[Mark1808]

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Mark,

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The profit motive works, if the electric car has a viable market someone will direct capital towards that cause.

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It does, as proven by the Rav 4 EV. Electric cars would be in production if the patents on the battery technology required to make them practical were not controlled by Chevron. Market failure.

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We have a Department of Justice that has gone after many company's on anti trust grounds. Do you think Chevron has cornered the electric battery market and squashed it so they can sell more oil? If this is the case then I believe this would be an anti trust violation and you should report it to the DOJ.

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They have not 'cornered the market', they're sitting on patents for a specific type of battery that would make electric vehicles practical. This has nothing to do with anti-trust laws afaik.

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You believe a corporations property belongs to the public? I don't. That patent was available to anyone with the know how to develop it.

If Chevron has a patent on an electric battery that will obsolete oil I think they would run with the idea as it would be very profitable. Their aim is making money not saving oil.

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Except if you develop the same thing on your own, you are violating the patent.

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Anyone else could have acquired those patents before Chevron. At any rate they are set to expire in 2014 and several companies are working on EV's. It also seems like the Metal Halide patents owned by Chevron are not as promosing as Lithium Ion as outlined in this quote:

It would seem that most technical people tend to look beyond the patent controversy surrounding NiMH batteries. Whether they look to Li-Ion, bipolar NiMH or any other battery design, their emphasis is on working with the batteries that best suit the requirements for an electric vehicle. While most “techies” admit that standard NiMH batteries covered by the Cobasys patents work acceptably well in PHEVs, their creative energy tends to be focused on Li-Ion batteries and other chemistries which can store more energy in much smaller packages.