Once the EV fleet is big enough to do some significant overnight load-levelling (trough-filling), the case for more nuclear energy will be plain.  Nuclear is not only free of criteria emissions, but essentially all GHGs as well.

Harvey:
China briefly reduced its schedule to reassess after Fukushima, and is now back on track, with 88GWe planned by 2020.
The rest of your stuff is about as well informed.

DM. Seems to be much less than the 120+ large NPPs (for a total of over 160 GWe) originially planned by China?

Worldwide, it seems that as many NPPs are getting shut down (temporarily or permanently) as new ones are being built.

As the existing NPPs are getting older and require more and more maintenance, average production may drop from about 93% to about 83% in another 15 years or so.

Sorry, but the world has not known the expected NPP boom. Will China rectify the down slide in the next 6 years and build 88 new facilities by 2020. One can doubt it?

Smith received around $30M in “Stimulus” money in 2010, and announced orders for something like 500 trucks. They filed an S-1 back in Nov of 2011 looking for $76M. Despite the better part of a year trying to drum up interest, not enough serious money showed up and they withdrew the IPO following Sept. Then last month they said meh, never mind we’re halting production.

It’s a really crummy business and at least in the last 7 years or so has never made money. You can still access the S-1 on sec.gov and see how feeble it was. Sinopoly (yet ANOTHER Chinese LiFePO manufacturer) apparently has the cash to bail out Smiths (though I can’t understand why they didn’t wait for a BK --- $42M is too much).

Commercial truck customers are not discretionary spenders like me or other EV nerds. They are also not like municipal transport authorities funded primarily by operating subsidies. A BE Truck has to make financial sense to be purchased in anything beyond symbolic ("look how Green we are at Joe's trucking") quantities. And for the foreseeable future they don’t.

Nobody is making money building and selling E-trucks. Even Smith’s prospectus forecast only a 3% CAGR in the near term. Their latest buyer will regret this.

Little large hydro power has been built by private capital in the US or elsewhere. If the subsidies and government regulations requiring wind power went away there would be no more wind farms built. The cost of storing wind energy till it is needed or providing backup with fossil fuels is very costly and windturbines produce only about 25 percent of their rated electricity over the years. The only way ethanol production from maize stays around is subsidies. Most people have no idea that they are already naturally radioactive so the anti nuclear folks including the oil producers are able to scare most of the people into believing that any and all radioactivity is to much, but forget to tell people that all the best foods are radioactive naturally as is every cell in every living thing including plants and people. If the people stayed put in the area near Fukishima not one person would have died from radioactive exposure during the last years since but several have died in automobile accidents. TEPCO had their big expensive battery installation at a wind power plant instead of at the reactors where it well might have saved them. They also ignored changes that their engineers had invented which would have cooled the reactors without large amounts of electricity. Regulations forced upon the nuclear power plants just out of fear have raised the costs. CANDU reactors are very reliable and can be built in a short time and can use as fuel all used fuel rods from US, UK, France, Japan, Russia, and China and others. The US produces a lot of used fuel rods but no actual fuel rod waste, but the government will not allow their use in CANDU or other heavy water reactors. Any Plutonium can be totally destroyed by using it in thorium based CANDU reactors. The present large reactors proposed for construction are a waste of money compared to the CANDU reactors but every country must have its own brand. China built two CANDU reactors on schedule and under budget but Russia underbid future ones just to get the business which is of course more expensive now and much delayed. The US government required that Japan evacuate large areas of its own population based on false fears and beliefs. Yes Chernobyl exposed people to radiation but not one person of the general population died within months of radiation and only about 50 people who were ordered to secure the reactor died. Many coal mines have had more deaths. Simply turning off diesel generators during the Tsunami may have worked to save them, but multiple sets of diesel generators can make all reactors in Japan safe from the failure of Fukushima; better yet use many Capstone turbines always running in an enclosed building. People will vote and demonstrate against nuclear power and text or talk on cell phones whilst driving. If the reactor had been built below sea level the ocean could have cooled it and radio active water would not have likely flowed back into the ocean. It is clear that Korea should build many more reactors and build undersea cables to japan for great income. All people against or for Nuclear power plants should read the book "Power to Save the World" All energy is nuclear energy and the big reactor in the sky, SOL, kills more people every year than even automobiles. ..HG..

Investment in U.S. business does not happen unless it is more profitable than investments in other parts of the world. China decided to go big in solar, now dominates the market. If we wait for the private sector only, other countries will pass us by.

Thomas, I am aware of their storied history and have seen their trucks running in the Mother Country. But their prospectus reveals a no-growth, debt-laden non-profit looking for investors in recent years. Since Tanfield has owned Smiths for quite some time, we can't know from here if in fact SEV has been a weak sister for many years, carried by the Parent company as an affectation of management.

In any case Tanfield still owns a significant portion of SEV, and is not yet bought into the Sinopoly proposal:

"The board of Tanfield believes there is still a very high level of risk that the planned listing process outlined by the Smith management will not be successful. Part of the process requires the restructuring of the capital structure of Smith and the approval of a number of significant investors. These approvals may not be granted.

“As indicated in Tanfield’s investment update of 14 March 2014 there will be a marked dilution to the ultimate holding by Tanfield in its Smith investment and therefore in the ultimate value to Tanfield shareholders.”