Belenos (George a board director) eco batteries to supply VW? Nov 1 2015

[party animal - not!]

Complicated, but worth a read - and admirable..........

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Swatch-controlled battery company might offer IPO, because VW

And George Clooney Is A Shareholder of Benelos Clean Power

This Volkswagen diesel-emissions scandal can make some folks do the darnedest things. Take Swatch, that fashion plate of decades past, for instance. Swatch Group AG CEO Nick Hayek and his board is looking at possibly taking a battery company that the watchmaker controls public and selling about 20 percent of the company. And the VW scandal, now more than a month old, is a primary reason, says Bloomberg News, citing comments from Hayek.

Swatch controls Belenos Clean Power, which can claim actor George Clooney as a board member. Swatch says Belenos makes batteries that are less expensive to produce than the lithium-ion batteries commonly used in electric vehicles because the Belenos batteries don't use rare raw materials. The batteries are apparently about 30-percent lighter than the Panasonic batteries Tesla Motors is currently using in the Model S and X before getting its Gigafactory online. Swatch also owns Renata, which will start making battery watches next year and may have batteries that can be tested for plug-in vehicles in 2017.

Why does Swatch want to get into the automotive battery business now? Well, there have been hints from VW execs beleaguered by the scandal and the potential long-term detrimental effects on diesel-vehicle demand that they may shift their focus towards plug-in hybrids and EVs. On a side note, ex-Swatch chairman Nicolas Hayek Sr. helped design the Smart ForTwo, so this wouldn't be the family's first venture into the automotive world. Getting some Belenos batteries into a Fortwo ED would be a nice way to come full circle, a few years from now.

[carolhathaway]

Well, maybe at least something good comes out of this bl..dy scandal... Let's wait if VW really is the only car factory which has duped...
I'm sure if the car industry and politics as well really wanted that they would have designed a payable car with much less emissions .

[LornaDoone]

Car companies like VW have old men running them who continue to think they are in the automobile business when in reality, they are in the transportation business.  They arrogantly decided they would lie to achieve non achievable emissions reductions so that they could say they did something new and different with the engineering of their vehicles when in fact they didn't.

They also have too close of ties to the oil companies so they have no incentive to really look at alternative fuels.

Until auto companies can start focusing on clean energy propulsion of vehicles we (the consumers) will continue to have to suck in the foul air that fossil fuels produce.

I like companies like Tesla that are looking at new ways to fuel vehicles.  And I just read that Aston Martin is coming out with a vehicle that has NO engine.  There are four battery power plants attached to the drive trains of the wheels and that's what will propel the vehicles.

But the car companies that I'm really having hopes will prevail are those companies that are working on fuel cells.  Fuel cells use hydrogen to produce electricity.  The only by-product of that process is water which a small amount leaks out of the tailpipe of the vehicle.

There are also two major world-wide government funded projects that I read about recently (but don't ask me to provide a link can't find it right now) that are working on fusion energy.

One is laser based and one is magnet based.  One is based in the US and the other is a multi-nationally funded project based in Paris.

If they can finally crack the fusion code (without blowing up the rest of us in the process) we will finally have long term, abundant and clean energy.  And once that happens, a lot of these middle eastern funded wars will HAVE to go away because no one will be buying that shit oil that the Saudi's and other countries in the middle east use to fund terrorism.

Yea, rag on me all y'all want but the Saudi's have produced some of the most destructive terrorists out there and they get away with it cause they have all of our collective nuts in a bind with their oil.

Until the rest of the world gets off the oil teat of the middle east we'll have to get involved in their fucking mindless wars and their terrorist activities all in the name of some jerk off wanting to go fuck some imaginary virgins.  Christ somebody get these men laid and maybe they'd be less fucking destructive!  So until we get off this oil merry-go-round we'll have to continue to fund anti-terrorism activities too! 

But once their buying power is gone then we can tell them to fuck off.

Look at this weekend.  I'm sure the Russians are just jumping for joy about their plane of tourists being shot down in the Sinai peninsula.  At this point it's not confirmed that it was a terrorist attack but I wouldn't be surprised.

And I'm sure the Russians are going to blame the US for selling arms in that area for years.  Their OWN arms sales not withstanding cause I'm sure they'll conveniently forget that they sold military grade weapons to the middle east too.

Ok done ranting.

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