Chevron and GM Worked Together to Kill Nickel Batteries, the Only Proven EV Batteries

There's a campaign called http://TrueCostofChevron.com which points out the murders, environmental destruction, imposition and destruction of native way of life, and other downside of Big Oil.

Surely, we have to call Big Oil really the "megalopoly" of a complex of auto, oil, oil-service and ancillary functions, such as oil drilling, military protection of oil supply lines, military suppliers, foreign-aid and offset groups supporting oil diplomacy, oil transporting, etc., down to Jiffy Lube and brake and other shops. They conspire to keep out alternatives to oil, and to keep the price of oil artificially much higher than the cost of extraction.

Sometimes the irony seems incredible: the electric and natural gas currently used to process a 42-gallon barrel of oil would take an Electric or CNG car about the same distance as the REST of the barrel takes an Internal Combustion oil-fired car. The natural gas used to extract heavy oil from shale would power a CNG car much farther than the gasoline or diesel finally extracted by burning it.

The true cost of Big Oil may never be fully known; behind every great fortune lurks great sins and greater crimes. At random: "Dec 2, 2008...Chevron has been cleared...of complicity in a deadly hostage incident in Nigeria"

But this campaign to hold Chevron to its crimes does not even mention that Chevron and GM cooperated to stop production of the Toyota RAV4-EV, killing a competitor to oil-burning cars and thus prolonging the life of the "Oil Megalopoly", a giant version of old-time monopolies such as the Steel Trust or Standard Oil.

GM and Chevron cooperate to kill a competitor to oil-fired cars
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In 1994, GM bought control of the worldwide exclusive licensing rights to the Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery from Ovonics, a subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices (ENER). These controlling rights, ex-grandfathered agreements, were vested in a new company named GM-Ovonics. GM also purchased enough ENER stock to ensure a controlling interest in NiMH.

GM had convinced ENER that it wanted to use the NiMH battery in its upcoming EV1 launch; but instead, GM suppressed NiMH, declining to use NiMH on the EV1, which was released with fault-prone GM-Delco lead-acid batteries in late 1996.

NiMH was forgotten; GM had successfully suppressed it, they thought. GM claimed that NiMH could not be used because of a "heat problem".

There were suspicions that GM was pandering to the interests of the Oil Megalopoly to the detriment of the public, its customers, or even its own survival.

But in 1997, Toyota, which had previously purchased limited "grandfathered" rights to NiMH, released the NiMH RAV4-EV, which was very reliable and had over 120 miles range using EV-95 NiMH batteries. These batteries, also successfully used in the HondaEV and RangerEV, showed that GM had not told the truth when it said it could not use NiMH. These plug-in Electric cars were only made available on "boomerang" leases that allowed the manufacturer to retain control of the EV and the batteries, and gave them the right to confiscate and crush the EV and the battery if they so chose. No customer was allowed to purchase any EV from Toyota (or any other auto maker, for that matter).

It was not clear why no plug-in car was offered for sale, which would have produced more profit and allowed owners to retain and improve them, like any other car.

In 1999, Toyota was allowed to join the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM), becoming part of the auto "club". Previously, Toyota and other foreign auto makers had been excluded from the predecessor organization (the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, AAMA, whcih was disbanded to form AAM).

On Oct. 10, 2000, GM openly and without apology sold all interest in GM-Ovonics, and thus control of NiMH, to Texaco Oil Corp.

Six days later, on Oct. 16, 2000, Texaco Oil and Chevron Oil announced that they would be merging, thus passing control of GM-Ovonics, and the only battery proven in EVs, NiMH, to Chevron Oil, the successor to Standard Oil of California. Obviously, this merger was not a thing of the moment; the timing seems to indicate that GM and Chevron wanted an intermediary which might avert parallels to their previous combination, "NAL", which bought up urban light rail in the 1940's.

Ultimately, GM-Ovonics was renamed "COBASYS", an acronym for "Chevron-Ovonics BAttery SYStems".

The next year, 2001, shortly after the merger was concluded, Chevron funded a lawsuit by its subsidiary against Toyota et al., alleging (outrageously) that Toyota was not allowed to use NiMH on plug-in cars, was not licensed to build NiMH batteries large enough to use on a plug-in car, and that Toyota had abused its original cross-licensing permission by improving the battery without authorization.

In Mar, 2002, Toyota mysteriously changed its policy and began selling Toyota RAV4-EV, using the superior NiMH EV-95 battery, to the general public. This is the only instance where an Electric car was sold to the public by a major auto company; almost all of them, last sold in Nov., 2002, are still on the road even though new replacement batteries are not available at any price. There is no proof that Toyota did so to pressure Chevron into settling the lawsuit; the timing could have been coincidental.

In Dec., 2002, Toyota announced that it had reached an agreement with Chevron Oil's unit to settle the lawsuit; and that it had cancelled the Toyota RAV4-EV program, and stopped making the EV-95 battery, retroactive to Nov., 2002. No more NiMH EV-95 batteries, or the RAV4-EV that they powered, could be made or sold.

Thus Toyota joined GM in cooperating with Chevron Oil to suppress and cease making plug-in Electric cars.

To this date, Chevron's unit COBASYS refuses to sell NiMH for plug-in cars, and only allows its use on hybrids that can't plug in -- and thus get all their energy, ultimately, from the gasoline pump.

Chevron Oil Corp. didn't buy control of NiMH to make money; in fact, COBASYS has never made Chevron a dime, it's been a money sink.

Chevron Oil doesn't want to make money from building batteries for cars, whether they plug in or not! But cars that run without oil are a deadly threat to Chevron's money river selling oil for oil-fired Internal Combustion cars.

Chevron Oil, the successor to Standard Oil of California, thus used oil profits to purchase and suppress a competing technology, a blatant example of not just restraint of trade, but unabashed and open violation of the public interest by use of monopoly power to increase the power and profitability of that monopoly.

Defense of oil supply lines, charged to the public, as well as health and other subsidies and costs due to the oil monopoly render this an issue of criminal proportions.

Chevron Oil abused the patent system to suppress improvements to NiMH, a competing technology, and used the patent system to suppress, rather than foster, improvements in science and technology, contrary to the stated purpose of the patent system.

Chevron Oil Corp. appears liable for criminal and civil penalties for these actions; to this date, Chevron Oil has not been even publicly accused of these crimes, let alone indicted.

Doug
562-430-2495