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The Future of the Car
Gandul writes "Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver's seat?"
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Me. I'll have no parts of these new cars.
They suck. Assembled in Mexico from Chinese parts.
Garbage. OVERPRICED garbage..
My car is 30 years old and it still runs fine and looks fine. How is that? It was made in Germany where they appreciate and exercise quality control.
I have several trucks that are 20 years old or older.
Guess what? I can fix them all myself. There is nothing in any of them that I can't troubleshoot or repair.
I wouldn't have one of these new cars that you can't work on without $100,000 car-o-scope and a PHD..
Screw that. I've never taken a car to be repaired by someone else except one time when I was traveling and had no tools.
Son of a bitches told me the transmission was blown and it was going to cost me $800 to have it fixed.
I told them to stick up their ass.
They put the transmission in the trunk and I called a tow truck to bring it home for me. My dad came out to help me with it. The repair cost $24 in parts and took one day. That was the LAST time I ever took anything to someone else for repair. And that means anything.
I get the service manuals, schematics, tools and test equipment for every thing I own, what tools or skills I don't have, my dad can cover as he's good with cars.
Bottom line, I'll never purchase a new car, ever, for any reason. The older the vehicle, the better I like it.
Biodiesel hopefully:
http://biodiesel.org/
Also, keep in mind that a computer controlled vehicle will get much better mileage. Almost no one gets the mileage listed in the window on purchase. Heavy feet on the accelerator and brakes take a toll on fuel efficiency.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Forget about biogas/biodiesel, most of it doesn't even have a positive net energy return.
Correct, ethanol is storage not power, but biodiesel does have about a 4:1 energy return, and biodiesel grown without petrochemical fertilizers can have an even higher energy return.
Engine fuel consumption is based on displacement and load. To use less fuel, you need less of a load (weight), or reduce the time (final speed). If you are accelerating slowly to 50, you'll find it has the same load as accelerating quickly to 50. This is, if you integrate the fuel consumption curves for both, the area is very close (around 1-2%).
A better way to minimize load (since romping on the gas doesn't affect mileage nearly as much as people think it does) is to make your average speed higher. By having your average speed higher, you reduce the time you spend loading your engine with acceleration, and keep it in the nicer "maintain velocity" part of the curve. It's even better if you maintain velocity at a slower speed, so as to reduce wind resistance. Most cars have a pretty bad wind resistance, even today!
How do you keep a higher average speed? When you know a light is going red a couple of blocks ahead, let yourself coast to it, instead of gasing up to it. If you know the period of the light, slow down very early, coast in at the slower speed, and then arrive just as it's changing. You won't have to stop, and you'll not have to accelerate over whatever speed you kept! This is also good for winter driving (less braking = less chances to lose grip on the tires).
One thing you'll notice with this is that most people tend to gas as hard as they can, slam on the breaks, and then jack rabbit when the light changes. By slowing early, you'll end up next to them at the light for a second, but pass them because you'll still have all your momentum working for you!
Mainaining a higher speed in corners is good, too. Just make sure your tire pressures are correct (check every 2nd time you fill, depending on tire quality), and learn how to handle your car. Note that most SUVs are not stable at cornering above 17mph/27kph, but a car like a late-1980s Accord can do 90 degree turns at around 28mph/45kph!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If you want to be a taxi driver in London (with the iconic black taxi) and be able to pick up passengers in the street, you need to do 'the knowledge' - and know a vast amount about how to get from any A to any B in London.
In my experience, the prime qualification for a cab driver in Aus is to have an opinion about the 'abbos', and not know where you are going most of the time (asking me to find it in the A to Z).
Uh, sorry, but the actual population of the USA is only just below 300 million. See http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.ht ml - the 500 million figure is from the last election :p
As if the US system is anywhere NEAR being a 'democracy'.
True, but the design has several nice features:
o The brake is compressing a vertical fin, so there should be a minimum amount of debris sitting on it.
o because the car straddles the rail, it would have to break in half to fall off the trail.
o you get a fair amount of lateral stability, so as long as the rail is installed correctly, the car won't wiggle from side to side like a railroad car does.
o The position information of the car is encoded into the vertical fin as holes, so as the car drives along, it knows exactly where it is.
o If you need to go farther away from the monorail than your batteries can provide, you'll be able to rent a gas/diesel/whatever engine that you drive over. It locks itself under your car and runs at its most efficient speed to charge your batteries.
The whole thing is a very sweet design. The only serious problem that I can see with it is debris (dirt, rocks, ice, loose parts) falling off the cars. That risk can be minimized by putting a deliberate bump into the track above an area in which it's safe to drop stuff. It's also possible to put a skin underneath the car so it doesn't accumulate/shed cruft.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
>>>"That's all current vegetable oil production. Serious, forward-looking studies of biodiesel consider growing new crops specifically optimized for oil production. IIRC an area 105 miles square would suffice for the entire energy requirements of the U.S.." Dream on. The areas required to grow biodiesel are ENORMOUS! For example... Australia exports 80% of our wheat. We eat a LOT of Weet Bix, bread, pasta, etc... but we still export 80% of our wheat. We grow a lot! But if we were to convert all 100% of our wheat into ethanol, we'd only get 9% of our transport fuels and no Weet Bix, bread, or wheat exports! Biodiesel has similar land limitations. You quickly end up running into making a choice between land and food! Also, how is it grown? If it is grown with traditional industrial "green revolution" agriculture, you LOSE energy! That's right. Look up the Haber Bosch process and figure how much gas energy gets used making nitrogen fertilizer. Figure how much petroleum & diesel energy gets used mining and transporting Phosphorous and Potassium. Once you add in the NPK values of the fertilizer, you realize we are in trouble. Then there's the pesticides... made from the petrochemical industry... oil again! So it's no wonder the "Green revolution" is now decidedly looked on as NOT that green. Indeed, after peak oil we will have enough trouble feeding ourselves, let alone growing fuel. check out "Eating Fossil fuels" at the link below. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_e ating_oil.html
If the USA COULD grow it's own oil from just a hundred or so square miles of dirt, why hasn't it? Why blow out the trade figures? Why fund your enemies? Why go to war in Iraq? This is not a game Chris... IIRC, 105 square miles is NOT going to fuel America.
http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D86.RE.Ch.5 .LiquidsX.html
Chris, please read the two links above. They could change your understanding of the world situation. This is really not a game, not a matter of personal opinion. We are in trouble... peak oil is here and yet we keep focussing on what "future cars" will look like when hardly anyone will be driving!
You can not be cited for driving at the speed limit, and if you were it would be thrown out.
Good. I now know for sure that you are a liar. I know traffic lawyers, so I hear cases that go through. There have been people cited, while traveling the speed limit, for a violation. They may have been going the limit, but they were in the left lane and the other cars were traveling faster. "Keep right except to pass" will get you a citation if you are in the left lane and not passing, whether you are going under the minimum, over the maximum, or anywhere in between. "Slow traffic keep right" means that traffic slower than the others on the road must keep right. This means that if everyone is going limit+5 and passing you on the right, and you are traveling the limit in the left lane, then you are breaking the law.
Also, I would like to know where you get your spedometer calibrated. I once inquired as to how to get mine officially calibrated, and the services were not offered to the general public. I ask because you are obviously not running with the regular spedometers, which I have verified to be off by 10+ mph. If you were on a consumer spedometer, then you wouldn't be so smug about your "exactly the speed limit" attitude. You can't know because you haven't been calibrated. For all you know, you are showing 65 in a 65 and traveling 60, or maybe 70.
As an aside, you are an asshole. It is perfectly legal to drive on the shoulder for long periods of time to allow others to pass in the state I grew up in. So, there are three types of people. There are ignorant people that block people because they are too stupid and lazy to learn the law. There are the people that are too mean and spiteful to pull over when appropriate to let others pass. And there are the people that are safe and let others pass, even if they are already at or above the limit. You would rather purposefully disrupt traffic in order to prove a point than to drive in a more safe and polite manner. You are less safe than the speeders you complain about. And, since the statistics kept by the federal government indicate that the vast majority of fatal crashes take place below the speed limit, you aren't any safer than all those speeders out there.
Learn to love Alaska