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Terrafugia CEO Responds To "Flying Car" Criticism
waderoush writes "The majority of the comments on last week's Slashdot post It's Not a Flying Car — It's A Drivable Airplane were critical, even dismissive, of Terrafugia's work to build a two-passenger airplane with folding wings that's also certified for highway driving. We boiled down these criticisms to the dozen most commonly expressed points, and today we've published responses from Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. While hybrid airplane-automobiles are an old (some would say laughable) idea, Dietrich argues that current materials and avionics technologies finally make the concept feasible."
The same thing was said about the automobile, the telephone, etc. etc.
I wonder (or wander offtopic slightly), has Africa any invasive species?
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Airbags were available in GM and Ford cars in the late 70's. Everything you are "thankful for" was available to the common guy at a decent price way before you knew it existed.
The rich did not have it. The common guy had it, we just did not want it back then. you have them now because the cost of it is rolled into the price of your car. if you could delete the airbag system your car's price would drop by $1500.00 and there are many people that WOULD delete it. I personally make sure I dont get cars with Antilock brakes. But then I know how to drive and antilock are for those that dont.
Moller claims to get about 18 mpg on ethanol with his M400 volantor, despite it's seemingly fuel-hungry 8 engines. I think he's cheating, though, since he's only actually built a 2-passenger model, and he hasn't flown it off the tether yet, let alone FAA-certified production models.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Prove me wrong on this.
Since you asked...
1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes...
We're AT WAR in the MIDDLE EAST. War means chaos. Chaos means production becomes unsteady. Unsteady production means LOWER SUPPLY.
Also...
CHINA and INDIA are ENTERING THE MODERN AGE. That means they want cars, and power plants, and other things that burn oil. Half the world starting to do what Americans have done for a century means INCREASED DEMAND.
You know what happens when you LOWER SUPPLY or INCREASE DEMAND? Yep. Prices go up. And this isn't even mentioning Peak Oil.
2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it,
The price of oil? Pretty much. Congress also can't stop hurricanes. What's your point?
the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way.
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country--the Republicans just think we're better off if they leave us to fend for ourselves, even if some of us starve. (Are you starving?)
Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China.
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.
Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow.
The dollar won't be the uber-currency of the 21st century. Good. Hegemony is boring, and Americans suck in a boring world.
4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.
"no solutions": I suppose you're right. We'll never go back to $1 a gallon gasoline. Shucks. But we knew this was coming twenty years ago.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Fusion: I won't even dignify this with more than "you're wrong."
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime. But (1) they get significantly cheaper with larger batches and technology improvements, (2) they last longer in larger installations, and with increased tech, which increases their total energy output, (3) in some places (deserts) they pay-off in less than five years already, (4) photovotalic isn't the only means of solar power. Reflected-light to melt salt or boil water works pretty damn well.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
It's Economics, stupid: Let me put this a little bit more clearly. Wind, Geothermal, Wave, Solar, and Nuclear lose out to oil and coal for electricity generation because the latter are so god damn cheap.
Incidentally, the total energy cost over the lifetime of a Prius has to be at LEAST twice what it is on a TDI Golf - and that's even less if you run your Golf on WVO or just biodiesel.
Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.Here's where I part company with you. Public transit doesn't work in the US like it does in the rest of the world. The only (well, statistically, the only) places that actually have working public transportation systems are major cities and in most cases that's not true either. I lived in SF and I could drive to work AND FIND PARKING in fifteen minutes, but it took a minimum of an hour and a half (assuming everything was on time and I made my connections, HA HA HA) to take the two buses and the light rail that represent the most rapid public transit between bernal heights and potrero hill.
In other words, even if you live in a major city, public transportation will probably fail you in the US.
This, however, is the result of deliberate actions taken on the part of the automotive companies; they bought bus and trolley lines and shut them down, and they lobbied for rail subsidies to be terminated in favor of the federal highway system. The federal government readily agreed, since it provided them with just one more form of leverage to apply against the states in their battle to severely curtail states' rights. Their attempts have been largely successful; for example, several states long avoided legalizing medical marijuana under the threat of their federal highway funds being terminated. This is all logical from the federal government's point of view, since marijuana was originally made illegal under the much-abused interstate commerce clause of the constitution, and that's the purpose of the highway system during peacetime.
Anyway, that's a slight digression, but if you can even afford to live in a city (I paid $800 for a ROOM in San Francisco, my landlord who was the manager of a toys R us turned out to be a tweaker... fun shit.) it doesn't necessarily follow that public transportation will do you any good. And before you suggest it, there is NO FUCKING WAY I would ride a bicycle. It's actually a health hazard to ride on the street not just because of the danger of some dipshit running you over, but because of all the exhaust you're sucking.
So I agree with your apparent assertion that (most?) hybrids are stupid (I think they make some sense when used as a taxi, and series hybrids make a LOT of sense) but I think the rest of what you have to say is pretty ridiculous.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
First, either you are lying or you are talking about the monetary cost of a solar system. It can take 10-30 years to pay off THAT cost, but that has nothing to do with the actual cost of producing the panel, and everything to do with supply and demand and artificially inflated prices.
You have to keep in mind that right now what we're doing with our national effort is making war. Far from being profitable (unless somehow it drives the price of petroleum in the proper direction to dramatically increase the value of the dollar - kind of doubt that one) this is actually putting us into huge debt. If we simply put that effort into producing PV solar, and instead of turning it into a pork processing system :) we just did everything at-cost, we could do this shit tomorrow. Or at least get started.
As the AC sibling comment to this one says, the very first hit on your search terms is Can Solar Cells Ever Recapture the Energy Invested in their Manufacture? and the answer is yes:
So in other words, they knew in 1977 (the linked short-paper was written twenty years later) that even at then-current (no pun intended) levels of efficiency that payoff was in under seven years. Today, with thin film panels, that should be substantially less.
If we promoted solar more, and produced more of it, then the prices would go down (if everyone and their mother made a grid-tie inverter it wouldn't cost you so damned much, for example) and then the economic payoff for the end user would come much sooner. Until then, solar is pretty much for the wealthy and those living off-grid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"