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Americans Refusing To Wait For Mainstream EVs
hazehead writes "The growing trend of folks refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles is starting to get some press. From DIY tinkerers in Atlanta trying to keep money from going overseas (or simply from leaving their wallets) to a guy in Oregon building an open source Civic conversion kit, Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
As long as that electricity is coming from coal and fuel powered sources and not solar, wind, water, or nuclear sources, all it does is shift the problem, not solve it.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Don't know about the US but I see articles on this subject in the newspaper at least a few times a year here in Canada. (No, the cold isn't a problem with batteries.)
My grandfather has even been on the evening news a few times to talk about the subject.
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting. Oh, and also, I would like to point out there is no such thing as "clean coal" if you get where that's from, I give you one rupee.
Richard P. Feynman is not my hero, but if I had to choose a scientist I admired, it would be him.
If we move our transport systems over to electricity, then change the way we generate that electricity, it does a great deal.
Also, its a hell of a lot easier to control emissions from power stations then it is to control millions of cars pouring exhaust fumes into the air in cities.
Its going to take a while to get the somewhat large number of nuclear power stations and solar power farms the US now wants up and running, but it is going to happen, and when it does, things will get a lot better.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Most manufacturers are going to have a version of an electric car (EV) by 2010, but since car manufacturers have such long development times, by the time we actually need it, its too late. I'm glad these heroes are doing something about it.
Really?
I'm all for using less gas and improving the environment, but the guy spent $12,000 to turn his Chevy into an electric car. He now estimates that he's saved $700 in gas. It doesn't mention exactly when his conversion was done, but mentions January as the time he began the conversion. If the conversion took two months, then he's saved $700 in 5 months, or $140 per month. This works out to $1,680 per year. In other words, he would need to drive the car for over 7 years to make up the price of the conversion. (Yes, there are additional savings since he doesn't need to change the oil or filters, but there might be other maintenance costs that might be higher given that it is a DIY project.) Based on this, I'm not about to tear the gas engine out of my car anytime soon.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
... and getting some press, car companies will step-up the EV production. They don't want any competition eating into their future market.
then more electricity will be generated (assuming capitalism is still alive in the US). It does help to solve the US' dependency on foreign oil. Although is the US people would stop demanding everything be made out of plastic and return to metals and natural fibers then our dependency on foreign oil would drop even more. It is a good start, at solving some of the problems, but it does not solve all the problems and EV's do have one large problem, how do you dispose of the energy storage devices?
insert inflammatory comment here!
> Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands.
Don't worry. The regulators will put a stop to it. Can't have people going around doing things without permission.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Exist for some cars. I've been thinking about this investment for a while now.
I would posit that electrical power from coal to drive electric cars would ultimately be cheaper for consumers, better for the environment, and would place on a better path to national energy independence.
It is far more efficient to have a single big plant burning electricity and sending electrons to people rather than having everyone around with their own little tiny power plants. A single giant coal plant has a generator that runs at a fixed rate, maximizing power output for fuel burned, whereas an internal combustion engine car operates over a wide range of RPMs, offering more of a compromise than a fuel solution.
The single giant plant is only one physical distribution point for many cars. Instead of having fleets of tanker trucks with hundreds of people hauling fuel around to dozens of gas stations, you instead have a single train run by one or two people hauling up to a month's supply of coal for a big coal unit and in one single trip.
If we did switch to electric cars, even if they did come from coal plants, you would also eliminate the environment problem of gasoline spills. There's nothing to "spill" in an electric car that is really bad. Yes, you will wind up with either lead acid batteries that are environment nightmare, or, lithium polymer batteries that periodically explode and kill everyone in the car, but ultimately, the birds will sing and trees will wave their branches in joy, if that's the sort of stuff you like.
This is my sig.
Those central sources are far cleaner than an ICE. They are also cheaper per watt.
It's a start, and I like the idea of an electrical vehicle because I can't build a gasoline refinery in my yard...but some solar cells and/or wind power...those can help.
Right now I'm just driving for no good reason so I can drive up the price of gas :D
Nah, just kidding.
Blar.
It's the concept of "waste" heat you see.
Deleted
Playing Devil's advocate, but to keep money from going overseas you're spending $12K to put foreign electronics in your vehicle.
At $4/gal, that's 3,000 gallons of gas worth of modifications. Figure 25MPG as a safe value and that's 75,000 miles worth of fuel. Add onto the costs of your expanded electric bill, and you're looking at over 100,000 miles of driving to break even. Now, they can only drive 40 miles a day, which is 2500 days of driving. At 260 work days in a year, that's 9.6 years of driving... just to break even. Even if you drive it all year long, every day, it's still 7 years. When you install it into a 14 year old truck, the rest of the truck will rust apart and you'll still be trying to break into the black.
I understand their principles, but money really shouldn't play into this as a justification.
There are quite a few folks in the Seattle area tooling around in home-brew electrics, including a co-worker of mine who's done a nice job with a Miata. There are two local factors that encourage this. One is that, being in Boeing's backyard, it's fairly easy to obtain a surplus jet-engine starter motor. The other is that most of our electricity comes from falling water, and therefore is relatively cheap.
EVs are way more frugal with their power compared to gasoline engines. So much so, that even taking into account loss in transmission lines and energy lost in charging batteries, you still come out ahead. I'll take an extra $100 on my electric bill than at the gas station any day... plus I don't have to make a special trip to 'fill up' the car.
Gas engines are at best about 30% efficient... as in only 30% of the energy consumed actually goes to making momentum for moving the car.
This is just more BS perpetuated by those who stand to lose their income streams from oil, including car mfgs who stand to lose the income stream of spare parts, since EVs are waaaaay more reliable than gas or diesel engines.
I can't wait until somebody finally gets around to making a full EV car that seats two with ABS and Airbags, PS, Heat and AC, even if it only goes 100 miles. If they can do it under $25k I'm there with cash in hand.
Perfect... Let the government worry about courts, police, and military. The rest we'll do ourselves, thanks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I would buy one of those Tesla Roadsters, but there's the whole $100,000 thing that I can't get past.
Like when you shop at WalMart. You get cheaper goods, but you also encourage CEOs to shift more and more jobs to cheaper over-seas nations. Less job opportunities, less wealth in the nation to pay for specialized services, etc.
You gotta look past your wallet to see how your choices can cost you. Giving money to a 'find the missing baby' charity is not cost effective.
Blar.
Common argument, but so very wrong, because producing electricity in large power plants, even from really disastrous ones as coal or oil, is very much more efficient than producing it in millions of small engines.
Subsequently adding cleaning solutions is also very much simpler/cheaper than doing the same to millions of small engines.
And later changing the production from one system (say coal or oil) to another (say nuclear, wind or solar) is very much simpler than to replace millions of cars.
Please, you Californians, if you see any of that horseshit on the ballot, please oh please vote it down!
Other components such as a fuel injector were replaced with their electric counterparts
What's the electric counterpart to a fuel injector? A... wire?
--sabre86
your cash goes to:
1. Chavez in Venezuela to support anti-American jingoism
2. Putin in Russia to support Russian Neoimperialism such as in Georgia
3. Bin Laden via Saudi Wahhabism, the ultra-fundamentalist form of Saudi Islam that gives rise to treating women like cattle, nonSunnis like subhumans, and Islamic terrorism in its myriad forms wherever such groups are supported by conservative Arabic funds
the American government doesn't seem to think getting off foreign oil is as much a priority as the American people think it is. The priorities of the American government conflates dependency on foreign oil with other foreign problems that, if they examined many problems around the world more carefully, they would see that it is the American people and their SUVs that fund those problems in the first place. this complacency is partly our own fault, for not hammering our leaders on this issue hard enough. likewise, you can complain to GM about building SUVs instead of electric cars, but we as Americans buy SUVs instead (until quite recently)
we need electric cars supported by a new wave of modern nuclear power plants. of course there are better sources of electricity than nuclear, but most of these are boutique and cannot scale like nuclear can. this includes wind and solar. but i don't really care to champion nuclear that much as i care about the need to get off foreign oil, any way possible. so please, invest in solar and wind as well, let us find new ways for nonnuclear tech to scale
modern nuclear via pebble bed reactors just does not go chernobyl, and via breeder reactors waste in lifespan and quantity is dramatically reduced (1/10th quantity of waste, a few centuries instead of 10,000 years of radioactivity, and lower radiation levels of safer forms of radiation). breeder reactors also dramatically increasing energy yeild, and allow us to use thorium as well as uranium. security concerns are real with nuclear technology, but if we spent 1/1000th of the amount of money and lives we spend securing our petroleum in iraq on securing breeder reactors instead (they make plutonium, that's the danger with breeder reactors), we would still be many orders of magnitude safer than our current status quo of funding terrorism and russian imperialism and anti-american jingoism like we do now. of course even thorium will run out in a century or two, but if we haven't mastered fusion technology by then, we are doomed anyways, or would have found a way to scale wind and solar by then
zero reliance on foreign petroleum by 2025. whoever enunciates that idea the loudest amongst a range of candidates in any contest before you, elect them to Senator/ President/ Congressman/ Dogcatcher
if petrodollars were to dry up on the international stage, many of the intransigent problems that all peoples of the world face today, not just Americans face, would dry up as well
thems the facts. get with it America
no more foreign petrodollars. stop feeding your damn SUVs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People have been doing this since the 70s. Popular Mechanics even had some projects back in the 70s and 80s.
Let me know when anybody is doing more than a thousand conversions a year. Until then it just the same as it ever was. A few will spend a lot of money on EVs and then the price of oil will drop. And yes oil does drop. Around 2000 gas was cheaper per gallon after inflation than it was in 60s!
Look up the oil glut of the 80s for another example.
It might not this time but if you asked anybody in 77 if the price of oil was going to drop they would have also said "Never"!
This is not a comment about EVs as much as this is just an over hyped news story that really means next to nothing.
Now the number of people that are signing up to by the Volt is a lot more interesting.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Not only is this a great example of the American can-do tradition, hopefully it will also go a long way toward dispelling the myth that cars are too complicated for "regular people" to deal with.
Think about it. When my parents were graduating from high school (1969) it was a given that people would know the basics of how to service a car. For guys especially, it was just something that guys "should" know. These days the attitude is more like, "meh, it's too complicated, leave it to the experts".
Let's hear it for can-do, rather than pay-someone-else-to-do.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
didnt we just have a slashdot article yesterday that implicated most americans dont know anything about science?
"hand me the bible, and a copy of USA Today honey, im going to build my way out of this energy crisis."
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can't build a gasoline refinery in my yard.
I've been told that many people, especially in the deep south, operate devices called "stills" which can produce an ethanol based fuel.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
How dare they??? I want government oversight of this dangerous endeavor immediately! I want it taxed, and regulated and I want government subsidies.
How dare people do things without asking for government permission!
They need to make sure that these vehicles can pass all the safety regulations. You know, to protect the children. Do it for the Children! Won't anyone think of the children????
OMG This is crazy. These people are Terrorists! They are out to destroy America! How dare they!
And don't forget Illegal Aliens. I know they are involved somewhere.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I hear that term a lot "sending our money overseas" or "giving all our money to the middle east"...Thats not quite how it works. US has contracts(not a well kept secret) with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait...etc, that state they will pay X dollar per barrel of oil. In the case of Kuwait I bet its pretty damn low (they would no longer be a country without western intervention). So how it goes, from my understanding, is this: US companies buy oil at contract for 40/barrel, then sell it to US citizens at 110 barrel...Oil companies see all the profit. Big oil = republican = current government = high oil prices. US didn't invade Iraq to steal the oil, they invaded Iraq to prevent Saddam from giving it away(oil for food lol) to EU and driving the prices down BELOW contract values..In that case the money does go the middle east. On topic: I think high oil prices are the greatest thing ever...you can't give away SUVs now. EV hackers get my support, they'll be the auto barons of the future.
Whenever I saw those damn "If you smoke pot, you're supporting terrorist" all I could think about was the distasteful regimes we buy our oil from.
Well said.
Blar.
Yep ""Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands"" You are exactly right... i do agree with your answer.. Regards, Elechub-SEO
This is how capitalism is supposed to work in the US.
Someone should be able to build up the next "toyota" (or whatever) in his garage using his own resources.
Not this government soviet style mandated 5 or 10 year plans.
I don't just want politician "selective funding" of these efforts (which usually end up in politician's buddys' pockets) but reduction of tax and legislative burden which blocks these "tinkerers" from possibly going big on their own.
Whatever fuel we conserve will just end up in stupid redneck toys like ATVs, dirt bikes, skidoos, recreational fishing boats, and those modded pickup trucks with giant wheels.
I would love an electric car. But a few times a year, I drive from the Bay Area to San Diego. This is the perfect solution to the problem.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (in 2003)... Oil Demand by Sector: Transportation 68% Industrial 23% Residential 4% Electricity Generation 3% Commercial 2% The US does not depend on oil for electricity. The US creates 49% of its electricity from coal, 19.4% nuclear, 20% natural gas, and 7% hydroelectric. The left over is made in other ways, but only 1.6% of the power generated in the US is actually produced from OIL. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/figes1.html Priority 1 here should be energy independence with transportation, based on the numbers. Our ability to create electricity has almost nothing to do with oil.
On Ni-MH batteries in 1996.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solectria_Sunrise
That's close to twice the range of my petrol car.
Deleted
4. Canada to help pay for training for our hockey team to beat yours.
You lazy bastards, get to work! Discover, innovate and become the next Henry Ford to save our sorry asses! I hope someone does come up with a good idea that they can sell, and I hope they only make black ones....take it or leave it.
WTF? Over?
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Ah, yes! I can't disagree. And round and round we go - leaving out the rest of us.
all Canadians: athletes, actors, comedians, newscasters, etc., who achieve some sort of fame wind up moving south of the border. this includes Gretzky
so please, train better Canadian Hockey players. so we can hire them ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who is going to foot the bill to upgrade the US power grid? When windmills generate large amounts of electricity outside of Los Angeles, PG&E shuts down many of the windmills as the transmission lines can't handle the additional electricity.
I found an interesting article about the US Power Grid: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/43823
According the American Society of Civil Engineers, http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=25 gave the US power grid a grade of D,
"The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts."
If everyone in your neighborhood upgraded their houses with another 220v circuit, could the transmission lines handle it? The increase in gas powered cars spurred an increase of gas stations, and that was paid for by the gas companies, through profits from selling gas. Remember tho in the US, power companies aren't allowed to be profitable.
If you had to pay 2,3,4x your electrical bill to pay to have your regions power grid upgraded, would you go for it? Better still would you pay for it even if you didn't have an electric car?
The job of the injector is to provide a metered supply of fuel, so the nearest answer is probably the plug, not the wire. High current connectors are not trivial to implement - the Vectrix scooter had a recall because of a problem in this area. But, generally speaking, it is the metering system - the controller - that is the major technical challenge of an EV. Because the batteries are available, if expensive, the brushless motors are available (and really solid proven technology), but connecting the two together is hard. The Vectrix has an advanced controller that allows regenerative braking, as do some hybrid cars, and effective regen is a major factor in mileage. The controller needs to be extremely efficient to avoid wasting lots of energy as heat, it needs to be very reliable and durable, and it needs to function correctly under many load conditions. In fact, I would submit that the sheer technical cleverness of modern motor controllers is what makes EVs possible on modern roads. If you had to start one like a tram, moving a huge brass switrch bar across a resistor bank to prevent the motor shorting before it ran up to speed, they would be impossible to commercialise.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Stealing precious tax dollars from fuel tax so they can drive their tax free electric vehicles all over town on road they haven't paid for!!!
Someone contact the MPAA (Motorcar Pavement American Association) and the RIAA (Roadway Improvement Advancement Association).
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I *so* wanna hug you!
Nukes! Nukes! Nukes! Nukes!
$12,000 to convert a car. Let's see - estimating $200 a month in gasoline costs, and assuming that electricity is free (which it isn't)...He might break even in 5 years.
As for paying $2 to keep one dollar from going overseas, I didn't know that Canada was overseas.
-Turkey
I can't abide using food crops to move my vehicle. If I could use a still to create ethanol from lawn clippings, pine needles and brush...then I'd be down.
Blar.
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The bicycle industry seems to be one of the last bastions of Yankee ingenuity, where small entrepreneurs make a successful business out of a few thousand square feet of floor space, some machine tools, and a few dozen employees. Once you get beyond the Huffies in Wal*Mart, a large percentage of the $500-and-up bicycles seem to be made by large numbers of small companies. But I don't think this is going to happen with cars.
The bicycle craze and the horseless carriage fad hit the U. S. at roughly the same time, maybe 1895 or thereabouts. An 1896 Boston Globe article quotes a livery stable operator as being worried by bicycles but dismissing the horseless carriage as "a pack of French nonsense." At the time, bicycles represented a high level of mechanical and engineering sophistication. It's not surprising that the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics; bicycles, early automobiles, and early airplanes were not at terribly different levels of complexity.
Not any more. (Pace, members of the Experimental Aircraft Association; I know that there are people still building airplanes in their garage).
But I don't see cottage-industry carmaking as going much of anywhere. For one thing, it's not about the car, it's about the battery. I don't think great breakthroughs in batteries are going to be the province of cottage-industry entrepreneurs.
In the 1900s, electric cars had a range of about thirty miles. In the intervening time, advances in batteries have been counterbalanced by increased expectations of what a car should do, and I find it very discouraging that the Chevy Volt should have a promised electric range of only forty miles.
The brilliance of the Prius (which uses a fundamental design worked out by the U. S. company TRW in the last sixties, who couldn't get U. S. carmakers interested in it) is that it achieves something significant without requiring revolutionary new batteries made of unobtainium. The battery is just a short-term buffer that makes up the difference between the torque required for normal driving and the torque obtainable from a small, fuel-efficient engine. But it does so by being mechanically and electronically very sophisticated. I don't think anyone could cobble up a Prius-style hybrid engine in a small machine shop.
I'd love to see a disruptive-technology electric car emerge from small companies, but I don't think it will happen.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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if you shoot heroin, you really do support the taliban and al qaeda. especially if you shoot heroin in europe
its funny, but the only positive effects the taliban had in afghanistan while they were in power was they utterly destroyed the opium trade there (the ONLY positive effect. blowing up ancient buddhas, beheading prostitutes and adulterers and prodiving a safe haven for bin laden and his jolly crew was their real achievements.)
before 9/11/01, american drug officials would fly over opium growing regions in afghanistan and be mind boggled at how there just was no opium anywhere. the taliban completely razed the poppy fields and issued death pronouncements on anyone who would grow poppies
so apparently, murderous religous fundamentalism is the way to win the war on drugs. "stop growing opium or we'll kill you" seems to weigh heavier in the minds of poor farmers than easy money i guess
but please note how shallow the taliban's religious convictions are: they got to power in afghanistan in the first place by relying on opium growing funds, and now that they are out of power again, they are relying on the poppy fields again
there's no religious fundamentalist like a hypocritical religious fundamentalist (well actually, that's doubly true, as all religious fundamentalists are hypocrites)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When we purchase vehicles, are we also purchasing the right to modify them? Isn't this like buying a cell phone, then unlocking it without the company's permission to use with another carrier, thus hurting them financially?
i always wondered at the status quo of nuclear power in canada
in the usa the rightful resurgence of new nuclear power technology is held in check by NIMBYs and a public opinion based on the failures of 1960s era nuclear tech (silkwood, three mile island, the china syndrome, etc... it just isn't like that anymore)
in canada is public opinion and NIMBYs a major influence too?
i know it is downright worse in great britain. NIMBYs and morons in the public there rule the day
only france and japan seem to have gotten nuclear tech right (that is, they rely on it a lot more than we do, and therefore don't fund wahhabism, antiwestern jingoism, and russian neoimperialism as much as we do)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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Very cool.
Of course, they have newer crash test regulations essentially designed to jack up the weight of cars. So we probably need to trade some safety to get out of the gas engine altogether...
This is my sig.
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Saturn AMP is just one. There is room for many businesses to start up doing conversions. In addition, this would be a good time for small manufacturing company to put together kit electric cars. Buy the frame, electric drive, then pick your chassis and batteries. You can assemble it yourself. Detroit is trying hard to keep their gas engines. But if a small business man was smart, they would make the kits such that others could sell the assembled kits, perhaps with add-ons. Heck, I could buy a kit car that did 80 MPH, had decent acceleration and got 50 Miles/ charge for $15K. Ideally, it would be a truck or a small SUV (crossover or whatever the new name is). But 50 miles/charge is fine here. To work and back, and then some. Out with the old and in with the new.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is still both cheaper and more environmentally friendly to buy a use car with good millage.
EVs make the best sports cars, period. Nothing competes with electric for performance. We should have been making electric sports cars 15 years ago. But soon Tesla & co. will finally push the internal combustion engine out of the high performance market.
After EVs are dominating the sports car world they weill trickle down rapidly.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
The way we get things done in America is lobbying. Until we start lobbying for electric or hydrogen powered cars, nothing is going to happen.
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting.
Plenty of people doing that already. A handfull of additional voices won't make enough difference to affect decision-makers.
But people willing to put tens of thousands of dollars and six months of their spare time into actually BUILDING an electric vehicle proves there's an actual demand out there, not just politically-correct lip service. That MAY get through to decision makers. (If not, at least it made a disprorportionate splash - which itself is a far more effective protest than writing letters or marching.)
I would like to point out there is no such thing as "clean coal"
But there IS such a thing as "clean wind". For instance - I have a fine site for a small mill, which would be big enough to charge an electric car if I could get one. (Doesn't have a mill now - because of ZONING laws. B-b But that may change.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
An additional problem for biofuel in CA is that the vehicle antipollution regulations make it difficult to get a diesel powered car.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
when you implicate the usa in all of the problems in the world, you lay responsibility for cleaning up the world at the feet of the usa by inference
in other words, those like you who seem to find a creative line of reasoning for blaming washington dc for everything in the world are actually more guilty than american neocon warhawks for putting the usa in iraq, or georgia. that's because, if you will recall, the usa is directly and 100% reponsible for saddam hussein (so the braindead kneejerk thinking goes). or, as you say above "In fact, the current conflict in Georgia is a direct result of American meddling in their affairs"
meanwhile, if you wish the usa to butt out of places in the world you would rather it not be involved in, then what you want to do is lay responsibility for things in the world at the feet of other players. yes, *gasp*, there are other world powers in the world. and yes, *gasp* they do evil meddling things outside their borders too. amazing huh?
there are more countries in the world than the usa. it is a big world, you should get out and see it some time. this lesson applies to those obsessed with the usa as the blame for every problem in the world more than any other ideologue partisan out there
blame implies responsibility. responsibility furthers involvement. therefore, your rhetoric, your words above, guarantees the usa remain involved in georgia, your words and your thinking guarantees the usa remain in places it doesn't belong more than the rhetoric of the most hardcore neocon warhawk in washington dc
that's a fact. understand why, and grow the fuck up and develop a more nuanced understanding of the world and its many peoples. its not an american playground. at least the world is not an american playground except in one place: your mind and the minds of braindead one dimensional partisans like yourself
people who think like you are the reason why the usa is overextended in the world. your rationale expects them to be involved. you can't even conceive of a world where the usa has its fingers in every little event. you can't establish a line of cause and effect that does not somehow creatively meander its way back to washington dc. that the usa is involved in places it doesn't belong is a bedrock principle of the way you think. to imagine a world functioning with other players besides washington dc> to you this is science fiction
pathetic, puerile, low iq stupidity: what is happening in georgia right now is the fault of the usa
hilarious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the usa should stay involved on the world stage
but staying involved by funding imperialism and terrorism with american petrodollars is not the way to do it
as for talk radio, i never listen to it. if you have a problem with the way someone thinks, you have to address what they actually think, rather than writing them off as a stereotype that actually has nothing to do with the person
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Pickup truck modified for electric, with a honda generator in the bed.
People, this is the *market* working! Great ideas don't just stand alone, market pressure pushes them into mainstream use. There was no doubt that someday oil would be priced high enough for other sources of energy to become attractive.
I just hate it when people think *they* are the smart ones and know what is best for the market. The market optimizes itself. It might take longer than you want, but it will eventually cut away the deadwood in a much smarter way than a centrally managed system.
My dad bought an electric Renault a couple of years ago and after i took it for a spin i was totally lost. First of all an electric car has a very flat torque curve, it accelerates pretty evenly from standstill to 90 Km/h. Its easy to drive it very smoothly and elegantly. The next thing is sound, the car is dead silent until you hit 60+ km/h and road noise starts. Electric cars arent all about the enviroment.
Myself i really want one but sadly you cant buy one no matter how much you are willing to spend. The demand is here but for some strange reason no western or japanese manufacturer wants the money. The Chinese on the other hand are getting up to speed very quickly and at current pace of development it wont be long before their EV's start pouring into the west.
HTTP/1.1 400
Aside from the cost savings, efficiencies and other benefits already mentioned, the electric car I rode in back around 1990 was wonderful for more reasons.
- silent, no noise pollution, just wind noise
- no shifting, the better torque allowed it to be driven in one gear
- no idling, it only is "on" using power when accelerating, otherwise completely off
- regenerative braking, actually GAIN power instead of wasting energy slowing
- less maintenance/cost, no oil changes, no cooling system, fuel injection, ignition system, clutch, timing belts
- never stop at a refilling station again or ever "run low" between fill ups, basically have a "full tank" at the start of every day
And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.
So we'll all have electric cars, and will use less gas. We'll have less cost, individually, until 'the man' comes up with enough invisible costs to put us back down.
All the while, the trucker is still buying diesel fuel. Lots and lots of it.
Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up, and those extra costs will be passed onto us at the shelves of our local Walmart.
At the end of the loop we have extra taxes/fees/etc AND higher prices.
WOOT?
yes, arrogance is expensive, isn't it?
throughout the last 15 years, after the fall of the soviet empire, europe has increasingly plotted its own course, away from washington dc. this is natural: europe didn't need the usa anymore, the soviet threat was dead
now what do we see? we see a neoimperialist russia invading an outpost of european style liberalism on the black sea, and shutting down oil pipelines that fuel your car and heat your house
so naturally, we shall see europe huddling up against the usa again in the near future
for example had bush invaded iraq in 2008 instead of 2003, after the resurgence of russia, rather than before, you would see france, germany, etc., dutifully falling in line and supporting that with troops, rather than vocally distancing themselves. why? because suddenly EUROPE NEEDS THE USA AGAIN
so yes, arrogance is a bitch. the arrogance in your words is suddenly expensive: you need america suddenly again
so be prepared to grow beet red in the facwe and throw food at your television. because what you will see there is merkel offering obama or mccain shoulder rubs, and sarkozy renaming french fries freedom fries: kowtowing to the next american president in ways you dislike, stifling all voices in your country that run antiamerican
europe has to do that again. its 1988 again, in geopolitical terms
so yes, arrogance is a bitch. you can't afford european arrogance anymore ;-)
hugs and kisses, your american poppa
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not sure what your point is. At the moment, what you say is true and obvious but that's precisely where the electric vehicle could come in. While there are still reatively few of them (electric vehicles) then it's more about personal preference and perhaps some potential savings to be made - if not now then very soon. As more and more of them come on the roads then in fact the amount of electricity and it's price will have A LOT to do with the usage and price of OIL simply because the two of them will be competing for the same market - transportation.
yes, i agree with you. i used the shorthand term SUV with the implicit implication that i was talking about an internal combustion engine SUV. as frankly, when you talk about SUV, 99.999999% of them are ICE SUVs
now if every suburban soccer mom in the country had 4 trucks in their driveway: an electric power supersize hummer, an electric power big wheel chevy tahoe, and an electric power lincoln navigator, i would support that 100%
because i don't have a problem with the SUV, i have a problem with the ICE SUV. which, when you talk SUV today in shorthand terminology, that is what is naturally implied
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because if we had 10x the amount of reactors we have today, but they used breeder technology instead, we would have waste that:
1. would be the same in quantity (breeder reactors consume 10x more fuel)
2. would last 200 years instead of 10,000 years
3. would give off less radiation
4. would give off less damaging types of radiation
so you could throw it in a hole and forget about it, because in 200 years it wouldn't be waste anymore
meanwhile, loading any nuclear waste for jettison into space is:
1. many orders of magnitude more expensive than putting it in a hole
2. if there is an accident, you are irradiating a large part of the atmosphere, whether breeder reactor waste or old style waste
even with a very low risk of #2 happening, no risk at all (from burying it) is still superior
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Really, it does. Look it up.
Not that I'm a proponent of using more oil, but the "terrorists have all our oil" argument needs to be put in perspective.
Chevron, a large petroleum company, owns the patent on NiMH battery technology that is critical for EVs.
Toyota produced the RAV4 EV starting in 1997 using NiMH technology. Chevron sued on patent infringement and got Toyota's NiMH production line shut down. Now there are no replacement NiMH batteries anywhere, yet many of the RAV4s are still operating on the original batteries. That's a little known secret that the oil companies tried to suppress.
With fuel costs out of control, there has been growing criticism over oil companies abusing the patent system to prevent competing technologies - technologies that the country badly needs - from ever reaching the market. The founders of the patent system intended the system to protect inventors from having their hard work exploited, not for corporations to maintain their monopoly. Chevron's ligitant tactics prove that they have no intention of producing NiMH batteries in the interest of maintaining their monopoly. They executed patent law in bad faith and a good argument could be made that they should have their NiMH patent revoked.
This is a shining example why our patent system is broken.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
It's a total piss off, and indicates the degree of cranio-rectal inversion present in the provincial government. We even have an electric car company (Zenn Motors) but we can't buy their CARS!!!
Pathetic bunch of cowardly shitbags at the top, standing in the way, as usual. And it's not like it's a Liberal v conservative v NDP v Green problem. The Greens are good to go, but the other three parties are too busy getting fucked by the car companies and the auto workers unions.
Utterly depressing.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
One of the main problems with commercial electric vehicles has been the treatement of the batteries. The GM EV1 was classed by California as a rolling hazardous waste dump which was partly why none of them could be sold only leased. There was no other way that GM could assure the California government that the batteries would not somehow end up in a landfill.
Think about it. What are lead-acid batteries? Well, first you have the acid. It would certainly burn any child's hand if you poured some on the child. That is obviously hazardous then. Lead comes next. Lead causes all sorts of learning disabilities and is toxic. Lead has to be hazardous also. So we have a lead-acid battery which is doubly toxic and hazardous. How many of these do you need for a car? Right next to a child? Sounds like some serious regulation is needed.
From what I understand mass production of lithium batteries isn't much cleaner, and the lithium batteries themselves aren't 100% perfectly safe. So you can expect the same kind of reaction when hybrid vehicles start reaching end-of-life. It hasn't happened yet, mostly because of sheer blindness to facts - something that will certainly disappear the first time somebody puts a hybrid car into a car crusher without removing the battery first.
You can be there will be regulations in place long before there are a lot of electric vehicles on the road. Some places they might make sense, but it is doubtful there will be any sense in them in California.
Which makes more sense?
1) Install a single, as-large-as-you-want, possibly even fuel generating smokestack scrubber on a single smokestack, or:
2) Install millions of mufflers on millions of combustion engines which have difficult engineering restraints on them? Mufflers need to be small, lightweight, and inexpensive as design concerns - concerns that are placed at least on equal footing with efficiency. Possibly more so.
Which seems like the better idea?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.
So we'll all have electric cars, and will use less gas. We'll have less cost, individually, until 'the man' comes up with enough invisible costs to put us back down.
All the while, the trucker is still buying diesel fuel. Lots and lots of it.
Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up, and those extra costs will be passed onto us at the shelves of our local Walmart.
At the end of the loop we have extra taxes/fees/etc AND higher prices.
WOOT?
BobMcD - You make an excellent point here, and I hope more people read it. The roads we drive on were designed for the transport of goods. This lead to us using large trucks to carry our goods to points across the US. It was much cheaper to transport it via truck than train (or other) at the time. In time that cost savings may no longer exist, and "the man" will pass down the extra changes in all of our goods/services. I found an EXCELLENT article from the early 1900's which discusses this predicament and the reasoning behind the creation of these roads in the first place. (as described above). http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=980CE1DB143AEE32A25753C3A9639C946195D6CF Your point is dead on.. The solution is not just figuring out how we get to work without oil, but the delivery of goods across the US without oil.
Same thing is happening "worldwide". Group of finnish people formed association around start of 2008 called "SÃhkÃautot Nyt", "Electric Cars Now". Their goal is to order bunch of older Toyota Corolla's and transform those into EV's with "opensource" solution. I remember also reading that some ev reseller in Norway has placed a big order for these remodelled Toyota cards.
Finnish website about the group:
http://www.sahkoautot.fi/ (Parts available in English too)
yush
too IF you could get electric motors AT A DECENT PRICE.
I was going to make a 'lectric motorcycle, there are plans all over the internet.
But they all used a deprecated pancake 20hp electric motor. Back then they cost about $500 or something. The closest replacement I could find was closer to $2000! Just for the motor.
First person to make a kickass electric sportbike that does 100mph for 100miles will make a fortune.
Conversions are great, but we have to be able to get motors.
They Live, We Sleep
Golf cart manufacturers are responding to the demand for EVs by creating a new class of "leisure" carts with turn signals and breaklights designed for the whole family. Local govs are starting to alter traffic laws to allow them on the roads or in special lanes.
I am surprised no one mentioned Hymotion or their parent, A123 systems, that makes a conversion for Prius that allows you to charge your battery via plug. http://www.a123systems.com/hymotion DR
And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.
So, if you want to make money you've just got an idea here. Trucks are actually suited quite perfectly for electric motors and nobody seems to build electric trucks. Well, you'd need to reduce power needs (trucks are usually really bad in the aerodynamic department) and make sure you have both the range and (since it won't be enough) the infrastructure for recharging. There's surely money waiting here for those who want to pull this trough. Could easily be the next boom.
You can save considerable doing your solar install if you do the bulk of the work yourself. I mean a lot, I wouldn't be surprised at all if anything you got quoted was like 40% labor. There's only a few parts that require a licensed electrician. (I have helped put in two big systems and did all of my own small system) As to your current electric bill, unless you have a signed contract from your supplier guaranteeing the price you pay now for the next 30 years, you can't compare it to a solar install which does give you such a contract. You can hope your bill won't go up drastically, but that's about it.
As to your car, good luck. Get a diesel that gets good mileage, or one of the better gasoline cars from the 80s that get better mileage than even hybrids now. I got a smallish diesel (pickup) last year used for really cheap, although it is a rat, it was the best I could find in my area for sale. My next project though will be pure electric (another small pickup, I'll do a conversion) for local driving into town, (I don't have to commute so once a week is fine, 40 mile range is fine, and I will keep it charged from my existing solar panels) then I will put a fuel generator in a trailer or in the bed (maybe, batteries suck down the weight)for longer trips. That solves the range problem quite easily, plus, having a decent generator is good back up emergency power for your home anyway, just a good thing to have.
As to rebates or tax credits, too many variables state to state to say yes or no, but the feds still have a 2 grand tax credit. Not a lot, but at least it beats nothing. Do a google search and check your individual state, they really vary a lot, some are quite generous. but heck ya I think we should have them, much better tax credits would get solar adopted faster and help with the overall long range energy issues, plus home installations are decentralized, meaning we don't need to expand the existing expensive powergrid network.
The cheapest way to start to go alternative energy is to drop demand. Sounds weird, but just getting really good energy efficient appliances and making sure your home is more than adequately insulated, etc, helps a lot.
Personally though I draw the line at compact fluorescents, I detest them things. I am holding out for cheaper LED lighting. We save in other ways like we get by without expensive AC here in georgia because we picked out our little cabin because it sits under really decent shade meaning we can get by with a few window fans and it has it's own water supply from a well, we have a woodstove hookup and that is our primary heat, and the huge garden spot cuts the food bills drastically, that and we raise our own beef. Nothing like "locally sourced" for a lot of your day to day necessities to cut the bills!
If you want to look at examples of self powered homes that also power the family car, just for some ideas and they are cool anyway, you can check out this for some working examples.
I drive 80 miles a day... I can't afford to live where the jobs are, and where I can afford a house (payed for and in the clear, save for the yearly rent, err I mean taxes), there are no real jobs (Wal-Mart & Mickey D's don't really cut it.)
I do car pool, so I guess that means I'm really only going 40 miles a day? And it's only about 45 mins each way, and makes 1.5 hours a day. I drive one way and my car-pooler drives the otherway. I usually sleep on the way and they read or something on the way home....
Currently, but once we start to produce plug in hybrids and electric cars, start creating more public transportation and high speed rail, this will shift the transportation burden away from oil and towards electrical power generation. Also, coal can be cracked down to petrol and cellulosic ethanol needs energy input, both of these can utilize electrical power. It is fine to use statistics, but these are statistics on past resource distribution, not what would be if we were more rational. For environmental reasons it should be at least 30% nuclear, 3% other, and 38% coal in 15 years. If we could get coal down to 20% it would even be better. This should actually also be within the context of increased power production to fuel a fleet of electric vehicles, high speed rail links and urban public transportation systems all powered electrically. This would decrease the percentage of oil used for transportation and reduce the total carbon footprint and the total amount of particulate and heavy metal pollution of the country. However, increased efficiency could to a lot more to cut oil consumption than altering the means of energy production in the short term.
switzerland is most definitely involved on the world stage in partisan ways. think about where all the bad guys in the world store their money. think about swiss drug policy's effect on drug trafficking. think about swiss immigration policy as it affects migrants. etc., etc., etc. you just don't notice these bad things because switzerland is tiny
also the usa does actually do good on the world stage. china and russia do good too on the world stage. but the good any of them do doesn't get as much press attention
and the european union throws its weight around too, and will throw it around more: its just a matter of size. the only countries that look good in comparison to the usa/ china/ russia are the tiny ones. and they do evil things too, but the countries are tiny, so the evil they do is tiny too, and so you don't notice it
not being involved on the world stage is an impossibility for a country the size of the usa (or china or russia). actually not being involved on the world stage is an impossibility for any country. you can't hide an elephant in a dorm room
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Residential would also be an easy target for reduction if by residential you are talking about heating? If so there are loads of different ways that are all better and cheaper (like heat pumps for example)
i never said it wasn't
the crazy part is you saying that american involvement is the deciding factor. americna involvement is a tiny minor nondecisive factor. i mean, what about the europeans? what do they want? how are they invovled? how about other countries afraid of russia in the russian sphere: ukraine, poland: how about what they want, what they are doing in georgia?
i think more important factors in the situation in georgia now is:
1. what georgians want to do
2. resurgent russian imperialism
its as if i told you that all of the problems the usa has with cuba is the fault of russia because the ussr tried to move some missiles there. woudl you believe that? of course the ussr mattered in cuba, of course the ussr was involved. but to say that that ussr involvement was the deciding factor, and completely ignore what cubans want, and completely ignore the history of the usa's involvement in cuba and the caribbean imperialistically, is completely insane
likewise, you want us to ignore what georgians want, and you want us to ignore centuries of russian imperialism in the caucasus
really? what are you smoking? can i have some?
if the usa disappeared into a giant lake tomorrow, and all americans disappeared off the face of the earth, and every mention of the usa in history was scorched from the history books and everyone's mind, what would happen in georgia?
you believe georgians would be in love with russia? you believe russia would smile benevolently on a free caucasus region?
do you believe that? no? then why do you believe anythign americans do is the deciding factor about what happens in the caucasus?
georgians would still be thumbing their nose at russia, because they do that because georgians dislike imperial russia. it has nothing to do with the usa. meanwhile, russia would still be a resurgent imperialist force in the caucasus because of new oil money and a desire to not seem weak anymore after the collapse of the ussr. that has nothing to do with the usa. get it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm proud of people taking this matter into their own hands. Though I drive a gas powered car, I did move from 100 miles to work to only 1/2 mile to work. I suppose that's my contribution.
I sold my house and now live in an apartment. I walk everyday to work and back. A pretty big state park is 1/4 mile from my apartment where I take my little girl frequently. I'm across the street from a grocery store. And 1/2 mile from downtown. I walk whenever I can.
This has given me roughly 4 hours a day back to me instead of driving. I've been on the same tank of gas for a month.
Though I'd love to have an electric car, saving only 60 bucks a month in gas makes the electric car too expensive.
.
I have scant faith in oversight and regulation as defined by the Bush administration and the National Review.
"Incompetent and corrupt" are the words that first come to mind.
what about all the free venezuelan oil that goes into the usa to support anti-bush venezuelan policies?
i'm not going to pretend the usa doesn't like chavez. i'm also not going to pretend the usa doesn't meddle in the internal affairs of caribbean countries. and i'm also not going to pretend gw bush is anything but a retard, and i'd like to see him out of office just as much as chavez
so you owe it to me to stop pretending the usa is the only country in the world that does dirty tricks, you have to stop pretending chavez doesn't fund the farc, you have to stop pretending that every crime you can lay at the doorstep of washington dc does not also fall at the doorstep of caracas
do we have an understanding?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you've merely indicated that the connections of petrodollars to antiwestern jingoism, russian neoimperialism, and saudi wahhabism is from a subsection of the piechart, not the whole piechart
what canada does with its slice of the pie is, god bless canada, nothing like what russia, venezuela, or saudia arabia does with their slices. this is to the eternal credit of canada. it isn't a destruction of my argument about what happens to the other slices of the pie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Imagine that a car was a free software computer program... Some people plays with free software in their spare time... But can everybody modify a computer program, or would some, if not most, be better of paying someone else to do it? :)
:)
- Now a programming analogy about cars on slashdot, that's not something you see everyday
Ontopic: People plays with cars everywhere not just in the US... And it's not going to even remotely touch the environmental issues... All it can do is make the stupid crowed that reads about it believe that government regulations are not necessary...
BTW: Don't take the "stupid crowed"-thing personal, IMO the crowed is just always stupid
No cause coal is seriously bad shit... Especially if you don't reuse the waste heat for warming houses... Which is not the case many places in the world..
Of course one could argue that powerplants are more efficient than cars...
.
How many of those "heroes" are there?
It is no less necessary I think to ask where they are.
"It never rains in southern California."
But in the northeast oil remains an important source of heat in winter - and winter driving demands endurance and horsepower.
In the central and mountain states, distances can be daunting.
Lithium Ion Goped's now available! 31 mile range! Clean, silent and 10 cents a charge!
http://www.goped.com/
NY Times Story
Autoweek Story
PhysOrg Story
If the NY Times story doesn't come up from the link, just search Google for Nissan electric car and you'll be able to read it.
"nothing is ever that simple, especially when you throw politics into the mix"
so stop making simple prejudicial assumptions about what i am saying
"your politically charged rhetoric is in-line with that of isolationists"
what you mean by "in-line" is "i've never thought about the issues enough to make a discernment between energy policy and foreign policy"
stop prejudicing me. read what i say. judge me on what i actually say. anything else is prejudice on your part and fails your own litmus test outlined in the comment you just made
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
tiny countries emit tiny amounts of evil. large ones emit large amounts of evil
of course switzerland didn't invade iraq, switzerland is too tiny. that doesn't mean that were switzerland a huge country, it wouldn't do some evil blunder of its own. every single country of enough size has a pretty solid track record of doing evil
so switzerland looks like a saint compared to the usa not because the swiss are saints, but because the swiss aren't allowed to prove they are just as human and prone to failure as americans are. the swiss are too tiny to show they can fail just as bad as the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
russia invades georgia, in a few days doing 10,000x worse evil than georgia did with all the american support it could ever have, for all the reasons georgians want
to fight bandits in their own soil
oh, i'm sorry, does that propaganda sound different from your propaganda?
for reasons of russian imperialism that has been going in the caucasus for centuries russia invaded
and...
drum roll please...
you want to criticize the usa for that
amazing
russia crushes a tiny neighbor it has crushed many times before... and you want to criticize the usa?!
amazing, dumbfounding, the way you think
i can't even fathom how your mind works
its like some sort of all consuming obsession. did you date the usa and it dumped you or something? where does this monstruous blinding obsession come from?
"We need a multi-polar world"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
russia just invaded a tiny neighbor. welcome to the multi-polar world you want. so, now that we have this mutli-polar world, do you stop obsessing about the usa now? (snicker)
probably not. weird stalkers never give up, no matter what reality says
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nope, they are not 12 volt, some electric cars go up to hundreds of volts because of series connections and in order to get some speed out of them. Even just slow speed golf carts are typically 48 volt with 6-8 volt batteries onboard. If you mean individual batteries, there are a variety of them, no one size fits all has come out to be the clear winner unless you can afford a tesla level battery pack which uses a form of lithium cells, thousands of them.
you said
the "terrorists have all our oil" argument needs to be put in perspective
under my argument
when i obviously did not make that argument
have a nice day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're citing businesses trying to block alternative approaches.
If you really want to see a mess, take a look at Compressed Natural Gas. Used to be you could convert your truck/car/bus whatever to run on natural gas/gasoline. When you burn natural gas, it burns cleaner than gasoline and is cheaper than gasoline. Right now, CNG is going for under a buck/gallon in Oklahoma, $2.60 in California.
The EPA and the California Air Resources Board, for reasons unexplained, decided to regulate conversion companies out of existence. EPA started out by mandating that companies that manufacture the retro-fit kits get their kits tested for each and every car model it was being installed on. Smog test wasn't good enough, it had to be a special $40,000 EPA test. California, not wanting to be left out, upped the test fee to $300,000. *EVERY* US kit manufacturer threw in the towel on the domestic market. The costs of the testing put the costs of the kits up so high that no one would buy them. The only way the remaining manufacturers stay in business is exporting kits to other regions of the world like Europe and South America. European countries only require that the engine has a regular smog test after the install to verify the kit is properly installed and functioning correctly. If you happen to find a kit, you don't dare install it in California because the cops will confiscate your car.
We have enough domestic natural gas to run every car in the United States for 100 years. We're the Saudi Arabia of natural gas and we can't use it except to cook and make electricity.
It's damn stupid.
For the NiMH battery in the Prius, Toyota says
"Toyota has a comprehensive battery recycling program in place and has been recycling nickel-metal hydride batteries since the RAV4 Electric Vehicle was introduced in 1998. Every part of the battery, from the precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is recycled. To ensure that batteries come back to Toyota, each battery has a phone number on it to call for recycling information and dealers are paid a $200 "bounty" for each battery."
I've never thought of Canada as a regime. I'm pretty sure that what little oil America buys abroad it gets from Canada.
Canada leads, but Saudi Arabia is close behind. Notably, Venezuela is fourth on the list.
It's sad but very, very true.
Do get me wrong, I like honda (only the bikes though), but I just hate FWD cars.
Now I am sure some of you will start ranting about how much safer an FWD car is, I still hope that there are /. people who will go back to logical reasoning as opposed to "safer because we can make it cheaper" car manufacturer propaganda.
There are a bunch of Miata (Mazda MX-5) electric projects, and I can understand it. Car people understand why all sports cars (real ones) are RWD, why BMW, Mercedes and (most?) Lexus cars are exclusively RWD, and why oversteer is a lot better than understeer, not even mentioning autox-ers and drifters who would not look at an FWD.
So why a Civic ? Really?
Just for the record, I drive an old (95) BMW, as I found that it was the only reasonably priced RWD car around here (besides Mercedes, which is just not my style ( I think most models are for old people who like comfortable big cars ...)
I would better change it to a 86 toyota or Nissan 240 (RWD), then drive a brand new honda, toyota, or any FWD crap.
i live in NZ and not only do they not even make cars here, i can't even import an electric vehicle. i've been looking for a while, but with no joy.
i've even talked to a manufacturer in India (Reva) and although they say it's been "approved" for sale in the UK, they refused to supply the certificates. w/o any proof, i can't get approval for even a private import into NZ.
Mark Smith
If you must have a SUV or large truck or van then I suggest looking into a compressed natural gas vehicle. They're especially a money saver for businesses that have whole fleets of vehicles that move a lot. I wish more fueling stations would offer CNG as an option but if you have the money ($5000+ depending on the model) you can fuel from home (or the corporate parking lot) using something like the FuelMaker Phill. Probably to much for the average home owner but not bad for businesses. Kind of a geek toy too I think - be the first on your block with your own CNG fueling station (woot).
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Right, but then there's the whole air conditioning/heating situation which most EV proponents forget to mention. 40 miles goes WAY down when you're cooling your vehicle.
What is your agenda? I can't figure anyone would spread such misinformation. Where did you get it? Do you actually believe it?
The air conditioner in our EV uses 600 watts. (Actually it cycles on and off while running, so the average load is certainly lower.) Compared to a typical road load of 20,000 watts, the 600-watt cooling load gets lost in the noise. It's barely measurable.
We have a 4000 watt water heater in our car. Compared to the 20kW road load, it's certainly noticeable but not a big deal. EVs will eventually gravitate toward heat pumps, which will provide heating and cooling for the same 600-800 watt load.
The real point that you're missing (it is rock solid obvious that you're not an EV driver) is that, regardless of the heating and cooling, the car always takes you where you need to go, so you stop thinking and worrying about it. You never need to stop for gas; you simply wake up with a full "tank" every morning, ready for another 100-plus miles.
Stop being an apologist for your gasoline addiction. If you want to bash EVs, pick a legitimate criticism: they're still very expensive and have limited availability.
Economics of Kensington's (RTFA) home built EV.
That $2000 set of lead acid batteries taking our friend Kensington 20 miles/charge is only good for 500 charge/discharge cycles or 10,000 miles. He's paying 20 cents/mile for batteries. Add the cost of the electricity(without regenerative braking) to this and we're closer to 30 cents/mile or 3.33 miles per dollar. At $10/gallon for gas a 34 mile per gallon vehicle has him beat. At $4/gallon, a 13 mpg vehicle has him beat.
>I can't wait until somebody finally gets around to making a full EV car that
>seats two with ABS and Airbags, PS, Heat and AC, even if it only goes 100 miles.
>If they can do it under $25k I'm there with cash in hand.
This, of course, is the big problem.
What The People want is a commuter car. They are willing to sacrifice on range and amenities, BUT they are going to expect the PRICE to be less for that sacrifice. Basically they are going to expect motorcycle prices for what amounts to a covered motorcycle.
But the car companies don't want to sell $10-$20K cars. The profit margins aren't nearly as nice as on $30-$40K SUVs and trucks.
Now you might say that the car companies will simply keep the prices artificially high. The problem here is that the barrier of entry to get into this micro-car business is not so high anymore. There are several EV car manufacturers getting off the ground now that are primed to hit this small commuter car market.
If the big car companies don't get with the program very fast, they are going to get their lunch eaten.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
What I need is an electric motor that weighs less than 125 lbs, and will put out 100 hp at 2500 RPM. Then I could build a decent light sport electric airplane!
It's neat in concept, but so far the majority of these DIY conversions are a one-off deal. Is there anyone working on what would essentially be a drop-in kit to replace a common powertrain? (Any GM, Ford, or Chrysler 4cyl or 6cyl should be common enough to do.)
Might not be as efficient as developing a car around electric power, but for short trip city driving - why not be able to go electric while recycling an older chassis? If it gets close to averaging 40mi/charge, there just might be a market for such a thing. Especially if it's as simple as unwiring and dropping the old transmission, dropping the gas tank for a battery pack, and replacing them with the electric units.
At the PlugIn Hybrid Electric vechicle conference a few weeks back, Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel) gave a presentation on how to turn the balance of payments black and screw the Arab terrorists (Saudi Arabian friends of Bush) and the oil companies.
We do not need to wait for the silver bullet of a "Volt" or better batteries. Using current generation batteries (the ones Chevron have deliberately taken off the market), we can focus on PSV's to change the oil usage in this country. PSV's are Pickups, SUV's, Vans. We don't need to rely on converted Prius' to get a 100MPG to make a dent in oil consumption.
The most ubiquitous vehicle in the US is a Ford F150 with the Silverado close behind. Millions and millions of these vehicles! They get 15/17MPG. If they have a plug in conversion option that allows their mileage to go to 30MPG, the oil usage in the US drops by millions of barrels an the oil companies scream like a stuck pig.
At the PHEV show, there was a company (name?) that had this system virtually ready to go by fall. The body on frame nature of PU's and SUV's leaves a lot of room for batteries and electronics. There will be various schemas for how to mount the motor on the rear (maybe 4WD transaxle).
The concept is so simple that even Click and Clack could do a conversion! There will be many millionaires made from Pickup and Van conversions. Apple won't be the only high tech company born in a garage.
This won't have negative payback like solar photovoltaic systems; the payback will be only 3-5 years. 2 year payback is a no-brainer in financial circles.
Wrench monkeys arise! There is a world awaiting your ingenuity. Repairing the damage done by our OIL President will take time, but it can be done.
Idiots like you help perpetuate Big Oil's lies. Until people are willing to hear and *believe the truth*, we will never be more than drones for the multi-national regime.
Most of our oil comes from Canada, Mexico and Africa! Most of the oil that is pumped in the US is sold overseas! It's not *our* oil - it is owned by the big oil companies who rake in billions of our dollars every quarter.
http://www.energyrefuge.com/archives/where_oil_comes_from.htm
"According to DOE, "In 2004, United States refineries produced over 90 percent of the gasoline used in the United States. Although the United States is the world's third largest crude oil producer, less than 40 percent of the crude oil used by U.S. refineries was produced in the United States. Net petroleum imports (imports minus exports) account for 58 percent of our total petroleum consumption. About 50 percent of our petroleum imports are from countries in the Western Hemisphere, with 19 percent from the Persian Gulf, and 18 percent from Africa and 13 percent from other regions"."
Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up
So, as the supply of petroleum available for diesel increases because cars are no longer using gasoline, the price also increases? That's not the way it works, it goes against the MOST basic economic principle, the law of supply and demand. As the demand decreases and the supply increases the price for diesel will go down, not up.
This will have the side effect of controlling inflation on food and manufactured goods -- as we are seeing right now, if the price of diesel increases we feel it quickly in the prices of things that are primarily carried by truck. If we convert just our private and fleet autos to electric we can easily supply the remaining demand (trucks, trains, jet fuel, heating oil, oil power plants, etc.) with our domestic production and not incur the huge trade imbalance that we are currently experiencing.
Enigma
An electric car is more of an electronics product than a mechanical one. The current car manufacturers are in danger of becoming obsolete because of this.
All it will take is good battery technology backed by a billionaire or private equity firm to create something that could put them out of business. The technology will just get cheaper, lowering the barriers to entry.
Glad to see you are back. This is what makes America great, both sides of the border (i.e. Canada too).
My dad invested in a small electric car company in the late 70's. My sister was the model they used in the brochure photos. It never took off though. It was fun to ride in, barely made a sound. Can't say he didn't try. Our family has a dismal record with entrepreneurial projects. They are usually interesting projects, future-looking, but we don't have the knack for timing and/or marketing.
Oil dropped in price in the 80's, killing the market. I imagine the same thing might happen again due to unforeseen world events, such as an Asian recession and/or governmental crisis in China.
Table-ized A.I.
I really can't think of a single good reason for the existence of an EV SUV. A SUV is designed to take you places which are often more than an EV's range away from the nearest electric outlet. If you're not taking it on dirt roads to the middle of nowhere there's no reason to use it instead of something more efficient and safer for highway driving.
I congratulate all the people standing up.
Standing up for themselves.
Wait? WAIT? WAIT FOR WHAT?
A messiah? A sign? Government approval?
HELL NO!
Just do it.
I know the solution. What I need are resources.
I don't need a messiah, a sign, or the damn gov't.
Electric Vehicles kick major ass.
NO need for gas. A little bit of oil, maybe.
NO money for opec. Hah hah.
Congratulations to all the people who are
standing up and saying "Screw you", I am NOT
going to wait, I am NOT going to allow and I am
NOT going to accept your SLOW SLOW SLOW progress
on EV.
In evolutionary terms, IF OPEC ran evolution, all
humans would still be in caves and drawing
crap pictures.
You forgot diesel-electric locomotives.
Clearly you don't. The simplest definition would be that your rights end at my nose. Or to put it another way a Libertarian is very likely to support the logic of emmision controls that work because you DONT have the right to produce nox that I (a libertarian) might be forced to breath to my detriment. As a libertarian this also means that I don't care to impose my will unduly on your wallet, and I am wholly uninterested in what you do in your bedroom. Libertarianism is practically the definition of logic. It is the antidote to the Red / Blue stupidity which has consumed this country.
If you are interested in the electric car scene, check out this website with all the individual conversions, there's a lot of them, from lawn tractors to commuter cars to sportscars to full size trucks, scooters, e-bikes, you name it, it's been converted. EV Album
I have this itch to build a alow autonomous electric vehicle.
The missing components I need are a series of data structures and layers so I can make a connection from points on a google map to a data structure describing the next 50 feet of roadway or highway shoulder that my vehicle is going to traverse.
The thing that is true for all the autonomous vehicle concepts is: most of the problem is finding a complete open source software stack.
Right now i have these components. These things just cry out for a "Do something interesting with this stuff."
-- I have a salvaged junk electric wheelchair that works. The signals from the joystick appear on a single 10 or 12 pin plug.
---I have a GPS that makes track data. I can convert the track data to google maps .kml overlays.
---I have an (old) laptop with a USB web cam, usb input for the GPS, and a high power wireless 802g.11 networking card. It runs Ubuntu beautifully.
--- The wheelchair pulls 2 to 5 kilowatts when running at 6.5 miles per hour top speed. (It is real hard to hold an ammeter over the battery lead while driving down the street!)
--- A 100 watt peak solar panel runs $800. So the charge -to- run ratio is 20:1 to 50:1.
--- The job for the wheelchair is to fetch a bag of groceries I ordered by email.
--- Of course, the same little heap of computer stuff can be dropped into any converted vehicle. If you stick to a low power and low speed performance model, then the main problem is simply coming up with an open source software stack and an open, extensible set of data structures.
Damn newfangled Pokemon trainers.. in my day, we battled Caterpie and liked it!
Ok, I gotta comment on this.
How can you base your opinion of modern automobiles on Ford products? They are all crap compared to Japanese cars, or even Chevys. The Windstar was especially horrible!
I'll never forget the endless problems my family had with our '87 Sable, and how every time we took it to the local Ford dealer to get it fixed, it would come back with something else broken on it. Or how it left us stranded on the side of the road, where thankfully our next-door neighbors just happened to drive by at that very moment.
Contrast that to our eight Hondas over the years and it's like night and day. I will never spend any of my money on a Ford product, and I don't honestly understand why anyone else would choose to do so either, after having the chance to try something better (like a Honda, or even a Toyota).
Don't judge all modern cars by the absolute worst example. (What other car company's products can burn your house down while parked and turned off in your garage? That's right, Ford, with another flawed design. That's what Ford should stand for: Flawed Or Ridiculous Design.)
Ford has improved slightly over the years, but their designs are still years behind GOOD cars that were on sale 15 years ago! Why would anyone buy one?!
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
No. The fastest cars in the word are electrics, although gas cars are close. The cars with the best acceleration are electrics by a wide margine. Of course, gas will still out preform electrics in an endurance race for some time. But sports car buyers are looking for the "feel" which mostly corresponds to acceleration.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'm bringing in foreign oil demands as well. The limited supply will be redistributed to meet demand in China, India, etc. That will mean less opportunity for profit locally, and higher prices.
Supply will not go up if we use less, because we are not the only consumers and the product isn't being produced locally.
No, not at all. My father used to work in the battery shop for UP. It is a matter of scale. A truck with enough batteries wouldn't be able to operate on our roads. Also, those locomotives take miles to get up to speed and miles to stop. Not going to equate on our highways, unfortunately...
Perfect... Let the government worry about courts, police, and military. The rest we'll do ourselves, thanks.
Who let the conservative on? Next we'll get geeks with actual girlfriends!! This has to stop. (Feel free to file this under disagreeable email in the idle section)
I just meant in the amount of fuel required to start those locomotives moving and getting up to speed. Once they're at speed, sure, they're efficient... Maybe we can electrify certain distances near where they stop (as far as I know, they stop at regular locations) to make it more efficient for them to get moving again and once they are, cut back over to diesel. The PRR had most of SE PA electrified and it kind of made sense, however it doesn't make sense to electrify the entire stretch from LA to to Dallas, or Santa Fe to Billings, y'know? Way too much electricity lost over that kind of distance.
Even after revising the 1985-2007 mpg estimates to make them comparable to the new 2008 mpg estimates, the 1989 Honda CRX-HF is rated at 41 city and 50 highway mpg.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/5263.shtml
After 20 years of technological innovation, and four years of sky-rocketing fuel costs, shouldn't a new car model get at least 41/50 mpg before that car is considered to be ecologically friendly? Yet greencar.com features the 2008 Nissan Rouge (22 city/27 highway mpg) as a "Top 2008 Fuel Economy Faves." The 2008 Nissan Rouge also has a sticker price of $19,250.
http://www.greencar.com/features/fuel-economy/
Seems to me that true economy cars been pulled from the market, and replaces with the new hybrids. Major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires an expensive, heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
In my opinion there is more to ecological friendliness than just mpg (although the present line-up fails at even that). Hybrids have huge batteries, and disposing of those batteries is never ecologically friendly. Then there is the ecological impact of manufacturing and shipping these huge, heavy, vehicles. Furthermore, recent road tests carried out by Auto Express show that hybrids often have worse CO2 emissions than standard autos.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3958376.ece
To have a real impact on fuel consumption, and emissions, new vehicles need to be affordable. Hybrids are about the most expensive vehicles on the market. How can hybrids have a positive effect of the environment, if practically nobody can afford the beasts? Even if you can afford the steep sticker price, what about the cost of maintenance? Hybrids have two engines, and use a complicated system to charge their huge batteries. I hate to even think about the cost of maintenance and repair.
It used to be common that most fuel efficient cars also had the lowest sticker price, and lowest maintenance costs. The cars where simply smaller, lighter, and required more manual operations. With smaller, cheaper, parts, and a less complicated design, the cars were cheaper to maintain. When I bought my 1992 Ford Festiva, the 30/37 mpg rating was the least of my criteria, I was also concerned with sticker price, and maintenance costs.
Why can't we do as well now, as we did 16 to 35 years ago?
1973 Honda Civic rated 35/40 mpg
1986 VW Golf Diesel rated 31/40 mpg *
1989 Geo Metro rated 43/51 mpg
1989 Honda CRX-HF rated 41/50 mpg
1992 Ford Festiva rated 30/37 mpg
* I got over 50mpg driving from Florida to New Jersey, while running the air conditioner.
Related:
57 mpg? That's so 20 years ago
Want to drive a cheap car that gets eye-popping mileage? In 1987 you could - and it wasn't even a hybrid.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/17/autos/honda_civic_hf/index.htm
Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybridso
A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7387432.stm
Hot Cars Best Gas Milage
Welcome to hi-mpg.org. We are automotive enthusiasts and travel aficionados who also love the environment. We appreciate both form and function, all while striving to leave future generations a legacy of clean air, scenic grandeur and a continuum of natural resources. In addition: the freedom to drive.
http://hi-mpg.org/best-cars-with-high-gas-mileage.phtml
One advantage of converting your car to a EV is you can have a cool looking car.. The EV's that are straight from the factory are buttugly (wouldn't be caught dead in a Toyota Prius), hell, even most new cars look buttugly IMHO.. In the US it's propably a lot easier to drive a car around which has been converted, but I guess here in the Netherlands you have to go through a lot of bureaucratic hoops to be able to drive your car on the road LEGALLY.. hehe..
Let me preface this by saying that I am all for electric vehicles but I just had an interesting thought. Assuming we're talking about mostly "plug-in" vehicles wouldn't switching large amounts of the populace over to EVs set up the infrastructure for a single point of failure? (The power grid). In the case of a power outage such as: Northeast Blackout of 2003 you would have large amounts of the population that would be unable to drive their vehicles. A couple of caveats: 1) This is more of an issue with the current state of our power distribution system than with EVs. 2) Increasing the effective range per charge on EVs would put them on equal footing with gasoline powered vehicles in case of emergency.
so your position is that russia is an unthinking alien force, like lightning strikes or a mass of angry bees. to you, russia is not composed of human beigns that can be reasoned with, or responsibility or accountability can be expected of
to you, the only responsible human beings ont he planet are americans. all other peoples and cultures in the world are composed of inscrutable forces that can only be avoided. only the usa is a responsible human being that must bear responsibility for whatever happens
this is what oyu are trying to tell us
see, i have a funny idea. my funny idea is that russian policy is set by russians. who, as human beings like americans, can bear responsibility for their actions, just like americans can
isn't that a crazy wack idea?
so, for example, when a woman wears a mini skirt and gets raped, i blame the rapist. you, apparently, would rather blame the woman, because she wore a miniskirt. THATS YOUR THINKING ON THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF GEORGIA
so the georgians took american assistance. therefore, all the evil the russians did or ever could do, is the fault of the americans
"Russia's response was predictable, and almost unavoidable and USA knew this."
is like saying " a mowan is respnsible for being raped because she wore a miniskirt. she knew she would attract bad men, so what bad men do is her fault" gee, maybe we should blame BAD MEN for what BAD MEN do? isn't that a crazy idea?
so if the RUSSIANS invade a country, the RUSSIANS are responsible for that
that's the weird alien bizarre thinking i have to offer you
pfffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
of america
america is evil. evil, evil evil
do you hear me clearly?
however, in georgia, right now, the actions of the russians are far more evil
do you understand?
the usa is not good
russia is not good
and right now, in georgia, russia is being far more evil than the usa ever could be
south ossetia, btw darling, IS GEORGIAN TERRITORY
THEY DONT NEED ANYONES PERMISSION TO DO ANYTHING THERE
HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
engage in genocide like the serbians did?
when the georgians engage in genocide, we can talk about splitting up georgia
meanwhile, georgia go after bandits on their own territory, and russia uses this as an excuse to invade the territorial integrity of another country (the west worked throung the united nations to engage the balkans, btw, it didn't act on its own)
and its just hilarious how you keep talking about the usa being the blame for this
1. you tell me not ride my skateboard in front of your house or you will beat me with a baseball bat
2. my friend gives me a skateboard and i ride it in front of your house, knowing it will make you angry
3. you come out of your house, and beat me bloody with a baseball bat
who is wrong? no matter what i did, beating someone with a baseball bat is worse, even though you warned me. get that? this is the same as above:
1. russia tells georgia not to try to police your own territories within your internationally recognized borders
2. usa gives georgia weapons to dow hat georgia wants to, in its own borders
3. russia invaes the territorial integrity of georgia
your conclusion? its the usa's fault. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
if a guy warns his girlfriend not to wear a slutty dress or he will beat her, and the girlfriend's best friend tells er to wear the dress any way, you blame the best friend. me? i blame the boyfriend for being an asshole
you want to say the usa is wrong for baiting russia to do great evil. i say rusia has done great evil, SO ATTACK RUSSIA
furthermore, i know what you are going to say: usa invaded iraq, so russia can do that to. so two wrong makes a right? how about the usa invading iraq is wrong AND russia invading georgia is wrong
this is your problem: pick which view is right:
1. russia good, america evil
2. america evil, russia good
which do you believe?
BZZZZZZZZZ
your wrong, trick question, both choices are wrong. the correct answer is:
1. russia evil, america evil
so you can't use what america does as an excuse to excuse russia. you can't use what russia does as an excuse to excuse america. YOU CALL THEM BOTH EVIL
and CLEARLY on the isue of invading georgia, RUSSIA IS BY FAR THE MOST EVIL BY ANY MEASURE OF THE SITUATION
but if you continue to blame the usa for the evil russia does, it just means you are a propagandized moron
and notice, I AM NOT SUPPORTING THE USA, so i am not a propaganda victim on the other side. i am calling you a propagandzied moron because i hate the usa AND russia. BOTH ARE EVIL. wake up you retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
rape the little girls of iran, swallow the hearts of north korean toddlers, drink blood from the skulls of iraqi children
that makes america pretty evil
and doesn't in any way make anything evil russia does somehow better, or somehow worse, or modifies it in anyway
therefore, when russia does something evil, you say "russia did something evil"
you don't say "yeah but america..."
america what?
america can do 1,000,000x worse than anything russia did
and?
so i'm going to go next door to my neighbors house, knock on his door, and shoot him the face
then when someone says "you're evil"
i'll say "yeah but stalin killed millions, which is worse, so that means i'm ok"
what the fuck does anything stalin did have to do with me shooting my neighbor in the face?
what the fuck does anything the usa ever did have to do with a RUSSIAN decision to defy the territorial integrity of another country?
the usa defied the territorial integrity of 10 countries? 1,000 countries? ok, america sucks
AND HOW DOES THAT EXUCSE WHAT RUSSIA JUST DID?
i don't fucking care about america. fuck america. america is evil, evil evil, evil
understand me?
AMERICA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EVIL RUSSIA IS DOING IN GEORGIE RIGHT NOW RETARD
i expect you to reply to me by saying "yeah but america..."
THIS IS SOMETHING RUSSIA DID
HELLO?????
do you have morality? a sense of human conscience?
or are you just obsessed with one stupid country?
if you have morality, when someone does something wrong, you chastise him
WHO invaded goergia?
WHO decided to invade georgia
therefore WHO did something wrong?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because i have no respect for you. i am not talking to an open minded person concerned with right and wrong. you are a propaganda victim, your mind is not clearly thinking
you honestly think that russia invading georgia is america's fault
which, you have to understand is completely absurd. i don't support america. i repeat, i do not support the usa. i am not for the usa, i am not for the usa, i am not for the usa
my criticism of russia comes from a neutral point of view. my criticism of russia come s a neutral morality. my ciricism of russia is not pro-american, or anti-american, or anything about america, because thinking about the crime russia committed by violating georgian territorial integrity does not involve anything america ever did. it is russia's decision, it is russia's crime
you apparently do not understand that, because you are so prejudiced, so partisan, you cannot even view the world without pro- or anti-american blinders. when some things that happen in this world honestly do not have anything to do with the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
there, fixed that for you
libertarians have several logical policies...it's the ones that are secretly neo-cons using libertarian rhetoric that are really anti-logic
Thank you Dave Raggett
taste like, since you obviously suck on it so hard
oh great apologist for russian neoimperialism
russia invades a tiny neighbor, and its tha usa's fault
amazing!
did you know that usa's invasion of irag is russia's fault for arms sales to hussein?
that sentence is complete bullshit, i don't believe it, it is just an example of the kind of bullshit you believe in
and yes, bush, that retarded moron, was elected by propaganda victims. people who think just like you about the usa's motivations, who swallow the most incredible bullshit
like you swallow incredible bullshit about russia's intents and purposes
you're a braindead partisan zombie
apologise some more for moscow retard, see if you can keep talking with your mouth full of putin's penis so firmly implanted in it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it