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The Grid, Our Cars, and the Net
Wired is running a piece on the big idea of Robin Chase — the founder of Zipcar — that we need to build our smart power grid on open standards and include cars as nodes in a mesh network. "'Today in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers and tanks and airplanes are running around using mesh networks,' said Chase. 'It works, it's secure, it's robust. If a node or device disappears, the network just reroutes the data.' And, perhaps most important, it's in motion. ... Build a smart electrical grid that uses Internet protocols and puts a mesh network device in every structure that has an electric meter. Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform. Add a mesh router. A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network. It's cooperative gain gone national, gone mobile, gone open."
no longer will we be slaves to the ISPs!
Ha ha Just Kidding.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Does this mean I can be alerted when I get near someone who cut me off before?
Imagine it, man. It would be like so many little nets inside of bigger nets going on forever (deep inhale, coughing exhale). Wow, uh, it would be like TRON, only way better. I need a salty snack.
And the crackers and vandals will pee themselves with joy.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
till someone haxxorz the grid and leaves us with a bunch of mad electronic cars gone wild!
Big ISPs and phone companies have too much to lose to allow this to ever happen.
It would be too hard to be tapped by various 3 letter government agencies so they wouldn't like it either.
Maybe instead of continuing to focus on the dinosaur that is the automobile, more effort should be put into building very a efficient mass transit infrastructure. Just a thought.
Hi there
What we need is to have it integrated into our phones and that we can tether to so:
a) consumers choose phones with over phones without
b) we can use it even outside the car and
c) it's not connected to cars (better to stop the car rebellion right there, tyvm).
That's what I want, my speedometer to be connected to a wireless mesh network.
This sounds like a great opportunity for the Dems to waste money finding stupid new ways to tax us.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
A nation-wide cloud? That sounds pretty bad. I heard the fumes were toxic, that's why I stopped making it in my basement. ... OH! MeSh cloud. I see.
I vote thanks but no thanks on this. Despite whatever wild-eyed claims about "openness" or "oneness" or whatever other hippie bullshit the brainchilds of this are spouting, there is absolutely NO information of any kind that is appropriate for my vehicle to be broadcasting. I'm sure the police and Federal government would absolutely LOVE to have a way to track the location of every vehicle in the country, not to mention who owns it and who they're talking to via their built in net cellphone at the time. Integrating this with the idea of a vehicle is a hilariously bad idea, because the instant it comes about there will be DOT, Federal, and State laws with a laundry list of mandates about how "open" this system will be allowed to be to be "roadworthy," and I guarantee you not a single one of these mandates will be in your best interest.
Pass.
If we're going to do the mesh network thing, I'd rather have it in a portable device like a phone or PDA that doesn't give the government a billion inroads to regulate, legislate, and subvert it, and one that I can chose not to buy, to turn off, or to leave at home.
I can't say I completely understand the article. It seems either she, or the person who wrote the article, is confusing mesh networking with power distribution. The article doesn't make clear how the two fit together (maybe someone else who understood can explain better). It talks about wireless networking at the same time it talks about plugging things in. Those two don't seem to fit well together (yeah, I know, some companies are developing wireless electric device chargers, but it's a totally different concept).
One thing that interested me in the article was this quote, " the Obama Administration allocated $4.5 billion in the stimulus bill for smart grid R&D." So we're getting some kind of smarter grid anyway, at least some research into it.
Qxe4
How pollyannish.
We decry monoculture in operating systems and databases, but some holy grail of IP everywhere?
I'm happy that my car is more reliable than my computer or Internet connection. If power to my home was as unreliable, I'd be pissed.
One hacker to rule them all?
Remember how much we liked electronic voting? That's how you'll feel about the 'smart grid' when suddenly government and utilities can micromanage your lives.
15 years ago when i looked at the literature there were substantial problems with the efficiency of the selected routes, route convergence and message overhead. these things got much worse as the rate of change in the peer graph goes up.
have things gotten that much better?
The US has a greater percentage urban population than France. We also have a greater rate of urbanization than France. As of 2008 we were 82% urban. Still think mass transit should be a low priority?
Source: CIA World Factbook
... will plugging my car into this "mesh" gain me? I don't see a reason for this. It's excessive and prone to more problems than we already have (I guess. I don't even understand exactly what problem she's trying to solve so as to properly determine that). I don't see the automobile in the same light that she does. Just let my car be a car and be powered by my power, Mrs. Xzibit.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Major Premise: Anything connected to a network can be attacked from anywhere on that network.
Minor Premise: Let's make cars that are connected to a network.
Conclusion: Let's make cars that can be cracked from across a network.
Am I missing something?
Or something like that.
Those who actually bothered to read TFA, what exactly is the point of this? I understand Robin Chase loves feel-good social causes, and she is a good organizer, but no one ever accused her of being an engineer. Having read TFA, it sounds to me a bit like confused meandering of someone trying to figure out how to use some of the stimulus billions for yet another social pet cause, but without the clear definition of what that cause is.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Try doing that with a mesh networking "black box" that's buried somewhere within your car's computer system and the DOT has mandated is illegal to disable or remove (if the future-car-to-be even works without it).
Quit the paranoid crap. You've already decided that this idea is "hippie bullshit" and now you're desperately trying to justify this position by throwing in as much anti-government hysteria as you can. You've invented a "black box", complete with conspiracy by the evil police state government to track your every move.
Spare me.
If you have anything intelligent to say about this particular idea you'd better say it soon. Otherwise people might judge you by the insanity inherent in any statement that decries hippies and government in the same breath.
So once this is done, can I IM other drivers and give them driving tips? Like, oh, I don't know -- "Hey buddy! If you'd bothered to use your freakin' turn signal, I coulda made my left, and not had to wait another ten minutes for an opening in traffic! Thanks a lot!" Because, if so? Sign me up!
I am not left-handed, either!
Folks who write articles about smart grid communicating with cars, etc bring to mind foolish talk of internet toasters and networked refrigerators.
The current electrical grid (speaking of USA; PJM region in particular) is very reliable as it is. Grid operators already have the ability to shape production; with millions of users, usage patterns are easy to spot and plan for ahead of time.
In my view, smart grid and smart meters are simply a way to control people's usage and charging them more; residential electric bills will likely become very complicated.
All this talk about people charging their cars at night and then selling it back during the day for extra credit is nonsense, because when millions of people are charging at night, it's easily conceivable that nightly usage could be just as high as during the day.
In respect to cars communicating with other cars - why? It's obvious that most people will charge their cars as often as possible, even if told not to, in particular, at night so they are sure to have enough charge to get to get the kids to school, get to work, etc.
The internet is another means of communication - it's not going magically solve energy issues nor change human nature.
In my view, a better approach than a so-called smart grid is developing / promoting more efficient energy production methods, in particular nuclear (solar, wind, etc are nice, but are lacking in energy density), along with encouraging people to produce some of their own energy for their needs, such as with solar panels on their roof.
Ron
Comment removed based on user account deletion
someone trying to figure out how to use some of the stimulus billions for yet another social pet cause
Bingo.
You will see more of this soon.
Hello? Sorry, I'm going to be late for work. I'm trying to get out of my driveway, but the car just says "Buffering..."
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
So you are all good with the government spying on you then?
So, the internet could someday actually *be* a big truck?
Having read TFA, it sounds to me a bit like confused meandering of someone trying to figure out how to use some of the stimulus billions for yet another social pet cause, but without the clear definition of what that cause is.
My feelings exactly. It has lots of woo-woo words and ideas which seem magical and yet, I can't understand what the fundamental idea is exactly. --It almost sounds like she's suggesting that we use phone system-like switching technology to route power to individual homes and devices. Sounds bloody expensive to put into place. A high voltage router on every street corner, though I don't really see the advantage, unless each house is also generating electricity. Maybe I'm missing something.
If the concept is viable, then it can be explained in baby terms, which clearly I need. I feel like one of those really thick studio execs guys like Kevin Smith make fun of. So either I'm really, really dumb, the idea needs work, or she needs a good translator to stand between her head and the audience.
Those Zip Cars looks sort of cool, though I don't quite see the advantage. Do they have a team of service people running around each city maintaining the cars? It sounds like a de-centralized "Rent-a-Car", but while they don't have to rent a main lot, they still must have to maintain a garage and offices somewhere, and I bet they have to pay for all the individual parking spaces. Seems gimmicky, but again, maybe I'm just not seeing the big picture. (After all, I still refuse to use a cell phone over my trusty land line, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing the point.)
-FL
Here's a product that can be adapted to a grid network that can power cars.
I did a lot of tariff programming back in the day and I loved it...
Electrical demand is not the same as network demand. If your ISP is short on bandwidth, everyone just slows down. But if your power company is short on power, at worst, they have to start throwing people off of the grid, because everyone must have 110VAC 60hz power.
This reality is reflected in the pricing of electricity, especially for larger customers.
The kind of an electric bill a refinery gets, for example, shows this. In such bills, you start with the raw data obtained from power recorders - every kwh and kvarh (reactive power), is recorded at either 15 minute or hourly increments, depending on the utility. This data is rolled up to look at peak demand, and bill to date usage, broken out into buckets representing time of use, each of which has its own price. For the most part, the demand portion of the bill is roughly half, and the other half is the cumulative portion.
So, of all the actionable items in a bill that one could act on, really, instantaneous demand is the most important thing to optimize. If you jack up your demand during the day, for just one hour, by 50%, you've significantly increased your monthly bill... because the utility still has to have equipment to satisfy peak service.
The thing is, industrial customers have known this now for at least 10 years, if not longer, and there's a whole electrical services industry designed to help them avoid that maximum demand charge. Some companies making ice at night for cooling by day. Others try and have multiple shifts. Still others just put in their own local generation that kicks in when their utility usage gets too high. All of this is controlled by automated SCADA systems that have been field proven for at least a decade, if not longer.
The point is, I'm wondering how much smarter the electrical world can actually get? What you are really talking about is putting residential customers on industrial style tariffs. But, what would be the benefit? I mean, there's not too much a residential customer could practically do that would cost effectively help them lower their peak demand in such a way as to be cost effective.
For example, in California, for SCE, the GS-2 tariff specifies a demand charge of less than $10 / kw. SCE GS2. If you figure that most homes use less than 2Kw max demand, there's not much room for economical demand shaving. If you lowered your peak demand from 3kw to 2kw, you would be saving $120 a year. There's few, if any devices that could store energy at night, help with peak demand by day, where you could actually recoup that investment economically.
This is my sig.
The mesh networks exists. Take a bunch of wifi routers, mesh their ssid's together. I imagine this to be a mesh network. No surprises.
The current WIFI users are slow-moving at home and only using WIFI at home.
The "TWIST" in Ms. Chase's opinion is to design WIFI for FAST-MOVING-WIFI users. Design wifi for moving quickly in and moving quickly out of a particular user's range of acceptable signal strength for reliable connecting/sending/receiving data.
The popular network apps like firefox/bittorrent still assume wired networks. That will change with time however. I'm sure a kind of wififox or wiftorrent designed for "UDP protocol" already exist for 3G/2G phones using proprietary source code. That's Ms. Chase's point. If that code were made to be open-source code, the world would greatly benefit. She didn't say anything about making the node-hardware easy to adapt to an owner's needs, but I think she was implying it by bringing up the open-source approach. Open-source implies "DIGITAL FREEDOM" as www.fsf.org/campaigns would express it. Every FAST-MOVING-WIFI-USER should have the ability to modify one's FAST-MOVING-WIFI-HARDWARE as one's sees fit.
I'm absolutely sure the guys that built UDP a long time ago already did everything necessary for mesh networks.
For as long as your computer is connected to two networks simultaneously. If the first try fails then you can retry the second packet on a second/third/fourth... network simultaneously. The first response back wins.
All these wifi devices already have a unique ssid manufactured into them. Right now the ip version 4 address and ip version 6 address needs to be changed if we moved from one wifi router to another. Reliable TCP/IP v4/v6 communication assumes your IP address doesn't change under your feet every second. I.e. SSL assumes the same constant source IP address and the same constant destination IP address for the connection to stay up.
But there's UDP...When using this protocol, it is understood and implied that the connection will not always be up. It is understood the protocol needs to be prepared for unreliable packet communication. This makes UDP more suitable for for wifi. The source ip address needs to be acquired from the wifi router. ok. the source ip can send a UDP request packet to the router and pray that the router will be quick enough give him a response UDP packet back. If he doesn't then it's time to send out another dhclient client request to get a new IP address from another router. Then reconnect to whatever other node you're talking to and continue to send/receive whatever. The routers know UDP by the way so it's just a matter building the applications with more wifi context.
Are there such api functions as:
getIpAddressForSSID(SSID as string)
returns IpAddress as string
getIpAddressForMAC(MAC as string)
returns IpAddress as string
?
They would be useful for the UDP/FAST-MOVING-WIFI.
My guess is that they exist, but I've never had a requirement to use them myself.
You can't just slap a mesh router on a car and expect to be able to pull up
Mesh networks are great in some situations, but not in vehicular networks on a city-wide (or country-wide) scale. 200 mesh routers in Vienna is cool, but what about 500,000, moving at an average speed of, say, 30mph? In this case:
Cooperative gain means more users bring more capacity, not less.
Is absolutely not true unless you're talking about storage volume rather than bandwidth. I can't wait to see someone spend millions of dollars to equip 10,000+ cars and watch everything fail, as long as they don't take away from my research funding.
TLDR: Leave the mobile networking ideas to the people who know what works and what doesn't.
A nationwide mesh cloud will form, linking vehicles that can connect with one another and with the rest of the network.
Unfortunately, people who live in the middle of nowhere (which ironically is "everywhere" in the U.S.) get left out of this 'nationwide' network.
It's a cool concept though.
She read some academic papers on mesh & vehicle networking (DARPA funded for sure), and pooped.
Sorry, title did not fit.
" the founder of Zipcar" that put 10,000 MORE cars on the street!
Just a few short years ago I was reading how Zip was "taking [invent your number here] cars off the street by (TA DAH) putting 10,000 cars ON the street!
Somehow, some way, giving hourly rental driving access to zads of people IN CARS, was somehow taking cars off the street.
It is as if Mr. Zip was zapping car owners into sending the gas guzzlers to the crusher and they only used bikes, unless they needed a Zip car to go to Ikea.
Sorry, all this girl has seen is people who never owned a car, or no longer own one, heading to Zip to USA A FUCKING CAR TO DRIVE AROUND when they would have done something else.
10,000 off the street? HA! Why didn't you just by everybody an SUV and be done with it?
As soon as someone claims something is 100% secure I know they don't know what they are talking about.
I'd rather walk.
Whats with having gas using cars part of the electric grid. we dont have that much electric cars to plug into the grid yet. of course we are moving in that trend with cars being able to connect to it.
You engineers out there, learn about it and *then* discuss it.
http://www.case.edu/energy/pdf/presentations/Utility_Deployment_of_Energy_Storage.pdf
P.S., Google is your friend
I've always thought that gridlock is partly a product of all the micro-pauses between seeing the car in front of us move and reacting to that. A grid system might be able to eliminate these pauses and hence remove what seems to me, a major cause of congestion. A grid might also be able to help with other similar traffic bottlenecks, such as merging and changes in direction. The only problem is, you'd have to give up some control of your car when in heavy traffic - but hey, you never had much anyway.
Ah! AH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I think this is an excellent idea, so long as there are limits to it. For instance, the network should NOT be connected to, or capable of connecting to, the actual functioning of the vehicle. Worst case example being it should NOT be even vaguely possible for someone to hack into your car and turn off the engine. Or slam on the brake/gas. That being said, being able to read/broadcast status reports would be good. Such as letting the driver behind me know that I just slammed on the brakes. I know tail lights are supposed to do that, but anyway. Or possibly acting like the yellow flag at the racetrack : "a car 500m ahead just lost control, be careful". Likewise, for areas subject to snow storms, fog, or other conditions of poor visibility, such tracking would be *very* appreciated just knowing how far away the next car is in front/behind. Likewise, if such a mesh network was actually part of the internet, it could conceivably make it possible to connect to the internet, access it, and whatnot without going through *any* ISP. On the one hand, the potential for tracking should worry the privacy and rights advocates, and with good cause. On the other, such distribution of networking could also enable rights and privacy, since it'd be hard to track anything through such a constantly changing network, and even harder to filter anything. I would say it pretty much eliminates the option of filtering our internet. All that being said, I'm not too sure what the connection is with the electrical grid, aside from the potential of "smart" use of electricity, which would be good.
Z
my guess is that zipcar probably pays alot to provide the network that their cars currently use.
If all the vehicles are connected to each other via wifi (or some other means of wireless internet), what happens when a malicious hacker gets into the network and shuts down every vehicle they can gain access to - or worse, decides to make them crash into each other?
Allow high load devices to communicate with energy producers to reduce peak load on the grid by rescheduling periods of high load.
Well, I managed 25 words or fewer. Basically, electric cars will all get plugged in when everybody gets home from work. If they all try to charge as quickly as possible, you get an extreme load on the electric grid from ~6-9 PM. Most of those cars won't be driven again until after sunup when the driver has to get to work the next day. It would be more efficient if the cars charged from 6pm - 6 am. If the power plant can tell the cars "hey, I'm going as hard as I can. Try later tonight when everybody is asleep!" then the electricity distribution system can be built around a typical average load, instead of needing to be built to handle wasteful peaks.
Then, add lots of hippie buzzwords about interconnectedness and unity. And some businessy buzzwords about paradigms and efficiencies of marketitude.
There's an open source EV project called the Tumanako Platform - take a look at what's going on: http://www.tumanako.net/
Sweep out the half dozen networks in our cars and replace them with an open, Internet-based platform.
Most vehicles have just two networks, one for components inside the cabin and one for the rest of the vehicle. Both are implemented with hardware that's way too primitive to cope with IP. They're completely datagram-based services whose primary requirement is to be able to cope with a large amount of line noise, hence the protocols are slow (typically 250Kb/s or thereabouts). Opening these networks up to internet access gains nothing, except perhaps the ability for a hacker to remotely disable your car while you're driving it.
Try another way (today) to move 3 tons of steel, etc, 12 miles down the road for less than $2.50. Plus you have the option of towing an additional 6+ tons for maybe an additional $1 every 12 miles.
This is not to say we can't imagine more efficient ways. The trouble is not inefficiency, but the use of limited resources (fossil fuel) and the stuff coming out of the tailpipe.
I agree. How did Robin go from zipcar to mesh?
I had an MBA friend who wanted to market a cordless hairdryer. I just shook my head.
Robin, I have a good cause, help me out. Its called wikispeeedia . It helps people be safe if they want to.
We need to take back OUR roads.
Don't want my car part of anything not under my complete control and with no monitoring by anyone other then myself by sitting in the drivers seat.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
People who don't agree with the policies of King George should move out of the colonies.
Or try on this one:
People who don't agree with my interpretation of the principles in the Declaration and writings of the U.S. Founders should move to the E.U.
Its nothing new, the idea of cars talking to each other to transmit road conditions, keep a certain distance, allow faster fluid road usage, impose road-travel pricing, etc have been around for a while.
http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/070508_network-on-wheels.aspx
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10895_7-6733591-1.html
There are probably other reasons to have it, from the 2nd link:
Google is also taking a strong interest in this technology. Why would an Internet search company be interested in car technology? Because it wants to extend its reach into your car. And where Google goes, Yahoo and Microsoft are likely to follow. Right now, navigation systems have static databases of restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses. A vehicle communication infrastructure could make that dynamic by sending requests for local restaurants, for example, over the network, with results coming back from Google, Yahoo, or any other online database.
so - safety, taxation, and advertising. I suppose it would also make stealing your car nigh on impossible, and it might help with congestion too.
is not fiction at all.
Quite the contrary, every major war in the past anywhere on the planet has had one major betrayal event associated with it, or the entire war or mass destruction has been provisionally designed into the machinery enabling the destruction or war or even accident.
This also includes infected woolen rugs given to the native Red Indians by the then "invading" Anglosaxons.
Great control of your personal or professional life, when given to another person with no genuine concern for your well-being, will eventually produce suffering or damage. How many incidents from history and personal experience will it take for you to understand this?
Apart from the untouchable being of God, every other being we perceive can place its own priorities above yours in a conflicting situation and by Murphy's law, or by simple logical possibility, will sooner or later materialize.
This is inevitably true.
Terminators, please help!
invaders
And that's how Skynet took over
Her point: we should turn all the tiny proprietary networks into a big standard network.
A "smart grid" is already being investigated, for power usage and distribution reasons. While we're doing that, we might as well make the power system be an actual, usable public network instead, using standard technologies (think IP and similar -- extended Internet).
Now, because we also have a need for mobile networks (see the myriad of cell/3G, WiMax, etc), we might as well use an open mesh standard for all of them as well, and make cars and other useful infrastructure be nodes in the mesh.
Thus, when you want to access information in or near your car (via a car's own interface, a browser on your phone/PDA, or a tethered laptop), instead of it going over some proprietary cell system, it goes via a mesh network of other cars and such until it reaches a municipal powerline network that then talks to the rest of the world over the Internet at large.
This grid... to what purpose?
Some ISP replacement -- no. Meshes are fine but there has to be a backbone; if some 100x the traffic density gridlock got 100x the capacity, no sweat, high-density areas would have hugely more mesh capacity. But the reality is the nearby nodes would interfere with each other, and so capacity will not scale like that. If it could work it'd be great, though; although the sticky bit for it to be useful as an ISP would be "where does it hook to the regular internet?".
Traffic control -- no. The example (in the article comments) of the traffic signals not changing when he's the only one on the road at 3AM -- that change could already be done via in-road sensors (changing lights as the car approaches if there's no other traffic) and IS done like this in some cities.. or via timing the lights properly, get 1 red maybe and the rest will be green. Having a transponder WON'T do anything for communities that just don't care if their lights work or not. It could replace a ipass but not add anything new to it.
Power control -- no. As has been said, there's not wireless power anyway, there's not significant numbers of electric vehicles etc., and there's not a smart grid. With smart grid (which will cost billions) and electric cars, there'd still be no reason to have some wireless mesh.
The suggestion of "cellular or wifi" shows the lack of appreciation of rural situation.. wifi is useless, both due to range, and who wants to have cars piggybacking on their wifi? Cellular, well, who wants some data thing in the car that relies on mesh but then you have to pay for cellular data too? If you're going for a mesh, go balls-to-the-wall, have the high-frequency, low-power, low-range high-throughput tech for usual use, and get something allocated at lower frequency, for higher power long-range (probably lower throughput) use. It's not like a cell phone, wifi, or an aircard where it'll be right next to your head or nuts, there's no reason it can't run 5 or 10 watts output if it needs. Still, not sure of the purpose but anyway..
Finally, three more concerns, cost and security, and privacy.
Cost -- The infrastructure to USE this for anything would be expensive -- implementing good traffic light control is expensive, collecting tolls is expensive, whatever big brother crap is expensive. For my DIRECT costs, the in-car module would cost, whatever they plan to use the module for will be expensive (what, in car internet or something?), and if places start deciding they should collect tolls via this setup that'll cost me direct money too.
Security. Spoofing, DOSing, who knows what sort of fun could be done with this? I can't really elaborate but it seems like a ripe source of trouble.
Privacy. I can't think of legit uses for this, that leaves the illegitimate -- indiscriminate car tracking, profiling, and various other Bushly activities.
We had a very heavy 1989 Oldsmobile station wagon. It got 25 City & 28 Highway! It was geared into the dirt. 3rd gear top speed was 45, but at that point it shifted into the 2nd speed of the transaxle. My friend, if SUV'S were geared even lower than that for front wheel drive up to say a 3rd or 4th gear then you could run a direct drive to the rear wheels for highway speeds only at the back tires. All vehicles could be made that way, lower gears and reverse on the front wheels, hi-speed at the rear but it only works if you have a powerful engine (see last paragraph). I imagine SUV'S and pickup trucks would then be getting maybe 45-65 mpg with no changes to the engines... especially with these new diesel engines they're coming out with.
Toyota came out with a engine for their little pickups that runs diesel but then it has a switch to jump over to METHANE. Damn thing is supposed to get 80 mpg. They could put a bigger one in SUV'S and Hummers. I presently only have a 1978 Ford Maverick and mileage is 14 or so, atrocious, but if I put some smaller diameter tires on next time I need tires I could IN EFFECT give it the extra/excess starting off power the Olds wagon had. That's where you need horses on the hoof, pulling away from a stop getting the car's weight moving with the least outlay of energy. Since I only drive it around town anyway & to work or the store I don't need it to do highway speeds. I can stand a top speed of 42-45 miles per hour. I'll tell ya something else you might not know this but I've read you can take the plugs and compression off a couple cylinders in the 302 and save gas that way! So with smaller tires I could have more torque to the road and make out well with fewer cylinders, probably double the gas mileage, if I chose to do all that.
IT'S ALL IN THE GEARING, THE GEARBOX AND DIFFERENTIALS IS WHERE YOU LOSE. They could keep every big SUV on the road. They just want people getting crushed into a bloody ball I guess. That's what they think of a man's family and children. Bloodsport without Van Damme. I'm too busy right now making a Gravity "Fuel" Home Engine generates electricity for homes to mess with it => http://tinyurl.com/GravityWheelOne but I invented a system for cars in 2003 that is a tornado engine, mixes super cold liquid air injected into a steam-filled hot cylinder (so th minus 320 degree air doesn't flash freeze the piston to the cylinder walls). Last year I designed the engine past theory to run like a mechanical heart. My son is making it up in 3-d Studio Max starting tomorrow. It's a Closed System; once put together no fuel in no pollutants out. I'm not much for making web pages but since I didn't have the bucks to pay anybody in 2003 I made this page telling the processes involved for the air-steam engine => http://www.newpath4.com/enginewow.htm . It's like an advanced steam engine in a way except the steam is no longer the "Prime Mover"; cold air takes its place => Steam pressure is replaced with air exploding pressure. It confuses people. Steam Heat becomes the catalyst that makes the liquid air explode rather than just expand. It's a weather cycle in an engine that should develop 600 horsepower. Here's the trick => all the cylinders fire at the same time PLUS another trick => it goes back to being a 2-cycle engine firing twice as fast. It's about 1100% more powerful than any diesel combustion engine.
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.