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Meet the Virginia-Built 110MPG X-Prize Car
tcd004 writes "Instead of using Detroit engineers or Silicon Valley bitheads, Virginia-based Edison2 relied on retired Formula 1 and Nascar engineers to build its entry for the X-prize. Relying on composite materials and titanium, the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle, but gets more than 100 mpg. The custom engineering goes all the way down to the car's lug nuts, which weigh less than 11 grams each. Amazingly, they expect a production version of the car should cost less than $20,000." Earlier today, in a Washington, DC ceremony, Edison2 received $5 million as the X-prize winner. Writes the AP (via Google) "Two other car makers will split $2.5 million each: Mooresville, N.C.-based Li-Ion Motors Corp., which made the Wave2, a two-seat electric car that gets 187 miles on a charge, and X-Tracer Team of Winterthur, Switzerland, whose motorcycle-like electric mini-car, the E-Tracer 7009, gets 205 miles on a charge. Both of those companies are taking orders for their cars."
whoda thunk such a thing could come from Lynchburg (manufacturing-wise)...i was pleasantly surprised when i heard about this a few months back.
"Two other car makers will split $2.5 million each"
What does that mean? Does it mean they get $2.5 million each or is it split between them?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
How will oil companies do this?
The story at Wired has pictures.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Edison 2 site that would have been linked to in the summary if anyone posting stories gave a damn anymore
Gasoline is just one of many products made from crude oil and the refiners actually have to go out of their way to squeeze as much of it out of the crude stock as possible. The oil companies have plenty of other products to fall back on.
I believe the statements "Relying on composite materials and titanium" and "should cost less than $20,000" are contradictory.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Like they've ensured Tesla Roadsters never get to the road, nor the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, or the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation of Toyota Hybrids. Oil companies may have been able to get a stranglehold on battery patents before, but the EV genie is out of the bottle. So, go buy one (if it fits your driving needs).
No federal crash testing safety standards will make sure this never sees the road. It has no airbags for instance. Also the lack of trunk space will make sure nobody would want to buy one.
I think it's going to have trouble meeting collision safety standards, actually, although it can't possibly be more dangerous than my motorcycle.
Ehrm, unless it can carry groceries and soccer kids uphill in winter it certainly won't become the defacto automobile.
Just sayin'
Why the in hell does it look like that?
For the love of God make one of these cars look like a damn car.
I was going to roll my eyes and say "conspiracy nut", and then I realized this one would be pretty easy to keep off American roads (en masse, anyway): how does it perform on crash tests?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
there's also the consideration that Edison2 doesn't plan on producing the car for mass market anyway... however, its already been driven around Charlottesville with a reporter inside...so technically they failed to keep it off the road (referencing the NPR article from their main page today).
With carbon fiber body and a titanium frame, it costing less then $20,000 sounds not even possible.
Add to it the 800lbs GVW and if the thing gets hit by another vehicle in the 2000lbs range it will certainly fly off the road. Good start, just not very believable in the statements made.
Does it have air bags, side-impact beams, crumple zones, etc? It seems like an impressive bit of engineering, but it will never make it to production in the US unless it meets all the government crash and safety standards.
Safety standards are one of the main reasons a 2010 Honda Civic gets nearly the same mileage in practice as a 1990 Civic. Although the more modern car has made strides in improving drive train efficiency, it weighs over 600 lbs more resulting in nearly the same fuel efficiency. Things like side-impact beams, air bags, and ABS make cars safer, but they also make them a lot heavier.
I don't know, I looked at buying a motorcycle for commuting everyday and decided against it due to safety factors. This looks like it would get better MPG and be almost as safe as a regular car.
at least I hope you did there.
First off, it's run on E85. That means it gets something like 50mpg and they say "theoretically" the car gets 110mpg in "gasoline numbers." i.e. if you switch it to pure gasoline, you should get 110mpg by some magic due to additional fuel density. (Imaginary, I'm convinced this won't happen; otherwise why wouldn't you just build a gasoline engine?)
At heart, the Very Light Car is a simple vehicle, avoiding the feature creep that has loaded down contemporary vehicles. Design simplicity, low mass and conventional materials result in lower material costs and production time.
Second, they seem to have avoided "design features" ... I don't see a feature list. ABS? Traction control? (things I don't care about). What about suspension? Is this 4 wheel independent? Rear wheel drive or all wheel drive? A heavy Torsen differential or open? All of these things affect the actual handling of the car and its safety. That whole "My Volvo is safe, I don't die when I hit things!" thing is bullshit; my Mazda3 is safe because I can turn HARD into a 120 degree right turn at 30mph without braking and, with tires screeching and wheels scrubbing, the car won't slip or skid sideways or spin or roll over.
If someone cuts me off on the highway, I can A) take a hit to my front quarter and spin; B) brake hard and get rearended by the tailgater, pushed into him, and spin anyway; or C) brake, downshift, floor it, and steer into a nearby opening. (C) is possible in my car; it was not possible in the Cobalt. In my Cobalt, I actually came off the road in a more gentle curve (still kinda tight, but not a hairpin or corner) at 30mph. The back slid a little bit and I had to fight to regain control. In the worst possible place (narrow roads, guard rails, mountains, and one lane going each way... if there was another car coming I would have had a head-on collision). This is not safe; the SUV I was pacing made it, and my Mazda3 can make it at 60mph+ (I've tested the handling elsewhere; no way am I pushing that car that hard on the street) so I know I'm not going to lose control in normal conditions.
That's what I want in a car. A good suspension, good brakes, good responsive steering, and slap some excellent tires on that bad boy. All wheel drive is excellent, Rear wheel drive is also very nice, front wheel drive ... has proven to be a severe safety hazard (loses control in the snow/rain/ice easily if your tires can't handle it; loses control trying to take off into a hard turn, so don't merge into cross-traffic from a stop). The car is safe, now teach the driver to drive, everything from recovery techniques to road etiquette and proper judgment.
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well it's not fast, it's not safe, but it's very efficient.
Actually, too bad the nanny state DOT and NHTSA will make sure you never see it on the road. I can all but guarantee it won't pass modern impact tests and does not have the requisite number of airbags etc... plus who is going to mass produce it? Labor unions? HA! So much for the under $20k without compromising the prototype design
Datsun B210
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
1st vehicle is made for a single person. Built for fairly low speeds (under 50), lightweight, obscene gas mileage, but 4 wheeled, and safe as can be. Made for to and fro work, non-highway.
2nd vehicle is multi-passenger, but not a long-hauler nor does it require fast speeds. Again, 50 and under. Make it lightweight, great mileage, made for around town, picking up the kids, going to the grocery store.
3rd vehicle is multi-passenger, highway driver, large capacity, made for high speeds. Gas mileage is probably nothing special. This is a travel vehicle made for time on the road.
You make these 3 with quality and safety in mind, and not trying to make money hand over fist, and you've won the salesroom. Yes, there will always be those who want sports cars, and gas-guzzeling suv's, however if you go to the sales lots today, it is VERY apparent what is lacking in quality and safety, and plain sensible engineering that a 100 year old industry should have. Disgusted doesn't scratch the surface with the current state of automobile selection.
The Edison2, according to the article, is practical, affordable, and offers real and immediate savings to the consumer. None of the models you listed can make all these same claims.
I don't know if the oil companies will keep the Edison2 off the roads and out of the minds of the consumer, but I am well confident they will try.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Does this mean the car can only turn left?
this is a PROTOTYPE that was built to win a contest!! Obviously it wouldn't meet safety standards and is not road legal for various reasons. The point is, if they put it into production, and lose, say, 35mpg in efficiency (I know nothing about automotive stuff, just for the sake of argument), it's still ~65mpg! Which would be revolutionary. As for <20k... that seems unlikely, and it seems much more likely that price and the cost of large scale auto manufacture is what will keep this off your local dealer's lot.
Before we get all excited about this car's potential to solve our energy problems, we should give some thought to practical matters like crash safety.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I think it's going to have trouble meeting collision safety standards, actually, although it can't possibly be more dangerous than my motorcycle.
I've always thought it odd that we are so terribly worried about safety standards for cars, yet we allow motorcycles. Now, don't get me wrong, I think we should allow motorcycles. It just drives me nuts when we see some rather interesting designs and concepts ignored because it won't meet our standards even though you could make a simple (but clear and obvious) warning that such and such a vehicle does not meet the motor vehicle safety standards.
Maybe a class 'experimental' license that you have to get before you can drive one just to show that you are fully educated about the safety risks and how to mitigate them through behavior (extreme defensive driving).
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First off, it's run on E85. That means it gets something like 50mpg and they say "theoretically" the car gets 110mpg in "gasoline numbers." i.e. if you switch it to pure gasoline, you should get 110mpg by some magic due to additional fuel density. (Imaginary, I'm convinced this won't happen; otherwise why wouldn't you just build a gasoline engine?)
To be fair, I constantly see E85 marketed as a green fuel not a more energy efficient fuel. Some quick reading says that on average E85 is 25-30% less efficient than gasoline. Is it possible that a car could be 50% less efficient when running on E85? I would say yes if the car was specifically engineered to increase MPG and ignored other features.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Easy there. Are you sure you aren't Steven Seagal?
I had a "Popular Mechanics" magazine from the early 80's that had an article on how to make a 100 MPG car with a spitfire car frame, molded fiberglass, and a Kubota tractor engine.
It's sad that it would take a X-Prize contest with a 10-million dollar purse to get us back to using the technology discussed in a old magazine.
Congrats to the teams. I'm just commenting about the automobile industry as a whole.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Hiring a bunch of unemployed (aka non-unionized) former factory workers is getting easier and easier these days.
It's Virginia built. That means it probably has neither turn signals, nor rear view mirrors, nor the ability to move in anything other than stop and go traffic.
Unfortunately, after the added weight of an average American the car only gets 50 MPG.
It's still the sign of a net loss for them, a potentially *huge* net loss.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Don't worry. The government regulations will guarantee that it is never as efficient. Every car has to meet safety requirements: air bags, crash tests, type of glass used (plexiglass not allowed), etc. If this thing really is that light, it might not do too well in crash tests. In order to meet those requirements, it will have to be beefed up.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
They won't.
2010 may finally be the year of 100MPG on the Car!
just make sure it has 5 point harnesses and a roll frame and solid anchor points and you should be able to skip the airbags. Really I don't get the "it's light and made of carbon it must be a death trap" thing. Look at an F1 car, they can crash into a car going 50-100mph slower, flip though the air, crash into a tire wall and both drivers get out under their own power and walk back to the paddock, or WRC cars, toss it down a mountainside and the driver gets out and climbs back up, or Peter Solburg in 2004 hitting a Hinkelsteine and going flipping down the road.
It's not hard to make a safe car, it's hard to make a car you can freely move around in and still be safe when it hits a wall at 70MPH, or another car also moving 55mph(110 wall). Strap the meatbags down and it helps a lot.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Yeah I like how people blame oil companies, but more typically it's the car companies themselves that cancel projects (EV1, RAV4) or the lack of interest from customer (Honda Insights barely sold at all). No conspiracy needed.
BTW my Insight can get over 100 MPG with slow driving (55mph) and avoiding use of the brake on the interstate. Of course it's only a two seater but that's fine for my daily commute. The best I've ever done was 121 MPG while driving south-to-north across Utah and Idaho.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Titanium is expensive. It's not easy to fix. And the aircraft industry has gobbled it up. My company has seen titanium prices go up 6 fold in the past few years due to the 787 and the A380 using similar titanium/composite bodies. While it's come down in the recent years, raw titanium is still roughly $11/lb, vs steel which runs about $.50/lb. While you use less lbs of titanium for a car than you do steel because titanium is lighter, it's not 5% of the weight of steel. The raw material on this thing will likely cost 5-8x what a regular car will cost.
Sure, but that's the problem with rules and regulations. Every time you write a law, and entire slew of assumptions get coded in.
What you describe may well be perfectly safe, but that doesn't mean the law still doesn't require airbags, for example.
Too bad the NHTSA won't either. In addition to the total lack of safety, can you imagine anyone over 40 getting into those narrow, low-slung doors?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The "equivalent" thing you keep seeing is there because we, collectively, made the moronic decision to measure fuel efficiency according to volume of fuel (at what temperature, anyway?) and not mass, and a gallon of gasoline is heavier than a gallon of ethanol. (A gallon of diesel is heavier than a gallon of gasoline, too, but for some reason the "MPGe" thing is never used in the other direction.)
Actually the government and consumers will take care of that. Crash Safety Equipment, Air Conditioning and other very standard(and heavy) systems from normal cars are missing on these vehicles. Once you add that up the 110mpg will be similar to what normal auto producers make.
More likely, these are specialized cars designed to meet an X-prize goal, not to meet road-safety standards, so you will never see it on the road. But you may see the technology in your next boring every-day car. Right now, I bet someone over at Toyota is calculating how much better gas mileage they can get by using specialized lightweight lug nuts.
my Mazda3 is safe because I can turn HARD into a 120 degree right turn at 30mph without braking
Plus it's got plenty of trunk room for shopping sprees and comes in a hot pink that's just FABULOUS.
Why no plexiglass?
It could even be two layers held together with a sheet of thing plastic in the middle like current glass. Seems redundant, but could be used to make everyone happy.
My diesel sedan from the mid-90's gets 60mpg, and weighs a bloody ton with all the steel, safety features, and such. If I threw a diesel engine in an ultralight chassis, without all the airbags and comfort, I wager I could break 100mpg. Heck, keeping everything in terms of comfort, but reducing the weight with a reengineered frame of lighter alloys, and carbon-fiber and plastic, and some better aerodynamics, and you could probably break 100mpg. Or make one where the "engine" is actually an electric motor, and a diesel generator constantly recharging the batteries in the back, and you can probably make a vehicle that can have lovely speed (as the generator can replae the need for quite a lot of the batteries needed for something like a Tesla), while having the option of running on just batteries to drive across town in wonderful silence.
That's cutting edge, but I rather go with the current "state of the art"?
More practical and way more fun to drive.
So add some airbags, whats that $1500 and a couple lost MPG?
Lots of people buy cars with no or no useful trunk. Go look at every sports car ever. Better yet, just add a hatchback lid to it.
The NEV article states the safety requirements:
In addition, some states have increased the MPH limit (owner can easily mod this) to 35MPH, allowing them to travel on 45MPH roads in the slow lane:
All of this adds up to a vehicle that is good for local commuting (if allowed on the 45MPH "expressways") and grocery grabbing, with minimal safety requirements and if it's non-emissions, also benefit from tax incentives.
I'm definitely keeping my eye on this, it'd be great for those days when I don't want to ride the bike to work (i.e., have to pick up the kid). The Edison2 car would fit nicely here (though it wouldn't get tax credits).
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"Innovations derived from racing enhance safety in the Very Light Car. These advances include collapsible space not available in current cars (such as wheels outside of the main body structure), a shape that deflects impacts, and a lightweight but sturdy steel frame. The nimbleness of the Very Light Car aids in accident avoidance, and low mass is an advantage in single-car or auto-pedestrian accidents."
( from http://www.edison2.com/facts-and-figures-overview/ )
So you're saying that despite the fact there are hundreds of thousands of them on the roads, the Toyota Prius is neither practical, affordable, nor does it offer any real and immediate savings to the consumer? And before you come back with some trite answer about it being a smug feel-good car, I've got two words for you to consider: Taxi Cab. If the Prius weren't a winner on all three of the metrics you name, why would taxi companies love the things as much as they do?
As for the Edison2, it's a cool concept, but it's still a concept. The thing exists as a one-off prototype with exactly none of the real-world production hassles and economics worked out. It therefore fails your three metrics by default.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
The Mazda3's not an awesome sports car. It's not a 2010 Camaro, or a 2006 GTO, or a Porsche, or an RX-8 or MX-5. That's my point, though. It's a decent little FWD econo car that ... can take a turn you should never, ever take at that speed. In an emergency situation, it's down to driver skill and not what engineering went into vehicle dynamics. I can stop fast, I can turn fast, I can control my vehicle. It forgives mistakes and some level of stupidity.
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Extreme defensive driving is right, because other motorists' perceptions come into play too. For instance, like every other driver on the road, I follow at distances where, if their car is able to slow down faster than mine, or I'm fiddling with the radio, I'm going to rear-end them. Before the banshees come out, hey, I'd avoid it if I could, but the fact is that when I do leave a space that would allow me to stop if they went from 60-0 in 1 second, another car passes and gets in that gap. There's no way to stop the behavior short of driving 30 in a 60mph zone, and that's what crumple zones, airbags, seatbelts, and insurance are for--driving in the real world.
Anyway, when I see a motorcycle, that goes out the window. I'm acutely aware that if they fall off the bike for some reason and I run over them, I'm probably going to kill someone, or at least fuck them up in ways that go far beyond sitting in a courtroom with a neckbrace suing my ass off. Since I'm not willing to accept that, I leave that space, and sometimes, even other drivers don't fill it in. I give them wide berth in other situations as well--just flat out, I never ever ever in my life want to hit a motorcyclist and do everything I can to make sure I don't. I notice most other drivers behave the same way, or at least leave some extra tolerance.
With an experimental car though, you're not going to get that immediate perception of "I'm quite possibly going to kill this person if I hit them." Sure, most of the risk is on the driver of the exotic, but what about steel rods that can detach in a collision and fly through the passenger compartment of a Saturn, or a million other things that can go wrong in weird ways? How do you even begin to evaluate that? Right now we require massive amounts of crash testing, but it becomes a lot less affordable to smash up 50 copies of your car when you might only sell 500 of them, and even then some wild design might cause huge problems in scenarios that aren't tested currently.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
No, because anyone over 40 is going to be driving a car so large they can barely see over the steering wheel.
How the hell does no trunk space match ...provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
P.S.
Volkswagen is now making a two-seater that gets ~200 Highway MPG. I wish I could buy it here in the US.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I could engineer a fuel-by-mass system. It'd need three reservoirs: a main fuel tank; a mass measuring reservoir; and an output reservoir. The charge of fuel in the mass measuring reservoir and the output reservoir would be set and measured upon starting the pump. The mass reservoir would fill from the main tank faster than the output reservoir emptied to vehicle; the output reservoir would similarly fill faster than it drains.
In use, the system initializes by taking mass of both the mass and output reservoirs. As the system runs, it keeps a running tally of output mass. This tally is produced by continuous measurement of the output reservoir mass.
Each time the output reservoir drops below a certain level, the mass reservoir transfers a measure of fuel into it. At this point, the amount of mass change in the mass reservoir is measured and added to a separate tally. The display then updates with that value plus a calculated correction on the output reservoir.
The system updates for this correction by adding the amount of mass moved from the mass reservoir (total) to the value of (initial mass - current mass) in the output reservoir. This latter value may be negative, as the reservoir may hold i.e. 4 gallons and receive 2 gallons at 1.5 gallons, thus it may start at 2 gallons and later have 3.5 gallons of fuel in it, giving it more mass than it started with for roughly the same fuel density. Thus the system should always render an accurate measurement, even continuously drawing from a single shared fuel line.
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The current glass in cars (for windshields) is SAFETY glass. Essentially, the glass itself is fragile on purpose, and the polyvinyl butyral in the middle only serves to hold the glass fragments together. The glass is supposed to disintegrate when faced with large stresses, but remain stuck to the polyvinyl butyral film. Plexiglass simply will not offer the disintegration behavior, as its designed for the exact opposite purpose and will not disintegrate.
"His name was James Damore."
I have not done the math on most of these vehicles, but I recently did on the Leaf after looking at their display at the California State Fair. Dollar per mile, the Leaf couldn't even come close to the fuel costs compared to my 1999 Suzuki Swift. It's purchase price, even after accounting for inflation isn't even close either. Yes, the Leaf probably has 10 years more worth of safety features, but that doesn't account for it's poor TCO. No doubt it is a better value in those magical parts of the country that I keep hearing about on Slashdot where they pay only $0.10/kwh. Here in California, we can be paying over $0.30/kwh.
Even more likely, this team has patents on many of the things they did so they can either license them to large manufacturers, or sell parts to them.
Most legitimate X-Prize teams I know of, and to be fair I know the space-based ones better, have a business plan that goes beyond the mere prize. Scaled Composites always had something like Virgin Galactic in mind, and Odyssey Moon has plans for funding their lunar mission beyond what the prize provides.
Thats the real strength of these prizes -- not being the sole reason for development, but providing an extra cushion of profitability to make a useful but not quite profitable business work, along with a race mentality to make things move more quickly.
It may be safer, but it can't be sold in the US as a production automobile because it would be considered a "car", and all production cars in the US have to have at least dual second-generation airbags (among other things that motorcycles do not require).
Motorcycles may be "less safe", but they don't require the same safety equipment as a car because they are a different class of vehicle.
They may be able to sell them as a "kit" or something, if they intend selling them without an airbag. I don't know if you could ever get it certified for road use, though.
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I could not afford one at the time, but would love to get a used one now. The real question would be could such a beast be converted to diesel.
Maybe one day a diesel series hybrid will be sold in the states. GM really screwed the pooch on the volt it looks like.
I'm on real time metering via ComEd in Chicago. At night, I pay as low as $0.01/KwH. It is extremely cheap for me to charge my Tesla Roadster at night.
It does not, I did not write the article nor the summary.
>>>when I do leave a space that would allow me to stop if they went from 60-0 in 1 second, another car passes and gets in that gap.
So?
.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I designed a less elegant solution, use a bunch of baffles in the tank to prevent sloshing and mount it to a digital scale. Better yet just place a scale in each of the mount points that the tank strap attaches to and do some simple math.
And my point was that the Mazda 3 is for chicks, which I kinda thought I made abundantly clear.
>>>but what about steel rods that can detach in a collision and fly through the passenger compartment of a Saturn, or a million other things that can go wrong
This is the kind of thinking that prevented the VW Lupo from coming to America, which is a shame because it could get 90 Highway MPG. Sometimes safety standards are too strict, and end-up harming the US people in other ways (in this case: more pollution because the cleaner car was not available).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You are allowed to drive experimental cars for short distances (less than 1000 miles), or with an experimental license for longer distances. Volkswagen did the experimental license deal when they drove their Lupo across the United States.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And before you come back with some trite answer about it being a smug feel-good car, I've got two words for you to consider: Taxi Cab. If the Prius weren't a winner on all three of the metrics you name, why would taxi companies love the things as much as they do?
Ha! Have you ever met a New York cabbie? Because I sure haven't, and I'm assuming that there's never been a bigger bunch of hemp-wearing tree-hugging kumbaya-singing hippies. With disposable income.
The enemies of Democracy are
So?
If a road is near maximum capacity but still maintaining the speed if you do not maintain speed you become a hazard to other drivers. So the 'safer' option is to give as much distance as you can without encouraging 'lane hopping' drivers. Keeping the speed differential to a minimum is safer than attempting to maintain a following distance which would be safe if traffic was light.
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The truth is that weight mainly affects acceleration, outside towns, while aerodynamics affects fuel consumption rather more. That's why the latest hybrids have such interesting shapes, especially around the rear end where the airflow detaches from the body.
As a real world, example, the Econetic Ford Fiesta is now available in the US, meeting full US specs. It produces 120BHP, more than European versions, but the NYT review mocks it for its low power and suggests it is slower than a rowing boat. That's nonsense, but it's the sort of thing rednecks like to believe. It does about 40MPUSG. It would have been hard to achieve that in a 1990 Fiesta, which would typically get around 28-33MPUSG. Yet it is much safer and much faster.
To be blunt, the real problem for economy cars in the US is the US mindset, which so often sees mere size as better than quality engineering. The mindset won't change until gasoline reaches about $5 per USG, and given the number of AGW-deniers among the current crop of Republican candidates, and Koch funding of the Tea Party, it's more likely someone will get invaded for their oil first.
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, but my point isn't anti-US. It's complaining that the US has many of the world's best engineers who could fix all the problems of peak oil and overconsumption - but their own countrymen won't let them.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I've seen nearly 30x that MPG in the SAE Supermileage Competition, built by HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS.
And that was several years ago.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I thought the whole point was that it broke into non-dangerous pieces and stuck together. Why do you want the windshield to be fragile?
The seatbelt will prevent you from hitting it. If that is not good enough mount it in such a way that a large stress from the inside will push it out.
I am not attempting to be rude, I am just curious and suggesting alternative techniques to possible reasons for what seems to be to be a odd design choice.
, I'd avoid it if I could, but the fact is that when I do leave a space that would allow me to stop if they went from 60-0 in 1 second, another car passes and gets in that gap.
Then you should back off again. Arriving alive is the goal, it's not a fucking race track.
At $0.01/KwH, it would make financial sense for many of us in CA to buy battery systems and charge our homes overnight. Our Electricity starts at $0.12/Kwh, and quickly raises. Since we work off of a tiered system, pretty much anyone charging their car in CA would be paying $0.32 to $0.38/kwh. I don't know how high the prices go on other tiers, so it may be even more.
The difference in electricity prices being so much greater than the differences in gas prices makes discussions on the economics of electric vehicles highly regionally specific.
Both of these are interesting but what problem are they solving? Nobody cares how many kg of fuel they have left in their tank. As far as measuring fuel out at the pump, yes you could install mass flow meters and pay by the lb/kg instead of by the gal/L, but is it worth the trouble and expense?
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
That whole "My Volvo is safe, I don't die when I hit things!" thing is bullshit; my Mazda3 is safe because . . .
Incidentally, the Mazda3 is also safe because it was, in part, designed by Volvo.
Loved that car, wish I still had one.
Not a typewriter
A few years ago, I read about a group of highschool students who did a very similar thing. They worked off a standard body, and built a hybrid drivetrain into it. They may not have achieved 110 mpg, perhaps 70 mpg. The point is, a lot of one-offs are doing this for very little money, and have been for a long time.
Long before that, back in the 90s on USENET... I recall reading a post from a guy who built an all-electric system in a light sportscar body. I don't recall what the body was, it doesn't really matter. The point is, he was TESLA MOTORS 15 YEARS AGO. Sure, the battery tech was not as good. He was probably lead-acid with a 30 mile range; but he claimed to have incredible speed off the line and I don't have any reason to doubt it.
The difference? All that marketing, patent lawyer garbage, investors, scale, etc. That's the hard part. The engineering is pretty well established.
Oh, and I'm pretty happy I didn't put down a deposit for my Aptera. I was actually toying with idea back when the dough was rolling in. Those guys even have a really cool prototype, but they keep delaying production. Why? Denied Federal funding due to 3-wheel design. Management problems. The 3-wheel denial problem was fixed; but Tesla grabbed the first round from Uncle Sam first. Still no production Aptera. Engineering is easy compared to all that other stuff.
The way I see it, getting 110 mpg cars to consumers is 10 percent engineering, 90 percent politics.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
how does it perform on crash tests?
It should be similar to a Formula 1, which is better then most production cars.
why weld? just form/machine the parts and then bolt together, see "billet aluminium car" by kirkham motor sports.
Machining is the most expensive way to produce a metal part. You start with a block of metal and grind away everything that isn't the part. It's very wasteful, in terms of energy, even if you recycle the waste metal chips. The cheapest methods are stamping or casting. Guess how most metal car parts are made?
Robotic welding is cheap, repeatable and produces strong assemblies. Bolting tends to be labor intensive, and adds more weight (bolts weigh more than welds).
It's not like the existing car companies haven't analyzed these alternatives more than a few times over the last 100 or so years.
Putting moderation advice in your
Yes 65mpg would be SOOOO revolutionary
There isn't a sedan widely available on the US market that gets anything near 65mpg. Most cars get far less. There is a car in europe that gets 65 per gallon. I don't get your point. (?)
That's a particularly lopsided view of the "oil conspiracy." The reality is that oil companies represent the single largest caucus of industry money with a single purpose: sell more oil. They brought those resources to bear against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in order to end the public's mandate for zero emissions vehicles, even the smallest amount, which killed electric car development in it's infancy. I remember seeing electric RAV4s and EV1s and Ford Ranger EVs buzzing around in the late 90s in rural Georgia. The technology developed by GM was mothballed by Exxon Mobil, who bought and buried the battery technology. Toyota continued to develop theirs, and now they have top selling hybrid car in the world.
The red herring offered consistently is, why wouldn't GM want to lead the way in electric car development? Two reasons: one, EV technology was receiving zero subsidy after CARB was bought and sold, yet gasoline in the United States is sold at a fraction of the price due to massive subsidies by the US government. The second is that electric motors are hideously reliable, as evidenced by hydroelectric dams that have been in operation for over one hundred years. If a material for infinitely durable shoes was developed by Nike, do you think they would be dumb enough to manufacture and sell it?
It's tough to continue netting billions if you make your product cheaper and more efficient, without being able to drop the price enough to sell it to more consumers. So, as one would naturally expect, you fight any newer technology with every tool you have, while simultaneously buying up the competition and burying new technology. An oil company actively reducing the value of their trillions of dollars of oil infrastructure is like Microsoft funding R&D for open source software. It just doesn't happen.
Eventually the new technology will win, if there is some other industry that will see gains, or if the government steps in to make sure the economy isn't artificially shackled to old technology because of monopolistic business practices. It's fashionable to call that Socialism, but everyone else calls it progress.
The additional upfront cost is not made up for by gas savings over 5 years for most people. (http://www.bcaa.com/downloads/BCAA_Hybrid_Cost_Analysis_2010.pdf) I suspect that since taxi's likely drive more than 20,000 km per year they might actually pay back costs. Especially when they operate in optimal contidions for getting the greatest difference in conventional vs. hybrid mileage.
For most people they don't make sense from a money point of view. There are green house gas savings and toxic chemical costs as well that need to be considered. Most people buy hybrids for reasons other than cost savings though.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Sounds like deregulating your electric system really worked out for you then.
If that were true don't you think one of the over 100 teams who spent millions of their own money would have done that? Its easy to get 100mpg when you gloss over all of the details and rules, but the X-Prize setup many tests to ensure the car actually got 100mpg in many scenarios. Your alleged PM 100mpg car may not even be true.
Oh come on. VW sells a three-cylinder diesel model in Europe that gets over 65 miles per gallon. You don't think someone could get more than that out of a lighter car with a much smaller engine?
I read this article, not that that's a definitive citation or anything.
The 1980s PM car used a diesel engine that made about 17 horsepower. It was extremely slow to accelerate, but because the engine size was matched up to exactly how much power was needed to keep the car moving, and because a tractor engine can be operated at full power output indefinitely, it meant that the engine was operated right at its peak efficiency most of the time. It got incredible fuel milage at the expense of terrible acceleration performance.
The designers decided that carrying a larger engine with excess reserve power meant that the car would be less efficient at steady-state cruising. They were right. The downside was the car took a very long time to get up to highway speed and couldn't do more than about 65 MPH. At lower speeds, in town, it wasn't much slower than the crappy econoboxes of the time - remember this was when 100 hp seemed like a lot in a small car.
Putting moderation advice in your
You don't sound secure in your sexuality. Do you spend a lot of time in airport bathrooms?
You've got your capitalization all backwards. kWh is SI.
It's quite clear that we possess the technology to make a 100+ MPG vehicle. The real question, though, is whether a practical vehicle can be made to attain those figures that the public would be willing to buy. Would tens of thousands of people be willing to buy it? No way.
People give American car companies a lot of crap for their vehicles performing inefficiently, but truthfully they're providing what the American consumer is willing to buy. Your average Joe won't buy a vehicle without trunk space and without comfortable seats. There are also factors such as appearance/design, safety (where are the airbags on these?), and the very basics like radio and cruise control. Keep in mind that up until the past few years, the best selling vehicle in the world was a pickup truck.
These Xprize vehicles would be hard pressed to make even the tiniest of dents in the market. They're a PR stunt and research platforms more than anything. Could the technology be used elsewhere? Absolutely. But don't expect to see these mass produced and highly sold anytime soon.
The XR3 has been around a few years and looks a lot more like a car than any of these. Is it because it is a three wheeler?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What if the car is half under a rock? No way you're pushing out plexiglass, only breaking it would work.
This guy built a car in 1984 that got 103.7 miles per gallon driving from Mexico to the Canadian border.
Tacoma native driving from Bellingham to Mexico on a tank of gas...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
>Before we get all excited about this car's potential to solve our energy problems,
>we should give some thought to practical matters like crash safety.
How long do you suppose it will be until fuel economy is the only practical matter under consideration? How long until you get to choose between driving any kind of vehicle at all or a bicycle?
My guess is it won't be very long and we will be forced to drive golf carts around town. Because you won't be able to afford to drive anything else.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
, http://cherepovecsite.ru/
http://bessern.ru/
The Edison2 is RWD.
Well then, I guess it's time to ponder how good your life has been so far...
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Wasn't blaming you, I was just hoping it wasn't a stated goal of the prize.
Seats 4 people with over 100 MPG is already a great achievement.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I thought regenerative breaking is used in a hybrid car, where energy is stored in the battery.
The red herring offered consistently is, why wouldn't GM want to lead the way in electric car development?
Agreed with most of your points. The other elephant in the room that the pro-EV movement never owns up to is that the EV1 had a variable cost of over $100,000, and a fully-amortized cost of nearly $1 million per car.
Was it a stupid PR move for GM to take the cars back and crush them? Absolutely, but I can completely sympathize with GM for not wanting to build cars that cost roughly 3x what the market was willing to pay.
Electrics (and to a lesser extent, hybrids) do cost more, and when talking to an EV advocate, it's never really clear if they expect the car companies to lose money on the sales, or if they expect government subsidies to make up for the difference.
The extra cost comes with great value, though, because gasoline cars have enormous externalized (i.e. invisible) costs, since they foul the air, the ecosystem, and the political climate.
I would imagine a bus style "pull here" thing could be used.
Another alternative would be to go out the side window.
I'm not an expert, but I would bet that you want the windshield to be as strong as it can be, while still being able to safely shatter. That way it absorbs maximum kinetic energy in the event of a crash.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
My daily commuter gets 70 MPG. I ride it about 10k miles per year. It has 8000 miles on it. I paid under $2k for it. It weighs 300 pounds. It goes 75 MPH on the freeway and has a range of about 300 miles. It uses no exotic anything. Anyone can buy one right now.
Why the hell is developing a 100 MPG gasoline vehicle using exotic materials worth a multi million dollar prize? This is a gigantic waste of time, effort, and money.
Seat ibiza gets 97.4mpg and it's a real car:
http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/firstdrives/237415/seat_ibiza_ecomotive.html
http://vimeo.com/5285448
A car that could have long been in production if the government actually funded innovation and wasn't simply looking out for unions.
When I went to NYC in April, probably 1/3 of the cabs were Ford Escape hybrids, which uses licensed Toyota hybrid technology (with Ford engines). Neither it nor the Prius are particularly expensive cars (maybe $25k or less?) and the hybrid drivetrain has huge fuel savings in city driving. The extra expense would easily be made up for getting two or three times the city mileage of a Crown Vic, which is almost the only taxi car in my city. The EPA rates the Escape hybrid at 34 mpg city, and the Crown Vic at 16 mpg.
Simplest way to double your MPG? Carpool. I was driving in to LA on the freeway looking around. Giant traffic jam. Every car had just one person. What a gigantic waste. 10 million people and nobody using the technology already available:
http://www.erideshare.com/carpool.php?city=Los%20Angeles
I personally telecommute most days - that gives even better MPG.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
That's what I want in a car. A good suspension, good brakes, good responsive steering, and slap some excellent tires on that bad boy. All wheel drive is excellent, Rear wheel drive is also very nice, front wheel drive ... has proven to be a severe safety hazard (loses control in the snow/rain/ice easily if your tires can't handle it; loses control trying to take off into a hard turn, so don't merge into cross-traffic from a stop).
I agree with your sentiments. I also have a Mazda 3 and although it's not perfect, I love the handling and braking on this car. I'm curious as to why you say a front wheel drive car is worse than a rear wheel drive car in slippery or difficult conditions. I know for a trained driver a RWD car will generally have better handling since they generally have much better weight distribution. However, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble in a RWD car in ways that just aren't possible on a FWD car. On slippery surfaces you can fishtail or spin out, not to mention oversteer on turns. With a FWD car, the only real concern is understeer. Sure this can be dangerous, but in general this is much easier to correct than oversteer. You can gun a FWD car on ice and while it won't turn, it won't go out of control. This seems much safer for the average driver to me.
Socialism is not the solution. It is the problem. The reason the Rav4 can't be built is because chevron owns the battery patents. Patents are a form of government interference in the market, I.E. corporate socialism. Get rid of those patents on those big NiMH and we'll have EV conversions everywhere within a year at incredible prices. Then, those EV conversion companies would scale up and GM would be dead, assuming corporate socialists did not bail them out.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
I tend to agree with you, but can see where he's coming from. When there's a lot of traffic, trying to leave a safe gap between you and the car in front turns you into a moving chicane.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Your little "corporate socialism" makes no sense at all, what you are actually talking about is corporatism a far right wing political ideology.
Wanna know what will happen if we get this all electric car utopia?
Oil companies will sell oil to fuel the power plants you need for your electric cars. You'll still be handing them your money.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Doesn't quite work that way.
Let's say you're driving on one of the freeways in Los Angeles. You leave the appropriate space between you and the driver in front. Someone else will pull in front of you. So you slow down to get your appropriate cushion back, which causes another driver to pull in front of you. So you slow down further, another driver cuts in, and so on. Eventually, you have stopped.
Driving rules break down when traffic gets over a certain density for a long enough time. What drivers feel is "safe" degrades because they're so used to taking risks due to the crappy situation.
Yes, traffic is really that bad there. 24/7. There is no rush hour anymore, there's just "bad" and "really bad". It's one of the reasons I'm happy to have moved away.
In your F1 racing example, the 5 point harness is to keep you from bouncing around in the compartment. The tire wall is made of tires so that it will give way instead of decelerating the car, and therefore its contents, all at once.
The extra cost comes with great value, though, because gasoline cars have enormous externalized (i.e. invisible) costs, since they foul the air, the ecosystem, and the political climate.
So you are saying electric cars don't foul up the air or ecosystem?
Just where do you think electricity comes from?
Oh wait... it won't foul up *your* air or *your* ecosystem, just the guy who has to live next to one of the power plants that generates the electricity to run your car....
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
It's a right-wing ideology, and I call it socialism because the word pisses them off. It is socialism, because it is the sharing of risk and privatization of reward.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
I guess that's why race drivers have fewer crashes?
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
The engineers on this team have a racing background, so I know they've seen the difference between "contact" in NASCAR races and open wheel races. As long as no one is too jiggly in NASCAR, the race proceeds with not much more than some scuffed sheet metal. Touch wheels in open wheel, and parts get ripped off. Helps the cars kill off momentum, but for the US drivers who "drive by feel," how will they get around this one?
"...And who wants to make buttprints in the sands of time?" ~Bob Moawad
So you are saying electric cars don't foul up the air or ecosystem?
No, I'm saying they foul the air less than gasoline cars, a fact which is supported by mountains of evidence. Are you claiming that electrics are as bad or worse? (If so, the evidence is not on your side.)
Just where do you think electricity comes from?
No need to speculate--mine comes almost entirely from solar power, and I know exactly what the energy mix is in my state. While I don't know yours, I can tell you that even the *average* mix in the US is about half as dirty as gasoline (when used as a transportation fuel), even before you account for indirect effects like wars to subsidize the latter. At night, when most of the EV charging occurs, the energy mix is even cleaner, thanks to nuclear base load generation.
Oh wait... it won't foul up *your* air or *your* ecosystem, just the guy who has to live next to one of the power plants that generates the electricity to run your car....
I can't tell if you're trolling or if you actually believe that, but we all share the same air, which should have been the first clue that you misunderstood what I wrote. Power plants don't have to pollute, but even the worst (coal) are (marginally) cleaner than using gasoline for transportation. Nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal are orders of magnitude cleaner.
Whats the chance it passes safety tests.....even if it were safe to have only this car on the road, it will get demolished when crashing into a "normal" car......and I doubt the wheel are going to deflect crashes as TFA says Don't get me wrong, I hope I'm completely off the mark and its the greatest innovation in land-transport since sliced bread, but I am skeptical....
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
I am saying that most people don't think the electric car utopia through. There is a large contingent of people who think that ecological problems will just disappear when everyone drives an electric car.
Your solar plant is not zero-emission, either. How did the solar plant get manufactured? The raw materials were dug up from the earth with the associated pollution of mining.
Yes, we do share the same air, but there's a difference between living in the same valley as the power plant, or living upwind 100 miles.
Will you be the first to volunteer to have a new power plant of any sort in your back yard?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
What the other poster said, also the car that got in the gap not only made an unsafe distance between itself and the car in front of it, but it also pulled in where I'm now an unsafe distance from it. I could slow down even more, but the cars would just get in the gap until I'm going half the speed limit or less, at which point I become a danger simply by my large difference in speed to the rest of the traffic.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
Agreed with most of your points. The other elephant in the room that the pro-EV movement never owns up to is that the EV1 had a variable cost of over $100,000, and a fully-amortized cost of nearly $1 million per car.
Only if you lump R&D and other one time outlays into the cost of the small run of those cars. If you stopped production of any modern vehicle at a few thousand units, you'd end up with similar costs. Doing it for a car with several groundbreaking technologies is comparing apples to astronauts.
Electrics (and to a lesser extent, hybrids) do cost more, and when talking to an EV advocate, it's never really clear if they expect the car companies to lose money on the sales, or if they expect government subsidies to make up for the difference.
We expect the government to incentivize the production of more efficient forms of transportation that are sustainable. This is no different than suggesting that the government invest in roads and railways. Transportation infrastructure is one the pillars of industrialized society.
The transition to 21st century forms of energy cannot be led by corporations like the transition to oil economies because new forms of energy cannot be easily capitalized. Searching and exploiting new sources of fossil fuels is intense and enormously profitable work. Setting up passive technologies that harvest solar or geothermal energy sources can be done at much lower cost, once the technologies are developed.
There is nothing more desirable for me than to one day own a home or apartment that gathers all the energy I need -- even for transportation -- from the sunlight that falls on it. And there is nothing more terrifying for energy companies.
(Imaginary, I'm convinced this won't happen; otherwise why wouldn't you just build a gasoline engine?)
You don't run on pure gasoline because it's not as suitable for exhaust gas recirculation.
In a nutshell, to accelerate efficiently AND cruise efficiently, internal combustion engines need to pump something other than fuel/air into cylinders. E85 is more tolerant of a wide range of "richnesses" and is more suitable to being diluted by exhaust gas.
Read more here: http://www.edison2.com/blog/2010/6/9/e85.html
My First Post Ever after lurking for a decade!
Time and time again I hear this nonsense. Yes, all things being equal a rear-wheel drive car is more capable. If you're a very competent driver. I'd argue that 95% of the world's driving population is not competent to the level that RWD provides a benefit over front-wheel drive. As a matter in fact, the handling traits exhibited by RWD make it a greater hazard for many, if not most drivers. People are more likely to lose control in RWD vehicles. All-wheel drive real benefit is getting unstuck and being able to get around in slippery conditions more easily. In terms of handling, while in some cases AWD offers some real advantages but more often than not AWD cars have a strong tendency towards understeer followed, in come cases, by snap oversteer.
The fact is, the car doesn't make a driver. Discounting automotive extremes a competent driver can manage to do well in almost any car. In a panic situation you're not going to be fiddling with gears. You're going to either veer out of the way or brake really hard. If you have time to downshift you probably also had time to brake normally. Most drivers in a panic situation aren't going to have the sense to modulate braking or steer around whatever they're facing. They're going to stop on the brakes and hope the car stops in time. All that talk about handling capabilities brought up as an ego booster is ultimately meaningless.
I want a car with capable handling myself. But there's a threshold at which any additional benefits are irrelevant for most drivers because they'll never be able to exploit them limits. I'm sure there's a lower limit which is a detriment, but what modern car isn't sufficiently competent, especially for a properly defensive driver?
Troll? Really? I don't see why. "Informative" or "Interesting" would have been more appropriate. Or no mod at all. But troll???
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle
This looks about as comfortable as the Saddle Seat RyanAir wants to use. It might fit Paris Hilton and her three best friends (does she have that many?), but for the non-anorexic crowd, it looks like a tight fit.
Disclaimer: I am an American, weigh in at 200lbs, and measure 6'4" (that's 1.93 meters for all you metric nazis out there - i.e. the rest of the world), so I'm not overweight, and there's no way I could fit in this thing
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
You assume Socialism is ownership of governments by corporations. That's not Socialism, that's Fascism.
Modern Socialism is the ownership of governments by people, and the belief that progressive tax structures, government funded investments in infrastructure, proactive measures to help the poor instead of reactive measures to jail them, and forced transparency of markets represents the best balance of individual and communal rights. Not to mention the enormous benefits it provides for the economy.
If America were a democracy, we could vote to invalidate EV patents, since the value of those patents being socially owned would carry more benefits for society at large than it does as private property. That, in effect, is socialism at work. We wouldn't necessarily invalidate all patents, since that may not benefit society as a whole. Perhaps shorter or more restrictive patents represent the best balance in that case.
I'm sure in that former situation you would decry imperial governments stealing property that doesn't belong to them, but that's okay. I understand that it's because your viewpoint isn't based on any coherent set of values.
>>>No, I'm saying they foul the air less than gasoline cars, a fact which is supported by mountains of evidence.
No not really. Greenercars.org rated the EV1 and RAV4 EVs as no cleaner than a Prius or Civic Hybrid, and about 8% less clean than a Honda Insight Hybrid or Civic Natural Gas car.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It helps that we have a slew of them thar nucular plants in Illi-noise too
Yes that's correct. Why do you ask?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This is not true. If solar power efficiency improvements maintain, car companies will be able to sell many customers the vehicle and the panels necessary to power it, and wrap it all up in one long term loan.
I honestly hope Google will form a subsidiary and begin constructing geothermal plants as well. The real fear for fossil fuel companies is these mainly passive methods at generating electricity will become widespread to the point that the value of oil collapses, due to all of the energy necessary to dig it out and process it.
Amazingly, they expect to build this vehicle for 1/5 the cost of a Tesla roadster. Right.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I disagree with both posts above. I drive I-95 almost every day, and I do have those "butting" drivers that squeeze in between, but I just slow down 1/2 MPH and restore the original 5-6 car lengths of space. It is not big deal, especially since my goal is to avoid accidents (almost 500,000 miles and none so far).
So I repeat: So? I'd still rather keep the 5-6 car space, rather than tailgate and risk being thrown through my windshield if the car in front suddenly stops.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>Arriving alive is the goal, it's not a fucking race track.
I agree 100% with you, but I'm afraid you're wasting your breath. A lot of slashdotters think it's also okay to text-and-drive, or phone-and-drive, even though repeated tests show by AAA show that the reaction time is slower than if you were legally drunk
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yeah, and the food you eat was grown on farms that use tools that were made with minerals dug up from the earth with big, smelly machines. The computer you use was assembled in a factory that uses big, smelly machines, and shipped over here in big, smelly machines.
Obviously everything is going to have a manufacturing cost, both financially and ecologically. The question is how much of one can our planet absorb without lasting effect. If you're seriously anti-solar because you can't assemble a solar panel without using a power source then I would like to hear your suggestions for further development.
Extreme defensive driving is right, because other motorists' perceptions come into play too. For instance, like every other driver on the road, I follow at distances where, if their car is able to slow down faster than mine, or I'm fiddling with the radio, I'm going to rear-end them. Before the banshees come out, hey, I'd avoid it if I could, but the fact is that when I do leave a space that would allow me to stop if they went from 60-0 in 1 second, another car passes and gets in that gap. There's no way to stop the behavior short of driving 30 in a 60mph zone,
http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/trafexp.html
After watching this, and then experimenting a bit with my travel times, I found that leaving a sizable gap is 1) less stressful, 2) adds next to zero additional time to my trip (think of the split seconds it takes you to travel a car length at 30 mph, even 100 cars passing you adds very little time to a trip), and 3) actually smooths out the ride for all the cars behind me.
You assume Socialism is ownership of governments by corporations. That's not Socialism, that's Fascism.
Or what I call corporate socialism, to piss of the republicans.
Modern Socialism is the ownership of governments by people
With all the fads, witch-hunts, and random behavior that come with democracy.
If America were a democracy, we could vote to invalidate EV patents, since the value of those patents being socially owned would carry more benefits for society at large than it does as private property.
If America was a democracy, it would have collapsed a long time ago, as people vote away their rights. Now, we have trouble voting away our rights but we're still succeeding. If those patents should be socially owned, why don't we vote to take away your computer and make it socially owned. Who decides what the limit is? I would agree with the need to shorten the patents.
I'm sure in that former situation you would decry imperial governments stealing property that doesn't belong to them, but that's okay.
Umm, yes. That's why I'm against the wars of America and Britan, against China, Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and virtually every other government on the face of the planet. I'm against all of em'.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Arriving alive is the goal, it's not a fucking race track.
Get the fuck off the road, pussy. Go put on a bomb suit, wrap it in bubble wrap, and walk there.
You might want to check where the Mazda3 MPS sits on the Nurburgring lap times. Look closely at the company it keeps. It's right between Corvette C5, Honda S2000, Honda NSX and Lotus Exige. It's faster than the MX5 (by 1 second) and the RX8 (by 4 seconds). The Mazda3 MPS is currently Mazda's fastest production model - despite being FWD. It's stopping distance (60-0mph or 70-0mph) is also exceptionally short, and comparable to many supercars. Look it up.
It is socialism, because it is the sharing of risk and privatization of reward.
How did you confuse Socialism with American Plutocracy?
Socialism is sharing of risk and sharing of reward. Let's all invest our tax money into public transport, and if it works, we'll all have better transportation infrastructure. Let's all invest our tax money into public health, and if it works, we'll all be healthier. And so forth.
Hell, the American economic system is basically, "Let's create an aristocracy, and hope they don't screw us over." It's appropriately named "trickle down economics," and they keep telling me it's raining.
I'm not buying it.
"It's purchase price, even after accounting for inflation isn't even close either."
The Leaf is rather highly priced. However, as a person who for some reason is the go to person when someone buys a car amongst my relatives, there are luxury car brands that are quite a bit more and get crappy gas mileage. Sure they are nicer, but my point is, some people want luxury and will pay; others want zero emissions and will pay.
And what you are comparing to is 10 year old car that if hit in an accident today would crumple like an aluminum soda can?
For me, not going to get an oil/oil filter/lube and going to the gas station alone would be convenience enough for me to get a Leaf. I'd also save on the emissions test in my state (just need the sticker presumably). Those lone are $300 in savings every year. The only thing you'd have to do regularly is rotate the tires, which is trivial, and the windshield washer blades (also trivial).
If you have a wind turbine, or a decent electricity meter or company that clearly spells out your rates, you just user a timer to charge up. That .30/kwh is probably near peak time. Then again, California is that place where you don't run new transmissions lines; PA deregulated recently, and I'm not paying anywhere close to that despite our price spike.
Yeah, and we all know how that works. My car should cost just 3 cents a mile (take the total road budget and divide it by vehicle miles travelled - no gas tax, no reg fee). Meanwhile, a bus costs 1000 times more per mile than a car (cost is the 4th power of weight). So, my car, at that rate, my car is subsidising buses and commercial vehicles. 7 dollar a gallon gas and unsustainable (both economically and environmentally) public transport is not my idea of progress.
Let's all invest our tax money into public health, and if it works, we'll all be healthier. And so forth.
I'm fine with that.
Hell, the American economic system is basically, "Let's create an aristocracy, and hope they don't screw us over." It's appropriately named "trickle down economics," and they keep telling me it's raining.
And it's a disaster, because people are allowed to operate without liability. These corporations have gotten to big, bought out the government, and now are slapped on the wrist for their mistakes. In a real economic system, we'd say, keep what you create. The government provides basic services on a user fee basis, where a basic service is defined as anything that runs on a singleton basis. I.E., roads, water, power, even public transport. As well as police, health, and fire.
I'm not buying it.
And neither am I.
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If you stopped production of any modern vehicle at a few thousand units, you'd end up with similar costs.
That explains the fully-amortized cost (and I agree with your conclusion) but doesn't evade the fact that even the variable cost on the EV1 was not within a factor of 3 of what the market would bear.
I work for the guy who designed the EV1's power electronics, so please believe me when I say I'm very pro-EV. I just want to make sure we support our case with unassailable logic, because the evidence really does support electrics.
We expect the government to incentivize the production of more efficient forms of transportation that are sustainable. This is no different than suggesting that the government invest in roads and railways. Transportation infrastructure is one the pillars of industrialized society.
I agree 100%. The first steps should be to remove some of the staggering incentives already in place that favor oil. Tax deductions for SUVs of 6000 pounds for "business purposes" is an obvious easy example.
Government isn't directly in the vehicle business, and I believe the best incentives would be for efficiency, rather than for specific technologies. The status quo provides significant tax incentives for fuel cells and other technologies that will never be affordable, practical, or necessary.
There is nothing more desirable for me than to one day own a home or apartment that gathers all the energy I need -- even for transportation -- from the sunlight that falls on it.
I'm doing it today, so I'm sure your day will come, too. It's worth it.
No need to rub it in. I believe Cali's electrical companies were practicing rolling blackouts so that they could change more for electricity.
I'm not anti-solar, just playing devil's advocate.
You still aren't answering the question. Are you willing to locate a solar plant in your own back yard? Or the mine for the raw materials? Or the assembly plant?
It's a 'yes or no' question that I find that most pro-electric, pro-solar people are unwilling to answer because nobody wants that.
It has to be located somewhere, however. So, if you are so supportive of the electric car industry and cleaner power, why won't you volunteer yourself to have the necessary infrastructure located in close proximity to you?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
+1 for smugness
Why does nobody want it? Property is not a "yes/no" proposition -- it has a specific value. If the price of the surrounding land reflected the presence of a plant (which it would in all real-world scenarios) then if it were appropriately priced I have no problem with it.
If you're talking about building it on private property or close enough to private property to devalue it then I feel like the owners should be compensated for the drop in value -- but, even absent that, yeah, I'd be willing. Disclaimer: I don't own land at the moment, so my opinion there may not be worth much.
NIMBY stuff (on both sides) tends to ignore the idea of the value of land (rather than a simple pass/fail relationship).
That is not what socialism is at all. Please read a book.
What does geography have to do with this achievement?
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
When republicans allow corporations to have no-bid contracts, and to bribe legislators, these corporations in essence become part of the government. Socialism is coerced, but unequal sharing (see defs above). Therefore, when they allow corporations to take without paying back, they are performing coerced but unequal sharing. Also known as socialism.
Communist: From each according to his ablity, to each according to his need
Socialist: From each according to his ablity, to each according to his need, with a bit extra for the people we think produce more
Corporate socialist/aristocrat: From each according to his ablity, to each according to his connections
Capitalist: From each according to his desire, to each according to his capital
Bailout: From each according to his ablity, to each according to his lack thereof
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I just don't understand why you seem to think electric vehicles are the future, or why anyone would want one. Moving you + your vehicle from point A to B requires a certain amount of energy. You assume that because your energy is stored in a battery in your vehicle, as opposed to fuel, it somehow makes it 'clean'. Not only do I understand this may be a shoddy assumption to begin with given how electricity is most often generated, but internal combustion engines have made HUGE strides in reducing emissions. Further, the actual environmental impact of the oil industry is far lower than what you take for gospel from mainstream media.
I drive a clean diesel which barely emits any emissions at all, and the ability to drive 500 miles on a 'charge' and 'recharge' nearly instantaneously is light years ahead of the best EV. Fuel has so many advantages, why don't we focus on systems to remove the last of emissions from them (we're almost there)?
There are plenty of renewable electricity sources. Atleast here in Finland, if you want to, you can opt for 100% green, renewable energy for your consumption. Price difference is 5-15%
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Admire mine here: http://www.coultersmithing.com/OldStuff/kart.html I did this so long ago I'm two websites, a new business, and a forum since then. And yes, I still drive it every day, it's handy and did I say fun? Swaps ends with the best of them on a limited traction road....mini cooper claims go-kart handling, but this is far better....and it will climb almost straight up. Other than the body work, does this look a little familiar? Sure does to me. Paid about $2k for this, yeah, they can make them for 10 times that, duh.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
No, i don't like living in industrial sector. :)
UNLESS it's dirt cheap, and comes with a huge garage, then i wouldn't mind
Besides, having a solar power plant on backyard would be kinda nice too from one perspective: You would know you couldn't get any greener electricity than that @ home: Solar, and next to 0 transmission losses. (Assuming 100% of my elect. comes direct from that plant)
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NiMh technology SUCKS utterly.
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Yes, but the F1 car also costs many millions of dollars. I don't think it's as easy as you make it seem, especially for a car they want to sell for $20k.
You still aren't answering the question. Are you willing to locate a solar plant in your own back yard?
Yes, a thousand times yes. In fact, I *do* have on site solar production that provides nearly all of the energy we use for cooking, heating, cooling, domestic water heating, and transportation. Electric vehicle ownership is strongly correlated with photovoltaic installations, and the utility of photovoltaics isn't somehow negated simply because people choose not to live in industrial areas.
How do you breathe, living in a vacuum? Gasoline powered cars are an improvement over their only predecessor, the horse, whose pollution (compared to a car) is monumental. Gasoline engines have been improving their pollution performance for a long time. Engineering always involves tradeoffs.
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Since the electric bill came today, I noticed the local rate is $0.035/kwh.
Those areas of the country are not magical, they do exist. The Leaf has enough range (if it's real) to use to commute to work too, although the last 250' hill climb to get the last 2 miles home does worry me a bit. Until that is proven out, I'll keep the Aveo and the motorcycle.
By the way, the two second place finishers would both be considered motorcycles, or possibly trikes, in this state. It's definitely time to rethink what is a motorcycle. Two wheels in front and one in back should make it a car by my thinking, not a trike, which requires a different endorsement than a motorcycle, and is also not a car.
You apparently don't drive in Boston, where it sounds like the parent does....
But driving south-to-north you were going uphill. Surely you mean north-to-south.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
They claim the suspension is inside the wheel, so it's 4 wheel independent.
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"The red herring offered consistently is, why wouldn't GM want to lead the way in electric car development? Two reasons: one, EV technology was receiving zero subsidy after CARB was bought and sold, yet gasoline in the United States is sold at a fraction of the price due to massive subsidies by the US government. The second is that electric motors are hideously reliable, as evidenced by hydroelectric dams that have been in operation for over one hundred years. If a material for infinitely durable shoes was developed by Nike, do you think they would be dumb enough to manufacture and sell it?"
But your reasons don't make any sense. They didn't exactly shun electric technology. It just wasn't viable. It still has large downsides. And the reliability issue doesn't really matter. Engines and transmissions are pretty reliable and are only a fraction of the parts on a car that wear. In any case, as long as the cars last long enough, it doesn't matter. After all, they sell NEW cars. There's a reason that car styling and features are so important. It's the primary way you get people to buy new cars. They rarely buy them because they NEED them.
Oh my Gods. Are you trying to represent three centuries of political thought with a dictionary definition?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Some socialists advocate complete nationalisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, while others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, East German and Chinese communist governments in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production).
What he meant by read a book was try to gain some nuanced understanding of the subject matter. Perhaps the best you can muster is the depth of a dictionary, but I still have faith that you can do better.
In a real economic system, we'd say, keep what you create.
In your "real" economic system, corporations wouldn't have to bribe and lobby their way out of things like being punished for ruining the environment, or exploiting workers, or fucking people over with loopholes in contracts, or by grabbing cash out of the bank vaults and fleeing the country. They'd just do it in broad daylight, without fear of consequences at all.
European public transport proves without a shadow of a doubt that it is progress. They use less than half the oil we do per capita. If you half ass investment in public transportation, it's a waste of money, just like if you started letting roads and bridges collapse, cars would stop being useful at a certain point.
And why shouldn't your vehicle be taxed? Who's going to pay for roads? Do you live inside of a Disney cartoon?
All energy from the earth, besides geothermal energy, is some form of solar energy. Using finite intermediaries of solar energy is very useful in many situations, like in emergency vehicles in case of grid outages, aviation, and so on.
Using them for short-haul commuting, or even long-haul transportation that is better served by EVs with built-in gas electric generators, is monumentally stupid and wasteful, and that is what 90% of people use fuel for. The DoE has already said that existing off-peak power generation in the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and West Coast could cover all of their electricity for commuting vehicles.
And why electricity instead of fossil fuels? Because there are dozens of ways to generate electricity. Nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind, tide, hydro dams... and the only way to produce fossil fuels is to kill a bunch of organisms and wait a few hundred million years. They will not be replenished any time soon, and those are worldwide numbers. US peak oil was reached in 1970, peak coal was reached in the mid 1990s, and peak gas is due any day now.
Furthermore, it's far easier to transport electric power than any form of fossil fuels, and we already have a standardized worldwide grid based on proven technology.
You may as well be arguing for whale oil lamps, talking about how expensive electricity is, and how much easier it is to kill whales and process their fat. Improvements in technology take investment and development, and are well worth the cost of entry, especially when you discover that your current technology is ultimately unsustainable.
With all the fads, witch-hunts, and random behavior that come with democracy.
Oh, I'm sorry, are you aware of a system of government that isn't composed of people?
If those patents should be socially owned, why don't we vote to take away your computer and make it socially owned.
Slippery slope arguments only work for people who are scared of inclines.
Umm, yes. That's why I'm against the wars of America and Britan, against China, Africa, France, Germany, Japan, and virtually every other government on the face of the planet. I'm against all of em'.
Primates wage war. Tribes war incessantly, for millennia, over trivialities. However, homo sapiens have come up with a system of Law that has provided many countries with the longest stretches of peace in their history. It's called Democracy. You should check it out sometime.
In your "real" economic system, corporations wouldn't have to bribe and lobby their way out of things like being punished for ruining the environment, or exploiting workers, or fucking people over with loopholes in contracts, or by grabbing cash out of the bank vaults and fleeing the country. They'd just do it in broad daylight, without fear of consequences at all.
Umm, in my real economic system, the courts would actually make you pay for the consequences of environmental damage. Think about if BP had to pay for the spill for real. The problem is that BP and friends bribed the government to limit their liability to 500 million.
European public transport proves without a shadow of a doubt that it is progress. They use less than half the oil we do per capita. If you half ass investment in public transportation, it's a waste of money, just like if you started letting roads and bridges collapse, cars would stop being useful at a certain point.
No, it doesen't. The reason they use half as much oil as we do is because they drive 0.4 as much and have 0.6 times less fuel intense vehicles. This is not do to public transport as 85 percent of all ground trips are by car (compared with 92 percent in the USA). 0.4 * 0.6 = 0.24. Why do they use only half as much oil, then? If you'd looked at the previous link, you'd see how bad transit really is.
And why shouldn't your vehicle be taxed? Who's going to pay for roads? Do you live inside of a Disney cartoon?
Do you even read what I write? I not only said my vehicle should be taxed (as a user fee), I even said exactly how much my vehicle should be taxed for being a car. 3 US cents / mile. Now, how much should it be taxed for having a fossil fuelled internal combustion engine? That's a whole nother story.
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compared with 92 percent in the USA
Sorry. 98 percent.
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No. It blows away many lithium-ions by volumetric energy density. It blows away lithium-ions in cost per cycle*wHr, especially these flooded cells. It is much easier to use, safer, and more tolerant of abuse.
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We have plenty of uses for oil beyond gasoline, the oil companies will stick around as long as there is oil to drill. The reality is that the electric vehicle production was artificially accelerated by CARB subsidies/rules. Take away that subsidy and the artificial creation evaporates. This doesn't represent a conspiracy, but rather shows how disruptive letting the government change the rules to investment decisions.
I see your point about car reliability (and that is probably part of Detroit's problem with many modern cars lasting longer) being a downside. Keep in mind that continued operation does not mean service free operation - some maintenance areas decrease and some increase (fewer moving parts/high temperatures and battery packs respectively for instance). Even if the mechanical aspects of the car were perfect forever, cars would still be replaced (maybe 20 year lifecycles rather than 10 year or so now) due to wear/damage of the body/interior.
As to the Nike example, provided that costs were not significantly higher, Nike would have every reason to produce those shoes and sell them for 2-3x as much as short term profits would make the CEO/investors rich. Even if the shoes lasted physically, change in shoe size, fashion styles, and as they make athletic shoes, smell accumulation would continue to drive sales (Nike has a lot of appeal in the kids and teen demographic after all).
In the car world, if you told GM they can increase their market share by 50% for the next decade or two but total car sales would plummet 50% afterward, they would probably jump at the chance to make their pension, etc. obligations solvent and invest their higher profits in diversifying (their finance arm has been more profitable than the rest of GM for years).
What he meant by read a book was try to gain some nuanced understanding of the subject matter. Perhaps the best you can muster is the depth of a dictionary, but I still have faith that you can do better.
What deeper understanding do you want? This term has been so abused throughout the world to mean so many different things, that it is meaningless. First you have to pick one of the definitions of the term, to gain a deeper understanding. If you want to market your philosophy, you are more than welcome to do so, but I really, really encourage you to pick a different name, preferably one that does not include the word "socalism".
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If you're so against cleaner power, why don't you volunteer yourself to have a coal plant built near your house?
(There's a not-so-fine line between playing devil's advocate and being an incessant dick. You crossed it in your first post on this thread.)
Try Silicon Valley Power, the municipal power company owned and operated by the City of Santa Clara. Very highly rated in satisfaction, $0.096/kwh average residential, 25% renewable. Despite the stereotype of government run programs, they are very reliable, very inexpensive, easy to work with.
No doubt, if you want, you can use huge amounts of electricity, buy it from PG&E or whoever and pay over $0.30/kwh, but you don't have to. If you choose to live in a place with high electricity prices, that's a choice you make. (sorry, I've read to many people saying that about poor broadband in rural neighborhoods, high crime in impoverished areas etc...)
I never once said I was against clean power. You here the "dick" here by inventing things that I haven't said.
In fact, I live a few blocks away from a giant paper mill that processes uncounted tons of post-consumer waste into recycled goods. It also supports jobs and the shipping industry so I can buy things that come from thousands of miles away and feel good that less trees are being cut down to support the packaging of said things.
It doesn't bother me.
I have, in the past, also lived less than a mile from a coal power plant. That didn't bother me either. The plant was almost entirely unnoticeable except on rare occasion when they had to unload a hopper, which resulted in a rather loud whoosh as all the coal dumped out.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Which is why oil companies are getting in the solar game. They learned from the rail road industry and have realized they sell power production, not oil.
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See : Mythbusters, Two objects hitting eachother do not add their speed together, as the force is transferred between twice the mass, so two cars hitting at 55 MPH = 1 Car into a brick wall at 55 MPH
I also agree with you on your premise. Give us PROPER safety gear, clear sight lines, and please somehow make it work okay in snow... we don't all live in california :(
That link is hardly unbiased. The title is loaded, and the guy's clearly anti-public-transport (and anti walking and cycling).
Problems
- he's comparing things like jet airlines to trams to electric scooters. These transport modes don't compete.
- he's used the overall car energy consumption (highway + city + everything) and compared it with frequent-stopping rail. He hasn't included long distance rail or long distance buses/coaches, presumably because they're very efficient, and he hasn't included city driving, presumably because it's inefficient.
- in the related link, he compares imaginary cars from the future (weighing 100-200lb) with crappy old US light rail (68 tonnes per car). It's a daft comparison anyway -- the very low rolling resistance of a steel wheel on a steel track is more important -- but in any case, the British light rail near here is 18 tonnes per car, and I'm sure we could imagine similar improvements to rail vehicle design.
- no externalities are considered. A bicycle in use produces no pollutants at all, a car does, trains produce the pollutants in a single place (at the power plant) where they can (if we want to) be collected. Cars take up lots of space (i.e. cause congestion), bicycles much less, trains even less. Cars need to be parked, eight bikes can use the same space, trains don't need to be parked where space is a premium (perhaps include the station building area here). Cars need a very smooth, high maintenance, wide road. Commuter trains need a medium maintenance narrow track, bicycles need a low-maintenance medium width path. Cars are noisy, trains quieter, bikes very quiet.
When I first checked out this web piece I figured Slashdot's readers simply have to check this out: http://hubpages.com/hub/rent-a-laptop-rentals . I can't understand renting a portable PC at all! The outlay of renting a portable PC for only a few weeks will set you back as much as simply going online and purchasing one!
So you have one giant tank and a big ass expensive scale to measure fuel flow; and if pump 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 14 are all running at once, you determine which is drawing how much of the mass change how exactly? Estimate by assuming they all have absolutely the same flow rate?
See, when you pump 30 gallons of gas, it has to measure 29.999-30.001 gallons on a strictly calibrated state regulated measuring device. The Comptroller of your state handles this stuff. What makes you think an approximate measurement of weights is going to fly?
My system allows you to use smaller scales, avoiding the need for a giant single point of failure AND a calibration nightmare AND a scale that has to handle a huge metal tank on top of a huge amount of fuel. It also happens to measure mass flow accurately for two accurately calibrated scales, irrespective of actual flow dynamics ANYWHERE in the system (you can dump a gallon +/- half a gallon randomly into the tanks, it doesn't matter; mass still gets measured).
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Yes, compared to your garden-variety DMV post-graduate with 20 years of experience driving I-95, an experienced NASCAR driver will have fewer crashes dealing with heavy traffic traveling around 140-180mph in tight turns with their wheels constantly skidding and scrubbing in the turns and the occasional overturned car just appearing in front of them where another moving car used to be WHILE they're surrounded by other drivers going 140-180mph.
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I'm curious as to why you say a front wheel drive car is worse than a rear wheel drive car in slippery or difficult conditions.
Because the first time it rained and I had a FWD car, I hit the gas and the car headed to the right. I turned the wheel a turn and a half left and it kept going right. Backed off the throttle... took it a second to finally straighten out. In the snow, I'm performing heavy HEAVY traction control whipping my steering wheel all over the god damn place and messing with my throttle and brakes; I've gotten to the point where I reflex right to the correct dynamic, but god damn, the Cobalt AND the Mazda3 just go wherever the hell they want, even at 10-20mph.
However, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble in a RWD car in ways that just aren't possible on a FWD car. On slippery surfaces you can fishtail or spin out, not to mention oversteer on turns. With a FWD car, the only real concern is understeer. Sure this can be dangerous, but in general this is much easier to correct than oversteer.
I used to gun my RWD truck into a turn onto white worn road up a hill in the rain on shit tires and... it spun. Sideways. Fuck.
A quick nudge the other way and releasing the gas just as it started moving took care of that, and my truck snapped straight. I'd slide the back out maybe 1 inch? And then I'm straight and on my way. Gunning a FWD into this is a nightmare, because the front either hops or just slides in random directions. Of course I don't drive stupid like that now; it still happens far too easily though, and I can't take off into cross traffic that's safe (meaning I could go straight across without peeling out and shifting like a mad NASCAR race driver, and still have plenty of room) because my car might hop the front wheels and now I have to limp instead of make a smooth take-off.
You can gun a FWD car on ice and while it won't turn, it won't go out of control. This seems much safer for the average driver to me.
No, if I gun my FWD car (any that I've owned/driven) on snow/ice, it decides to go right. Or maybe left. If it's moving, it might spin in place; I had a tailgater on the highway at 20mph in the snow, nutjob... so I went down to third and gunned it, turned left to compensate, and sailed along SIDEWAYS in front of him. Had the car under control (if you believe that), did some acrobatics in place, until he backed off. I guess the guy didn't realize YOU CAN'T FUCKING STOP IN THE SNOW. He was about 5 feet off my bumper at 20mph... I could brake in that stuff (my ABS makes me go spinning HARD when it kicks in though... I need to disable that when it snows), and he could slap his brakes down and just slide right into me. When I got home I stayed home; fuck that, I'd rather take an MX-5 or GTO out in the snow (an Audi would be optimal).
My experience with front wheel drive is it fails by understeer, which leaves the wheels I need to use to steer disconnected from the road. I then can't execute any correction method aside from A) try harder (floor it and turn harder, see if it grabs); or B) hit the brakes. It also fails by torque steer, meaning one wheel gets more torque than the other (either by drive train asymmetry or by individual wheel slippage) and it steers in an odd direction (being driven by the wheels used to steer).
I don't have traction control, my car won't compensate for me. I can either turn into the skid and correct a fishtail, or I can slide along and hope my FWD recovery techniques work. RWD recovery techniques ALWAYS work: look at the sport of "drifting" to see something that simply wouldn't be possible if this wasn't true. FWD is more of a "drive slowly, and even then keep a LOT of space because you WILL be going places you don't want to go" deal, which is why I can (but don't like to) drive on shitty tires in a RWD vehicle but I absolutely CANNOT drive a FWD vehicle without excellent tires that can handle all conditions like optimal conditions (yes, I have tires that let me go 130mph in the rain through curvy backroads like it's dry and fresh tarmac... the 30mph I'm actually going is not a big deal, and this is a good thing).
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I do that with my Insight, because it's a stick shift and it can be a real pain to constantly shift in and out of 1st gear. So instead I just drift along at 5-10 mph during traffic jams.
Sometimes the people behind me get angry and beep their horn, so I just beep my "horn" right back at them
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Seriously, wake me when these things can be made on a traditional assembly line by unskilled labor and when they can take the place of a Ford F-150 pickup truck. Anything else is a stunt.
Seems like the obvious solution is not to replace your car after 5 years. Anyone who does is obviously not concerned with cost (or the environment) in the first place making the whole issue moot.
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And why electricity instead of fossil fuels?
While I agree with your rant pitting electricity against fossil fuels, there are other compression ignition- and spark ignition- compatible fuels that are made from plant-based (hence renewable) resources.
I don't advocate using food crops for fuel, but cellulosic ethanol would be better than gasoline.
My hope is for nuclear energy based on integral fast breeder reactors. Clean, efficient, and the waste is 'hot' for a tiny fraction of our current wasteful once-through designs.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
1. You could try not driving like an idiot. If you're gunning it in the snow (except for specific cases where you WANT under/over steer) then then the problem is between the seat and the steering wheel. The key to driving in the snow is avoiding sudden manoeuvres because your tires have the best traction when they're not spinning/skidding. It's also best to make one change at a time, steering, OR braking, OR acceleration but not more than one at a time. Look, I love having fun in the snow just like everyone else but when you're around other cars that's not the time for games.
2. The default behaviour of a FWD car to continue in a straight line while both turning and accelerating is far safer for most drivers than the behaviour of a RWD car which tends to spin (rapidly, if you have a short wheelbase like in my Bronco). In a FWD car letting off the throttle (which is the natural reaction of most people anyway) will eliminate the under steer almost immediately. If you really want to induce over steer in a FWD car you can do it by turning first then dabbing the brakes for just a second.
3. If you really want easy driving in the snow get an AWD car. My wife's Subaru makes it so easy to get up the long twisty hill to our house in the winter it almost feels like cheating. In a RWD car it's just plain impossible (without chains anyway). In a FWD car you can do it but it's a tough balancing act between maintaining enough momentum to get up the hill but not so much that you slide off in the corners. With AWD it's trivial.
So I repeat: So? I'd still rather keep the 5-6 car space, rather than tailgate and risk being thrown through my windshield if the car in front suddenly stops.
So? Wear your seatbelt and you won't get thrown through the windshield ;)
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It's funny to read your posts. I bought my Toyota MR-2 for the exact same reasons you cited for your Mazda (handling, suspension, good tire options/design). I don't think enough people realize or measure how significant a part of safety handling is in a vehicle. For what it's worth, I also ride a motorcycle, and the only reason I feel safe on a 2 wheeled overpowered engine between my thighs is that I know I can make that two-wheeled, overpowered engine go pretty much anywhere I want/need it to when I want/need it to. Compare that to my friends who drive long, lifted, over-sized trucks and I don't see how they can feel safe in a vehicle like that at all (if you turn hard, you're going head-over ass and bouncing down the road). Ah well.
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Someone said I could gun a FWD car on ice and it pretty much won't lose control. Gunning a FWD car anywhere, even on dry land, causes it to torque steer. Driving gently in the snow is an exercise in fast reflexes; gunning it in the snow is an exercise in trying to regain enough control for fast reflexes to make a difference.
The default behavior of FWD to continue in a straight line when you lose traction mid-turn ends me up in opposing traffic or guard rails, which again is why I find a good suspension and incredibly high wet/dry tires essential. The default behavior of RWD ends me up reflexively correcting the issue before it's even a problem. Understeer happens in FWD. Constantly. At 15mph making a turn on Continental touring tires (stock on a 2008 Cobalt) in the rain on decent road, you're cornering far too hard. Trying to take off from a stop in the rain, even on good tires in FWD, is a challenge unless you're going in a straight line.
I used to drive a 1991 Nissan hard-body pickup truck with a KA24e engine on crap tires in the snow. I made it walk up hills by toying with the throttle. I drove around 20mph in the snow down narrow side streets without a hitch. The worst thing it did on a constant basis was not want to move (tires spin in place on take-off), versus FWD always moving but most of the time going in a random direction. I don't mean "slide off in the corners," I mean "you point the car forward and it goes right, left, right, left, wherever it feels like grabbing just this second."
If you want real snow driving, get some Dunlop WinterSports or Michelin XIce2 tires. FWD, RWD, AWD, doesn't matter. Real snow tires get you going. Sure, AWD will be better suited for odd traction conditions caused by the snow; but you're WAY better off with AWD and snow tires than AWD with all-season tires.
Summary: Rear wheel drive oversteers, but correction is trivial; Front Wheel Drive understeers and correction is react-and-pray. Rear wheel drive has trouble moving in low traction conditions; front wheel drive moves wherever the hell it wants in low traction conditions. Proper all wheel drive will manage a lot better than the above. Proper tires and a good suspension are needed in all cases.
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The upfront cost *does* make sense over the life of the vehicle though. Also, resale value holds up better, and as long as interest rates are lower, you pay a smaller interest penalty for that hybrid premium.
Will you be the first to volunteer to have a new power plant of any sort in your back yard?
Yes. I'd be happy to live near any sort of nuclear reactor. Hell, I'd live on the god damn property. They put out less radiation each year than *a fucking coal plant* (due to the uranium in the coal being burned).
First, I'd be happy to have any of that infrastructure in my backyard. Second, the whole point of an electric vehicle infrastructure across the country is that you can push power from where it's generated to where it's needed, so *you don't have to have infrastructure in your backyard*.
I have, in the past, also lived less than a mile from a coal power plant. That didn't bother me either. The plant was almost entirely unnoticeable except on rare occasion when they had to unload a hopper, which resulted in a rather loud whoosh as all the coal dumped out.
You're aware you were breathing in large amounts of heavy metals and radioactive materials which were former residence of the millions of pounds of coal burned every minute, correct? Yes, I can want first world standards without demanding coal be the way the power for that lifestyle is maintained.
Unless the oil companies own the uranium mine that is fueling the Northern Illinois Excelon reactors that power my Tesla Roadster, than no, they're not going to be fueling the power plants I use.
In almost all states, three wheel vehicles are regulated and licensed as motorcycles, not "cars".
That assumes equal weight of the cars, doesn't it? If one of this hits an original Hummer, there's going to be a winner and a loser.
Sure, because EVERY car has to be able to replace a pickup in order to be useful.
You can demand, but you need to be willing to have it next door, or be willing to use force against others to have it next door to them if you can't find anyone to volunteer.
That's all I am saying.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
This is where the Byron nuclear power plant is that powers my home and my electric vehicle:
http://goo.gl/maps/Y27U
I live roughly 80 miles east of there. Does it appear to be in anyone's backyard? For this argument, I don't consider a corn field or other parcel of land used for food production to be a backyard.
sounds like crumple zones in standard road cars to me. As for "hitting" a 5 point, you shouldn't you should be firmly strapped into it and the seat before you start moving. Now i'm sure you can get bruised by them, if you are moving forwards to hit the straps you "are doing it wrong".
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
yes, but most of teh money isn't spent on safety gear. It's spent on areo, suspension etc etc.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Well, to start we disagree about "backyard"... but I'll go with you for the sake of the argument.
Since you asked for that exclusion, I'd say "backyard" is any land with a dwelling that has space devoted to non-farm and non-ranch purposes that (1) can see the plant or (2) can be directly affected by malfunction, misoperation, or malicious activity at the plant in such a manner as health or wealth (e.g. property value) could be negatively impacted for a significant period of time due to such an event.
I would say that (2) would include being above an aquifer that the plant is also above, being within the exposure area of a theoretical nuclear accident, any increase in background radiation, etc.
Personally, I'd live right next to that plant and be perfectly happy about it. Provided I had water that came from pretty far away. :-)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Maybe they had to turn right?
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=OyuGJJ6rKQ0C&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq='race+drivers+have+fewer+crashes'&source=bl&ots=zqlejfpoBH&sig=QmE-KnGY69HW8nKoV4aHtOPYryo&hl=en&ei=CdyTTPr_JJL6swO81_DACg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q='race%20drivers%20have%20fewer%20crashes'&f=false
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Yes. I'd be happy to live near any sort of nuclear reactor. Hell, I'd live on the god damn property.
But you're smart. There's been half a century of lunatic and government fear-mongering over atomic power. One clever approach I've heard is to offer free electric bills (cap it at $500/mo or so) to everybody in the town where a new one gets built. It's not really that much of a cost.
They put out less radiation each year than *a fucking coal plant* (due to the uranium in the coal being burned).
Thorium is the bigger contributor but your point is quite valid nonetheless.
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Sounds like deregulating your electric system really worked out for you then.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the power industry in CA is, in actuality, highly regulated and building a new power plant is therefore incredibly cost-challenging.
At those rates, there should be new plants going up frequently to get their share of the pie.
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Try performing any home improvement project with a Smart Car.
http://failblog.org/2009/06/19/swingset-transportation-fail/
Besides that, how are you going to transport your six precious little snowflakes and their great dane pooch to and from all the extracurricular activities in a go-kart?
That link is hardly unbiased. The title is loaded, and the guy's clearly anti-public-transport (and anti walking and cycling).
That's an irrelevant point. Most of the other stuff out their is anti-car biased, so I guess we can ignore it for being biased, no? What matters is the validity of his arguments. All the data is a direct copy from a DOT report - linked in the article. You'll see that it is accurate and valid. If you disagree with the DOT, you'll have to find another source.
- he's comparing things like jet airlines to trams to electric scooters. These transport modes don't compete.
He's doing that deliberately so we can see all the transit modes at once. You are free to ignore any one you don't like.
- he's used the overall car energy consumption (highway + city + everything) and compared it with frequent-stopping rail. He hasn't included long distance rail or long distance buses/coaches, presumably because they're very efficient, and he hasn't included city driving, presumably because it's inefficient.
The city MPG of non-hybrid cars is not that much lower than the highway MPG, but that is a very valid criticism of this paper. However, that result is only a factor of twenty percent in the cases I looked at (comparing car's average and city MPG).
- in the related link, he compares imaginary cars from the future (weighing 100-200lb)
Those cars aren't imaginary. We can build one right now, it just won't be very safe. That's why he promotes robocars (which I have my own opinions about). What he's really talking about is an electric bike/motorcycle/trike, which is the most efficient method of motorised transport in the US, hands down. If you notice, he compares electric vehicles with Japanese light rail, and note that a solo Tesla (many small EV cars like the Rav4 have strikingly similar results) has similar efficiency. If you put the average number of people in that car, you get virtually the same exact number. The Japanese do only %50 of their miles in cars, the lowest in the G8, so I think they might know something about public transport.
- no externalities are considered. A bicycle in use produces no pollutants at all, a car does, trains produce the pollutants in a single place (at the power plant) where they can (if we want to) be collected. Cars take up lots of space (i.e. cause congestion), bicycles much less, trains even less. Cars need to be parked, eight bikes can use the same space, trains don't need to be parked where space is a premium (perhaps include the station building area here). Cars need a very smooth, high maintenance, wide road. Commuter trains need a medium maintenance narrow track, bicycles need a low-maintenance medium width path. Cars are noisy, trains quieter, bikes very quiet.
I'm currently working on a giant report that includes all the externalities, including noise, health, and route costs. The preliminary results are strikingly in favor of cars, unless you put a very big premium on CO2. We're talking very big, higher than most CO2 taxes.
Responding to criticism one by one:
A bicycle in use produces no pollutants at all - that's true, but their are health consequences to riding bicycles. I have not taken into account all the costs, but the cost of broken bones + knee damage are all issues we will be looking at.
trains produce the pollutants in a single place (at the power plant) - yep, and so do electric vehicles. They produce less pollutants as well because they are electric and more efficient by nature. They have a problem though, they run during the day, and I'm not sure if new powerplants need to be built to handle train demands. Going 70 percent electric would mean no new powerplants if we charge at night. You are totally right out the pollution of the internal combustion engine, and why it needs to go away.
Cars need to be parked, eight bikes can use the
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All the data is a direct copy from a DOT report - linked in the article. You'll see that it is accurate and valid. If you disagree with the DOT, you'll have to find another source.
The DoT report says (just before table 2.15, and other places) that the data between the different modes isn't comparable...
- in the related link, he compares imaginary cars from the future (weighing 100-200lb)
Those cars aren't imaginary. We can build one right now, it just won't be very safe. That's why he promotes robocars (which I have my own opinions about). What he's really talking about is an electric bike/motorcycle/trike, which is the most efficient method of motorised transport in the US, hands down. If you notice, he compares electric vehicles with Japanese light rail, and note that a solo Tesla (many small EV cars like the Rav4 have strikingly similar results) has similar efficiency. If you put the average number of people in that car, you get virtually the same exact number. The Japanese do only %50 of their miles in cars, the lowest in the G8, so I think they might know something about public transport.
Electricity is cheap. There's not much incentive to reduce the electricity consumption of a train.
The current electricity charge for freight (I can't find it for passenger trains) in Britain is £1.88 / kgtm (thousand grosse-tonne miles?!). (source is document G.) A fast (not high speed) electric train weighs roughly 500 tonnes (50 tonnes per vehicle), on a 100 mile journey the electricity charge is less than £10 (assuming it's similar to freight). Since the electricity seems to be charged by mass, not usage, there's no incentive to buy a more efficient train.
However, presumably in some places electricity usage is more important, so we can expect it to decrease as the technology from hybrid/electric cars finds its way into trains.
I'm currently working on a giant report that includes all the externalities, including noise, health, and route costs. The preliminary results are strikingly in favor of cars,
(I assume you mean electric cars?)
A bicycle in use produces no pollutants at all - that's true, but their are health consequences to riding bicycles. I have not taken into account all the costs, but the cost of broken bones + knee damage are all issues we will be looking at.
The British government decided the health benefits outweighed the risks (people taking regular exercise are healthier, and less likely to take a day off work. Car accidents are more expensive to clear up, in countries with more cycling there are less cycling accidents per cyclist-km). The Norwegian government decided the same, and any public sector employees cycling to work are paid part of the saving.
trains produce the pollutants in a single place (at the power plant) - yep, and so do electric vehicles. They produce less pollutants as well because they are electric and more efficient by nature. They have a problem though, they run during the day, and I'm not sure if new powerplants need to be built to handle train demands.
There are some hybrid trains, if this becomes a problem, but I'd be surprised if it does: you may as well put a big battery near the railway line. (Or any other way of storing power.)
Cars need to be parked, eight bikes can use the same space, trains don't need to be parked where space is a premium (perhaps include the station building area here) - the problem is the premium on space. In a tiny, cramped city like New York, cars are a bad idea. But, in a low density suburban community like San Jose, cars are way better.
This is the heart of the problem: someone in NYC might commute 5-10 miles. It will take a lot of ine
The DoT report says (just before table 2.15, and other places) that the data between the different modes isn't comparable...
DOT report, chapter 2, page 15: (help! I'm turning into a bureaucrat)
Great care should be taken when comparing modal energy intensity data among modes. Because of the inherent differences among the transportation modes in the nature of services, routes available, and many additional factors, it is not possible to obtain truly comparable national energy intensities among modes. These values are averages, and there is a great deal of variability even within a mode.
In essence, they are stating that there are many small factors that effect the results, not that the modes are completely incomparable. They are also talking about the difficulties of comparing gas and diesel to electric.
Electricity is cheap. There's not much incentive to reduce the electricity consumption of a train.
Ridiculously so. Electricity for a Tesla or Rav4 for 100 miles is $1.25 to $2.5 dollars. Trains are actually really efficient from a raw technical prospective. They already use regenerative braking, and they are designed with big, efficient motors. Some electric motors can be up to 99.9 percent efficient. I have no idea how efficient train motors are, but I don't think trains have much room for improvement.
(I assume you mean electric cars?)
No. Gas cars and hybrids too. The negative externalities of a bus are huge, and can only be bigger than a car. They use more energy and do more damage to the roads. The negative externalities of a train are great because of the high costs of building the train line. If we got buses and trucks of the road or made them pay their fair share, cars would generate revenue.
There are some hybrid trains, if this becomes a problem, but I'd be surprised if it does: you may as well put a big battery near the railway line. (Or any other way of storing power.)
We could just as easily stick that battery in my car and get 40 miles of range. 40 miles + generator means 80 percent of all car trips are electric.
Then this all depends whether we're trying to make sprawl efficient, or make people efficient.
We're trying to give people what they voted for, sprawls, and make it efficient. In that light, a car is the best option.
I pay for some road maintenance, yet I hardly use them (95% of my on-road distance is by bicycle, which -- by the same damage formula -- doesn't need the expensive road), and I don't particularly care who pays -- that's easy to solve. Cars at the moment pay less than they should, at least within towns. The infrastructure cost to carry thousands of rail passengers (and freight) by road would be enormous.
Repeat after me, cars fund 80 percent of road expenditures. Transit fund 25 percent. If we got rid of buses and trucks, it would be fine. In essence, in order for cars to pay for roads and subsidise buses and trucks, we need an additional 17 cents a gallon gas tax. link. You'll have
Leaving so much space that you can't hear the cars is presumably increasing the length of your journey. I guess if everyone is in a car there's no one outside to hear the noise (except the people living near the main road).
Except I don't live near a main road, and I'm not all that far away from the road (about 40 feet from the road outside my house right now).
BTW, thanks for actually engaging in a civilized debate. That's kind of rare on these subjects, in my experience.
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The local hardware store here has pick up trucks you can rent by the hour for the rare times you need to haul something big home. They also deliver.
Point is that you STILL need practical vehicles. This kiddie car foolishness caters to the government employee who drives from their apartment to their cushy East Coast government pencil-pushing job and back again. Try climbing a hill with an electric car.
And furthermore, since all electrical storage devices self-discharge you eventually waste all the energy used to charge them.
I will be impressed when the power sources are capable of A) moving a currently-manufactered 3000 lb chassis plus payload, B) 300+ miles on a charge, and C) can be charged in 5 minutes. Anything less than that is a stunt. You want people to junk their fossil-fuel vehicles you MUST offer them something that is as good as or better than what they currently have.
Oh, and BTW, replacing a battery pack in a hybrid vehicle costs well over $5000. You think anyone is going to pay that kind of money when they can say "screw it, I'll just run on gas." Guess again.
The way I see is that the early electric vehicles should be marketed to families with multiple vehicles, as a replacement for the smaller second car that is only used to commute to work and run errands. It's the perfect use case, as generally that vehicle does not make long trips, does not need to haul a lot of people and stuff, and has a predictable usage pattern meaning it can charge up when electricity is cheap. We'll worry about how to replace the main family vehicles, taxis, vans, trucks, work vehicles, etc later.
And while batteries are expensive, you do have to factor in the total cost of ownership here - electric motors are simple and reliable, and you don't have to worry about oil, coolant, oil pumps, water pumps, complicated transmissions, injectors, exhaust system, alternators, emissions systems, and everything else you get with a gasoline powered engine. A $5000 battery pack every 10 years suddenly doesn't look so bad to me. (though I do admit I'm not too impressed with current hybrid technology)
No doubt it is a better value in those magical parts of the country that I keep hearing about on Slashdot where they pay only $0.10/kwh. .
Not only is power cheaper than the $0.10/kwh here (and mostly clean), but the cost of a gasoline car including taxes is 2-3 times the amount in US minimum. We welcome cheap electric cars any day!
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New Zealand? Babe this is America. I failed my driving test and got a license anyway. My driving test was to get in a car; put seatbelt on; let proctor put on seatbelt; start car; disengage parking brake; signal; enter parking lot; parallel park in under 3 minutes (I couldn't); unpark; stop at stop sign 3 feet away; signal; turn right; stop at stop sign 30 feet away; signal; turn right; stop at stop sign 60 feet away; signal; turn right; immediately stop and put car in park. That's it. Then they license you.
Race car drivers actually know how to drive. In America, we made anti-lock brakes and traction control mandatory because people can't react to low-traction conditions in any way other than hitting the brakes. Everyone here is terrified of rear wheel drive and clutches. Nobody can recover from a fishtail (oversteer). When it rains, there's 2 closed intersections every 3 miles due to people skidding out of control in the rain.
Face it: if you're racing, you know something about driving. Licensed American drivers know how to operate a car (one pedal makes it go, the other makes it stop; use the wheel to steer).
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If you'd actually clicked on the link, you'd find that book was written by an American.
Here's what the blurb says about him: "Leonard Evans, an internationally renowned expert on traffic safety, is president of Science Ser-i’ing Society, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan".
Admittedly that book I linked was written in 1991, so it is a little out of date. If you have any more recent research which supports your hypothesis, I'd be glad to see it.
If you don't, you're just making an unsubstantiated claim based on your own prejudices. I agree that it might be a little surprising that race drivers have more crashes than average on public roads, but hey, that's what the research says.
Don't agree with it? Find something which backs up your position.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Since you asked for that exclusion, I'd say "backyard" is any land with a dwelling that has space devoted to non-farm and non-ranch purposes that (1) can see the plant or (2) can be directly affected by malfunction, misoperation, or malicious activity at the plant in such a manner as health or wealth (e.g. property value) could be negatively impacted for a significant period of time due to such an event.
You're (purposefully?) defining the equation without evaluating relative risk -- above, you define any risk whatsoever as a disqualifier. It's not helpful to treat these subjects with a binary black/white filter, but whether that's your criteria or not, coal-fired generation fails rational analysis. (See below.)
I can't figure out where you're coming from, since you're the guy who claimed you live near a giant paper plant and a coal-fired generation plant, and that it didn't bother you.
I would say that (2) would include being above an aquifer that the plant is also above, being within the exposure area of a theoretical nuclear accident, any increase in background radiation, etc.
Any increase? I think you're confusing the parent's nuclear plants with coal plants, the latter of which emit radioactive material and heavy metals every hour of every day of every year, with 100% certainty.
I did click the link and I got Google Books with a giant blank gray box in the content area. Won't show me any text.
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