TYhe battery is for computers - it is NOT of a cell format suitable for cars, unless you want to build a brainless Tesla style battery pack with 8671 batteries.
It's almost a given that any details about some new battery technology always avoids the negatives. Those hopeful or shilling simply avoid the bad stuff. other li ion batteries can be recharged quickly and either 1) cost a fortune and weigh a ton (Altair) or 2) diminish their lifespan by so doing. Regardless, it all comes down to cost.This article says nothing about practicality, weight, etc.
Paul Thurrott's coverage of the Google Chrome leak/announcement ends with the remark that "what we've really got here is an example of Google pulling a Microsoft: Creating an unnecessary me-too product that they can use for product tie-ins. All of the features here are present in existing browsers, all of them. So what does Google really bring to the table?"
The idea of opening tabs in separate processes has been part of Internet Explorer 8 since March, at least.
Web-apps in windows that don't have an address bar or toolbar are not just a decade old in Internet Explorer, they've been a pain in the backside for a decade. Malware writers love them. I used to use Proxomitron to force them to have obvious controls.
The thumbnail home-page is basically Opera's Speed Dial, and IE7 has had a thumbnail view for a couple of years (albeit it only shows current tabs).
Putting tabs over the address bar is the standard Opera view, and utterly pointless for most people.
Chrome's InCognito is already in IE8 as InPrivate Browsing, and was in Safari 3 before that.
Omnibar is Firefox's Awesome bar.
Auto-completion, anti-phishing and sandboxing features are all pretty old hat by now.
Google can't even think up a new name: Microsoft Chrome was an old tool that allowed "Web developers to add multimedia features to HTML using Microsoft's DirectX technology".
Additions and corrections are, of course, welcome;-)
As with Gmail, Chrome may be a big hit if it's brilliantly executed, especially given Firefox's general crashiness and bad memory leaks (which, to be fair, used to be part of IE too). But if it's more like Google Base, Knol, Orkut, Froogle and similar rubbish, it may not catch on....
The film is a total lie. Notice that even today, as desperate as many companies are to get an electric car on the road, no one, and I mean no one, is looking to use either the lead acid nor the NiMH batteries available to the EV-1. The Toyota Rv4 and Honda EV were also electric cars built at the same time as the EV1 and canceled as well, and for the same reason - too expensive, too long to recharge, too short a driving range (getting to a from a destination a mere 35 miles away was very iffy), a battery pack that cost over $20,000 and lasted a mere 6 years or so, making these electric cars (called cheap to operate by Paine's absurdly stupid film) the most expensive ride, per mile , of any vehicle on the planet. No one familiar with the needs of a private
transporation vehicle can possibly make even a remotely plausible argument that any of the 1990's electric cars
were viable or practical alternatives to the gasoline powered vehicles. You still can't, even with today's far better li ion batteries. Only cars that have range extender engines, like the Chevy Volt, and use smaller, cost effective battery packs can possibly achieve widespread usage. And the killer is this - a plug-in with a 40 miles range and a 50 MPG liquid fuel mileage, can avoid almost any need for gaoline. There is NO, ABSOLUTELY no need for a battery-only electric. using commuter stats, it's easy to demonstrate that the Volt will achieve 285 MPG, even with no workplace recharging, and 569 MPG if 1/2 can recharge at work, avoiding 93% and 98% of any need
for gasoline for commuting, by far the largest consumer of the fuel.
Battery-only electric cars are hardly any more advanced or practical than the Detroit Electric, first built in 1907. So what if the driving range is now 220 miles for a $90,000 tiny sports car? You
still can't take it on a trip, or even go to the state line and back. Anyone gullible enough to swallow the silly lies in the film should be required to drive an electric as their only vehicle for a year. Maybe then, the numbskulls will realize that an electric car is not yet practical, because there is not yet a practical battery. It's that simple. The film spent hours and slandered just about everybody and everything in sight, and still didn't understand why the 1990 EVs failed so miserably. Chris Paine is one big liar or one dumb cookie. Maybe he's both.
Wake me when you actually have something that can be displayed/measured.
Talk lioke this has been going on about EEStor for 5 years now. All I hear is talk about paradigm changes. At least Detroit is spending millions on batteries that actually exist, and work, via the USABC (I didn't think an anti-Detorit yoyo would know what that is). I'm getting sick and tired of these morons and their advanced batteries/caapcitors that always are just 6 months to a year away. You folks have NO credibility anymore. None. So shut up, or put up.
I laugh when I hear people argue about whether a power generation technology is "renewable." Hell, coal and oil and natural gas are "renewable." We seldom should care whether a fuel source is renewable or not,
unless all else is equal, which is NEVER the case. Take nuclear energy. I've actually heard those who subscribe to the theory of carbon induced global warming actually argue that nuclear power shouldn't be used because "it isn't renewable." Well, just exactly how would that make any sense? Nuclear fuel
will obviously be available for the next several hundred years (at the minimum) and I don't know of any nuclear plant design that yields a plant that would exist for that length of time. If the fuel source outlasts the plant, then renewability becomes a nonsensical criteria. People are amazing!
I laugh to hear wind described as "successful" when it is, without doubt, the most impotent and expensive (5 times more costly to build than nuclear power)means of not only ruining untold thousands of acres but producing uncontrollable, nearly valueless electricity. And, by forcing utilities to operate fossil fuled power geenrators to chase wind energy, up to 15% more carbon emissions are generated than normal. The Time article displays practiically wholesale ignorance of the wave technologies - there are plenty of them, something like 30 different wave machines currently under development or testing. Only a few actually produce dispoatchable power - the rest are no better
than wind in this respect - the Seadog is clearly the most impressive design - cheapand easy to build, containing no electronics and impervious to seawater - it consists of only a half dozen moving parts and merely pumps seawater to shore. But that makes all the difference, since that energy can be
easily stored in reservoirs and then used as required to produce hydroelectric power, the most valuable and efficient power generation technology available, able to operate as a peak demand provider. The other enormous advantage of wave over wind is that waves contain 450 times more energy than wind. A very small area is required compared to the enormous tracts of land gobbled up and ruined by giant wind towers. But, like wind, unless the wave technology is dispatchable, it is simply
a waste of taxpayer dollars to pay for its enormous subsidies. Solar thermal will replace all wind and
any non-dispatchable wave that is still around in 10 years.
The Total format is the only sensible thing that has happened in this format war, aside from the legions of consumers who have refrained from buying any of the high def stuff. But people who think that one format will quickly die off are probably living in a dream world. The public has taken sides just as stubbornly as the manufacturers have.
I would imagine that yanking a drivetrain out and putting in an electric motor and a bunch of
batteries would violtae all kinds of vehicle highway safety rules. The car was neither designed
nor approved as an electric vehicle, much less as the Rube Goldberg concoction that you'll end up with. As far as the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is concerned, you have to remember that when Hollywood makes a movie they claim is a documentary, that doesn't mean that it isn't more or less a total fiction. The only claim made by the movie that I found actually truthfull was when it stated that General Motors dveloped an electric car car called the EV1. Everything else was total fantasy, most especially liar Ed Begley's big whopper that an electric car "satisfies the needs of 90% of the people." People need to go on vacation and visit others who live more than 30 miles away, which is about the furthest you could dare travel in an EV1 after
a few years and hope to get back home. A very large number of people don't even have a means
of recharging an electric car. The EV1 cost a very hefty $44,000. The Toyota Rav 4 electric cost $43,000 and the Hinda EV electric cost over $50,000. You can't own JUST an electric car. Anybody
got that kind of money for a grocery getter. And that doesn't even mention the cost of those
5 year batteries - the EV1 Version II battery pack cost over $10,000. The Tesla lithium ion
battery pack costs $20,000. It would be more accurate to say that electric cars satisfy the transportation needs of zero percent of the population, and ever since the Detroit Electric
built its first cars in 1907 can tell you exactly why electric cars failed : there haven't
been any practical electric batteries. Fuel cell cars being developed by many of the auto manufacturers are electric cars, but powered from a fuel cell's output rather than a battery.
But there is hope. Altair Nanotechnology has developed a type of lithium ion battery that
will take over 10,000 recharges (as opposed to regular lithium ion batteries that can only be recharged 750 times), is completely safe and non-toxic and, most importantly, can be recharged
in 8 to 12 minutes. Without an ability to be recharged quickly, public electric car recharging stations will never be feasible. A pickup truck by Phoenix Motorcars will be using the new batteries and goes on sale later this year. And Alcoa will be using these batteries in the hybrid battery packs it supplies to many of the auto makers. These are the batteries that electric cars have waited 100 years for.
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a hilariously idiotic pack of lies only a gullible
youngster could swallow. There was no mystery why no one wanted that piece of
shit EV1 electric car. If you think otherwise, I'll get you one and you can pay me the $45,000
it cost to build and $15,000 for the 26 nickel metal-hydride batteries that might last 5 years and just might get you to the dentist and back. People who swallow the lies in that film know zilch about the EV1, the biggest automotive flop since the Edsel. Only dumb Ed Begley and dumber Tom Hanks could voice Chris Paine's often hilariously stupid lies (he claims that GM couldn't kill the EV1 until the zero emission law was cancelled, in spite of the fact that only GM was even offering a zero emission car. He also claimed it gave GM an out for avoiding alternative fule cars, but forgot to mention that GM was and still is developing a zero emission fuel cell car!!! The list of his lies is endless. If the film makes a claim, assume it's a lie and you'll be right every time. Chris Paine is a lying piece of human garbage). Ed (the Fool) Begley claims the car could satisfy 90% of a driver's needs. Unfortunately, less that 50% even had a
place the recharge the car, making his claim, shall we say, beyond stupid. Everyone needs a $45,000 grocery getter. Nobody can own just an EV1. You have to own at least one gasolne powered car if you need to go to a destination over 35 miles away, or less on old batteries.
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TYhe battery is for computers - it is NOT of a cell format suitable for cars, unless you want to build a brainless Tesla style battery pack with 8671 batteries.
It's almost a given that any details about some new battery technology always avoids the negatives. Those hopeful or shilling simply avoid the bad stuff. other li ion batteries can be recharged quickly and either 1) cost a fortune and weigh a ton (Altair) or 2) diminish their lifespan by so doing. Regardless, it all comes down to cost.This article says nothing about practicality, weight, etc.
Paul Thurrott's coverage of the Google Chrome leak/announcement ends with the remark that "what we've really got here is an example of Google pulling a Microsoft: Creating an unnecessary me-too product that they can use for product tie-ins. All of the features here are present in existing browsers, all of them. So what does Google really bring to the table?" The idea of opening tabs in separate processes has been part of Internet Explorer 8 since March, at least. Web-apps in windows that don't have an address bar or toolbar are not just a decade old in Internet Explorer, they've been a pain in the backside for a decade. Malware writers love them. I used to use Proxomitron to force them to have obvious controls. The thumbnail home-page is basically Opera's Speed Dial, and IE7 has had a thumbnail view for a couple of years (albeit it only shows current tabs). Putting tabs over the address bar is the standard Opera view, and utterly pointless for most people. Chrome's InCognito is already in IE8 as InPrivate Browsing, and was in Safari 3 before that. Omnibar is Firefox's Awesome bar. Auto-completion, anti-phishing and sandboxing features are all pretty old hat by now. Google can't even think up a new name: Microsoft Chrome was an old tool that allowed "Web developers to add multimedia features to HTML using Microsoft's DirectX technology". Additions and corrections are, of course, welcome ;-)
As with Gmail, Chrome may be a big hit if it's brilliantly executed, especially given Firefox's general crashiness and bad memory leaks (which, to be fair, used to be part of IE too). But if it's more like Google Base, Knol, Orkut, Froogle and similar rubbish, it may not catch on....
The film is a total lie. Notice that even today, as desperate as many companies are to get an electric car on the road, no one, and I mean no one, is looking to use either the lead acid nor the NiMH batteries available to the EV-1. The Toyota Rv4 and Honda EV were also electric cars built at the same time as the EV1 and canceled as well, and for the same reason - too expensive, too long to recharge, too short a driving range (getting to a from a destination a mere 35 miles away was very iffy), a battery pack that cost over $20,000 and lasted a mere 6 years or so, making these electric cars (called cheap to operate by Paine's absurdly stupid film) the most expensive ride, per mile , of any vehicle on the planet. No one familiar with the needs of a private transporation vehicle can possibly make even a remotely plausible argument that any of the 1990's electric cars were viable or practical alternatives to the gasoline powered vehicles. You still can't, even with today's far better li ion batteries. Only cars that have range extender engines, like the Chevy Volt, and use smaller, cost effective battery packs can possibly achieve widespread usage. And the killer is this - a plug-in with a 40 miles range and a 50 MPG liquid fuel mileage, can avoid almost any need for gaoline. There is NO, ABSOLUTELY no need for a battery-only electric. using commuter stats, it's easy to demonstrate that the Volt will achieve 285 MPG, even with no workplace recharging, and 569 MPG if 1/2 can recharge at work, avoiding 93% and 98% of any need for gasoline for commuting, by far the largest consumer of the fuel. Battery-only electric cars are hardly any more advanced or practical than the Detroit Electric, first built in 1907. So what if the driving range is now 220 miles for a $90,000 tiny sports car? You still can't take it on a trip, or even go to the state line and back. Anyone gullible enough to swallow the silly lies in the film should be required to drive an electric as their only vehicle for a year. Maybe then, the numbskulls will realize that an electric car is not yet practical, because there is not yet a practical battery. It's that simple. The film spent hours and slandered just about everybody and everything in sight, and still didn't understand why the 1990 EVs failed so miserably. Chris Paine is one big liar or one dumb cookie. Maybe he's both.
Wake me when you actually have something that can be displayed/measured. Talk lioke this has been going on about EEStor for 5 years now. All I hear is talk about paradigm changes. At least Detroit is spending millions on batteries that actually exist, and work, via the USABC (I didn't think an anti-Detorit yoyo would know what that is). I'm getting sick and tired of these morons and their advanced batteries/caapcitors that always are just 6 months to a year away. You folks have NO credibility anymore. None. So shut up, or put up.
I laugh when I hear people argue about whether a power generation technology is "renewable." Hell, coal and oil and natural gas are "renewable." We seldom should care whether a fuel source is renewable or not, unless all else is equal, which is NEVER the case. Take nuclear energy. I've actually heard those who subscribe to the theory of carbon induced global warming actually argue that nuclear power shouldn't be used because "it isn't renewable." Well, just exactly how would that make any sense? Nuclear fuel will obviously be available for the next several hundred years (at the minimum) and I don't know of any nuclear plant design that yields a plant that would exist for that length of time. If the fuel source outlasts the plant, then renewability becomes a nonsensical criteria. People are amazing!
I laugh to hear wind described as "successful" when it is, without doubt, the most impotent and expensive (5 times more costly to build than nuclear power)means of not only ruining untold thousands of acres but producing uncontrollable, nearly valueless electricity. And, by forcing utilities to operate fossil fuled power geenrators to chase wind energy, up to 15% more carbon emissions are generated than normal. The Time article displays practiically wholesale ignorance of the wave technologies - there are plenty of them, something like 30 different wave machines currently under development or testing. Only a few actually produce dispoatchable power - the rest are no better than wind in this respect - the Seadog is clearly the most impressive design - cheapand easy to build, containing no electronics and impervious to seawater - it consists of only a half dozen moving parts and merely pumps seawater to shore. But that makes all the difference, since that energy can be easily stored in reservoirs and then used as required to produce hydroelectric power, the most valuable and efficient power generation technology available, able to operate as a peak demand provider. The other enormous advantage of wave over wind is that waves contain 450 times more energy than wind. A very small area is required compared to the enormous tracts of land gobbled up and ruined by giant wind towers. But, like wind, unless the wave technology is dispatchable, it is simply a waste of taxpayer dollars to pay for its enormous subsidies. Solar thermal will replace all wind and any non-dispatchable wave that is still around in 10 years.
The Total format is the only sensible thing that
has happened in this format war, aside from the legions
of consumers who have refrained from buying any of the
high def stuff. But people who think that one format will
quickly die off are probably living in a dream world.
The public has taken sides just as stubbornly as the
manufacturers have.
I would imagine that yanking a drivetrain out and putting in an electric motor and a bunch of batteries would violtae all kinds of vehicle highway safety rules. The car was neither designed nor approved as an electric vehicle, much less as the Rube Goldberg concoction that you'll end up with. As far as the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is concerned, you have to remember that when Hollywood makes a movie they claim is a documentary, that doesn't mean that it isn't more or less a total fiction. The only claim made by the movie that I found actually truthfull was when it stated that General Motors dveloped an electric car car called the EV1. Everything else was total fantasy, most especially liar Ed Begley's big whopper that an electric car "satisfies the needs of 90% of the people." People need to go on vacation and visit others who live more than 30 miles away, which is about the furthest you could dare travel in an EV1 after a few years and hope to get back home. A very large number of people don't even have a means of recharging an electric car. The EV1 cost a very hefty $44,000. The Toyota Rav 4 electric cost $43,000 and the Hinda EV electric cost over $50,000. You can't own JUST an electric car. Anybody got that kind of money for a grocery getter. And that doesn't even mention the cost of those 5 year batteries - the EV1 Version II battery pack cost over $10,000. The Tesla lithium ion battery pack costs $20,000. It would be more accurate to say that electric cars satisfy the transportation needs of zero percent of the population, and ever since the Detroit Electric built its first cars in 1907 can tell you exactly why electric cars failed : there haven't been any practical electric batteries. Fuel cell cars being developed by many of the auto manufacturers are electric cars, but powered from a fuel cell's output rather than a battery. But there is hope. Altair Nanotechnology has developed a type of lithium ion battery that will take over 10,000 recharges (as opposed to regular lithium ion batteries that can only be recharged 750 times), is completely safe and non-toxic and, most importantly, can be recharged in 8 to 12 minutes. Without an ability to be recharged quickly, public electric car recharging stations will never be feasible. A pickup truck by Phoenix Motorcars will be using the new batteries and goes on sale later this year. And Alcoa will be using these batteries in the hybrid battery packs it supplies to many of the auto makers. These are the batteries that electric cars have waited 100 years for.
Who Killed the Electric Car? is a hilariously idiotic pack of lies only a gullible youngster could swallow. There was no mystery why no one wanted that piece of shit EV1 electric car. If you think otherwise, I'll get you one and you can pay me the $45,000 it cost to build and $15,000 for the 26 nickel metal-hydride batteries that might last 5 years and just might get you to the dentist and back. People who swallow the lies in that film know zilch about the EV1, the biggest automotive flop since the Edsel. Only dumb Ed Begley and dumber Tom Hanks could voice Chris Paine's often hilariously stupid lies (he claims that GM couldn't kill the EV1 until the zero emission law was cancelled, in spite of the fact that only GM was even offering a zero emission car. He also claimed it gave GM an out for avoiding alternative fule cars, but forgot to mention that GM was and still is developing a zero emission fuel cell car!!! The list of his lies is endless. If the film makes a claim, assume it's a lie and you'll be right every time. Chris Paine is a lying piece of human garbage). Ed (the Fool) Begley claims the car could satisfy 90% of a driver's needs. Unfortunately, less that 50% even had a place the recharge the car, making his claim, shall we say, beyond stupid. Everyone needs a $45,000 grocery getter. Nobody can own just an EV1. You have to own at least one gasolne powered car if you need to go to a destination over 35 miles away, or less on old batteries.