Even if China wins and there is mysteriously no nuclear exchange, what exactly do they win? A country full of unproductive, rebellious mouths to feed, without any resources to covet, that previously was doing perfectly well buying their iPads...
If I were the Chinese leader who is planning such an invasion:
This conquest is all about land and resources, not people.
Cooperating ex-Americans will be permitted to live, as long as they are useful.
All other ex-Americans will be killed.
A small number of Chinese (say, 100-200 million) will be sent to populate the new land. The restriction of one child per family will be lifted from them.
I personally don't see the point in losing 33% of the value when you drive it off the lot.
For some strange reason people prefer to buy new clothes instead of picking up used ones at the garbage dump.
A new car comes with full warranty. A used car probably has an expired warranty. A new car is more likely to be trouble-free, and you know for sure that it wasn't in any accident and it wasn't damaged. There are many ways to kill the car that are not obvious. (Driving a car on uneven roads for several years will do one in nicely.) A new car will be perfectly clean. A new car is probably also the latest model, which comes with all the latest improvements, gadgets and such, and with full resource of wearable parts (lights, gaskets, rubber boots, and many more.)
The loss of 30% as you drive it off the lot is just a local discontinuity. It matters if you intend to sell the car right away - you lose money. However if you intend to drive the car for a long time then it doesn't matter. You pay $20K and you drive the car for 10 years. That would be $2K/yr. Or you can buy a used car (5 years) for $10K. You will drive it for 5 years. That would be... the same $2K/yr.
This whole tile madness is driven by commercial reasons. Since MS can't make a phone to be as capable as the desktop, they want to dumb the desktop down to the level of the phone. Then, they think, if everyone is trained to love the bomb ^W the Metro interface there will be more software for Windows phones, and more money for MS.
A tile (as shown) is nothing but a small application window that can't be arbitrarily resized, and that has no Z ordering. The demo on the linked page is totally confusing - my Galaxy Tab has exactly the same stock configuration of installed applications; the only difference is that all application icons are of the same size (so more fit on each screen.) I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.
Considering the Leaf's battery costs around $6000-7000, and the rest of the car is infinitely easier to build than an ICE-carrying car,
I didn't know until now that Leaf is selling for the same $16,500 as Ford Fiesta. Or even cheaper, down to $6-7K, since "infinitely easier" has a limit of zero. Where can I get one for that price?
If you only need to rent on the weekends, check out Enterprise.
Yes, rental places do dump cars on weekends because they have an excess, and rentals don't earn any money while sitting in the lot.
However renting is still bothersome. If you don't have a car you have to get to the rental place (and from it) somehow. Then your plans are governed not by your needs but by someone else. If I'm using my own car I'm free to stay here for a day, there for two days, and there is nobody to say a word about that. With rentals you have a contract, and you have to do what the contract says.
In this case (of owning an inferior EV and then renting) it's just silly, worthy of another South Park episode. If you buy a car, buy a car, not a souped-up golf cart. Volt and Leaf may be even doing a disservice to the idea of an EV because they are demonstrating to the whole world how deficient an EV is. When better batteries show up it will be an uphill battle to overcome that belief. There is a reason why nobody mass-produced EVs 10 years ago - because our batteries aren't good enough. Same problem as today; however the manufacturers simply decided to rewrite the spec.
Owning your own good car gives you freedom. You can cross the whole country in that car, hardly ever stopping (Lisa Nowak demonstrated that by driving 900 miles non-stop. NASA trained her well.) Owning of your own plug-in EV, on the other hand, keeps you on tether, always on the lookout for an outlet.
Once batteries become more capable, the EV will be not just a viable option, it will be the only car in existence because from every other technical point an EV is superior. Today, though, it's just an expensive toy.
Chances are, your household has more than one car anyway.
There is only one car in my household. My coworker, though, has a family, and he bought an additional car. Guess what, it's a minivan - because that's what you need for family needs.
EV will not be making any sense to buy until its cost becomes low enough to overcome its deficiencies. Even if today Volt or Leaf are adequate for some people, they are still a net loss of money in any term, short or long. Purchase of an EV is reasonable only if you are comfortable with paying $15-20K extra just for a novelty (and for bragging rights.) If you need a reliable working car, there are plenty to choose from. I think a fair price of a Leaf today would be about $10-12K - not $35K as it appears to be.
Let's face it. Nobody likes to think. Therefore, we want one solution for everything. That's a car.
It's not unreasonable. We buy machines so that they make our lives easier and more comfortable.
Sure, I could get a bicycle, a motorbike, a car, an SUV and a truck - each for its own special occasion. But it would be awfully expensive - and wasteful too, since the car has to be made but it won't be doing anything while sitting in the garage. People tend to buy what serves most of their needs.
I don't have a truck. This means that when I need to buy something long at Home Depot I need to ask a friend. However I can go to work in my car just fine. Imagine that I only had a motorbike and had to ask for a ride each time when the weather is bad. That would be very inconvenient.
I can understand if a lifelong city dweller, who doesn't even know how to exit the city, is comfortable with a 60-mile Leaf. Good for him, and Leaf is the right car. But most people have serious needs that can't be easily deferred. Relatives arriving at the airport that is 50 miles away; a doctor sending you for tests to a city that is 80 miles away; a family member in trouble 90 miles away; a job offer from a company 60 miles away... Leaf can't go there and back without recharging, and you never know if there will be a chance to recharge. It will also take forever to recharge.
Some say "rent a car for that." But here is a surprise for them. Rental places aren't renting cars for free. Rentals cost money. Why would you be buying already a very expensive car only to park it at the rental place's lot (yes, a safe and secure place for your precious) and pay additional monies to drive a strange jalopy that was used just minutes before you by who knows who and carries who knows what deadly viruses. Or drugs - just hope that the car is never searched; there is no way to prove that an empty plastic bag with traces of a certain plant matter is not yours. Rental cars have their use, but I wouldn't want to bother with them for a common trip.
An EV right now is a reasonable purchase only if you have too much money. You will not save any money on an EV because EVs cost too much. Even a hybrid, like Prius, is marginal in terms of savings - though with today's gas prices my Prius does a very good job. But I bought my Prius for a reasonable price (about $25K, with the price on similar gas cars being around $22K.) The $3K premium that I paid is either already saved, or I don't care. It's much harder to not care about $15K premium, and even harder if for that money you get LESS of a car.
It's also common in SF Bay Area - lots of people have a house in San Francisco and work somewhere in Silicon Valley. You can't just sell a house and move, it costs very big bucks. Today you probably can't sell a house at all unless you are willing to recover only 30% of what you paid for it. Jobs are transient, homes are permanent - that's why people spend hours in traffic, not because they love it.
my current hybrid is doing great and faring quite well in it's 7th year.
Same here. I bought a new Gen. II Prius in 2005. It has about 44,000 miles on the odometer, and at that rate I don't expect to need a new car for another 30 years. Perhaps I'll need a new battery in 3-5 years from now, but that battery is not too expensive, compared to Volt's battery.
If I had to look for another car right now I would have bought the latest new Prius. I like it, and it is very comfortable for me. I will never go back to a car with a gearbox (be it manual or automatic) - you just can't do that after the CVT.
I wouldn't buy a Volt or a Leaf today. They cost too much and they have too small battery range. Leaf is not even in the running, and Volt is overpriced for what it delivers. It might be a good car if you live on a flat land and only go to a corner store, but it's hills everywhere around, and hills are bad for battery range. Some of my trips are 420 miles one way (8-9 hours of driving.)
Noun 1. hijacking - robbery of a traveller or vehicle in transit or seizing control of a vehicle by the use of force
Looks like piracy, stealing and murdering. The free dictionary is defining piracy as hijacking.
The difference in goals is only in the item being stolen. It could be goods (or their delivery and safety, in case of extortion) or the ship itself (in case of pirates needing another work boat.) In either case, if you see pirates approaching your ship then do something, the visit won't be healthy for you. The following instrument would be a good start.
Slashdot has very little to provide beyond public comments that the account holder wrote. There is probably only the email address that isn't public, and preferences (which don't have much value.)
The IP address may be logged, but I doubt that all the millions of HTTP requests per day are logged for more than a day, even if that. Slashdot has no duty to keep logs, and it costs money to do so, and it creates a legal obligation to make those logs available. Why to have them then?
But it's pretty difficult to 'steal' an IP, anyway.
It's very easy, actually. Just take the IP and improve on it (or remove unwanted pieces.) Then your fork will be more valuable than the original.
Microsoft wouldn't want that to happen with Windows 7 and Windows 8 because all their horrible Metro model would fall apart if a company shows up that is willing to sell Windows 7 for $25 and to support it until the end of time. Then Windows would be essentially stolen because MS would be unable to sell it. MS would have to actually invent something new that people want (I'm not sure that MS even knows how to do that, considering ribbons and Metro.)
I have to note that both materials that you are referring to are using data from 2003. It's 9.5 years ago. But we got housing crisis by 2008 - and the crisis was characterized by costs of housing going up, up and more up. Many people couldn't buy (or even rent) in cities and because of that they had to live in adjacent towns. My example of Gilroy is not abstract; one of my coworkers did exactly that because anything closer was out of his financial capabilities. After the crisis hit another problem developed - lack of credit. Today houses are available, and for much less than in 2008 - but in order to get a mortgage you need to prove that you don't need it.
I don't have 2011 data, so this is just how I understand the situation. However freeways here are packed at rush hour, and many cars there are not doing a local hop from one exit to another - they are in for a long haul.
There are other reasons to stay away from cities. I live on the edge of the city, among nature. Birds, deer, foxes are all around, outside of cows and horses. It is peaceful here, as opposed to gang-ridden concrete jungles. People live there, but that housing is of low quality, dense, cluttered. If you live there then perhaps you can be within 20 miles from work; however it is not good for you, and anyone who can afford it tries to escape the city.
and a hundred years ago hitching posts outnumbered parking spots.
Yes, gas stations were rare then - and motorists carried cans of gas with them. Given the high energy density of gasoline, one could comfortably go on a long drive without worry. An EV does not give you that option.
Its all about the cost of gasoline, which isn't going down
It's not going down because there is political will that it remains high and keeps rising. NIMBY/BANANA people fully agree with that, and green advocates believe that humans should go back into caves - or even better they should kill themselves in an ecologically clean manner - to appease Gaia.
To act like the lack of powered parking spots is some deal-breaking, unsurmountable problem is ridiculous
It can be done
Sure, it can be done if your name is Joseph Stalin. However a market economy (which the USA largely remains) is not interested in "it can be done" unless it is accompanied by "and that's how it profits you personally."
I'd rather spend money here on things like this, than on things like the Iraq war and permanently staging the fifth fleet in the UAE (socialized expenses that are NOT paid by the gallon, but probably should be).
Very few people would (or should) disagree here. Menacing most of the world is not helpful in the long run. The money could be better spent on investments into the infrastructure. At least fishing for pieces of another bridge wouldn't be a common pastime of rescue workers.
The government could invest some of that money into EVs and solar and... wait a minute, they did just that - and they lost their shirt on it. Why is it so? Because the country is not capable of competing with China in these conditions. We have another political problem here.
In the end the government could (let's posit that) build chargers at every corner, and it could sell EVs with huge discount, so that they are sufficiently affordable to buyers of new cars. And we also can dream that the government would build new [nuclear] powerplants to charge all those cars. Many people would cry foul here for one simple reason: that government would be subverting free market principles. EVs today can't stand on their own because the technology is not ready. The government could take money from me and give to you, so you can buy an EV. Quite a few people would have a serious problem with that. This is a good illustration why the government shouldn't use taxes to benefit of a small group of people. Perhaps there is an amicable solution, like a government-issued credit to EV companies, but I don't see a politician on the arena at this time who would be even mentally capable of comprehending the problem, let alone the solution.
Right, and I'm sure the concept of a powered parking spot is beyond even the wildest imaginations of Silicon Valley's best
Yes, as it seems. There are very few charging stations around. 99.999% of parking spots have no power; and even if there is an outlet on a wall, most likely it's not for your use. An EV owner may largely get away with stealing power, but if that becomes a problem then external outlets will be simply locked. Employers, in this market, are not too eager to splurge either. Most medium and small businesses even tell employees to use their own cars to run company errands, without compensation. It is pretty expensive to dig trenches in paved parking lots and drag cables, even if you are only planning regular 120V outlets and not very expensive quick chargers (and for what cars? Are they all standardized?) Then there will be ongoing maintenance expenses, vandalism, etc. Power in the parking lot is a headache. It could be also a good lure if a mall installs those outlets - then they have a captive audience. But even here there are not enough EVs to warrant that. Plenty of people drive trucks...
Once you start talking about at destination charging, staying on the grid and off gasoline become that much easier.
not that it's already not doable for the 80 percent of the population who commute under 20 miles each way.
That theory about 80% of population is not well substantiated by neverending stream of cars on roads of South Bay. A very typical commute from Santa Clara to Gilroy, for example, is 38 miles - but you'll sit in traffic on US-101 far more than you'd think (and then lights, A/C and heater will bring your battery down.)
My personal belief is that EV will become popular only when the cost of the car drops into range of low-end cars (say, under $15K.) That's because EVs are in fact low-end cars, with these batteries and the constant need to worry about SoC. Once batteries become more capable (or charging faster) then the prices may swing in the opposite direction. If you ask me, it's very difficult to match the energy transfer speed of gasoline because hydrocarbons are extremely powerful substances. Many space rockets fly on kerosine, for example. One possible way to develop EV is to simply work toward lowering costs. If that Leaf (as a pure EV) would be selling for $10K today, it would be flying off the shelves - because the limitations of the car would be amply compensated by its low cost. I'd get one for driving down to the valley for lunch. There are always errands that are well within capabilities of the car. And there are other errands, where you need range and peace of mind. A gasoline car will be a piece of history, like a horse, but not before the battery technology makes a few serious advances.
That would be absolutely true if only Volt would be selling for a reasonable price, like Tauruses ($16,500,) Camrys ($22K) and Accords ($22K.) However it is far more expensive ($35K - $40K incl. the charger,) and as result there will be no savings, ever - just a loss all the way down. At best you will see savings after 10-12 years of use. Then you'd be better off buying a Taurus, investing the difference and using investment gains to buy fuel.
As other posters already said, gasoline costs today are comparable to other costs that are associated with the car (loan, service, parking, tolls.) My gasoline costs are so small that I don't even count them.
Note: The Highlander Hybrid is not designed to be driven off-road.
Does it have low clearance, or what? Why would anyone want a 4WD like that? Plenty of rural roads (gravel if you are lucky) can be mistaken for off-road areas.
Take me, as an example. My daily commute is just under 15 miles 5 days a week. A Volt would cut my fuel consumption from 7.5 gallons per week to basically nil. The car itself is still a bit pricey for me to justify, so I haven't taken the plunge yet... but if they get down to the $20k range, I might just.
If the gas is $5/gal. then you will be saving 7.5 * 5 = $37.5/week or $150/mo. Even not going into details of your car loan (if you need one,) your insurance alone will eat this money and ask for more. You can't insure a $40K new car for the same peanuts as a $10K used one. A loan will require you to have a very costly insurance.
But let's say that your insurance stays the same and you pay cash. The difference in cost between your current car ($10K as a guess, if you are lucky) to $33K (if you can get every discount and tax credit) will be $22K. To compensate for that you need to drive like you do for $22K/$150 = 146.6 months, or 12 years. This is longer than the warranty on the battery (10 years as I heard) and most likely the car will be dead by then for one reason or another. Since the cost of the battery comprises the majority of the car's price it does not make sense to repair - the car will be scrapped before you realize any savings.
But that's not all. You are investing $22K for 12 years. The car will give you negative return on that investment; however if you simply buy some safe, tax-free municipal bonds of a safe city then, with 3% rate, you can get $31K. This means that your actual LOSS on a Volt will be quite large.
An EV is a great idea; however with today's prices it simply does not make any sense, unless you are a rich "trust fund baby." A Volt is not a car for working people because it is a black hole for your money. You can buy it for pleasure, but that's the only reason to bother. Sales of Volt seem to confirm this reasoning - they are consistent with sales of expensive, luxury items into a very small market of top earners.
Where in a city is the average job going to be 30 miles away?
Many people live in San Francisco but work in Silicon Valley. That'd be easy 40-50 miles one way.
Agricultural workers live in cities but work in fields all around the area, up to 50 miles one way.
Company reps live somewhere but service the entire large area, sometimes driving more than a hundred miles per day.
You also need to consider other power needs:
At night you need headlights. They are 150W each, plus rear lights, and they are on regardless of whether you are moving or sitting in traffic.
In rain you need windshield wipers. Their motor is not running on wishes.
In winter you must have heating - at least for the windows to remain frost-free. Rear window defroster is a power-hungry beast.
In summer you need either an internal A/C (consumes power) or a 4-windows-down A/C (consumes power.)
There are plenty of hills in many locales. Climbing hills burns joules very quickly. Some roads require chains in winter time, or winter tires (that also lowers the efficiency.)
Wind can help and it can hurt efficiency.
You can't drive at the optimal speed all the time.
To summarize, an EV - a car that can't be fueled up at any corner station in minutes - has to have a considerably larger range. For me such an EV has to be able to drive for about 80 miles and then, at the end of the trip, climb 2,000 feet of elevation, without damaging the battery. Gas assist defeats the purpose - I already have a Prius which easily does all of the above. Volt doesn't buy me anything; I'd get one otherwise.
And hopefully with improved battery technology as well
Indeed; a cheaper and better EV will be accepted by a wider audience. I can't buy a Volt, for example, because it is simply not capable of climbing uphill to where I live (not in EV mode, at least - and I have no desire to splurge on premium gasoline for it.)
Generally speaking, flying involves invoking some mechanism which actually imparts lift.
Of course this is just a principle. However a falling person creates lift. This lift is insufficient to overcome the gravity and make the flight permanent; but the lift is there. If you jump into a sufficient airflow then you can fly as long as you want. Another popular option is to wear a large sail-like clothing; then the lift will be generated by that clothing. In all those cases flapping is done only if it pleases the flier:-) It's fair because birds aren't flapping their wings all the time either. Larger ones glide more, otherwise they'd run out of energy. A human is larger than an eagle, so it stands to reason that human would be gliding all the time.
The same applies to flying squirrels. They are not capable of powered flight, but they can generate some lift. They don't even need it if they move from a high point in one tree to a lower point in another tree. We don't say that those squirrels are falling from tree to tree, do we?
Once you climb into an orbit it becomes spaceflight. This is an established term for last 50 years. The word "flight" covers controlled, intentional movement above the ground. It doesn't have to be permanently powered (a small stone with the note wrapped around it flew into the open window; a bullet flies fast but a space rocket flies even faster.) If the flight is not controlled then it becomes a fall. A skydiver has a lot of control over the descent even before he opens the parachute.
stored as memories in your neural net! everyone is illegal!!!
Children who are blind from birth are the only exception. Perhaps a case can be made for children who are sufficiently brain-damaged and therefore "pure."
Unless you are something other than human, no... no, you may not.
Any human can fly by flapping his arms really fast. However when flying like that on Earth (or on similarly dense planets) the flier has limited control over the flight. It helps to climb a tall cliff before departure.
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Even if China wins and there is mysteriously no nuclear exchange, what exactly do they win? A country full of unproductive, rebellious mouths to feed, without any resources to covet, that previously was doing perfectly well buying their iPads...
If I were the Chinese leader who is planning such an invasion:
I personally don't see the point in losing 33% of the value when you drive it off the lot.
For some strange reason people prefer to buy new clothes instead of picking up used ones at the garbage dump.
A new car comes with full warranty. A used car probably has an expired warranty. A new car is more likely to be trouble-free, and you know for sure that it wasn't in any accident and it wasn't damaged. There are many ways to kill the car that are not obvious. (Driving a car on uneven roads for several years will do one in nicely.) A new car will be perfectly clean. A new car is probably also the latest model, which comes with all the latest improvements, gadgets and such, and with full resource of wearable parts (lights, gaskets, rubber boots, and many more.)
The loss of 30% as you drive it off the lot is just a local discontinuity. It matters if you intend to sell the car right away - you lose money. However if you intend to drive the car for a long time then it doesn't matter. You pay $20K and you drive the car for 10 years. That would be $2K/yr. Or you can buy a used car (5 years) for $10K. You will drive it for 5 years. That would be... the same $2K/yr.
This whole tile madness is driven by commercial reasons. Since MS can't make a phone to be as capable as the desktop, they want to dumb the desktop down to the level of the phone. Then, they think, if everyone is trained to love the bomb ^W the Metro interface there will be more software for Windows phones, and more money for MS.
A tile (as shown) is nothing but a small application window that can't be arbitrarily resized, and that has no Z ordering. The demo on the linked page is totally confusing - my Galaxy Tab has exactly the same stock configuration of installed applications; the only difference is that all application icons are of the same size (so more fit on each screen.) I'm not sure what was gained by doing this.
Considering the Leaf's battery costs around $6000-7000, and the rest of the car is infinitely easier to build than an ICE-carrying car,
I didn't know until now that Leaf is selling for the same $16,500 as Ford Fiesta. Or even cheaper, down to $6-7K, since "infinitely easier" has a limit of zero. Where can I get one for that price?
If you only need to rent on the weekends, check out Enterprise.
Yes, rental places do dump cars on weekends because they have an excess, and rentals don't earn any money while sitting in the lot.
However renting is still bothersome. If you don't have a car you have to get to the rental place (and from it) somehow. Then your plans are governed not by your needs but by someone else. If I'm using my own car I'm free to stay here for a day, there for two days, and there is nobody to say a word about that. With rentals you have a contract, and you have to do what the contract says.
In this case (of owning an inferior EV and then renting) it's just silly, worthy of another South Park episode. If you buy a car, buy a car, not a souped-up golf cart. Volt and Leaf may be even doing a disservice to the idea of an EV because they are demonstrating to the whole world how deficient an EV is. When better batteries show up it will be an uphill battle to overcome that belief. There is a reason why nobody mass-produced EVs 10 years ago - because our batteries aren't good enough. Same problem as today; however the manufacturers simply decided to rewrite the spec.
Owning your own good car gives you freedom. You can cross the whole country in that car, hardly ever stopping (Lisa Nowak demonstrated that by driving 900 miles non-stop. NASA trained her well.) Owning of your own plug-in EV, on the other hand, keeps you on tether, always on the lookout for an outlet.
Once batteries become more capable, the EV will be not just a viable option, it will be the only car in existence because from every other technical point an EV is superior. Today, though, it's just an expensive toy.
Chances are, your household has more than one car anyway.
There is only one car in my household. My coworker, though, has a family, and he bought an additional car. Guess what, it's a minivan - because that's what you need for family needs.
EV will not be making any sense to buy until its cost becomes low enough to overcome its deficiencies. Even if today Volt or Leaf are adequate for some people, they are still a net loss of money in any term, short or long. Purchase of an EV is reasonable only if you are comfortable with paying $15-20K extra just for a novelty (and for bragging rights.) If you need a reliable working car, there are plenty to choose from. I think a fair price of a Leaf today would be about $10-12K - not $35K as it appears to be.
Let's face it. Nobody likes to think. Therefore, we want one solution for everything. That's a car.
It's not unreasonable. We buy machines so that they make our lives easier and more comfortable.
Sure, I could get a bicycle, a motorbike, a car, an SUV and a truck - each for its own special occasion. But it would be awfully expensive - and wasteful too, since the car has to be made but it won't be doing anything while sitting in the garage. People tend to buy what serves most of their needs.
I don't have a truck. This means that when I need to buy something long at Home Depot I need to ask a friend. However I can go to work in my car just fine. Imagine that I only had a motorbike and had to ask for a ride each time when the weather is bad. That would be very inconvenient.
I can understand if a lifelong city dweller, who doesn't even know how to exit the city, is comfortable with a 60-mile Leaf. Good for him, and Leaf is the right car. But most people have serious needs that can't be easily deferred. Relatives arriving at the airport that is 50 miles away; a doctor sending you for tests to a city that is 80 miles away; a family member in trouble 90 miles away; a job offer from a company 60 miles away... Leaf can't go there and back without recharging, and you never know if there will be a chance to recharge. It will also take forever to recharge.
Some say "rent a car for that." But here is a surprise for them. Rental places aren't renting cars for free. Rentals cost money. Why would you be buying already a very expensive car only to park it at the rental place's lot (yes, a safe and secure place for your precious) and pay additional monies to drive a strange jalopy that was used just minutes before you by who knows who and carries who knows what deadly viruses. Or drugs - just hope that the car is never searched; there is no way to prove that an empty plastic bag with traces of a certain plant matter is not yours. Rental cars have their use, but I wouldn't want to bother with them for a common trip.
An EV right now is a reasonable purchase only if you have too much money. You will not save any money on an EV because EVs cost too much. Even a hybrid, like Prius, is marginal in terms of savings - though with today's gas prices my Prius does a very good job. But I bought my Prius for a reasonable price (about $25K, with the price on similar gas cars being around $22K.) The $3K premium that I paid is either already saved, or I don't care. It's much harder to not care about $15K premium, and even harder if for that money you get LESS of a car.
It's also common in SF Bay Area - lots of people have a house in San Francisco and work somewhere in Silicon Valley. You can't just sell a house and move, it costs very big bucks. Today you probably can't sell a house at all unless you are willing to recover only 30% of what you paid for it. Jobs are transient, homes are permanent - that's why people spend hours in traffic, not because they love it.
my current hybrid is doing great and faring quite well in it's 7th year.
Same here. I bought a new Gen. II Prius in 2005. It has about 44,000 miles on the odometer, and at that rate I don't expect to need a new car for another 30 years. Perhaps I'll need a new battery in 3-5 years from now, but that battery is not too expensive, compared to Volt's battery.
If I had to look for another car right now I would have bought the latest new Prius. I like it, and it is very comfortable for me. I will never go back to a car with a gearbox (be it manual or automatic) - you just can't do that after the CVT.
I wouldn't buy a Volt or a Leaf today. They cost too much and they have too small battery range. Leaf is not even in the running, and Volt is overpriced for what it delivers. It might be a good car if you live on a flat land and only go to a corner store, but it's hills everywhere around, and hills are bad for battery range. Some of my trips are 420 miles one way (8-9 hours of driving.)
The dictionary says that
Looks like piracy, stealing and murdering. The free dictionary is defining piracy as hijacking.
The difference in goals is only in the item being stolen. It could be goods (or their delivery and safety, in case of extortion) or the ship itself (in case of pirates needing another work boat.) In either case, if you see pirates approaching your ship then do something, the visit won't be healthy for you. The following instrument would be a good start.
Slashdot has very little to provide beyond public comments that the account holder wrote. There is probably only the email address that isn't public, and preferences (which don't have much value.)
The IP address may be logged, but I doubt that all the millions of HTTP requests per day are logged for more than a day, even if that. Slashdot has no duty to keep logs, and it costs money to do so, and it creates a legal obligation to make those logs available. Why to have them then?
But it's pretty difficult to 'steal' an IP, anyway.
It's very easy, actually. Just take the IP and improve on it (or remove unwanted pieces.) Then your fork will be more valuable than the original.
Microsoft wouldn't want that to happen with Windows 7 and Windows 8 because all their horrible Metro model would fall apart if a company shows up that is willing to sell Windows 7 for $25 and to support it until the end of time. Then Windows would be essentially stolen because MS would be unable to sell it. MS would have to actually invent something new that people want (I'm not sure that MS even knows how to do that, considering ribbons and Metro.)
Mercenaries on board can afford a gyrostabilized platform for a sniper with a .50 rifle. Incoming pirates would have no chance.
I am curious. How many fishing boats have been hijacked. Oh, yeah. None.
You mean pirates honestly bought each and every boat that they are using?
First, the project couldn't have even been done financially using any other OS/hardware combination.
What is better, to have five useless computers or one that is useful?
I have to note that both materials that you are referring to are using data from 2003. It's 9.5 years ago. But we got housing crisis by 2008 - and the crisis was characterized by costs of housing going up, up and more up. Many people couldn't buy (or even rent) in cities and because of that they had to live in adjacent towns. My example of Gilroy is not abstract; one of my coworkers did exactly that because anything closer was out of his financial capabilities. After the crisis hit another problem developed - lack of credit. Today houses are available, and for much less than in 2008 - but in order to get a mortgage you need to prove that you don't need it.
I don't have 2011 data, so this is just how I understand the situation. However freeways here are packed at rush hour, and many cars there are not doing a local hop from one exit to another - they are in for a long haul.
There are other reasons to stay away from cities. I live on the edge of the city, among nature. Birds, deer, foxes are all around, outside of cows and horses. It is peaceful here, as opposed to gang-ridden concrete jungles. People live there, but that housing is of low quality, dense, cluttered. If you live there then perhaps you can be within 20 miles from work; however it is not good for you, and anyone who can afford it tries to escape the city.
and a hundred years ago hitching posts outnumbered parking spots.
Yes, gas stations were rare then - and motorists carried cans of gas with them. Given the high energy density of gasoline, one could comfortably go on a long drive without worry. An EV does not give you that option.
Its all about the cost of gasoline, which isn't going down
It's not going down because there is political will that it remains high and keeps rising. NIMBY/BANANA people fully agree with that, and green advocates believe that humans should go back into caves - or even better they should kill themselves in an ecologically clean manner - to appease Gaia.
To act like the lack of powered parking spots is some deal-breaking, unsurmountable problem is ridiculous It can be done
Sure, it can be done if your name is Joseph Stalin. However a market economy (which the USA largely remains) is not interested in "it can be done" unless it is accompanied by "and that's how it profits you personally."
I'd rather spend money here on things like this, than on things like the Iraq war and permanently staging the fifth fleet in the UAE (socialized expenses that are NOT paid by the gallon, but probably should be).
Very few people would (or should) disagree here. Menacing most of the world is not helpful in the long run. The money could be better spent on investments into the infrastructure. At least fishing for pieces of another bridge wouldn't be a common pastime of rescue workers.
The government could invest some of that money into EVs and solar and ... wait a minute, they did just that - and they lost their shirt on it. Why is it so? Because the country is not capable of competing with China in these conditions. We have another political problem here.
In the end the government could (let's posit that) build chargers at every corner, and it could sell EVs with huge discount, so that they are sufficiently affordable to buyers of new cars. And we also can dream that the government would build new [nuclear] powerplants to charge all those cars. Many people would cry foul here for one simple reason: that government would be subverting free market principles. EVs today can't stand on their own because the technology is not ready. The government could take money from me and give to you, so you can buy an EV. Quite a few people would have a serious problem with that. This is a good illustration why the government shouldn't use taxes to benefit of a small group of people. Perhaps there is an amicable solution, like a government-issued credit to EV companies, but I don't see a politician on the arena at this time who would be even mentally capable of comprehending the problem, let alone the solution.
Right, and I'm sure the concept of a powered parking spot is beyond even the wildest imaginations of Silicon Valley's best
Yes, as it seems. There are very few charging stations around. 99.999% of parking spots have no power; and even if there is an outlet on a wall, most likely it's not for your use. An EV owner may largely get away with stealing power, but if that becomes a problem then external outlets will be simply locked. Employers, in this market, are not too eager to splurge either. Most medium and small businesses even tell employees to use their own cars to run company errands, without compensation. It is pretty expensive to dig trenches in paved parking lots and drag cables, even if you are only planning regular 120V outlets and not very expensive quick chargers (and for what cars? Are they all standardized?) Then there will be ongoing maintenance expenses, vandalism, etc. Power in the parking lot is a headache. It could be also a good lure if a mall installs those outlets - then they have a captive audience. But even here there are not enough EVs to warrant that. Plenty of people drive trucks...
Once you start talking about at destination charging, staying on the grid and off gasoline become that much easier. not that it's already not doable for the 80 percent of the population who commute under 20 miles each way.
That theory about 80% of population is not well substantiated by neverending stream of cars on roads of South Bay. A very typical commute from Santa Clara to Gilroy, for example, is 38 miles - but you'll sit in traffic on US-101 far more than you'd think (and then lights, A/C and heater will bring your battery down.)
My personal belief is that EV will become popular only when the cost of the car drops into range of low-end cars (say, under $15K.) That's because EVs are in fact low-end cars, with these batteries and the constant need to worry about SoC. Once batteries become more capable (or charging faster) then the prices may swing in the opposite direction. If you ask me, it's very difficult to match the energy transfer speed of gasoline because hydrocarbons are extremely powerful substances. Many space rockets fly on kerosine, for example. One possible way to develop EV is to simply work toward lowering costs. If that Leaf (as a pure EV) would be selling for $10K today, it would be flying off the shelves - because the limitations of the car would be amply compensated by its low cost. I'd get one for driving down to the valley for lunch. There are always errands that are well within capabilities of the car. And there are other errands, where you need range and peace of mind. A gasoline car will be a piece of history, like a horse, but not before the battery technology makes a few serious advances.
That would be absolutely true if only Volt would be selling for a reasonable price, like Tauruses ($16,500,) Camrys ($22K) and Accords ($22K.) However it is far more expensive ($35K - $40K incl. the charger,) and as result there will be no savings, ever - just a loss all the way down. At best you will see savings after 10-12 years of use. Then you'd be better off buying a Taurus, investing the difference and using investment gains to buy fuel.
As other posters already said, gasoline costs today are comparable to other costs that are associated with the car (loan, service, parking, tolls.) My gasoline costs are so small that I don't even count them.
By the way, the Highlander is a real hot rod
Toyota.com has this to say:
Note: The Highlander Hybrid is not designed to be driven off-road.
Does it have low clearance, or what? Why would anyone want a 4WD like that? Plenty of rural roads (gravel if you are lucky) can be mistaken for off-road areas.
Take me, as an example. My daily commute is just under 15 miles 5 days a week. A Volt would cut my fuel consumption from 7.5 gallons per week to basically nil. The car itself is still a bit pricey for me to justify, so I haven't taken the plunge yet... but if they get down to the $20k range, I might just.
If the gas is $5/gal. then you will be saving 7.5 * 5 = $37.5/week or $150/mo. Even not going into details of your car loan (if you need one,) your insurance alone will eat this money and ask for more. You can't insure a $40K new car for the same peanuts as a $10K used one. A loan will require you to have a very costly insurance.
But let's say that your insurance stays the same and you pay cash. The difference in cost between your current car ($10K as a guess, if you are lucky) to $33K (if you can get every discount and tax credit) will be $22K. To compensate for that you need to drive like you do for $22K/$150 = 146.6 months, or 12 years. This is longer than the warranty on the battery (10 years as I heard) and most likely the car will be dead by then for one reason or another. Since the cost of the battery comprises the majority of the car's price it does not make sense to repair - the car will be scrapped before you realize any savings.
But that's not all. You are investing $22K for 12 years. The car will give you negative return on that investment; however if you simply buy some safe, tax-free municipal bonds of a safe city then, with 3% rate, you can get $31K. This means that your actual LOSS on a Volt will be quite large.
An EV is a great idea; however with today's prices it simply does not make any sense, unless you are a rich "trust fund baby." A Volt is not a car for working people because it is a black hole for your money. You can buy it for pleasure, but that's the only reason to bother. Sales of Volt seem to confirm this reasoning - they are consistent with sales of expensive, luxury items into a very small market of top earners.
Where in a city is the average job going to be 30 miles away?
Many people live in San Francisco but work in Silicon Valley. That'd be easy 40-50 miles one way.
Agricultural workers live in cities but work in fields all around the area, up to 50 miles one way.
Company reps live somewhere but service the entire large area, sometimes driving more than a hundred miles per day.
You also need to consider other power needs:
To summarize, an EV - a car that can't be fueled up at any corner station in minutes - has to have a considerably larger range. For me such an EV has to be able to drive for about 80 miles and then, at the end of the trip, climb 2,000 feet of elevation, without damaging the battery. Gas assist defeats the purpose - I already have a Prius which easily does all of the above. Volt doesn't buy me anything; I'd get one otherwise.
It'll feel good
Yes, that's the only reason to buy Volt.
And hopefully with improved battery technology as well
Indeed; a cheaper and better EV will be accepted by a wider audience. I can't buy a Volt, for example, because it is simply not capable of climbing uphill to where I live (not in EV mode, at least - and I have no desire to splurge on premium gasoline for it.)
Generally speaking, flying involves invoking some mechanism which actually imparts lift.
Of course this is just a principle. However a falling person creates lift. This lift is insufficient to overcome the gravity and make the flight permanent; but the lift is there. If you jump into a sufficient airflow then you can fly as long as you want. Another popular option is to wear a large sail-like clothing; then the lift will be generated by that clothing. In all those cases flapping is done only if it pleases the flier :-) It's fair because birds aren't flapping their wings all the time either. Larger ones glide more, otherwise they'd run out of energy. A human is larger than an eagle, so it stands to reason that human would be gliding all the time.
The same applies to flying squirrels. They are not capable of powered flight, but they can generate some lift. They don't even need it if they move from a high point in one tree to a lower point in another tree. We don't say that those squirrels are falling from tree to tree, do we?
Once you climb into an orbit it becomes spaceflight. This is an established term for last 50 years. The word "flight" covers controlled, intentional movement above the ground. It doesn't have to be permanently powered (a small stone with the note wrapped around it flew into the open window; a bullet flies fast but a space rocket flies even faster.) If the flight is not controlled then it becomes a fall. A skydiver has a lot of control over the descent even before he opens the parachute.
stored as memories in your neural net! everyone is illegal!!!
Children who are blind from birth are the only exception. Perhaps a case can be made for children who are sufficiently brain-damaged and therefore "pure."
Unless you are something other than human, no... no, you may not.
Any human can fly by flapping his arms really fast. However when flying like that on Earth (or on similarly dense planets) the flier has limited control over the flight. It helps to climb a tall cliff before departure.