The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation. These could act like your home UPS, fixing blackouts of a few minutes, when they occur. This also would make the grid much more able to use wind and solar sources, without so much need for standby diesel systems currently in place.
The problem with the 27.8% ICE system efficiency vs 36.3% EV system efficiency is that you forgot a couple of important factors.
1) ICE vehicles in cities waste 15% to 20% of their fuel idling at stop signs. EVs don't waste energy while stopped.
2) EVs recover a large percentage of their braking energy via regenerative braking. ICE vehicles waste it by heating their brake systems.
When these factors are taken into account, the system efficiency of EVs is much more favorable than your post suggests.
Even if we never send or receive an email, never access the web, and never make or receive a call, most of us can still be pretty accurately tracked.
If you carry a mobile phone with the battery charged, you can be tracked by GPS, or by triangulation from nearby cell towers (even if your phone is "off").
If your car has OnStar or a similar service, it can be tracked as well.
The government could use this to build a very accurate picture of where you go and who you associate with (e.g. what church, if any, do you attend? where do you work? where do you live? do you obey speed limits? etc.). This can lead to inferences such as ability to predict what political party you're likely to support, or whether you're likely to own a gun.
Even if you trust the current administration to only use this data for anti-terrorism purposes, the very existence of the database of "who associates with who" will inevitably lead to abuse by a few bad apples (e.g. local law enforcement) in the government.
There is an interesting related subject called Dual Photography, where the "light source" is one (or more) simple photocells, and the "camera" is a video projector or steerable point light source such as a laser pointer.
The computer can render what the image would look like under any combination of lighting from the original photocell position(s). This technique can create images with just a point light source and a photocell, and no camera or lens at all.
This is only applicable to "still life" photos, where the subject sits still in a darkened room for several minutes while the light source scans the scene. The linked page summarizes the technique, and links to a 19MB PDF paper that contains more info and several example images.
For hard science fiction, I liked Vernor Vinge's work, particularly "A Fire Upon the Deep", and his Across Realtime series ("The Peace War", "Marooned In Realtime", etc...).
David Brin's Uplift series ("The Uplift War", etc...) was also good, but not really hard-core hard science fiction.
Slashdot Mirror
The resiliency of the power grid would be vastly improved if we put a battery pack (the size of a normal intermodal container) at each substation. These could act like your home UPS, fixing blackouts of a few minutes, when they occur. This also would make the grid much more able to use wind and solar sources, without so much need for standby diesel systems currently in place.
ICE: 30% * 92.5% = 27.8% efficient
EV: 50% * 98% * 80% * (100%) * 92.5% = 36.3% efficient.
The problem with the 27.8% ICE system efficiency vs 36.3% EV system efficiency is that you forgot a couple of important factors. 1) ICE vehicles in cities waste 15% to 20% of their fuel idling at stop signs. EVs don't waste energy while stopped. 2) EVs recover a large percentage of their braking energy via regenerative braking. ICE vehicles waste it by heating their brake systems. When these factors are taken into account, the system efficiency of EVs is much more favorable than your post suggests.
The Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon.
Even if we never send or receive an email, never access the web, and never make or receive a call, most of us can still be pretty accurately tracked. If you carry a mobile phone with the battery charged, you can be tracked by GPS, or by triangulation from nearby cell towers (even if your phone is "off"). If your car has OnStar or a similar service, it can be tracked as well. The government could use this to build a very accurate picture of where you go and who you associate with (e.g. what church, if any, do you attend? where do you work? where do you live? do you obey speed limits? etc.). This can lead to inferences such as ability to predict what political party you're likely to support, or whether you're likely to own a gun. Even if you trust the current administration to only use this data for anti-terrorism purposes, the very existence of the database of "who associates with who" will inevitably lead to abuse by a few bad apples (e.g. local law enforcement) in the government.
There is an interesting related subject called Dual Photography, where the "light source" is one (or more) simple photocells, and the "camera" is a video projector or steerable point light source such as a laser pointer.
The computer can render what the image would look like under any combination of lighting from the original photocell position(s). This technique can create images with just a point light source and a photocell, and no camera or lens at all.
This is only applicable to "still life" photos, where the subject sits still in a darkened room for several minutes while the light source scans the scene. The linked page summarizes the technique, and links to a 19MB PDF paper that contains more info and several example images.
For hard science fiction, I liked Vernor Vinge's work, particularly "A Fire Upon the Deep", and his Across Realtime series ("The Peace War", "Marooned In Realtime", etc...).
David Brin's Uplift series ("The Uplift War", etc...) was also good, but not really hard-core hard science fiction.