Japan actually has a large, and largely untapped, capacity to use wind power. They also have quite a lot of hydroelectricity, which is useful for buffering against variations.
Wind power is actually cheaper than nuclear anyway now.
Nuclear power is probably not such a great idea for Japan, it's quite a small country, very highly populated, and on the ring of fire, and any accidents could have much worse effects than we saw with Fukushima. With Fukushima, it was fortuitous that it was on the East coast, and the prevailing winds blew the fallout out to sea where it was diluted it down. If the accident had been West of Tokyo it would have been incredibly, stupendously bad, and if they return to using nuclear power in a big way, that could actually happen.
I'm certain that there was development like you say- there's been electric cars since around 1900, and many, many more in development and concept cars; but they've never caught on- till now.
But would Nissan have actually started mass producing it, if there wasn't a clearer market? Even when they did start, it was controversial. And didn't the Tesla establish that plug-in electric cars had acceptance? What it meant was that Nissan wasn't going alone, and made it possible for the execs to sign off on it.
It really wouldn't. If the track was superconducting it would require cooling the whole length with liquid nitrogen, and having just checked, it looks like superconducting materials are about ten times more expensive than neodymium magnets, so you wouldn't want to make the track out of superconducting materials.
To some extent, but it wasn't particularly affordable even then- that's why they specifically went with a high-end car like the Roadster. And make no mistake, the Roadster actually changed things- we may not have had the Nissan Leaf yet, if there had been no Roadster. The Roadster killed the giggle factor. Before that electric cars were looked at as glorified electric milk floats (even though the EV1 showed the way, nobody really listened as it was more of a concept car).
No, because if they're near a hydroelectric plant they can also build wind turbines and solar.
Wind turbines and solar don't always produce power, but when they do they can turn down the hydroelectric, and when the wind drops they can turn it back up again.
The net result is that the data centre uses no hydroelectric power, on average, and generates no pollution (other than that to make the turbines and solar panels which is a lot less anyway.)
No smog, no pollution, and it's irrelevant what the main power source on any local grid may be.
Server farms run as virtual machines, so you're only using a fraction of one machine, and even then, only when it's being accessed, so the fact that the actual machine it's on is available 24x7 makes no difference, the server farm provides compute power for web servers for other countries when you're asleep.
Actually keeping your laptop on all the time almost certainly uses more energy.
Musk is good at spotting ideas that work, and making them work.
Electric cars existed before the Tesla Roadster, but it was the first manufactured car that was aspirational; people seriously wanted one, and it was practical.
The only real trick to that was sticking in a big enough battery- a big battery helps two ways- it increases range, but more subtly it increases the power/weight ratio.
Of course it's more expensive, so that makes it a high-end car. But it's a fast car, so people are prepared to pay the premium.
For the point of view of the company, if you have income you can use that to develop a cheaper version, and economies of scale appear to help drive the price of the battery down.
No, careful here. Outsourcing CAN actually improve the environmental aspects of what you do.
For example, centralised servers have far more chance of being run by renewables than your home computer. Google for example, is tending to do stuff like build their servers near hydroelectric plants or where there's wind farms or solar available.
So outsourcing your needs CAN actually be a good thing; and if everyone did it, it's a net positive.
Nah, we'll have caused civilisation to crash due to global warming long before we get uneconomical fossil fuels due to lack of availability.
But actually at the moment, it's looking like a combination of wind and solar will replace the bulk, and possibly all, of our fossil fuel use; these renewables are becoming cheap and easy enough that people won't build new fossil plants very much, so as the old ones wear out they'll just get shut down.
Yeah, and you can't get it to a block of flats why exactly????
One word: monopoly.
Don't forget blocks of flats can actually use fibre; they can connect the flats with Ethernet quite easily; because the flats are close together, and they can reduce the infrastructure costs when doing that.
Otherwise you have lots of ADSL's with boxes, each individually powered, at each end of each wire, wasting energy, with BT charging a standing charge on each one, and the line is going at 1/10 the speed.
Anyway, there's was a 'stop sell' even on non blocks of flats at least until July, I haven't checked in the last few weeks, they may well have renewed it.
Really? As in real fibre, not BTInfinity, which is still just ADSL over the significantly shorter distance to the cabinet in the road???
I mean, sure they'll upgrade you to ADSL to the cabinet, no problem, which they call 'fibre', but it's really still ADSL going into your property as opposed to fibre where they actually have a real fibre entering your property.
Real fibre is several hundred megabits or more, whereas BTInfinity caps out at ~75 Mbps, more normally you'll actually get ~55 Mbps.
Well, it's still a better car in most ways. People don't only buy the cheapest car.
Is your car already air conditioned when you get into it? The Leaf lets you set that. You're literally more comfortable in a Leaf than you would be in most cars. And the difference in running costs is not extreme. And yes, the equation in the UK is different, gas is more expensive, and there's more charging stations. But America will catch up, and the Leaf/electric cars are getting ever cheaper.
But no single car is right for everyone; but I do find the extremely common hatred amusing.
I checked into it. The premature failure of the battery in hot climates was an issue with the 2011, 2012 models, but Nissan reformulated the battery chemistry and the 2013 version doesn't really have the issue (the degradation happens at 1/3 the rate).
They also extended the warranty to cover back to the 2011 models, and if it happens they replace the battery back to full charge state.
Even when they do wear out, they're selling replacement batteries at (what seems to be) slightly below cost. The batteries are getting cheaper all the time anyway (8% per annum), and provided you do a reasonable mileage, the Leaf is still cheaper and more reliable than using a hybrid.
In order for the package to be useful, you need to be where it arrives.
Imagine if you received a notification saying it was at the post office and then you replied to it, and it arrived shortly afterwards, so you're always there to receive it.
Not necessarily. On the upside, the drones only weigh a few kilograms, compared to a tonne or two for a truck, and the drones can fly as-the-crow-flies direct routes, and they are electric vehicles, so are actually potentially much *more* efficient, particularly in Switzerland, where they get a lot of their energy from hydroelectricity.
I suspect in a lot of cases they will be faster and more efficient.
Apparently you're incapable of understanding that your wife frequents a restaurant that actually caters for sufferers of Celiac disease, and you're also incapable of understanding that them doing so is not indicative of 'fanaticism'.
> A restaraunt my wife frequents has completely separate grills and utensils for gluten free cooking. That's pretty much fanaticism.
No, for people that actually have celiac disease (as opposed to people that are "gluten free"), that's how you have to do it. They're allergic to even small traces of gluten; similar to the way peanuts trigger allergies in minute traces.
As I understand it, your situation is that you get stuck in traffic jams every day, in 35C weather for 6 hours, which would mean the A/C would flatten the battery, you're probably going to change jobs so you 100% definitely will have to sell the car, even though you don't have a new job yet, you have no fast chargers on any freeways you may be doing long distances on, you do high mileage, which you apparently think means the battery pack will wear out, but simultaneously, you think that the vehicle won't pay for itself because electric vehicles only pay for themselves on high mileages which you aren't going to be doing. In addition, your car is uninsured, so you may crash it and lose all the economic value in the battery. You also live in the south, where the batteries age more quickly. Oh and Nissan are going to fraudulently reprogram their battery indicator, and the courts are totally going to let them get away with it.
As I have already pointed out, even in the US, the average daily mileage is only 30; and most people don't suddenly jump into their car and drive for days on any regular basis.
And there's very little problem with a 2 hour jam. It's a 7+ hour jam that does for your range.
I'm not saying that batteries don't degrade, only it takes more than a 'few years'. The batteries are expected to last 10 years/100,000-150,000 miles or more without significant degradation, and there's no evidence that this won't be achieved.
The other thing I haven't mentioned- cost. Yes, electric cars are fairly expensive right now, but they batteries are getting exponentially cheaper every year. Fossil cars, are NOT getting cheaper. We're right about at the crossing point now; electric cars are going to be cheaper- and second hand cars are becoming more and more available and more and more cost-effective, and they're cheaper to run. Pretty soon everyone will preferentially run an electric car, because it's cheaper.
I mean, sure, electric cars are better for only 99% of most people's journeys.
I'm in the UK; it has a half decent; but not fully decent infrastructure, some parts of the country don't have very much public charging infrastructure.
Obviously, if you don't have much public infrastructure around you, you shouldn't get the Leaf.
Nissan Leafs don't seem to lose much range; it's still a relatively new car, but so far it seems that there's very little degradation of the batteries; the idea that range plummets after a 'few years' is clearly bullshit.
Indeed, the second hand value seems to have gone up recently for vehicles of the same age.
The rule of thumb that Leaf drivers use is 70 mile range at 70 mph; note that the A/C or heating makes very little difference; unless you're stuck for hours in a traffic jam; which is pretty damn rare, but even then you have the choice of how much to use the A/C; it's not like you're going to be unexpectedly stranded, the car keeps you informed of the situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Japan actually has a large, and largely untapped, capacity to use wind power. They also have quite a lot of hydroelectricity, which is useful for buffering against variations.
Wind power is actually cheaper than nuclear anyway now.
Nuclear power is probably not such a great idea for Japan, it's quite a small country, very highly populated, and on the ring of fire, and any accidents could have much worse effects than we saw with Fukushima. With Fukushima, it was fortuitous that it was on the East coast, and the prevailing winds blew the fallout out to sea where it was diluted it down. If the accident had been West of Tokyo it would have been incredibly, stupendously bad, and if they return to using nuclear power in a big way, that could actually happen.
I'm certain that there was development like you say- there's been electric cars since around 1900, and many, many more in development and concept cars; but they've never caught on- till now.
But would Nissan have actually started mass producing it, if there wasn't a clearer market? Even when they did start, it was controversial. And didn't the Tesla establish that plug-in electric cars had acceptance? What it meant was that Nissan wasn't going alone, and made it possible for the execs to sign off on it.
It really wouldn't. If the track was superconducting it would require cooling the whole length with liquid nitrogen, and having just checked, it looks like superconducting materials are about ten times more expensive than neodymium magnets, so you wouldn't want to make the track out of superconducting materials.
That's not how any of this works; the board contains liquid nitrogen; the track is made of supermagnets.
Not really much more complicated the track is just 2 or more magnetic stripes made with shitloads of neodymium magnets.
Nah it's just liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen costs the same as milk. MRIs use liquid helium; whole other thing.
To some extent, but it wasn't particularly affordable even then- that's why they specifically went with a high-end car like the Roadster. And make no mistake, the Roadster actually changed things- we may not have had the Nissan Leaf yet, if there had been no Roadster. The Roadster killed the giggle factor. Before that electric cars were looked at as glorified electric milk floats (even though the EV1 showed the way, nobody really listened as it was more of a concept car).
No, because if they're near a hydroelectric plant they can also build wind turbines and solar.
Wind turbines and solar don't always produce power, but when they do they can turn down the hydroelectric, and when the wind drops they can turn it back up again.
The net result is that the data centre uses no hydroelectric power, on average, and generates no pollution (other than that to make the turbines and solar panels which is a lot less anyway.)
No smog, no pollution, and it's irrelevant what the main power source on any local grid may be.
Server farms run as virtual machines, so you're only using a fraction of one machine, and even then, only when it's being accessed, so the fact that the actual machine it's on is available 24x7 makes no difference, the server farm provides compute power for web servers for other countries when you're asleep.
Actually keeping your laptop on all the time almost certainly uses more energy.
Musk is good at spotting ideas that work, and making them work.
Electric cars existed before the Tesla Roadster, but it was the first manufactured car that was aspirational; people seriously wanted one, and it was practical.
The only real trick to that was sticking in a big enough battery- a big battery helps two ways- it increases range, but more subtly it increases the power/weight ratio.
Of course it's more expensive, so that makes it a high-end car. But it's a fast car, so people are prepared to pay the premium.
For the point of view of the company, if you have income you can use that to develop a cheaper version, and economies of scale appear to help drive the price of the battery down.
KILL?
u mean: "WESTINGHOUSED"!
No, careful here. Outsourcing CAN actually improve the environmental aspects of what you do.
For example, centralised servers have far more chance of being run by renewables than your home computer. Google for example, is tending to do stuff like build their servers near hydroelectric plants or where there's wind farms or solar available.
So outsourcing your needs CAN actually be a good thing; and if everyone did it, it's a net positive.
Nah, we'll have caused civilisation to crash due to global warming long before we get uneconomical fossil fuels due to lack of availability.
But actually at the moment, it's looking like a combination of wind and solar will replace the bulk, and possibly all, of our fossil fuel use; these renewables are becoming cheap and easy enough that people won't build new fossil plants very much, so as the old ones wear out they'll just get shut down.
Yeah, and you can't get it to a block of flats why exactly????
One word: monopoly.
Don't forget blocks of flats can actually use fibre; they can connect the flats with Ethernet quite easily; because the flats are close together, and they can reduce the infrastructure costs when doing that.
Otherwise you have lots of ADSL's with boxes, each individually powered, at each end of each wire, wasting energy, with BT charging a standing charge on each one, and the line is going at 1/10 the speed.
Anyway, there's was a 'stop sell' even on non blocks of flats at least until July, I haven't checked in the last few weeks, they may well have renewed it.
Really? As in real fibre, not BTInfinity, which is still just ADSL over the significantly shorter distance to the cabinet in the road???
I mean, sure they'll upgrade you to ADSL to the cabinet, no problem, which they call 'fibre', but it's really still ADSL going into your property as opposed to fibre where they actually have a real fibre entering your property.
Real fibre is several hundred megabits or more, whereas BTInfinity caps out at ~75 Mbps, more normally you'll actually get ~55 Mbps.
As of a couple of months ago at least, BT will refuse to sell you fibre to the premises if you have access to ADSL.
My flat is literally 40 feet away from a fibre and even Ethernet enabled street box, and I can't get fibre.
Well, it's still a better car in most ways. People don't only buy the cheapest car.
Is your car already air conditioned when you get into it? The Leaf lets you set that. You're literally more comfortable in a Leaf than you would be in most cars. And the difference in running costs is not extreme. And yes, the equation in the UK is different, gas is more expensive, and there's more charging stations. But America will catch up, and the Leaf/electric cars are getting ever cheaper.
But no single car is right for everyone; but I do find the extremely common hatred amusing.
I checked into it. The premature failure of the battery in hot climates was an issue with the 2011, 2012 models, but Nissan reformulated the battery chemistry and the 2013 version doesn't really have the issue (the degradation happens at 1/3 the rate).
They also extended the warranty to cover back to the 2011 models, and if it happens they replace the battery back to full charge state.
Even when they do wear out, they're selling replacement batteries at (what seems to be) slightly below cost. The batteries are getting cheaper all the time anyway (8% per annum), and provided you do a reasonable mileage, the Leaf is still cheaper and more reliable than using a hybrid.
In order for the package to be useful, you need to be where it arrives.
Imagine if you received a notification saying it was at the post office and then you replied to it, and it arrived shortly afterwards, so you're always there to receive it.
Not necessarily. On the upside, the drones only weigh a few kilograms, compared to a tonne or two for a truck, and the drones can fly as-the-crow-flies direct routes, and they are electric vehicles, so are actually potentially much *more* efficient, particularly in Switzerland, where they get a lot of their energy from hydroelectricity.
I suspect in a lot of cases they will be faster and more efficient.
Apparently you're incapable of understanding that your wife frequents a restaurant that actually caters for sufferers of Celiac disease, and you're also incapable of understanding that them doing so is not indicative of 'fanaticism'.
> A restaraunt my wife frequents has completely separate grills and utensils for gluten free cooking. That's pretty much fanaticism.
No, for people that actually have celiac disease (as opposed to people that are "gluten free"), that's how you have to do it. They're allergic to even small traces of gluten; similar to the way peanuts trigger allergies in minute traces.
As I understand it, your situation is that you get stuck in traffic jams every day, in 35C weather for 6 hours, which would mean the A/C would flatten the battery, you're probably going to change jobs so you 100% definitely will have to sell the car, even though you don't have a new job yet, you have no fast chargers on any freeways you may be doing long distances on, you do high mileage, which you apparently think means the battery pack will wear out, but simultaneously, you think that the vehicle won't pay for itself because electric vehicles only pay for themselves on high mileages which you aren't going to be doing. In addition, your car is uninsured, so you may crash it and lose all the economic value in the battery. You also live in the south, where the batteries age more quickly. Oh and Nissan are going to fraudulently reprogram their battery indicator, and the courts are totally going to let them get away with it.
Makes sense!
As I have already pointed out, even in the US, the average daily mileage is only 30; and most people don't suddenly jump into their car and drive for days on any regular basis.
And there's very little problem with a 2 hour jam. It's a 7+ hour jam that does for your range.
I'm not saying that batteries don't degrade, only it takes more than a 'few years'. The batteries are expected to last 10 years/100,000-150,000 miles or more without significant degradation, and there's no evidence that this won't be achieved.
The other thing I haven't mentioned- cost. Yes, electric cars are fairly expensive right now, but they batteries are getting exponentially cheaper every year. Fossil cars, are NOT getting cheaper. We're right about at the crossing point now; electric cars are going to be cheaper- and second hand cars are becoming more and more available and more and more cost-effective, and they're cheaper to run. Pretty soon everyone will preferentially run an electric car, because it's cheaper.
I mean, sure, electric cars are better for only 99% of most people's journeys.
I'm in the UK; it has a half decent; but not fully decent infrastructure, some parts of the country don't have very much public charging infrastructure.
Obviously, if you don't have much public infrastructure around you, you shouldn't get the Leaf.
Nissan Leafs don't seem to lose much range; it's still a relatively new car, but so far it seems that there's very little degradation of the batteries; the idea that range plummets after a 'few years' is clearly bullshit.
Indeed, the second hand value seems to have gone up recently for vehicles of the same age.
The rule of thumb that Leaf drivers use is 70 mile range at 70 mph; note that the A/C or heating makes very little difference; unless you're stuck for hours in a traffic jam; which is pretty damn rare, but even then you have the choice of how much to use the A/C; it's not like you're going to be unexpectedly stranded, the car keeps you informed of the situation.