I've seen the same thing. In order for a second vehicle to be 'worth it' from a strictly economical point of view, it's not only going to have to save it's loan payments, it's also going to have to save the insurance and taxes.
Even looking at a 20mpg vehicle vs a 40mpg one, at $4/gallon, 40k miles.
That'd be $4k savings a year. That's $333.33/month. We'll call the depreciation and maintenance even - the lower mileage vehicle is likely the more expensive one, but it's being driven less, so it'll keep it's value up more. But the more you drive the cheaper vehicle, the more it'll depreciate.
Let's say the big vehicle is $40k, and the small one $20k. We don't really care about the cost of the large vehicle, we assume it's a must. At $20k@5% for a 5 year loan, the monthly payment is going to be $377.42. Even if we figure it's only going to be $400/year to insure and title, we've already broke our goal - $4,529 a year in annual payments. We end up being almost $1k in the hole per year until the 5th year is up.
Buy a used $10k vehicle and we'll save $1,335 a year, but that involves the downside of driving an old beater when you have that nice big new vehicle in the driveway.
so just raising the bed of the truck by a foot to fit in a palette of batteries underneath seems like the best use of space.
Just bought a truck recently, looking underneath it I spotted all sorts of space between the frame rails that could be used for batteries without lifting the bed. Of course, I have a 4WD, so it's a bit higher than some 2WD models*. That includes leaving plenty of space around the axle, not going below it, etc...
It'd be a little more complicated, but not much.
Bonus: No need to add sand bags in the winter!
*Though I'm half tempted to see about lowering the thing... Easier to load/unload and might increase gas mileage. Then again, even $1k to do it would swamp any gas savings... The very problem with the article - conversions are 'gee whiz' deals because they simply cost too much.
From what I can see, a lot of those problems are caused by corrosion on a battery termina,
Did you mean terminal? I'd think that a minute with a brass brush would fix any corrosion problems. Might end up being part of preventive maintenance if the corrosion leads to cell damage.
Or treating the terminal with any number of anti corrosion products. My uncle used to work in the airline industry. They had all sorts of stuff.
Rogerborg: The silver lining is that there's a nascent industry in reconditioning / recycling these batteries waiting to emerge, but only when there's enough of them dying to make it worthwhile, which means that it's a silver lining on a cloud that's raining pure acid on early adopters.
It's not like these batteries are new technology - recycling is a known technique, and you should be able to get most of your money back from the core charge they're so recyclable.
Hmm... Maybe the companies will start spending an extra $20 per pack and put in cell monitoring hooked up to the service light.
Yeah, right. Something with an 8L V8 engine needs more horsepower. How about buying a either frickin' race car (if you want to go fast) or a frickin' semi (if you want to haul stuff) instead of a truck, huh? Also, adding all that stuff also adds _weight_ to the vehicle.
My truck doesn't have an 8L V8 in it. It has a 2.7L 4 cylinder. There's also a 4L V6 available.
Adding 10-50hp, especially at 0 RPM, would substantially improve the acceleration of my truck, especially if I'm towing something. I'd get to enjoy the gas mileage of a 4cylinder with the performance of the V6.
Why put a second motor into the the car and add a whole additional bunch of points of failure when you can simply put in a bigger engine? It makes no sense.
Simple enough: 25mpg -> 35 mpg. And '100% torque at 0 RPM'. Don't forget that electric motors have far fewer points of failure than a engine.
Up here in ND half to three quarters of the vehicles you see in the ditch along the highway during winter are SUVs. Hint: They're, at most, about 25% of the vehicles. About 25% are trucks, and you hardly see them in the ditch.
Still, it's going to be my first year driving a by default RWD truck in the winter up here. At least I have the option to go 4WD now. Always had a FWD car before. Had more problems getting stuck in deep snow than sliding. The fact I was driving a coupe with a non-limited differential didn't help.
... unless you bring a generator, of course. Bonus points for mounting it on top of the car.
First thought was generator in the trunk, but then I realize 'Wait, I'm going a long distance, I want luggage in there!'.
Second thought is to put the generator into a small trailer. This provides multiple benefits. While you lose some efficiency due to the extra axle and such, you don't always need to haul it along, and it's trivial to have the trailer provide even more storage space. Put the charging plug in the back, or better yet an auxillery charging port with additional controls located next to the ball. I'm thinking engine start/stop along with the standard brake lights, turn signals, and electric brakes. Maybe a line to provide actual starting power so the trailer doesn't need it's own battery. This way the car knows when the system is hooked up, and can act appropriately(more like a hybrid than a EV).
When I worked it up, you could have a trailer about as long as a U-haul type, but only has high as the car(for aerodynamics), a little narrower, with half the space taken up by the generator system, the rest available for storage(allowing it to haul more than a SUV), with a 10-20 gallon tank. I figured the whole kit would get ~30mpg. Not great, but not horrible either. And you still get a free 100 miles or so out of the batteries each day, more if you charge up more often than nightly.
The most interesting I've seen is 'pusher' trailers - chop off the front of a FWD car, add remote controls for starting, throttle, and drive/neutral. When cruising, you start up the trailer, and it's wheels push the EV forward. Regenerative braking and electric power maintain the proper speed. Probably unsafe for more than the knowledgable hacker types currently using them.
I think we still are far off from using all electrics for a long time, till the top mileage increases to that of a current gas engine.
The tesla roadster is close, with ~240 miles to a charge.
My nightmare is having an electric car during and evacuation for a hurricane. It is hard enough now to find gas to get out, not to mention if you screw up, and are in traffice for up to 20 hours (hot days with the AC running). You'd be stranded pretty badly in an electric car...not to mention, it might be hard to work the battery swap thing here since everyone would need one at once.
Then buy a hybrid. I'd suggest(if it were economical) a PHEV with an inverter system. That way you'd have the option of using the highly efficient engine in the vehicle to provide power to your house if you chose not to evacuate, or return before power has been restored. As a bonus, if you get an effective 50mpg on fuel with a 12 gallon tank, you have almost double the range of many vehicles. You're looking at a 600 mile unrefueled range.
Heck, take it a step further and simply have a high efficiency generator at home in that case - the house has power and you can charge your pure EV.
Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?
First - I kinda object to calling a Ford Escape a 'Truck'. A Truck has a bed, normally uncovered. The Escape is a SUV.
Going on - it depends on what you need. If you need a truck, and there are people who do, does it make sense to try to punish you by restricting you to the old wasteful power systems? Or do you go ahead and come out with a hybrid truck, even a PHEV?
Consider the taxis in NYC. NYC, in all it's glory, has decided that the only vehicle that meets the needs to be a taxi is a stretched crown vic that's 6" longer than even the regular vic. Recently they decided to issue some green medallians - and the hybrid that came close enough to their ideas of acceptable storage area and leg room was the Escape. Which gets something like 5 times the mileage of the crown vic. Taxi drivers love them, and there's still room in the vehicle for 3-4 people and all their luggage for a trip to/from the airport.
I do like the idea of electric vehicles btw, I just think a standard truck is a dumb place to start. Though the Ford F150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years, so in a way trucks are a good place to start - but not with current models IMO. They would need to make them lightweight (but still strong, obviously) to get the best efficiency. Electric motors have good torque too so they'd be good for hauling, as long as they have enough charge..
Well, there's a lot to consider when you look at making a hybrid F-150(or equivalent). Still, there are a lot of potential benefits. Off the top of my head: 1. Weight - for towing capacity, you actually don't want the thing too light. Still, the battery pack, especially for a PHEV, is going to add a lot of weight. Best spot to put it would probably be right in front of the rear axle. 2. Space - Should have relatively few problems finding some space under the bed for it. Looking at my truck, I should be able to have boxes 6" deep and 24" wide on either side of the axle and still have quite a bit of room. 3. Structure - Trucks have to be designed to take more abuse and loading than cars. For example, an 08 F-150 is expected to be able to tow 3,700 pounds, and carry 1,976 pounds in the bed. Using advanced techniques, you could probably shave off almost as much weight as the batteries would add, but that'd get expensive, and maybe fragile. Elegent failure modes are a must. 4. Towing capacity- good and bad here. I've been learning a lot about towing recently, and the engine plays a large part here, and most importantly, not just for propulsion. When going downhill engine braking is important to keep from overheating the brakes. So the bad part - you're unlikely to be able to undersize the engine much in order to be able to tow that 3.7k pounds down the highway at 75, or up a 15 degree slope for a hundred miles, or down a 20 degree slope for 20 because a smaller engine can't brake as well. The good part - electric motors provide great torque at low velocities, easing starting from a stop, and with regenerative braking can save quite a load on the engine and/or brakes. Hmm... Might want to go the train route and put resisters on the roof to bleed off excess energy in case of a long hill. Maybe a tow mode sensor - traveling uphill, let the batteries drain. Travelling downhill, emphasis the regenerative braking. 5. Economy. Trucks, due to their relatively oversized engines, get horrible gas mileage as standard. Going from 15 mpg to 25 mpg isn't out of sight, and will pay back quickly enough to be an easy sell to somebody with the money to buy and operate a truck. 6. Commercial use. A commercial operater will know exactly how much he's using in gas, and will likely know individual vehicle's mileage. Even a modest gain in mpg would pay back quickly due to level of driving, and with gas prices the way they are, with even a minimal comparis
While you're right for 'first impression' type things, many wine snobs (and beer/whisky snobs like me) go to great lengths to develope their palates so that they can be sensitive to subtle flavors.
Which is why I spoke of tendencies and chances.
What makes a 'fine' wine? What makes a 'good' chocolate shake? A 'good' steak? Taste is ultimately a perception, an impact on a sense. So it'll vary between people.
As others have noted, the subtleties between wines can be outweighed by the taster's impression of the relative value of the bottle it came out of. Nothing against you, but that starts getting into 'golden ears' and the ensuing crazyness of stuff like $500 digital interconnects, $5k speaker cables, and $1000 wooden knobs.
I'm not that into wine, but my understanding is that you have to really work to appreciate the complexity of 'fine' wines, while the cheaper 'good' wines tend to be much more simple, and therefore easier to 'get' all at once.
Quite possibly true. Of course, I ask, is it worth it to spend all that effort to get yourself such that you end up drinking more expensive drinks?
Personally, I like my beers chewy, my wines sweet, and am not a snob at all.
Humans tend to like what they were exposed to early on in life. So, you get a 'wine snob' who started out drinking fine wines from the beginning, vs a guy who grew up drinking cheap stuff*. The guy who grew up drinking the cheap stuff has a good chance to actually prefer it.
If you grew up drinking beer, you'll probably prefer beer. And so on.
*Let's face it, most alcohol drinkers didn't wait until they were 18/21 to start drinking.
This is what I see. I figure that there'll be more games like WoW that distribute updates via peer to peer, even a movie download service comparable to iTunes. Yes, I know there are some out there, I speak more of scale of selection and scale of operation.
Multiplayer games will become more bandwidth intensive, as developers stop trying to squeeze every bit so carefully, indeed, the demands of really massive multiplayer games - imagine a FPS like counterstrike, day of defeat, team fortress, but with hundreds of players to a team, not a couple dozen like current. Bigger maps, etc...
People will demand bandwidth - and companies will respond to serve that market, or they'll be replaced.
more than 25% of Korea's population lives in *1* city (and well over half live in that cities metro area), and Japan fits half the population of the United States into a nation smaller than California I really don't think you're wrapping your head around the Geography of this whole thing..
Even Canada can, by writing off the remotest 10% or so of it's population, achieve an average density higher than the USA's. A lot of Canada is very, very, empty. Satellite network access is about the only option.
I get pretty good broadband, they upped my speed not long ago, and dropped the price. I used to be on a $40 2mbit plan, now I'm on a $25 4mbit plan. I'd still prefer a higher upload speed(400kbit), but I figure I'm doing pretty good for living 45 miles from the closest 'major' town.
So essentially, we'll have to bend over for as little as possible?
Given the nature of caps, essentially the least number of people will have to bend over.
Saying that if the caps remain steady for four years will result in normal users seeing it is somewhat deceptive as places with caps have a history of raising them periodically.
As a power user, we need to be aware of our monthly usage if that's part of the plan we sign up for.
Personally, I figure I use less than 100GB/month. Email - insignificant, some gaming that could almost fit over a 56k connection(if with nasty lag for today), some filesharing - but only about 10GB/month.
In general, I figure they have the cap set to an order of magnitude above the average user, assuming I'm somewhat above average.
I'd prefer they forget to consider bandwidth issues at all, because they seem to add restrictions to the service instead of improving it a lot of the time...
It's reality in some respects. The power user pays the same $20-70 that a non power user pays. The upgrades needed to satisfy the bandwidth demands of the power users could cost in the hundreds to even millions of dollars, far more than what they can expect the PU to pay. Solution? Restrict the cheaper plans so the average user doesn't notice, yet force the power user to either use less or pay to get the premium service, or perform the upgrades via a price increase on everyone, costing you average(profitable) users to cheaper services.
My figuers are a bit different. Figure that we DO turn on various energy saving features, but not hibernate or suspend, because we're lazy and patch at night. That's another point - we wouldn't be able to charge our workers for leaving workstations on, because they're actually directed to do so for nightly patching.
Let's say such a computer settles down to 100 watts at night, for 16 hours a day. Weekend completely unused. 128 hours a week unused, could be shut off. At 100 watts, that'd be 12.8 kwh a week. Or, in my area, $1.28/week, $66.56/year at the highest energy charge($.10/kwh). Go to large volume commercial rates, it might be less than $30. Now, look at that employee who's making $30/hour. If he uses more than an hour of time a year dealing with a booting computer, it's wasting money.
Then there's the whole baseload/peak thing. A business running it's computers at night is taking up cheap baseload power. It's during the day that expensive peak power is used.
I'd prefer it if the darned phones merely plugged into your USB port and you could pull the darned photos off the camera yourself.
I have a motorola E850. I can pull the pictures off of it via bluetooth. It doesn't have a standard USB port so I'd need an adaptor cable, and I just haven't bothered yet.
I've messed with the camera feature a couple times. Don't like it. Biggest problem: THE INTERFACE SUCKS!!!!
The first part is good enough. Push this butten to enter camera mode. Push it again to take a picture. Now, this is where it falls down. I take 1 picture. I now have to press 3 menu buttons to tell the camera that yes, I want to store the picture, not mail it to somebody(which would cost monty). Until I do that, I can't take another picture. Unlike my now old-ass 2.1MP camera than I can click the button, take a higher resolution picture, wait a second or so, then take another one. I can take hundreds of pictures that way before replacing the memory card or otherwise transfering the pictures.
Same deal with the MP3 player.
Of course, I ended up selecting the phone I did primarily for low signal reception, battery life in low signal areas, and bluetooth. The camera/mp3 player functionality was supposed to be a neat bonus. As is, I'll only use the camera for emergency purposes.
Had a need to solve a cubic equation at work lately?
Surprisingly, Yes
Even programming needs zero math skills.
*snort* yeah right. Though I will admit my usage of calculus is limited.
Still, it's often the Meta learning, the learning how to learn, the reading comprehension, the process of solving problems, that are useful.
It's not everyday use, but I DO use a lot of my middle school education on occasion. High school? Programming skills, english. The history is good to know on occasion. For example, with today's economy being compared with the great depression - I actually have some measuring points because they taught a bit about it in school. Well, ok, they didn't really teach it, but they handed me a book and I read it.;)
Though I'll fully admit most of the stuff I use day to day is middle school level. I can't remember if I had basic accounting practices in middle or high school. I do know I was forced to take a business accounting class in college. Dead easy, but I don't have any problems with handling my personal finances anymore.;)
There's a difference between respecting; IE being polite, and agreeing with their actions.
I don't ask you to agree with his actions, I just think that being polite and using his actual name is the proper course of action. I don't like Clinton, but I use his proper name. I say 'Hillary' instead of "Hitlery" like some do.
After all, you're more likely to close people's ears if you're insulting.
That's pretty exorbitant for most people. In my case it's more than an entire paycheck. A few years ago it would be a month's income. I still have a 32" CRT TV that's perfectly functional, why should I spend that much money?
Come back when it's $700.
I guess it's worth it for some, and not for others
I think that's the point we're trying to make - HDTV, right now, is for the 'philes. Half of whom probably get their stuff off the internet. The 'average' consumer is also the one perfectly happy with 128kb mp3s in their IPod. Add in a half dose of aging eyes for the percentage of population above 40 and you're looking at a restricted market.
I've seen cheapo DVD players for ~$15 at Walmart as well. Magnavox even.
So 'Sub $200' isn't cheap. Try ~$100. No more than a $5 premium for the blueray version.
Oh, and another 7-10 years to get a majority of the TV's out there being HDTV. Right now from what I've heard most aren't even capable of receiving digital.
My idea was to ship electrical power using the ribbon. I'd have power stations on both ends - grid on earth, solar in orbit. As a pod rises, the solar tends to take over. For that matter you could beam power from underneath as well. Efficiency loses from atmosphere will be mostly outweighed by the cheap, easy to maintain power on the ground.
Yeah, this project, assuming it possible, would be a small percentage of the prospective bailout. Though if it was a true purchase of the bonds at market rate, you'd get at least some of that money back.
I still oppose it though, unless the bailout requires the severing of golden parachutes and such, and the purchasing of those 'poisoned' mortgages is at below market rate.
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I've seen the same thing. In order for a second vehicle to be 'worth it' from a strictly economical point of view, it's not only going to have to save it's loan payments, it's also going to have to save the insurance and taxes.
Even looking at a 20mpg vehicle vs a 40mpg one, at $4/gallon, 40k miles.
That'd be $4k savings a year. That's $333.33/month. We'll call the depreciation and maintenance even - the lower mileage vehicle is likely the more expensive one, but it's being driven less, so it'll keep it's value up more. But the more you drive the cheaper vehicle, the more it'll depreciate.
Let's say the big vehicle is $40k, and the small one $20k. We don't really care about the cost of the large vehicle, we assume it's a must. At $20k@5% for a 5 year loan, the monthly payment is going to be $377.42. Even if we figure it's only going to be $400/year to insure and title, we've already broke our goal - $4,529 a year in annual payments. We end up being almost $1k in the hole per year until the 5th year is up.
Buy a used $10k vehicle and we'll save $1,335 a year, but that involves the downside of driving an old beater when you have that nice big new vehicle in the driveway.
so just raising the bed of the truck by a foot to fit in a palette of batteries underneath seems like the best use of space.
Just bought a truck recently, looking underneath it I spotted all sorts of space between the frame rails that could be used for batteries without lifting the bed. Of course, I have a 4WD, so it's a bit higher than some 2WD models*. That includes leaving plenty of space around the axle, not going below it, etc...
It'd be a little more complicated, but not much.
Bonus: No need to add sand bags in the winter!
*Though I'm half tempted to see about lowering the thing... Easier to load/unload and might increase gas mileage. Then again, even $1k to do it would swamp any gas savings... The very problem with the article - conversions are 'gee whiz' deals because they simply cost too much.
My personal favorite: A good snowfall followed by freezing rain/sleet.
From what I can see, a lot of those problems are caused by corrosion on a battery termina,
Did you mean terminal? I'd think that a minute with a brass brush would fix any corrosion problems. Might end up being part of preventive maintenance if the corrosion leads to cell damage.
Or treating the terminal with any number of anti corrosion products. My uncle used to work in the airline industry. They had all sorts of stuff.
Rogerborg: The silver lining is that there's a nascent industry in reconditioning / recycling these batteries waiting to emerge, but only when there's enough of them dying to make it worthwhile, which means that it's a silver lining on a cloud that's raining pure acid on early adopters.
It's not like these batteries are new technology - recycling is a known technique, and you should be able to get most of your money back from the core charge they're so recyclable.
Hmm... Maybe the companies will start spending an extra $20 per pack and put in cell monitoring hooked up to the service light.
Yeah, right. Something with an 8L V8 engine needs more horsepower. How about buying a either frickin' race car (if you want to go fast) or a frickin' semi (if you want to haul stuff) instead of a truck, huh? Also, adding all that stuff also adds _weight_ to the vehicle.
My truck doesn't have an 8L V8 in it. It has a 2.7L 4 cylinder. There's also a 4L V6 available.
Adding 10-50hp, especially at 0 RPM, would substantially improve the acceleration of my truck, especially if I'm towing something. I'd get to enjoy the gas mileage of a 4cylinder with the performance of the V6.
Why put a second motor into the the car and add a whole additional bunch of points of failure when you can simply put in a bigger engine? It makes no sense.
Simple enough: 25mpg -> 35 mpg. And '100% torque at 0 RPM'. Don't forget that electric motors have far fewer points of failure than a engine.
Up here in ND half to three quarters of the vehicles you see in the ditch along the highway during winter are SUVs. Hint: They're, at most, about 25% of the vehicles. About 25% are trucks, and you hardly see them in the ditch.
Still, it's going to be my first year driving a by default RWD truck in the winter up here. At least I have the option to go 4WD now. Always had a FWD car before. Had more problems getting stuck in deep snow than sliding. The fact I was driving a coupe with a non-limited differential didn't help.
... unless you bring a generator, of course. Bonus points for mounting it on top of the car.
First thought was generator in the trunk, but then I realize 'Wait, I'm going a long distance, I want luggage in there!'.
Second thought is to put the generator into a small trailer. This provides multiple benefits. While you lose some efficiency due to the extra axle and such, you don't always need to haul it along, and it's trivial to have the trailer provide even more storage space. Put the charging plug in the back, or better yet an auxillery charging port with additional controls located next to the ball. I'm thinking engine start/stop along with the standard brake lights, turn signals, and electric brakes. Maybe a line to provide actual starting power so the trailer doesn't need it's own battery. This way the car knows when the system is hooked up, and can act appropriately(more like a hybrid than a EV).
When I worked it up, you could have a trailer about as long as a U-haul type, but only has high as the car(for aerodynamics), a little narrower, with half the space taken up by the generator system, the rest available for storage(allowing it to haul more than a SUV), with a 10-20 gallon tank. I figured the whole kit would get ~30mpg. Not great, but not horrible either. And you still get a free 100 miles or so out of the batteries each day, more if you charge up more often than nightly.
The most interesting I've seen is 'pusher' trailers - chop off the front of a FWD car, add remote controls for starting, throttle, and drive/neutral. When cruising, you start up the trailer, and it's wheels push the EV forward. Regenerative braking and electric power maintain the proper speed. Probably unsafe for more than the knowledgable hacker types currently using them.
I think we still are far off from using all electrics for a long time, till the top mileage increases to that of a current gas engine.
The tesla roadster is close, with ~240 miles to a charge.
My nightmare is having an electric car during and evacuation for a hurricane. It is hard enough now to find gas to get out, not to mention if you screw up, and are in traffice for up to 20 hours (hot days with the AC running). You'd be stranded pretty badly in an electric car...not to mention, it might be hard to work the battery swap thing here since everyone would need one at once.
Then buy a hybrid. I'd suggest(if it were economical) a PHEV with an inverter system. That way you'd have the option of using the highly efficient engine in the vehicle to provide power to your house if you chose not to evacuate, or return before power has been restored. As a bonus, if you get an effective 50mpg on fuel with a 12 gallon tank, you have almost double the range of many vehicles. You're looking at a 600 mile unrefueled range.
Heck, take it a step further and simply have a high efficiency generator at home in that case - the house has power and you can charge your pure EV.
Or, someone who thinks it's pointless to start with a friggin truck if you're trying to be fuel efficient..?
First - I kinda object to calling a Ford Escape a 'Truck'. A Truck has a bed, normally uncovered. The Escape is a SUV.
Going on - it depends on what you need. If you need a truck, and there are people who do, does it make sense to try to punish you by restricting you to the old wasteful power systems? Or do you go ahead and come out with a hybrid truck, even a PHEV?
Consider the taxis in NYC. NYC, in all it's glory, has decided that the only vehicle that meets the needs to be a taxi is a stretched crown vic that's 6" longer than even the regular vic. Recently they decided to issue some green medallians - and the hybrid that came close enough to their ideas of acceptable storage area and leg room was the Escape. Which gets something like 5 times the mileage of the crown vic. Taxi drivers love them, and there's still room in the vehicle for 3-4 people and all their luggage for a trip to/from the airport.
I do like the idea of electric vehicles btw, I just think a standard truck is a dumb place to start. Though the Ford F150 was the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years, so in a way trucks are a good place to start - but not with current models IMO. They would need to make them lightweight (but still strong, obviously) to get the best efficiency. Electric motors have good torque too so they'd be good for hauling, as long as they have enough charge..
Well, there's a lot to consider when you look at making a hybrid F-150(or equivalent). Still, there are a lot of potential benefits. Off the top of my head:
1. Weight - for towing capacity, you actually don't want the thing too light. Still, the battery pack, especially for a PHEV, is going to add a lot of weight. Best spot to put it would probably be right in front of the rear axle.
2. Space - Should have relatively few problems finding some space under the bed for it. Looking at my truck, I should be able to have boxes 6" deep and 24" wide on either side of the axle and still have quite a bit of room.
3. Structure - Trucks have to be designed to take more abuse and loading than cars. For example, an 08 F-150 is expected to be able to tow 3,700 pounds, and carry 1,976 pounds in the bed. Using advanced techniques, you could probably shave off almost as much weight as the batteries would add, but that'd get expensive, and maybe fragile. Elegent failure modes are a must.
4. Towing capacity- good and bad here. I've been learning a lot about towing recently, and the engine plays a large part here, and most importantly, not just for propulsion. When going downhill engine braking is important to keep from overheating the brakes. So the bad part - you're unlikely to be able to undersize the engine much in order to be able to tow that 3.7k pounds down the highway at 75, or up a 15 degree slope for a hundred miles, or down a 20 degree slope for 20 because a smaller engine can't brake as well. The good part - electric motors provide great torque at low velocities, easing starting from a stop, and with regenerative braking can save quite a load on the engine and/or brakes. Hmm... Might want to go the train route and put resisters on the roof to bleed off excess energy in case of a long hill. Maybe a tow mode sensor - traveling uphill, let the batteries drain. Travelling downhill, emphasis the regenerative braking.
5. Economy. Trucks, due to their relatively oversized engines, get horrible gas mileage as standard. Going from 15 mpg to 25 mpg isn't out of sight, and will pay back quickly enough to be an easy sell to somebody with the money to buy and operate a truck.
6. Commercial use. A commercial operater will know exactly how much he's using in gas, and will likely know individual vehicle's mileage. Even a modest gain in mpg would pay back quickly due to level of driving, and with gas prices the way they are, with even a minimal comparis
While you're right for 'first impression' type things, many wine snobs (and beer/whisky snobs like me) go to great lengths to develope their palates so that they can be sensitive to subtle flavors.
Which is why I spoke of tendencies and chances.
What makes a 'fine' wine? What makes a 'good' chocolate shake? A 'good' steak? Taste is ultimately a perception, an impact on a sense. So it'll vary between people.
As others have noted, the subtleties between wines can be outweighed by the taster's impression of the relative value of the bottle it came out of. Nothing against you, but that starts getting into 'golden ears' and the ensuing crazyness of stuff like $500 digital interconnects, $5k speaker cables, and $1000 wooden knobs.
I'm not that into wine, but my understanding is that you have to really work to appreciate the complexity of 'fine' wines, while the cheaper 'good' wines tend to be much more simple, and therefore easier to 'get' all at once.
Quite possibly true. Of course, I ask, is it worth it to spend all that effort to get yourself such that you end up drinking more expensive drinks?
Personally, I like my beers chewy, my wines sweet, and am not a snob at all.
Humans tend to like what they were exposed to early on in life. So, you get a 'wine snob' who started out drinking fine wines from the beginning, vs a guy who grew up drinking cheap stuff*. The guy who grew up drinking the cheap stuff has a good chance to actually prefer it.
If you grew up drinking beer, you'll probably prefer beer. And so on.
*Let's face it, most alcohol drinkers didn't wait until they were 18/21 to start drinking.
This is what I see. I figure that there'll be more games like WoW that distribute updates via peer to peer, even a movie download service comparable to iTunes. Yes, I know there are some out there, I speak more of scale of selection and scale of operation.
Multiplayer games will become more bandwidth intensive, as developers stop trying to squeeze every bit so carefully, indeed, the demands of really massive multiplayer games - imagine a FPS like counterstrike, day of defeat, team fortress, but with hundreds of players to a team, not a couple dozen like current. Bigger maps, etc...
People will demand bandwidth - and companies will respond to serve that market, or they'll be replaced.
Local phone company. Why?
more than 25% of Korea's population lives in *1* city (and well over half live in that cities metro area), and Japan fits half the population of the United States into a nation smaller than California I really don't think you're wrapping your head around the Geography of this whole thing..
Even Canada can, by writing off the remotest 10% or so of it's population, achieve an average density higher than the USA's. A lot of Canada is very, very, empty. Satellite network access is about the only option.
I get pretty good broadband, they upped my speed not long ago, and dropped the price. I used to be on a $40 2mbit plan, now I'm on a $25 4mbit plan. I'd still prefer a higher upload speed(400kbit), but I figure I'm doing pretty good for living 45 miles from the closest 'major' town.
So essentially, we'll have to bend over for as little as possible?
Given the nature of caps, essentially the least number of people will have to bend over.
Saying that if the caps remain steady for four years will result in normal users seeing it is somewhat deceptive as places with caps have a history of raising them periodically.
As a power user, we need to be aware of our monthly usage if that's part of the plan we sign up for.
Personally, I figure I use less than 100GB/month. Email - insignificant, some gaming that could almost fit over a 56k connection(if with nasty lag for today), some filesharing - but only about 10GB/month.
In general, I figure they have the cap set to an order of magnitude above the average user, assuming I'm somewhat above average.
I'd prefer they forget to consider bandwidth issues at all, because they seem to add restrictions to the service instead of improving it a lot of the time...
It's reality in some respects. The power user pays the same $20-70 that a non power user pays. The upgrades needed to satisfy the bandwidth demands of the power users could cost in the hundreds to even millions of dollars, far more than what they can expect the PU to pay. Solution? Restrict the cheaper plans so the average user doesn't notice, yet force the power user to either use less or pay to get the premium service, or perform the upgrades via a price increase on everyone, costing you average(profitable) users to cheaper services.
Update:
Xerox CopyCentre 265/275 uses a 20A plug (110-140V, 60hz, 20A)
Cost 'starts at' $16k, and prints at 65ppm.
So they do exist, they're just intendended for larger offices expecting high volumes.
My figuers are a bit different. Figure that we DO turn on various energy saving features, but not hibernate or suspend, because we're lazy and patch at night. That's another point - we wouldn't be able to charge our workers for leaving workstations on, because they're actually directed to do so for nightly patching.
Let's say such a computer settles down to 100 watts at night, for 16 hours a day. Weekend completely unused. 128 hours a week unused, could be shut off. At 100 watts, that'd be 12.8 kwh a week. Or, in my area, $1.28/week, $66.56/year at the highest energy charge($.10/kwh). Go to large volume commercial rates, it might be less than $30. Now, look at that employee who's making $30/hour. If he uses more than an hour of time a year dealing with a booting computer, it's wasting money.
Then there's the whole baseload/peak thing. A business running it's computers at night is taking up cheap baseload power. It's during the day that expensive peak power is used.
A 2kW printer would, at the least, require one of those sideways prong 20A 120V plugs (18A actual draw).
While I could see such a printer - it would be an extremely high volume one, capable of spitting out a full size book in a couple minutes.
I'd prefer it if the darned phones merely plugged into your USB port and you could pull the darned photos off the camera yourself.
I have a motorola E850. I can pull the pictures off of it via bluetooth. It doesn't have a standard USB port so I'd need an adaptor cable, and I just haven't bothered yet.
I've messed with the camera feature a couple times. Don't like it. Biggest problem: THE INTERFACE SUCKS!!!!
The first part is good enough. Push this butten to enter camera mode. Push it again to take a picture. Now, this is where it falls down. I take 1 picture. I now have to press 3 menu buttons to tell the camera that yes, I want to store the picture, not mail it to somebody(which would cost monty). Until I do that, I can't take another picture. Unlike my now old-ass 2.1MP camera than I can click the button, take a higher resolution picture, wait a second or so, then take another one. I can take hundreds of pictures that way before replacing the memory card or otherwise transfering the pictures.
Same deal with the MP3 player.
Of course, I ended up selecting the phone I did primarily for low signal reception, battery life in low signal areas, and bluetooth. The camera/mp3 player functionality was supposed to be a neat bonus. As is, I'll only use the camera for emergency purposes.
Had a need to solve a cubic equation at work lately?
Surprisingly, Yes
Even programming needs zero math skills.
*snort* yeah right. Though I will admit my usage of calculus is limited.
Still, it's often the Meta learning, the learning how to learn, the reading comprehension, the process of solving problems, that are useful.
It's not everyday use, but I DO use a lot of my middle school education on occasion. High school? Programming skills, english. The history is good to know on occasion. For example, with today's economy being compared with the great depression - I actually have some measuring points because they taught a bit about it in school. Well, ok, they didn't really teach it, but they handed me a book and I read it. ;)
Though I'll fully admit most of the stuff I use day to day is middle school level. I can't remember if I had basic accounting practices in middle or high school. I do know I was forced to take a business accounting class in college. Dead easy, but I don't have any problems with handling my personal finances anymore. ;)
There's a difference between respecting; IE being polite, and agreeing with their actions.
I don't ask you to agree with his actions, I just think that being polite and using his actual name is the proper course of action. I don't like Clinton, but I use his proper name. I say 'Hillary' instead of "Hitlery" like some do.
After all, you're more likely to close people's ears if you're insulting.
$3k NZD ~ $2k USD.
That's pretty exorbitant for most people. In my case it's more than an entire paycheck. A few years ago it would be a month's income. I still have a 32" CRT TV that's perfectly functional, why should I spend that much money?
Come back when it's $700.
I guess it's worth it for some, and not for others
I think that's the point we're trying to make - HDTV, right now, is for the 'philes. Half of whom probably get their stuff off the internet. The 'average' consumer is also the one perfectly happy with 128kb mp3s in their IPod. Add in a half dose of aging eyes for the percentage of population above 40 and you're looking at a restricted market.
I've seen cheapo DVD players for ~$15 at Walmart as well. Magnavox even.
So 'Sub $200' isn't cheap. Try ~$100. No more than a $5 premium for the blueray version.
Oh, and another 7-10 years to get a majority of the TV's out there being HDTV. Right now from what I've heard most aren't even capable of receiving digital.
My idea was to ship electrical power using the ribbon. I'd have power stations on both ends - grid on earth, solar in orbit. As a pod rises, the solar tends to take over. For that matter you could beam power from underneath as well. Efficiency loses from atmosphere will be mostly outweighed by the cheap, easy to maintain power on the ground.
dooh....
Distracted posting...
Yeah, this project, assuming it possible, would be a small percentage of the prospective bailout. Though if it was a true purchase of the bonds at market rate, you'd get at least some of that money back.
I still oppose it though, unless the bailout requires the severing of golden parachutes and such, and the purchasing of those 'poisoned' mortgages is at below market rate.