I'm sure our wasteful governments (local, state and federal) could find ways to cut back and do without the revenue?
This is part of the problem with many home level alternative power schemes. You have a $200k house, you install $40k of solar panels, you now have a $240k house.
The extra taxes on that $40k can wipe out any savings, even with subsidies. Most areas have passed at least a 10 year moratorium on counting the increased value, along with other energy saving stuff like additional insulation.
Still, it's something I'd have to consider, what good is a $20k(depreciated) solar system if it'll save me $2k in electricity costs in a year, yet cost me $2k in extra taxes and insurance? I'd be better off buying a house without the solar system, and investing the $20k.
We won't be able to start pumping Ethanol through our oil pipelines tomorrow, although we can build new pipelines and retrofit existing ones to cope with the new challenges. (Plastic pipes come to mind!)
Actually, plastic is generally worse than metal when it comes to ethanol. Still, you just have to select the right form of plastic, metal, ceramic, glass, whatever.
Still, some potential developments I've heard about don't make ethanol from biomass, it makes some sort of gasoline analoge, capable of being used in unmodified engines. Who knows, that might win out.
but lowest in the ratio government aid to private aid (its citizens are more generous the the government) and about 16th in aid per capita.
And what's wrong with that? Personally I think that aid/charity should be mostly a private matter.
16th, given the hundreds of countries, ain't bad, especially given our size and the fact we normally take care of internal incidents and disasters without counting in that international aid category.
On the other hand, given our size, aren't we generally dealing with at least one INTERNAL disaster that would trigger international aid if it occurred somewhere else? Yes, Katrina triggered international aid. But we still have various fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, industrial accidents, etc...
And we don't normally see a huge amount of aid in them. We provide it internally. Sometimes we'll get assistance from foreign governments in the form of various specialists. But not stuff like X hundreds or thousands of tons of food, equipment, etc...
Of course, I much favor a hand up type style of aid, versus a 'hand out' style of aid. The difference is that the recipient of a hand up doesn't need one the next year, while the recipient of a hand out is generally waiting there with their hand still out next year.
Unfortunately, the hand up is generally more expensive than the hand out.
It'd be more efficient to use land closer to where the stuff will be needed. The problem with the midwest is that you'd have to transport the stuff from there to be processed, and that would incur a lot of overhead.
Why not process it right there? Then you're just shipping the fuel. Heck, put a pipe in next to the seawater draw in area and pump the fuel down it for loading into barges. It's not like we don't already ship fuel accross the world by barge.
With this sort of production, it makes more sense to set up centers based on usage. Remember, the great thing about bacteria is that they can be easily farmed vertically so we could get the same area without having to have to use purely horizontal cultivation.
There's economy of scale benefits as well; which is why I think that a consumer level rooftop installation is unlikely. I suggested the southwest deserts because land is cheap there, sun is plentiful, and ultimately speaking, rail or barge transportation isn't that expensive(yet, and could be fueled bye the centers). As for vertical farming, depends on how much sun the bacteria need/can use. Though it would be neat to have the south faces of skyscrapers be giant bacteria stacks for fuel.
Depending on a number of variables; vertical construction is likely to be more expensive than horizontal construction. Especially if land is cheap. As it would be in Texas/Nevada/Arizona
Well, the first step in a algae, bacterial, etc... solution would be to use artificial means for producing them, such as trays out somewhere in the desert. You simply pump in seawater if your process can use salt water. Many designs I saw were fairly water neutral, only needing enough to replace the liquid fuel being shipped out(the H in the hydrocarbons comes from water, so that water has to be replaced). That way it's not in the ocean.
As you'd be controlling everything, the problems you point out shouldn't happen. One I remember is that you have feedstock(algae and nutrient water mix) enter one side of a 'stack'. Over time the water/algae mix moves down the stack until it's harvested at the bottom. Some of the algae is seperated and sent back to the top of the stack to keep that going.
Could even be a bit 'U' shape to keep that part short.
And yes, variable compression ratio would be a good idea, and might actually allow you to run either gasoline or ethanol efficiently. Still, I'm of the mind that the most efficient ethanol engine will still be a dedicated ethanol engine. Variable compression would still help, of course. Might become common simply due to the transition phase.
I'd tend to go with a gravity system as being gentler to the bacteria and ultimately cheaper.
As the other poster mentioned; a good point is that it's not a 'all bacteria MUST survive extraction', if even 10% survive, it might only be a couple days until they're back to the old population level.
You'd probably see more profit* going solar than trying for this. Biological processes can be tricky, and you'd still need the equipment to convert the cellulose to ethanol. Filters and storage tanks. Etc...
Personally, I'd vote for more or less empty desert areas in Texas and Nevada and such, using pumped in sea water.
*IE your balance sheet would be less red at the end of the day, at least for now.
I was figuring a desert type environment, with salt water pumped in more or less straight to provide the water would be a lot cheaper than many other environments. Fresh water is getting expensive.
As for release into the wild, most likely not a big deal - conditions conductive to their growth isn't universal, areas conductive probably have non-altered species of cyanobacteria already that are more competitive.
But it's carbon that came out of the atmosphere in the growing of the corn(or other biomass), so it's carbon neutral.
No 'might as well be one'.
The lower energy density can be fixed a couple ways. One simple method would be to simply increase the size of the gas tank. The other, smarter way if E85 or even E100 becomes common would be to cut the tie to gasoline. Specifically 'Regular'. Ethanol has an extremely high octane rating, you can build a very high compression engine for it and gain back enough efficiency to make up the gas mileage. Only problem is that you wouldn't be able to fill the tank with gasoline. Well, you could go halfway and just have to fill up on premium if you can't get ethanol. It'd work as long as you can normally get ethanol, but as I can't, I wouldn't get such a vehicle.
I read that one car has a computer controlled turbo that would ramp up the effective compression when running on ethanol to get extra power and even efficiency.
Indeed it would pull CO2 from the air in the process. Burning it as fuel would release it again.
This would be considered a renewable fuel. This seems to be a variation on the proposals I've seen for vast farms of algae/plankton etc... You set up the systems out in the desert somewhere, draw off the growth and process it into fuel, whether that be ethanol or biodiesel.
The quirk here is that you can apparently harvest without taking/killing the bacteria, which is an interesting twist. I wonder how you filter out the cellulose and glucose and stuff without killing the bacteria? I'd imagine a filter small enough to catch the bacteria would clog quickly and easily, or the bacteria would tend to pile up and have the first ones end up crushed.
Maybe it's some sort of gravitational seperation system.
Money. You're essentially going from 1 battery system for your car to two. One in the car for driving, one in the garage to store the energy for a fast charge.
For the garage I'd actually look into flywheel energy systems. They tend to beat chemical solutions in larger amounts, especially when you don't particularly care about mass.
Recycling of anything other than electronics and batteries is a bunch of horseshit at this point
I'd substitute 'metals' for electronics. Most electronic recycling isn't very profitable. Various metal items can be recycled efficiently enough that there are yards that will pay *you* to bring them in.
Aluminum can be recycled quite economically, as can copper and steel. Gold and Silver. Even Lead.
Plastic bottles? Not so much. Glass? Depends on landfill costs and how close a lenient glass factory is.
Probably take a titration stack; IE 'oil refinery'.
It'll probably need post processing no matter what just for quality control, lubrication, additives, and such.
At 50% efficiency, if we assume that the extra processing increases cost to $3/gallon, it'd still make sense, at least for local areas around the plant. Due to transportation costs, $3/gallon at the refinery isn't cost effective(yet). Get it to 75% efficient, $2/gallon cost, and it probably will be. Then there's the question of feedstock cost. Is the $1/gallon estimate including having to pay for feedstock, or is it the processing cost?
I'll agree that yes, you should regularly check that stuff, and I'd call the wipers a maintenance item, as I'm really picky about my wipers and replace them often as a result.
Still, wipers are in common with all vehicles. Brakes should be lifetime on an EV with regenerative braking due to reduced usage of the brake pads. Bulbs? I've had one go out in 5 years.
Interestingly enough, you might still have radiator fluid to worry about, and therefore a coolant pump. Some of the EV systems I've been reading about use water cooling for the control circuits and motor.
Major expense wise, though, Tires should be the biggest item on a EV. Figure $400 every couple years, depending on driving. You eliminate oil changes - figure $30@3 months, $120/year. Belts, spark plugs, etc... Might have some parts needing greasing with the tire change.
One additional point, you aren't taking in the disposal costs of the HIGHLY TOXIC batteries. Yes, some can be recycled, but many cannot. What do we do about those? ICE vehicles are 99% recyclable. Hybrids and Electrics are not, due to the batteries.
While I agree with most of your post, I have to chime up here. There are three battery types commonly used in EVs. All are essentially 100% recyclable.
Lead Acid - there are places that will pay you for your car battery. Very, Very recyclable NiMH - recyclable. Due to small size of many cells, many people don't bother though. Wouldn't be the case for a EV battery. LiIon - recycable.
Actually, most small (sub compact) size electric cars have similar ranges to gas powered cars
Do you have figures on that? I've always figured that the range for a gasoline car is ~300 miles. All the EV sites I've seen touting economical EVs(excludes the Telsa) is around 100 miles.
As for recharge time, it's all dependant on two factors. Well, one usually ends up being the limiter. The first is battery chemistry. You can only charge a lead-acid battery so fast. NiMH is a bit faster, and you have a better 'fast charge' ability. LiIon is better yet, though it gets really slow near the end. The second is the wattage capacity of your charging system.
If all you have is a 120V outlet, you're only going to be able to push about 1.5KWh into the batteries in an hour. 2KWh for a 'heavy duty' 20Amp dedicated circuit. Switch to a dryer type outlet at 240V@30A, and you're up to 6KWh. Which would fill most EV batteries in about 3 hours. The Tesla, sportscar that it is, has a 53KWh battery. That dryer outlet would take 9 hours to charge it from empty. There's nothing except the pain of handling 000 gauge* wires and running most of a modern house's capacity to it to keep you from charging it in just over an hour. Well, assuming the charging system can keep up. Of course, at that point a transformer and kicking the voltage up to levels only line workers normally see**.
However, electric cars are so much more efficient that california would end up with GOBS more power if they simply redirected the gas for cars into powerplants.
Better yet, just burn the crude oil, better still, build nuclear plants, wind farms, etc... Leave the gasoline for other areas.
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market.
They've been a niche market for the last 100+. Look up Jay Leno's antique electric car.
However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable.
Not yet. You can obtain a ~35 mpg gasoline car for around $15k. Zap wants $14k for a truck with a max speed of 25mph, a payload capacity of 770 pounds, and a range of 30 miles. Great for zipping around a warehouse, not so great for commuting in most areas. The Zap-X, which looks like a car has a ESRP of $60k. The Tesla is $100k.
Conversion kits seem to run around $10k, excluding the batteries.
Even if you assume power is free, in many cases battery aging and replacement needs exceed the cost of the gasoline in and of itself.
It is getting better, but slowly.
With near term developments in super capcitors and batteries, the range of applications will increase, the fueling times will decrease and the cost will drop.
Fueling times, at this point, are generally limited by infrastructure. There's not magic bullet out there to make batteries cheap enough to make them the right choice anytime in the near future, I'm afraid.
*IE bloody huge **lethal very quickly if not done right. I'm thinking 600-1000V. A thousand volts could handle the charge using 'only' 4 or 5 gauge wire. Still going to look and handle worse than a garden hose full of water.
Personally, what I think that IP product* companies and people need to concentrate less on surpressing piracy and more on attracting customers and profit.
Just like a storefront business doesn't perform the measures necessary to stop 100% of shoplifting, music companies shouldn't either. Why? Because the draconian measures necessary piss of the paying customers, ultimately costing sales. So a store will go: In order to drop our shrink rate from 1% to.5% we'd have to institute 100% bag checking. This will cost X hours of employee labor at Y rate, plus cost us Z business as people stop shopping here. It's not worth that 50% reduction.
I suggest the music industry concentrate less on trying to stop piracy, especially with draconian DRM, and start trying to please customers. Offer me a good, convienent deal, and I'll take it.
Over 50% of my media problems have been traced to DRM. Software refusing to run, having to enter key codes, tracking down key codes to install. Media refusing I legitimately paid for refusing to play until I crack the DRM.
You might not be able to beat the pirate's price, but you can beat their quality and convenience. People are willing to pay for that.
I don't even know why we are discussing this, because the market should (and is) making clear what it wants, and what it can provide. The biggest inhibitor right now is the market cannibalising itself in the form of piracy.
You sure about that? I've read before that something like 90% of the pirates wouldn't have bought the stuff in the first place. Thus, no lost sale.
The very success of iTunes indicates that the pirates can be, if not beat, at least ignored as there are plenty of people willing to pony up the money if the music industry can produce a product they want.
What you can't assume is that there will be a flock of dedicated people waiting to give up all their free time for free to fill the music gap (even for the modest $800 price tag).
Why not? Music is like sports - for every professional there are hundreds of 'wanted to bes'. People not quite good or lucky enough to make it. Besides, it doesn't take many today, especially with the internet. Figure $1k to create the Album, another $1k or so will get you a thousand professionally pressed CDs. Let's say you sell them at small concerts, bar appearances, etc... If you can sell them at $10@ea, that's a 5 to 1 return, assuming the gigs pay for themselves otherwise. At 10 CDs a gig, 2 gigs a week, the supply will be gone in less than a year.
At the same time, you put your music up on some of the small artist friendly sites.
$8k a year isn't much, but add it on to the profits from the gigs themselves, the clever tshirts, etc...
For a more 'full time' bandbe $8k - Gig CD sales $16k - online CD sales $10k - T-shirt/poster/etc... sales $200k - concert tickets.(100 gigs/year, 100 people a gig, $20 profit per person) Total: $244k, over 4 members, $61k each.
I'd call that a living wage. Wild guesses all, of course, and a lot of it depends. For example, I know that there are many people who make a living merely singing in clubs. So it can be done.
without me having to pay upstream because I only bought one copy
This is the falling down point. Otherwise, there's little other than expense and preference to prevent such a system you're talking about from being used. I think it's even been tried.
I think it's even been tried. Licensing fees are the usual sticking point, not so much because you need the server to keep track of what songs sold, which is easy, but because most of the labels wanted as much per track as they'd get per CD. So their being greedy killed the business.
So it would work, just you'd have a fairly large monthly check to send to each of the recording labels, depending on the usage of the machine. In today's MP3 age, you might even be able to get them to bend on the pricing part now.
Furthermore, the protocol itself may have corner conditions or situations that make it difficult to implement unless you know the "tricks" of the implementation. These too can be trade secrets.
Very true. That's what I'd figure as a 'trade secret'; sure, I could start creating a duplicate interfacing protocol in a few weeks given a packet analyzer, but my product would likely be plagued with bugs and quirks for quite some time, assuming the protocol has any complexity to it.
Plus, part of the license terms might have Microsoft notifying samba whenever they go to change the protocol. Which, given that it's a propriatory protocol, they can do without notice. Much to the pain of their users.
This is a bigger thing than you might realize. Going by your music example, it's like trying to learn how to play a symphony from listening to it.
Buying the 'license' gets you the sheet music and the assistance of the author.
Saving that much effort does save $$$ and as long as Microsoft wasn't being too greedy(possibly realizing that samba would be able to reverse engineer it soon enough no matter what), it'd be cheaper to pay the money than perform the otherwise necessary back engineering.
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I'm sure our wasteful governments (local, state and federal) could find ways to cut back and do without the revenue?
This is part of the problem with many home level alternative power schemes. You have a $200k house, you install $40k of solar panels, you now have a $240k house.
The extra taxes on that $40k can wipe out any savings, even with subsidies. Most areas have passed at least a 10 year moratorium on counting the increased value, along with other energy saving stuff like additional insulation.
Still, it's something I'd have to consider, what good is a $20k(depreciated) solar system if it'll save me $2k in electricity costs in a year, yet cost me $2k in extra taxes and insurance? I'd be better off buying a house without the solar system, and investing the $20k.
We won't be able to start pumping Ethanol through our oil pipelines tomorrow, although we can build new pipelines and retrofit existing ones to cope with the new challenges. (Plastic pipes come to mind!)
Actually, plastic is generally worse than metal when it comes to ethanol. Still, you just have to select the right form of plastic, metal, ceramic, glass, whatever.
Still, some potential developments I've heard about don't make ethanol from biomass, it makes some sort of gasoline analoge, capable of being used in unmodified engines. Who knows, that might win out.
but lowest in the ratio government aid to private aid (its citizens are more generous the the government) and about 16th in aid per capita.
And what's wrong with that? Personally I think that aid/charity should be mostly a private matter.
16th, given the hundreds of countries, ain't bad, especially given our size and the fact we normally take care of internal incidents and disasters without counting in that international aid category.
On the other hand, given our size, aren't we generally dealing with at least one INTERNAL disaster that would trigger international aid if it occurred somewhere else? Yes, Katrina triggered international aid. But we still have various fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, industrial accidents, etc...
And we don't normally see a huge amount of aid in them. We provide it internally. Sometimes we'll get assistance from foreign governments in the form of various specialists. But not stuff like X hundreds or thousands of tons of food, equipment, etc...
Of course, I much favor a hand up type style of aid, versus a 'hand out' style of aid. The difference is that the recipient of a hand up doesn't need one the next year, while the recipient of a hand out is generally waiting there with their hand still out next year.
Unfortunately, the hand up is generally more expensive than the hand out.
It'd be more efficient to use land closer to where the stuff will be needed. The problem with the midwest is that you'd have to transport the stuff from there to be processed, and that would incur a lot of overhead.
Why not process it right there? Then you're just shipping the fuel. Heck, put a pipe in next to the seawater draw in area and pump the fuel down it for loading into barges. It's not like we don't already ship fuel accross the world by barge.
With this sort of production, it makes more sense to set up centers based on usage. Remember, the great thing about bacteria is that they can be easily farmed vertically so we could get the same area without having to have to use purely horizontal cultivation.
There's economy of scale benefits as well; which is why I think that a consumer level rooftop installation is unlikely. I suggested the southwest deserts because land is cheap there, sun is plentiful, and ultimately speaking, rail or barge transportation isn't that expensive(yet, and could be fueled bye the centers). As for vertical farming, depends on how much sun the bacteria need/can use. Though it would be neat to have the south faces of skyscrapers be giant bacteria stacks for fuel.
Depending on a number of variables; vertical construction is likely to be more expensive than horizontal construction. Especially if land is cheap. As it would be in Texas/Nevada/Arizona
Well, the first step in a algae, bacterial, etc... solution would be to use artificial means for producing them, such as trays out somewhere in the desert. You simply pump in seawater if your process can use salt water. Many designs I saw were fairly water neutral, only needing enough to replace the liquid fuel being shipped out(the H in the hydrocarbons comes from water, so that water has to be replaced). That way it's not in the ocean.
As you'd be controlling everything, the problems you point out shouldn't happen. One I remember is that you have feedstock(algae and nutrient water mix) enter one side of a 'stack'. Over time the water/algae mix moves down the stack until it's harvested at the bottom. Some of the algae is seperated and sent back to the top of the stack to keep that going.
Could even be a bit 'U' shape to keep that part short.
And yes, variable compression ratio would be a good idea, and might actually allow you to run either gasoline or ethanol efficiently. Still, I'm of the mind that the most efficient ethanol engine will still be a dedicated ethanol engine. Variable compression would still help, of course. Might become common simply due to the transition phase.
I'd tend to go with a gravity system as being gentler to the bacteria and ultimately cheaper.
As the other poster mentioned; a good point is that it's not a 'all bacteria MUST survive extraction', if even 10% survive, it might only be a couple days until they're back to the old population level.
You'd probably see more profit* going solar than trying for this. Biological processes can be tricky, and you'd still need the equipment to convert the cellulose to ethanol. Filters and storage tanks. Etc...
Personally, I'd vote for more or less empty desert areas in Texas and Nevada and such, using pumped in sea water.
*IE your balance sheet would be less red at the end of the day, at least for now.
I was figuring a desert type environment, with salt water pumped in more or less straight to provide the water would be a lot cheaper than many other environments. Fresh water is getting expensive.
As for release into the wild, most likely not a big deal - conditions conductive to their growth isn't universal, areas conductive probably have non-altered species of cyanobacteria already that are more competitive.
But it's carbon that came out of the atmosphere in the growing of the corn(or other biomass), so it's carbon neutral.
No 'might as well be one'.
The lower energy density can be fixed a couple ways. One simple method would be to simply increase the size of the gas tank. The other, smarter way if E85 or even E100 becomes common would be to cut the tie to gasoline. Specifically 'Regular'. Ethanol has an extremely high octane rating, you can build a very high compression engine for it and gain back enough efficiency to make up the gas mileage. Only problem is that you wouldn't be able to fill the tank with gasoline. Well, you could go halfway and just have to fill up on premium if you can't get ethanol. It'd work as long as you can normally get ethanol, but as I can't, I wouldn't get such a vehicle.
I read that one car has a computer controlled turbo that would ramp up the effective compression when running on ethanol to get extra power and even efficiency.
Indeed it would pull CO2 from the air in the process. Burning it as fuel would release it again.
This would be considered a renewable fuel. This seems to be a variation on the proposals I've seen for vast farms of algae/plankton etc... You set up the systems out in the desert somewhere, draw off the growth and process it into fuel, whether that be ethanol or biodiesel.
The quirk here is that you can apparently harvest without taking/killing the bacteria, which is an interesting twist. I wonder how you filter out the cellulose and glucose and stuff without killing the bacteria? I'd imagine a filter small enough to catch the bacteria would clog quickly and easily, or the bacteria would tend to pile up and have the first ones end up crushed.
Maybe it's some sort of gravitational seperation system.
Who the heck tosses a car into a landfill? All that steel is highly recyclable.
Money. You're essentially going from 1 battery system for your car to two. One in the car for driving, one in the garage to store the energy for a fast charge.
For the garage I'd actually look into flywheel energy systems. They tend to beat chemical solutions in larger amounts, especially when you don't particularly care about mass.
It isn't just Volvo working on it. There's also a hyrdolic system that promises to be even more efficient than electric versions.
Cost just needs to come down a bit...
Recycling of anything other than electronics and batteries is a bunch of horseshit at this point
I'd substitute 'metals' for electronics. Most electronic recycling isn't very profitable. Various metal items can be recycled efficiently enough that there are yards that will pay *you* to bring them in.
Aluminum can be recycled quite economically, as can copper and steel. Gold and Silver. Even Lead.
Plastic bottles? Not so much. Glass? Depends on landfill costs and how close a lenient glass factory is.
Why wouldn't they just do that stuff at the pump?
Probably take a titration stack; IE 'oil refinery'.
It'll probably need post processing no matter what just for quality control, lubrication, additives, and such.
At 50% efficiency, if we assume that the extra processing increases cost to $3/gallon, it'd still make sense, at least for local areas around the plant. Due to transportation costs, $3/gallon at the refinery isn't cost effective(yet). Get it to 75% efficient, $2/gallon cost, and it probably will be. Then there's the question of feedstock cost. Is the $1/gallon estimate including having to pay for feedstock, or is it the processing cost?
I'll agree that yes, you should regularly check that stuff, and I'd call the wipers a maintenance item, as I'm really picky about my wipers and replace them often as a result.
Still, wipers are in common with all vehicles. Brakes should be lifetime on an EV with regenerative braking due to reduced usage of the brake pads. Bulbs? I've had one go out in 5 years.
Interestingly enough, you might still have radiator fluid to worry about, and therefore a coolant pump. Some of the EV systems I've been reading about use water cooling for the control circuits and motor.
Major expense wise, though, Tires should be the biggest item on a EV. Figure $400 every couple years, depending on driving. You eliminate oil changes - figure $30@3 months, $120/year. Belts, spark plugs, etc... Might have some parts needing greasing with the tire change.
One additional point, you aren't taking in the disposal costs of the HIGHLY TOXIC batteries. Yes, some can be recycled, but many cannot. What do we do about those? ICE vehicles are 99% recyclable. Hybrids and Electrics are not, due to the batteries.
While I agree with most of your post, I have to chime up here. There are three battery types commonly used in EVs. All are essentially 100% recyclable.
Lead Acid - there are places that will pay you for your car battery. Very, Very recyclable
NiMH - recyclable. Due to small size of many cells, many people don't bother though. Wouldn't be the case for a EV battery.
LiIon - recycable.
Actually, most small (sub compact) size electric cars have similar ranges to gas powered cars
Do you have figures on that? I've always figured that the range for a gasoline car is ~300 miles. All the EV sites I've seen touting economical EVs(excludes the Telsa) is around 100 miles.
As for recharge time, it's all dependant on two factors. Well, one usually ends up being the limiter. The first is battery chemistry. You can only charge a lead-acid battery so fast. NiMH is a bit faster, and you have a better 'fast charge' ability. LiIon is better yet, though it gets really slow near the end. The second is the wattage capacity of your charging system.
If all you have is a 120V outlet, you're only going to be able to push about 1.5KWh into the batteries in an hour. 2KWh for a 'heavy duty' 20Amp dedicated circuit. Switch to a dryer type outlet at 240V@30A, and you're up to 6KWh. Which would fill most EV batteries in about 3 hours. The Tesla, sportscar that it is, has a 53KWh battery. That dryer outlet would take 9 hours to charge it from empty. There's nothing except the pain of handling 000 gauge* wires and running most of a modern house's capacity to it to keep you from charging it in just over an hour. Well, assuming the charging system can keep up. Of course, at that point a transformer and kicking the voltage up to levels only line workers normally see**.
However, electric cars are so much more efficient that california would end up with GOBS more power if they simply redirected the gas for cars into powerplants.
Better yet, just burn the crude oil, better still, build nuclear plants, wind farms, etc... Leave the gasoline for other areas.
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market.
They've been a niche market for the last 100+. Look up Jay Leno's antique electric car.
However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable.
Not yet. You can obtain a ~35 mpg gasoline car for around $15k. Zap wants $14k for a truck with a max speed of 25mph, a payload capacity of 770 pounds, and a range of 30 miles. Great for zipping around a warehouse, not so great for commuting in most areas. The Zap-X, which looks like a car has a ESRP of $60k. The Tesla is $100k.
Conversion kits seem to run around $10k, excluding the batteries.
Even if you assume power is free, in many cases battery aging and replacement needs exceed the cost of the gasoline in and of itself.
It is getting better, but slowly.
With near term developments in super capcitors and batteries, the range of applications will increase, the fueling times will decrease and the cost will drop.
Fueling times, at this point, are generally limited by infrastructure. There's not magic bullet out there to make batteries cheap enough to make them the right choice anytime in the near future, I'm afraid.
*IE bloody huge
**lethal very quickly if not done right. I'm thinking 600-1000V. A thousand volts could handle the charge using 'only' 4 or 5 gauge wire. Still going to look and handle worse than a garden hose full of water.
Personally, what I think that IP product* companies and people need to concentrate less on surpressing piracy and more on attracting customers and profit.
.5% we'd have to institute 100% bag checking. This will cost X hours of employee labor at Y rate, plus cost us Z business as people stop shopping here. It's not worth that 50% reduction.
Just like a storefront business doesn't perform the measures necessary to stop 100% of shoplifting, music companies shouldn't either. Why? Because the draconian measures necessary piss of the paying customers, ultimately costing sales. So a store will go: In order to drop our shrink rate from 1% to
I suggest the music industry concentrate less on trying to stop piracy, especially with draconian DRM, and start trying to please customers. Offer me a good, convienent deal, and I'll take it.
Over 50% of my media problems have been traced to DRM. Software refusing to run, having to enter key codes, tracking down key codes to install. Media refusing I legitimately paid for refusing to play until I crack the DRM.
You might not be able to beat the pirate's price, but you can beat their quality and convenience. People are willing to pay for that.
*Such as music, movies, books, etc...
The usual job I hear that analogy used for is the buggy whip maker instead of blacksmiths.
;)
Yeah, for the GP, there are still buggy whip makers. There's just a lot fewer of them now.
Blacksmiths, for the most part, I think have transitioned to 'machinists'.
I don't even know why we are discussing this, because the market should (and is) making clear what it wants, and what it can provide. The biggest inhibitor right now is the market cannibalising itself in the form of piracy.
You sure about that? I've read before that something like 90% of the pirates wouldn't have bought the stuff in the first place. Thus, no lost sale.
The very success of iTunes indicates that the pirates can be, if not beat, at least ignored as there are plenty of people willing to pony up the money if the music industry can produce a product they want.
What you can't assume is that there will be a flock of dedicated people waiting to give up all their free time for free to fill the music gap (even for the modest $800 price tag).
Why not? Music is like sports - for every professional there are hundreds of 'wanted to bes'. People not quite good or lucky enough to make it. Besides, it doesn't take many today, especially with the internet. Figure $1k to create the Album, another $1k or so will get you a thousand professionally pressed CDs. Let's say you sell them at small concerts, bar appearances, etc... If you can sell them at $10@ea, that's a 5 to 1 return, assuming the gigs pay for themselves otherwise. At 10 CDs a gig, 2 gigs a week, the supply will be gone in less than a year.
At the same time, you put your music up on some of the small artist friendly sites.
$8k a year isn't much, but add it on to the profits from the gigs themselves, the clever tshirts, etc...
For a more 'full time' bandbe
$8k - Gig CD sales
$16k - online CD sales
$10k - T-shirt/poster/etc... sales
$200k - concert tickets.(100 gigs/year, 100 people a gig, $20 profit per person)
Total: $244k, over 4 members, $61k each.
I'd call that a living wage. Wild guesses all, of course, and a lot of it depends. For example, I know that there are many people who make a living merely singing in clubs. So it can be done.
without me having to pay upstream because I only bought one copy
This is the falling down point. Otherwise, there's little other than expense and preference to prevent such a system you're talking about from being used. I think it's even been tried.
I think it's even been tried. Licensing fees are the usual sticking point, not so much because you need the server to keep track of what songs sold, which is easy, but because most of the labels wanted as much per track as they'd get per CD. So their being greedy killed the business.
So it would work, just you'd have a fairly large monthly check to send to each of the recording labels, depending on the usage of the machine. In today's MP3 age, you might even be able to get them to bend on the pricing part now.
Furthermore, the protocol itself may have corner conditions or situations that make it difficult to implement unless you know the "tricks" of the implementation. These too can be trade secrets.
Very true. That's what I'd figure as a 'trade secret'; sure, I could start creating a duplicate interfacing protocol in a few weeks given a packet analyzer, but my product would likely be plagued with bugs and quirks for quite some time, assuming the protocol has any complexity to it.
Plus, part of the license terms might have Microsoft notifying samba whenever they go to change the protocol. Which, given that it's a propriatory protocol, they can do without notice. Much to the pain of their users.
Which leaves documentation
This is a bigger thing than you might realize. Going by your music example, it's like trying to learn how to play a symphony from listening to it.
Buying the 'license' gets you the sheet music and the assistance of the author.
Saving that much effort does save $$$ and as long as Microsoft wasn't being too greedy(possibly realizing that samba would be able to reverse engineer it soon enough no matter what), it'd be cheaper to pay the money than perform the otherwise necessary back engineering.