estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available.
Uh, there's your problem. I know conservation isn't as sexy as buying a new hi-tech solution to ease the guilt, but our own wastefulness is our greatest resource.
If you want to get an intimate feel for writing programs without being able to waste resources, try embedded systems programming. The microchip 10F series has only a few dozen bytes of ram, and a couple hundred words of flash. And no hardware multiply. Making it do useful things is an art. Oh, and unlike some relic from the 70's, you can actually get a job programming for tiny microcontrollers.
Agreed on all of the above, but the experience of working on the relics will translate to modern embedded systems sufficiently well that I think there is value. In many cases the relics will be even slower and be more RAM- and ROM-constrained than all but the the tiniest of today's embedded microcontrollers.
Which grants more freedom? * taking the train to an interview or driving
Definitely the train, here. On the train I can be absolutely guaranteed to arrive on schedule. In traffic? Who knows.
taking the train/bus to get groceries or driving
Both of those options sound pretty bad. If you can't walk to get groceries, something is seriously wrong with your city planning.
packing the kids up and taking the train to grandmas -or- driving
Oh I see where you're going with this. You've never so much as visited a place that has excellent rail service, so you don't even have a way to imagine how well it works.
Amtrak is going to get referenced a lot in this thread, but it's a terrible point of reference for judging the merits of rail travel, high speed or otherwise. If you've ever been to Europe, Japan, or anywhere with real quality rail service, you surely know that Amtrak's only contribution is that it serves as an example of how not to build and operate your national rail service.
Why did they have to drag $500 bug-finding bounties into this? Quoth TFA:
it's a small fraction of what the company would have to pay a full-time professional.
It's a REWARD, not an offer of employment. There is a "missing cat" poster on my block, but (applying the logic of TFA's author) I would have to be CRAZY to bother searching for it, because the reward is only $25 -- a small fraction of what it would cost for a full time cat searcher. I could never make a living searching for lost cats!
And as people pointed out the first time around, medical devices are tested extensively before being deployed. I am an ardent free software supporter, but the safety/reliability issue is simply the wrong argument. I would say the more important argument when it comes to medical software is control -- do you really want to have a corporation that you have absolutely no control over to be in control of a device that sustains your very life? What happens if that company goes bankrupt, and the source code dies with the company? What if they decide they want to start charging people a yearly fee for using their pacemakers (a situation that does not seem too far fetched, given what I have seen proprietary software companies do in the past)?
I'd say those are all safety and reliability issues.
They take so long to build... and they're so bloody expensive.
Burning coal, the only large-scale practical alternative at present, is very expensive, too. You just don't pay all the costs with your monthly energy bill.
(And before anybody starts, yes, I'd love to see wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources grow to represent a significant fraction of the base load energy mix, too, but even under the most optimistic assumptions there is no practical way that will happen in the next few decades. There is no 100% solution.)
I think that our real emphasis needs to be on needs to be the successful implementation of renewable energy sources in automobiles.
That will go a long way, but there will not be single solution. Conservation is another approach with great potential: Our own wastefulness is a huge resource, waiting to be tapped.
Emissions free where? At the point of final energy usage?
I'm probably feeding a troll, because this shouldn't have to be spelled out every time: Obviously it means no emissions at the vehicle itself (which is quite valuable, all else being equal) and, as with electric road vehicles, reduced upstream emissions due to improved efficiency, multiple energy sources, and simpler manufacturing.
The point of a series hybrid is not to maximize battery-only range
No, terminology confusion aside, that is absolutely the point, at least as far as concerns any credible automaker with a hybrid program. Efficiency is the goal, and the point of a plug-in series hybrid is to drive in "EV mode" most of the time, because (even while dragging around a full-scale IC engine system) the vehicle is dramatically more efficient in this mode.
If you're not using most of your EV range in the design application, then your energy storage is too great, and energy storage is incredibly expensive (on the order of $100/mile).
There are other reasons for building hybrids (e.g. some people just want to reduce oil consumption at any cost) but, barring some outside (e.g., political) influence, cars are not built for these reasons.
GM has frankly proven themselves to be largely incompetent and incapable of existing without purpose-bought legislation
...and they're the only credible automaker with a plug-in series hybrid program. That ought to tell you something.
The assumptions you make about power requirements
...are based on the goal of engineering real products in the real world.
I've never personally had to design a vehicle to pass federal crash test standards.
Series hybrids are harder to do, that is the actual reason.
"Harder" is a bit of a dodge. In an engineering context, "harder" usually means "more expensive to design/manufacture" or "less efficient".
And you DO NOT need 50-80kW to maintain cruising on the typical vehicle, 80kW is 107HP which is at least four times what you need to get a Prius to cruise on flat ground with those skinny tires and its aerodynamic profile.
Your imaginary series hybrid isn't going to be very fun to drive if you engineer it with only enough power to cruise at constant speed on level ground. If you ever intend to accelerate from a stop or drive up a hill you will need substantially more power. The battery system can't contribute significant additional power unless:
- You operate the IC engine prior to depleting the battery (but remember, the whole point was to maximize the battery-only range)
OR
- You buffer surplus IC power via the battery. In this case you need a bare minimum 40 kW IC engine (note that the Volt is presently spec'd at ~55 kW) and you can say goodbye to overall efficiency approaching that of modern parallel hybrids.
No offense intended, but I'm about done with this thread. Series hybrids will certainly continue to appear attractive and simple, especially to engineers (amrchair style and otherwise) who have never even attempted to build one. The reality is that the engineering trade-offs are enormous, and probably not worthwhile in the general case. GM is wagering that the cost and inefficiency is worth the "comfort" factor in getting people to adopt electrics. I'm not aware of any other credible series hybrid project that is on its way to market.
There are vehicle/trailer-mountable generators and appropriate trailers readily available as commodity items.
Not that can sustain 50-80 kW, which is about what you need for a small passenger vehicle. Remember, the idea is to operate the generator after the electric system is depleted, so you need to provide 100% of traction power. Unless this is an oddball vehicle that can't drive in the mountains or accelerate comparably to other vehicles on the road, you need more power than you realize.
The "commodity" generators in this class tend to weigh several tons and cost between $10,000 and $30,000.
That's only true if the engine is only run at peak efficiency, which is not generally the case in parallel hybrids, but is generally the case in series ones.
This is also often claimed, and there is a grain of truth, here, but it's not of much practical value, because in a series hybrid configuration you do have to vary the power output (considerably) to match road load. Otherwise, you're buffering power output with the electrical system, and the round-trip (in)efficiency of doing so more than counteracts the "engine peak efficiency" theory.
Bottom line: It is not a coincidence that Toyota's Prius and virtually every other hybrid on the road uses a parallel configuration.
Speaking of AC Propulsion, I always thought the tZero was a great idea, particularly the towed engine for long range travel. Any idea why Tesla hasn't replicated this?
The "range extending trailer" represents an enormous amount of engineering (i.e. cost) relative to its utility. A battery electric vehicle with 100-mile range is already a good fit for between 90 and 95% of what we do with light-duty vehicles today. There are several prominent strategies for making the vehicles suitable for the remaining 5 or 10% of use cases, including:
large batteries ("as far as you'd ever want to drive in a day"--to some extent this is Tesla's approach with the Roadster)
series hybrids (range extending trailers are a variation on this)
battery swapping (exchange your empty battery for a fully-charged one)
pervasive public charging infrastructure
HVDC (high voltage DC, or "fast") charging
All of these strategies come at significant cost, but are based on the false premise that battery electrics must meet the needs of 100% of drivers. In reality, we can use the right tool for the job--electrics for 90% of our needs, with other specialized vehicles filling in the gaps.
In particular, series hybrids (which is really what the range-extending trailer is) are the worst of both worlds in many significant ways: They come burdened with the cost and weight of the entire IC engine system even when operated as electrics, but in long range mode they will always be less efficient than a parallel hybrid arrangement.
I thought they got a big loan from the government at obscenely low interest rate for a venture capital startup?
Tesla is perilously low on cash, and the government loan can't be used to fund operations. Although not quite this simple, it's basically only available for capital investments.
No, like most modern high-powered variable speed motors, they're synchronous polyphase AC motors driven by a variable frequency drive.
Close, but no: While synchronous motors are indeed most common in shipping vehicles today, Tesla, like AC Propulsion (from which Tesla licensed its technology) uses asynchronous AC motors.
One of the confusing issues in this area is that small motors of this type are referred to as "brushless DC" motors, while larger ones are called AC motors driven by variable speed AC drives.
The distinction is not one of size. Brushless DC motors are really synchronous AC in nature, with permanent magnets and zero field slip. These can be small (e.g. driving the fans in your computer) or large (the electric motor in a Prius). ACP and Tesla use asynchronous motors with field slip. These motors use no permanent magnets, in favor of copper, iron, and/or aluminum rotors.
Both types of motors rely on modern switching electronics for control, but require different control strategies and have different cost vs. efficiency trade-offs.
I've come back around to believing these state-sanctioned killings should be televised at prime time. The current system allows those in need to exercise their primal desire for vengeance, while keeping the actual killing mostly hidden from society and easy to ignore.
If state-sanctioned killing is so noble, we should stop treating it like a taboo subject -- let's put it out in the open, right where everyone (children included) will see it. Because it's so noble, remember? It's a good thing.
So which is it, Mr. Wikipedia research? Those don't look like incendiary rounds to me, but either way, they're explosive. In this video. Which is what we're talking about, here.
Even non-direct hits will cause almost massive trauma to human targets.
The fate of the occupants of the van later driving by, two adults and two children, was also sealed when they saw the Reuters cameraman's driver badly injured on the sidewalk (by a previous volley of American bullets from the sky).
Just to clarify: It's a total understatement to call these "bullets". They're 30mm cannon shells filled with high explosive, so they're more like grenades than bullets. Each of the two Apaches in the video is firing about 10 of these per second at the civilians, which is why the "bodies" lying around are hardly recognizable as such.
Just like these claw crane games that you find in vide arcades or amusement parks
Dubious programming craw crane games is just a red herring. The real scam with those crane games is that the prizes inside aren't worth the money even if you had a 100% success rate in grabbing them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm speculating on BP right now. It's at around $38/share, went down as low as about $35.
I think you meant to say BP hit a low of $26.75 in late June. That's a huge difference, whether you're speculating or not.
estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year now available.
Uh, there's your problem. I know conservation isn't as sexy as buying a new hi-tech solution to ease the guilt, but our own wastefulness is our greatest resource.
If you want to get an intimate feel for writing programs without being able to waste resources, try embedded systems programming. The microchip 10F series has only a few dozen bytes of ram, and a couple hundred words of flash. And no hardware multiply. Making it do useful things is an art. Oh, and unlike some relic from the 70's, you can actually get a job programming for tiny microcontrollers.
Agreed on all of the above, but the experience of working on the relics will translate to modern embedded systems sufficiently well that I think there is value. In many cases the relics will be even slower and be more RAM- and ROM-constrained than all but the the tiniest of today's embedded microcontrollers.
Which grants more freedom?
* taking the train to an interview or driving
Definitely the train, here. On the train I can be absolutely guaranteed to arrive on schedule. In traffic? Who knows.
taking the train/bus to get groceries or driving
Both of those options sound pretty bad. If you can't walk to get groceries, something is seriously wrong with your city planning.
packing the kids up and taking the train to grandmas -or- driving
Oh I see where you're going with this. You've never so much as visited a place that has excellent rail service, so you don't even have a way to imagine how well it works.
Amtrak is going to get referenced a lot in this thread, but it's a terrible point of reference for judging the merits of rail travel, high speed or otherwise. If you've ever been to Europe, Japan, or anywhere with real quality rail service, you surely know that Amtrak's only contribution is that it serves as an example of how not to build and operate your national rail service.
'It was unbelievable,' said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski
Oh right, like I'm going to trust any "free gift" data I get from a guy with a name like that!
Why did they have to drag $500 bug-finding bounties into this? Quoth TFA:
it's a small fraction of what the company would have to pay a full-time professional.
It's a REWARD, not an offer of employment. There is a "missing cat" poster on my block, but (applying the logic of TFA's author) I would have to be CRAZY to bother searching for it, because the reward is only $25 -- a small fraction of what it would cost for a full time cat searcher. I could never make a living searching for lost cats!
And as people pointed out the first time around, medical devices are tested extensively before being deployed. I am an ardent free software supporter, but the safety/reliability issue is simply the wrong argument. I would say the more important argument when it comes to medical software is control -- do you really want to have a corporation that you have absolutely no control over to be in control of a device that sustains your very life? What happens if that company goes bankrupt, and the source code dies with the company? What if they decide they want to start charging people a yearly fee for using their pacemakers (a situation that does not seem too far fetched, given what I have seen proprietary software companies do in the past)?
I'd say those are all safety and reliability issues.
You realize that every country in the history of humanity has done the exact same things, right?
And (even if that were true) you realize that that's not a very good excuse, right?
I am against building any [nuclear power] plants that don't involve fuel reprocessing, myself. That doesn't mean I'm pro-coal.
Yes it does, whether you realize it or not.
They take so long to build... and they're so bloody expensive.
Burning coal, the only large-scale practical alternative at present, is very expensive, too. You just don't pay all the costs with your monthly energy bill.
(And before anybody starts, yes, I'd love to see wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources grow to represent a significant fraction of the base load energy mix, too, but even under the most optimistic assumptions there is no practical way that will happen in the next few decades. There is no 100% solution.)
I think that our real emphasis needs to be on needs to be the successful implementation of renewable energy sources in automobiles.
That will go a long way, but there will not be single solution. Conservation is another approach with great potential: Our own wastefulness is a huge resource, waiting to be tapped.
Emissions free where? At the point of final energy usage?
I'm probably feeding a troll, because this shouldn't have to be spelled out every time: Obviously it means no emissions at the vehicle itself (which is quite valuable, all else being equal) and, as with electric road vehicles, reduced upstream emissions due to improved efficiency, multiple energy sources, and simpler manufacturing.
The point of a series hybrid is not to maximize battery-only range
No, terminology confusion aside, that is absolutely the point, at least as far as concerns any credible automaker with a hybrid program. Efficiency is the goal, and the point of a plug-in series hybrid is to drive in "EV mode" most of the time, because (even while dragging around a full-scale IC engine system) the vehicle is dramatically more efficient in this mode.
If you're not using most of your EV range in the design application, then your energy storage is too great, and energy storage is incredibly expensive (on the order of $100/mile).
There are other reasons for building hybrids (e.g. some people just want to reduce oil consumption at any cost) but, barring some outside (e.g., political) influence, cars are not built for these reasons.
GM has frankly proven themselves to be largely incompetent and incapable of existing without purpose-bought legislation
...and they're the only credible automaker with a plug-in series hybrid program. That ought to tell you something.
The assumptions you make about power requirements
...are based on the goal of engineering real products in the real world.
I've never personally had to design a vehicle to pass federal crash test standards.
I know.
Series hybrids are harder to do, that is the actual reason.
"Harder" is a bit of a dodge. In an engineering context, "harder" usually means "more expensive to design/manufacture" or "less efficient".
And you DO NOT need 50-80kW to maintain cruising on the typical vehicle, 80kW is 107HP which is at least four times what you need to get a Prius to cruise on flat ground with those skinny tires and its aerodynamic profile.
Your imaginary series hybrid isn't going to be very fun to drive if you engineer it with only enough power to cruise at constant speed on level ground. If you ever intend to accelerate from a stop or drive up a hill you will need substantially more power. The battery system can't contribute significant additional power unless:
- You operate the IC engine prior to depleting the battery (but remember, the whole point was to maximize the battery-only range)
OR
- You buffer surplus IC power via the battery. In this case you need a bare minimum 40 kW IC engine (note that the Volt is presently spec'd at ~55 kW) and you can say goodbye to overall efficiency approaching that of modern parallel hybrids.
No offense intended, but I'm about done with this thread. Series hybrids will certainly continue to appear attractive and simple, especially to engineers (amrchair style and otherwise) who have never even attempted to build one. The reality is that the engineering trade-offs are enormous, and probably not worthwhile in the general case. GM is wagering that the cost and inefficiency is worth the "comfort" factor in getting people to adopt electrics. I'm not aware of any other credible series hybrid project that is on its way to market.
There are vehicle/trailer-mountable generators and appropriate trailers readily available as commodity items.
Not that can sustain 50-80 kW, which is about what you need for a small passenger vehicle. Remember, the idea is to operate the generator after the electric system is depleted, so you need to provide 100% of traction power. Unless this is an oddball vehicle that can't drive in the mountains or accelerate comparably to other vehicles on the road, you need more power than you realize.
The "commodity" generators in this class tend to weigh several tons and cost between $10,000 and $30,000.
That's only true if the engine is only run at peak efficiency, which is not generally the case in parallel hybrids, but is generally the case in series ones.
This is also often claimed, and there is a grain of truth, here, but it's not of much practical value, because in a series hybrid configuration you do have to vary the power output (considerably) to match road load. Otherwise, you're buffering power output with the electrical system, and the round-trip (in)efficiency of doing so more than counteracts the "engine peak efficiency" theory.
Bottom line: It is not a coincidence that Toyota's Prius and virtually every other hybrid on the road uses a parallel configuration.
Speaking of AC Propulsion, I always thought the tZero was a great idea, particularly the towed engine for long range travel. Any idea why Tesla hasn't replicated this?
The "range extending trailer" represents an enormous amount of engineering (i.e. cost) relative to its utility. A battery electric vehicle with 100-mile range is already a good fit for between 90 and 95% of what we do with light-duty vehicles today. There are several prominent strategies for making the vehicles suitable for the remaining 5 or 10% of use cases, including:
All of these strategies come at significant cost, but are based on the false premise that battery electrics must meet the needs of 100% of drivers. In reality, we can use the right tool for the job--electrics for 90% of our needs, with other specialized vehicles filling in the gaps.
In particular, series hybrids (which is really what the range-extending trailer is) are the worst of both worlds in many significant ways: They come burdened with the cost and weight of the entire IC engine system even when operated as electrics, but in long range mode they will always be less efficient than a parallel hybrid arrangement.
I thought they got a big loan from the government at obscenely low interest rate for a venture capital startup?
Tesla is perilously low on cash, and the government loan can't be used to fund operations. Although not quite this simple, it's basically only available for capital investments.
No, like most modern high-powered variable speed motors, they're synchronous polyphase AC motors driven by a variable frequency drive.
Close, but no: While synchronous motors are indeed most common in shipping vehicles today, Tesla, like AC Propulsion (from which Tesla licensed its technology) uses asynchronous AC motors.
One of the confusing issues in this area is that small motors of this type are referred to as "brushless DC" motors, while larger ones are called AC motors driven by variable speed AC drives.
The distinction is not one of size. Brushless DC motors are really synchronous AC in nature, with permanent magnets and zero field slip. These can be small (e.g. driving the fans in your computer) or large (the electric motor in a Prius). ACP and Tesla use asynchronous motors with field slip. These motors use no permanent magnets, in favor of copper, iron, and/or aluminum rotors.
Both types of motors rely on modern switching electronics for control, but require different control strategies and have different cost vs. efficiency trade-offs.
You know what would be a good thing for governments to do with their citizens' money? Let them keep it.
I actually like living in civilization -- it's imperfect, but it's what my taxes buy, so on balance I like paying them.
I've never found or even heard of a place with lower taxes in which I'd rather live. If you have, why didn't you move? (Serious question.)
I've come back around to believing these state-sanctioned killings should be televised at prime time. The current system allows those in need to exercise their primal desire for vengeance, while keeping the actual killing mostly hidden from society and easy to ignore.
If state-sanctioned killing is so noble, we should stop treating it like a taboo subject -- let's put it out in the open, right where everyone (children included) will see it. Because it's so noble, remember? It's a good thing.
First, you write:
Not all of them are filled with high explosive.
...and then a bit later:
No, they're using the [high explosive incendiary]
So which is it, Mr. Wikipedia research? Those don't look like incendiary rounds to me, but either way, they're explosive. In this video. Which is what we're talking about, here.
Even non-direct hits will cause almost massive trauma to human targets.
...and the HEDP is what they're using in all of the shells seen in this video.
The fate of the occupants of the van later driving by, two adults and two children, was also sealed when they saw the Reuters cameraman's driver badly injured on the sidewalk (by a previous volley of American bullets from the sky).
Just to clarify: It's a total understatement to call these "bullets". They're 30mm cannon shells filled with high explosive, so they're more like grenades than bullets. Each of the two Apaches in the video is firing about 10 of these per second at the civilians, which is why the "bodies" lying around are hardly recognizable as such.
Just like these claw crane games that you find in vide arcades or amusement parks
Dubious programming craw crane games is just a red herring. The real scam with those crane games is that the prizes inside aren't worth the money even if you had a 100% success rate in grabbing them.