Can we have our IRA terrorists (and their Noraid funders) back, please?
Sure. Fill out the paperwork, and send it on over to the Justice Department. After, of course, charging them with a crime over there. Then wait for the hearings, appeals, etc. to go through.
Just like we have to do when we try to extradite someone from over there.
Yellow ribbon? Yellow alert? "Yellow" used to mean "cowardly"
And yellow ribbons were emblematic of the US Cavalry, yellow lights are used as warnings, etc.
"Yellow" means cowardly. Except when it doesn't. And it doesn't, more often than it does, when the word is used to modify another word (except that "yellow belly" still means cowardice).
May I ask, how often do you engage in a greater than 200 mile trip in a single day?
Averages slightly more often than weekly over the last couple-three years.
On the other hand, I figure it'll balance out by people not having to visit a gas station. Plug it in at home, rather than going to a station, running your credit card or prepaying, sitting there while the vehicle fills up.
The ten minute charge thing is to allow me to do those >400 mile trips without an overnight stop. Which is why 30 minutes for a charge is acceptable if the range is 400 miles (enough time for a lunch break after six hours on the road), but ten minutes is required if the range is only 250 miles (less than four hours on the road, and I'm not going to be willing to stop for an extended time, especially since most of my over 400 mile trips are also over 500 miles, and would require two stops).
Given your emphasis on range, I'd figure you're probably spending $5k or so a year on gasoline. That means it could be $10-15k more than a gasoline car and STILL save money overall.
Between all three cars, almost certainly. For any one of them, not hardly. I pick the car to fit the task at hand. If all I'm doing is city driving this week, I'll not be using the car that needs 500 mile range. Though come to it, all of my cars can manage 500+ miles on a tank of gas.
Part of the economic aspect is that substantial savings can be realized with a pure EV over a hybrid, for those that fit the profile. You probably don't fit that profile - but a 40mpg PHEV that uses 300watt-hours a mile might save you quite a bit of money, especially if gasoline prices shoot up again.
I don't fit the profile for another reason - I don't buy new cars. A three-five year old used car is cheap enough and still generally reliable enough to make it a better deal than a new car.
That said, I'll evaluate the options the next time a car collapses into a black hole, and see what makes sense. It'll depend on which car collapses, and what gasoline prices are like then. And what is available on the market.
I concede your point that you can make EVs popular if you can convince 1% of the population buy one or more of them. I'm not so sure that you can do that, though, without an infrastructure that allows fillups on the road (the ten minute charge I mentioned).
What the hell is the point of having a human race if all it does is breed? Humanity ought to be setting its aims a little higher and actually *do* something worthwhile. We can debate about what specific things are worthwhile, but worthwhile does not mean simply pumping out more babies.
Well, according to Darwin, it does mean exactly that. "Evolutionarily successful" means having lots of babies grow to breeding age. It doesn't mean "doing something worthwhile"....
All that said, I'm in favour of the human race/species lasting for at least the next billion years or so. Which means getting off this particular rock, and out into the galaxy. And the sooner we get started, the better.
I would be in favor of temporarily suspending the NASA program, utilizing those resources to come up with new energy technology, and then licensing that technology to help fund the resurrected space program.
Alas, it is in the nature of politics that if NASA's budget were "temporarily suspended", it would never be unsuspended. What you're essentially wishing for here is that NASA cease to be, and the USA get out of space travel/exploration.
Strange. I thought the dinosaurs died because they were unable to adapt to a changing environment.
A changing environment precipitated by a honking big rock falling from the sky.
Note that we're not quite up to diverting a dinosaur killer. But we ought to be capable of doing so within 20 years, if we don't give up on space travel/exploration now.
Which means there's a really good chance we'll never "go the way of the dinosaurs". We may make ourselves extinct in other ways, but we should be immune to falling rocks within my lifetime.
Oddly enough, Google very quickly comes up with an article about Extradition Treaty between Germany and the USA originally signed in 1978, with a Supplement to same in 1986, and another couple of Supplements in 2006.
The difference with extraditing to France is that it works both ways. With the US it unfortunately isn't.
I wish this particular idea would quietly give up the ghost. It's just not true.
There is a valid, reciprocal, extradition treaty between the USA and the UK. The UK has, in addition, ratified a revision to that Treaty that the US Senate hasn't bothered to ratify yet. Which means the revision is valid in the UK (assuming the brits choose to treat it as valid - they don't have to, since it hasn't been ratified here), but the original treaty is still valid in the USA (and in the UK, assuming the brits choose to treat the revision as not yet valid, since it hasn't been ratified by the Senate).
Which means that people can be (and are) extradited to the UK from the USA when the appropriate paperwork is submitted to whatever department of the US government handles such things. Just like happens when the USA wants to extradite someone from the UK.
In a two party system like the US have, when the president and the house are the same party (as they often are in the first half of a term in office) they can push through almost anything.... when the president and the house are different parties (as they often are in the second half of a term in office
It's an intriguing theory that the President and House are the same party "often in the first half of a term in office" (presumably of the President, since House members only have two year terms. I should point out, as an example, that Bush (jr) is the first Republican President since Eisenhower where "the President and the House are the same party in the first half of a term in office". Note that Eisenhower had a Republican controlled House (and Senate) for two years of his eight in office.
"when the president and the house are different parties (as they often are in the second half of a term in office" is only meaningful because most of the Presidents since WW2 have been Republican. And since the Democrats controlled the House for all but fourteen years since then, they pretty much had a lock on "different in the second half".
Note, by the way, that Clinton had House and Senate under solid Democrat control for his first two years, and accomplished essentially nothing other than a big tax increase for pretty much everyone.
Contrariwise, Bush had a House and Senate under solid Republican control for his first two years, and accomplished essentially nothing other than a big tax cut.
In other words, it's a myth that the President and Congress being in the same Party means harmony between President and Congress. Congresscritters have their own objectives, and they seldom really match well with the President's, no matter the Party.
AND Mythic has shown themselves to be quite competent and excellent at communicating their plans.
Having played DAoC, the previous Mythic MMO for some years, I can tell you that Mythic will cease be competent at communicating their plans just as soon as people start being unhappy during the beta period of an expansion.
At that point, they will clam up to the greatest extent possible, and provide misleading or outright incorrect answers whenever they are forced to provide something.
As an example, I point to the Origins Server. Mythic proposed an idea for a new server. DAoC players, in general, thought it was a great idea. Mythic began implementing something that didn't match their original description (which the players liked). The people playtesting the new stuff started complaining that what they were playtesting didn't match the Mythic proposal. Mythic postponed Origins indefinitely, and have ceased providing any information of any kind about the plan/design of Origins.
I was being almost like an economist - feeling out your comfort zone. Just how much do you value that 500 mile range? I wasn't trying for real numbers. Think like a car company feeling out potential customers - how much range to they think they need? How much do they want? What charging time would be acceptable? What would be good? How much are they willing to pay? How much can they save?
I figured as much. And the EV companies are going to have to try to sell the things to people like me more than to people who are drooling EV fanatics - there aren't enough drooling EV fanatics to justify the assembly line.
That said, more answers:
I value the 500 mile range a LOT. I'd be willing to drop to 400, if the car was otherwise worthwhile, but not below that. And it'd have to be really worthwhile to make me give up that 100 mile cushion. I can afford to keep a vehicle that can get by nicely on 200 miles, but the other two have to be able to handle greater ranges to justify my paying for them.
Acceptable charging times: for a commuter car, four hours. For a real car, no more than 30 minutes. And that 30 minutes is only acceptable if the range on a charge is 400+ miles. For shorter range on charge, I'll want charging time on the order of ten minutes, max.
If the EV costs more to own and operate over a five year period, including the car payments, than a gasoline car, I have no use for it. So the difference in operating costs can't push the price higher than the savings on operating costs. Which means the EV really can't be more than a couple-three thousand dollars more than a comparable gasoline car.
And if you expect me to weigh the EV seriously, as opposed to "well, it's one option of many", then it had better save enough over five years to be worthwhile. Which probably means it needs to be no more expensive than a comparable gasoline car.
Oh, and it has to have legroom and headroom for a 6'3" driver. Which is one of my primary requirements for any vehicle - way too many of them just don't cut it in the legroom department.
While the primary goal for airplane designers is to try and minimize weight, a submarine must be extremely heavy in order to submerge underwater.
A submersible (the device described in TFA is most definitely a submersible, not a submarine) can also dive underwater by making use of dynamic lift - use the wings to generate negative lift to hold it down. Just like modern submarines can "ride the planes" (meaning to use the bow/stern or sail/stern planes to keep the submarine in neutral buoyancy without actually making the thing displace exactly the amount of water it weighs.
Note that it's probably still a silly idea. If you can't go forty or fifty fathoms down, someone flying overhead is going to see you. And if you CAN got forty or fifty fathoms down, you probably weigh too much to take off from an airfield, much less from the ocean's surface. Pressure tight hulls don't come in lightweight versions.
Note further that someone flying overhead can probably see you at forty or fifty fathoms, come to that. That's not far below periscope depth, and subs at periscope depth were being spotted from airplanes in WW2 using the Mk1 Eyeball.
Age of Conan is a bigger flop than Star Wars Galaxies. It was a buggy, incomplete pile of rubbish. And still is.
WAR however is a quality game.
Interesting that you'd use "imcomplete" as a contrast between AoC and WAR, given that WAR had to drop four (of six) capital cities and four (including two of six heavy tanks) classes from the game at the last minute.
Mind you, I've not played either. AoC looked to be interesting till the reports from the beta testers reached the public, then it looked to suck big time. WAR seems to be well adapted to the current market, but I like to solo in PvP from time to time, so my interest in it is limited, at best.
The odds of it landing on you even if were tough enough to survive atmospheric entry are pretty remote.
The odds are astronomical, even! Hell, the odds are on a galactic scale! Why, the odds are so big, they make space look small!
You jest. It must be remembered that there is a woman in Alabama (not sure if she's still alive, but it's only been 50-odd years, so quite possibly) who was hit by a meteorite. Well, technically it was still a meteor, since it hadn't hit ground when it hit her, but maybe we can stretch the definition slightly since it hit her house first.
Plus there was a meteor that wrecked a few houses in India recently. It hurt a few people, as I recall.
Still worse odds than winning the lottery, of course.
One thing I've wondered, those small asteroids that hit the earth, say that land and are about the size of my fist, did those burn down to that size from a bigger size, or are there trajectories that it could land mostly without burning up. Like if it goes in at a really steep angle, could a rock the size of a basketball before it enters be about the size of a basketball when it lands, or is that pretty much impossible?
Yes they "burned down". Yes, there are trajectories that let things land without burning up. But they make for lousy shows, since it requires the rock to skim the outer atmosphere just deep enough to slow below escape velocity, and then slowly (over a period of months or years) lose enough more energy that they reenter permanently. If that happens, and if they're metallic, and if they're really extremely spherical (no hot spots other than the obvious one - out front), then maybe they can make it to the ground substantially intact. Odds - well, literally astronomical.
How big is your tank? What's your mpg? How much does a fillup cost?
17 gallons. 31-32 highway. About $60.
Would you accept a halving of range if that meant your fillups cost $1/gallon? 30 cents?
For that car? No. It's my comfortable car for travelling long distances. I've had to drive across stretches where 250 miles between fillups would have been iffy. For that matter, I drove out after Katrina in that car. Due to power outages inland, I couldn't fill up within 250 miles of Slidell on the route I took. My gas burner got me the 500 miles to where I wanted to be without having to stop.
My other cars? One yes, one maybe. Of course, you haven't actually provided any real numbers for price "per gallon" for an EV, so no way to say that those numbers would be realistic. I'm inclined to think that they won't, since gas taxes would have to be made up somewhere if a large fraction of the population went EV. And I'm betting it would be a surtax on electricity. Which would make that $0.30 figure pretty much impossible (gas taxes are more than $0.30 per gallon where I live), and the $1 figure iffy at best.
Note, by the way, that all my vehicles are paid for. Buying new ones to take advantage of the miracle of electricity would mean laying out a great deal of money - which means I'm better off keeping what I have till they collapse into a pile of rust.
Also since the life of efficient battery is (currently) short, and their not dense. The efficiency of dense batteries (like lead acid) makes them almost the same cost as burning fuel, their is still not a reason to spend $35,000 except for pure vanity (or you own a power
plant, so you pay no markup and no delivery loss through power lines.)
I really hate to be a grammar nazi, but there are three homonyms that are relevant here - "there", "their", and "they're". Not only did you use "their" incorrectly twice, but you used it to replace each of the others - the first one should have "they're", the second "there".
If you're going to be semiliterate, at least try to be consistent in your semiliteracy, or people might start to suspect you're closer to il- than semi-.
you guys believe in 'facts' from a book written by people that thought the world was flat.
Oddly enough, most primary sources of historical material that were written before Christ thought the world was flat too. Not all of them, but most.
Should we disregard what we learned about the Pharoahs because they though the world was flat? Or the Assyrians? The Persians? The Hittites? The Romans (arguably the Romans knew better, or at least had a decent excuse to know better. But I've never seen anything definitive written by a pre-Christian Roman author saying the world was round, so I can't say)?
Personally, I've always thought we were bright enough to separate the wheat from the chaff - you make me doubt that.
But it's accepted by Christians to be like 6000 years old
Well, no. An Anglican Archbishop calculated that as the age of the Earth back in the 1600's. Back when calculating such things was considered scholarship.
First, most Christians are NOT Anglicans, and could give a rat's hind leg what a 400 year old Anglican Archbishop said about anything.
Second, these days, Anglicans don't believe him either. He's ancient history, and his ideas are considered, by most Christians, to be quaint.
Thirdly, of the few Christians who believe him, most don't know he's an Anglican Archbishop, so they don't know to pooh-pooh him for that reason.
And finally, there are some sects of Christianity who espouse the Young Earth opinion. I've never talked to a member of one of those sects who actually believed it, though no doubt some few did.
Ultimately, GM is planning to "subsidize" that cost down some, but one can question how much of a "subsidy" it is when you're making risk assumptions like that.
GM is not going to take a loss on them. They're not going to lower their profit margin signifcantly. So don't bet on the battery costs being more than "hidden well". You'll still be paying them, one way or another.
I agree with parent. Completely. IT == boring. Aerospace == really neat. Stress the fact that you support the aerospace, not the nitty-gritty details of a server farm.
Alternatively, you can talk about how, as sysadmin, you get to read everyone's private email when you get bored. That might play well.
Not especially good mileage, really. I used the mileage my 2000 Buick sedan gets. If I were to compare it to something that gets good mileage, the comparison would look worse for the Volt.
Your calculation is reasonable if you put zero value on the environment.
My comparison is one that most people who aren't complete idiots will be doing when they consider a new car purchase. Contrary to popular rumour, most people don't pick a car because it's environmentally friendly. They pick it because it fits in their budget. And a $35K car doesn't actually fit in too many budgets. Even a $35K car that gets 50 mpg.
Especially given that they can get a Prius for $25K that gets 48 mpg.
In answer to your real question, I don't think that me blowing an extra 10-15K on a new car will save the environment, or even have a noticeable effect on it. I don't think there would be a noticeable effect on the environment if EVERYONE bought one of these things, frankly. Other than that pretty much everyone would be homeless after a few months, since most of the country can't afford a $35K car, much less two of them (we have three cars in my family - if you think I'm spending $100K plus to be "environmentally friendly", then I have some nice land just outside the levees to sell you).
I assume it's still legally someone's property until the trash has been physically taken away,
It is legally trash when it enters the dumpster.
And, no, it's not a crime to take someone's trash.
Note, by the way, that law enforcement does take advantage of this. So if you toss something even vaguely incriminating, it can be recovered and used against you, even without a search warrant.
The Chevy Volt is slated to be in the 35-40k range,
So, for the price of this thing, I can buy a 25K sedan that gets 30 mpg, and run the sedan for 75000+ miles before I reach the cost of the Volt?
Or, looking at it another way, using the same vehicle as a comparator, the Volt and the generic sedan break even on cost at about 187,500 miles. Not counting maintenance, of course, since we have yet no way to evaluate the cost of maintaining the Volt.
Note: the above is for highway driving, not commuting. Strictly for commuting, the Volt will break even at somewhat over 75,000 miles, depending on the cost of electricity.
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Sure. Fill out the paperwork, and send it on over to the Justice Department. After, of course, charging them with a crime over there. Then wait for the hearings, appeals, etc. to go through.
Just like we have to do when we try to extradite someone from over there.
And yellow ribbons were emblematic of the US Cavalry, yellow lights are used as warnings, etc.
"Yellow" means cowardly. Except when it doesn't. And it doesn't, more often than it does, when the word is used to modify another word (except that "yellow belly" still means cowardice).
Averages slightly more often than weekly over the last couple-three years.
The ten minute charge thing is to allow me to do those >400 mile trips without an overnight stop. Which is why 30 minutes for a charge is acceptable if the range is 400 miles (enough time for a lunch break after six hours on the road), but ten minutes is required if the range is only 250 miles (less than four hours on the road, and I'm not going to be willing to stop for an extended time, especially since most of my over 400 mile trips are also over 500 miles, and would require two stops).
Between all three cars, almost certainly. For any one of them, not hardly. I pick the car to fit the task at hand. If all I'm doing is city driving this week, I'll not be using the car that needs 500 mile range. Though come to it, all of my cars can manage 500+ miles on a tank of gas.
I don't fit the profile for another reason - I don't buy new cars. A three-five year old used car is cheap enough and still generally reliable enough to make it a better deal than a new car.
That said, I'll evaluate the options the next time a car collapses into a black hole, and see what makes sense. It'll depend on which car collapses, and what gasoline prices are like then. And what is available on the market.
I concede your point that you can make EVs popular if you can convince 1% of the population buy one or more of them. I'm not so sure that you can do that, though, without an infrastructure that allows fillups on the road (the ten minute charge I mentioned).
Well, according to Darwin, it does mean exactly that. "Evolutionarily successful" means having lots of babies grow to breeding age. It doesn't mean "doing something worthwhile"....
All that said, I'm in favour of the human race/species lasting for at least the next billion years or so. Which means getting off this particular rock, and out into the galaxy. And the sooner we get started, the better.
Alas, it is in the nature of politics that if NASA's budget were "temporarily suspended", it would never be unsuspended. What you're essentially wishing for here is that NASA cease to be, and the USA get out of space travel/exploration.
A changing environment precipitated by a honking big rock falling from the sky.
Note that we're not quite up to diverting a dinosaur killer. But we ought to be capable of doing so within 20 years, if we don't give up on space travel/exploration now.
Which means there's a really good chance we'll never "go the way of the dinosaurs". We may make ourselves extinct in other ways, but we should be immune to falling rocks within my lifetime.
Oddly enough, Google very quickly comes up with an article about Extradition Treaty between Germany and the USA originally signed in 1978, with a Supplement to same in 1986, and another couple of Supplements in 2006.
I wish this particular idea would quietly give up the ghost. It's just not true.
There is a valid, reciprocal, extradition treaty between the USA and the UK. The UK has, in addition, ratified a revision to that Treaty that the US Senate hasn't bothered to ratify yet. Which means the revision is valid in the UK (assuming the brits choose to treat it as valid - they don't have to, since it hasn't been ratified here), but the original treaty is still valid in the USA (and in the UK, assuming the brits choose to treat the revision as not yet valid, since it hasn't been ratified by the Senate).
Which means that people can be (and are) extradited to the UK from the USA when the appropriate paperwork is submitted to whatever department of the US government handles such things. Just like happens when the USA wants to extradite someone from the UK.
It's an intriguing theory that the President and House are the same party "often in the first half of a term in office" (presumably of the President, since House members only have two year terms. I should point out, as an example, that Bush (jr) is the first Republican President since Eisenhower where "the President and the House are the same party in the first half of a term in office". Note that Eisenhower had a Republican controlled House (and Senate) for two years of his eight in office.
"when the president and the house are different parties (as they often are in the second half of a term in office" is only meaningful because most of the Presidents since WW2 have been Republican. And since the Democrats controlled the House for all but fourteen years since then, they pretty much had a lock on "different in the second half".
Note, by the way, that Clinton had House and Senate under solid Democrat control for his first two years, and accomplished essentially nothing other than a big tax increase for pretty much everyone.
Contrariwise, Bush had a House and Senate under solid Republican control for his first two years, and accomplished essentially nothing other than a big tax cut.
In other words, it's a myth that the President and Congress being in the same Party means harmony between President and Congress. Congresscritters have their own objectives, and they seldom really match well with the President's, no matter the Party.
Having played DAoC, the previous Mythic MMO for some years, I can tell you that Mythic will cease be competent at communicating their plans just as soon as people start being unhappy during the beta period of an expansion.
At that point, they will clam up to the greatest extent possible, and provide misleading or outright incorrect answers whenever they are forced to provide something.
As an example, I point to the Origins Server. Mythic proposed an idea for a new server. DAoC players, in general, thought it was a great idea. Mythic began implementing something that didn't match their original description (which the players liked). The people playtesting the new stuff started complaining that what they were playtesting didn't match the Mythic proposal. Mythic postponed Origins indefinitely, and have ceased providing any information of any kind about the plan/design of Origins.
I figured as much. And the EV companies are going to have to try to sell the things to people like me more than to people who are drooling EV fanatics - there aren't enough drooling EV fanatics to justify the assembly line.
That said, more answers:
I value the 500 mile range a LOT. I'd be willing to drop to 400, if the car was otherwise worthwhile, but not below that. And it'd have to be really worthwhile to make me give up that 100 mile cushion. I can afford to keep a vehicle that can get by nicely on 200 miles, but the other two have to be able to handle greater ranges to justify my paying for them.
Acceptable charging times: for a commuter car, four hours. For a real car, no more than 30 minutes. And that 30 minutes is only acceptable if the range on a charge is 400+ miles. For shorter range on charge, I'll want charging time on the order of ten minutes, max.
If the EV costs more to own and operate over a five year period, including the car payments, than a gasoline car, I have no use for it. So the difference in operating costs can't push the price higher than the savings on operating costs. Which means the EV really can't be more than a couple-three thousand dollars more than a comparable gasoline car.
And if you expect me to weigh the EV seriously, as opposed to "well, it's one option of many", then it had better save enough over five years to be worthwhile. Which probably means it needs to be no more expensive than a comparable gasoline car.
Oh, and it has to have legroom and headroom for a 6'3" driver. Which is one of my primary requirements for any vehicle - way too many of them just don't cut it in the legroom department.
A submersible (the device described in TFA is most definitely a submersible, not a submarine) can also dive underwater by making use of dynamic lift - use the wings to generate negative lift to hold it down. Just like modern submarines can "ride the planes" (meaning to use the bow/stern or sail/stern planes to keep the submarine in neutral buoyancy without actually making the thing displace exactly the amount of water it weighs.
Note that it's probably still a silly idea. If you can't go forty or fifty fathoms down, someone flying overhead is going to see you. And if you CAN got forty or fifty fathoms down, you probably weigh too much to take off from an airfield, much less from the ocean's surface. Pressure tight hulls don't come in lightweight versions.
Note further that someone flying overhead can probably see you at forty or fifty fathoms, come to that. That's not far below periscope depth, and subs at periscope depth were being spotted from airplanes in WW2 using the Mk1 Eyeball.
Interesting that you'd use "imcomplete" as a contrast between AoC and WAR, given that WAR had to drop four (of six) capital cities and four (including two of six heavy tanks) classes from the game at the last minute.
Mind you, I've not played either. AoC looked to be interesting till the reports from the beta testers reached the public, then it looked to suck big time. WAR seems to be well adapted to the current market, but I like to solo in PvP from time to time, so my interest in it is limited, at best.
You jest. It must be remembered that there is a woman in Alabama (not sure if she's still alive, but it's only been 50-odd years, so quite possibly) who was hit by a meteorite. Well, technically it was still a meteor, since it hadn't hit ground when it hit her, but maybe we can stretch the definition slightly since it hit her house first.
Plus there was a meteor that wrecked a few houses in India recently. It hurt a few people, as I recall.
Still worse odds than winning the lottery, of course.
Yes they "burned down". Yes, there are trajectories that let things land without burning up. But they make for lousy shows, since it requires the rock to skim the outer atmosphere just deep enough to slow below escape velocity, and then slowly (over a period of months or years) lose enough more energy that they reenter permanently. If that happens, and if they're metallic, and if they're really extremely spherical (no hot spots other than the obvious one - out front), then maybe they can make it to the ground substantially intact. Odds - well, literally astronomical.
17 gallons. 31-32 highway. About $60.
For that car? No. It's my comfortable car for travelling long distances. I've had to drive across stretches where 250 miles between fillups would have been iffy. For that matter, I drove out after Katrina in that car. Due to power outages inland, I couldn't fill up within 250 miles of Slidell on the route I took. My gas burner got me the 500 miles to where I wanted to be without having to stop.
My other cars? One yes, one maybe. Of course, you haven't actually provided any real numbers for price "per gallon" for an EV, so no way to say that those numbers would be realistic. I'm inclined to think that they won't, since gas taxes would have to be made up somewhere if a large fraction of the population went EV. And I'm betting it would be a surtax on electricity. Which would make that $0.30 figure pretty much impossible (gas taxes are more than $0.30 per gallon where I live), and the $1 figure iffy at best.
Note, by the way, that all my vehicles are paid for. Buying new ones to take advantage of the miracle of electricity would mean laying out a great deal of money - which means I'm better off keeping what I have till they collapse into a pile of rust.
My Buick sedan gets better than 500 on a tank of gas. And it's the shortest range car I own. 240 isn't even in the timezone of acceptable.
I really hate to be a grammar nazi, but there are three homonyms that are relevant here - "there", "their", and "they're". Not only did you use "their" incorrectly twice, but you used it to replace each of the others - the first one should have "they're", the second "there".
If you're going to be semiliterate, at least try to be consistent in your semiliteracy, or people might start to suspect you're closer to il- than semi-.
Oddly enough, most primary sources of historical material that were written before Christ thought the world was flat too. Not all of them, but most.
Should we disregard what we learned about the Pharoahs because they though the world was flat? Or the Assyrians? The Persians? The Hittites? The Romans (arguably the Romans knew better, or at least had a decent excuse to know better. But I've never seen anything definitive written by a pre-Christian Roman author saying the world was round, so I can't say)?
Personally, I've always thought we were bright enough to separate the wheat from the chaff - you make me doubt that.
Well, no. An Anglican Archbishop calculated that as the age of the Earth back in the 1600's. Back when calculating such things was considered scholarship.
First, most Christians are NOT Anglicans, and could give a rat's hind leg what a 400 year old Anglican Archbishop said about anything.
Second, these days, Anglicans don't believe him either. He's ancient history, and his ideas are considered, by most Christians, to be quaint.
Thirdly, of the few Christians who believe him, most don't know he's an Anglican Archbishop, so they don't know to pooh-pooh him for that reason.
And finally, there are some sects of Christianity who espouse the Young Earth opinion. I've never talked to a member of one of those sects who actually believed it, though no doubt some few did.
GM is not going to take a loss on them. They're not going to lower their profit margin signifcantly. So don't bet on the battery costs being more than "hidden well". You'll still be paying them, one way or another.
I agree with parent. Completely. IT == boring. Aerospace == really neat. Stress the fact that you support the aerospace, not the nitty-gritty details of a server farm.
Alternatively, you can talk about how, as sysadmin, you get to read everyone's private email when you get bored. That might play well.
Not especially good mileage, really. I used the mileage my 2000 Buick sedan gets. If I were to compare it to something that gets good mileage, the comparison would look worse for the Volt.
My comparison is one that most people who aren't complete idiots will be doing when they consider a new car purchase. Contrary to popular rumour, most people don't pick a car because it's environmentally friendly. They pick it because it fits in their budget. And a $35K car doesn't actually fit in too many budgets. Even a $35K car that gets 50 mpg.
Especially given that they can get a Prius for $25K that gets 48 mpg.
In answer to your real question, I don't think that me blowing an extra 10-15K on a new car will save the environment, or even have a noticeable effect on it. I don't think there would be a noticeable effect on the environment if EVERYONE bought one of these things, frankly. Other than that pretty much everyone would be homeless after a few months, since most of the country can't afford a $35K car, much less two of them (we have three cars in my family - if you think I'm spending $100K plus to be "environmentally friendly", then I have some nice land just outside the levees to sell you).
It is legally trash when it enters the dumpster.
And, no, it's not a crime to take someone's trash.
Note, by the way, that law enforcement does take advantage of this. So if you toss something even vaguely incriminating, it can be recovered and used against you, even without a search warrant.
So, for the price of this thing, I can buy a 25K sedan that gets 30 mpg, and run the sedan for 75000+ miles before I reach the cost of the Volt?
Or, looking at it another way, using the same vehicle as a comparator, the Volt and the generic sedan break even on cost at about 187,500 miles. Not counting maintenance, of course, since we have yet no way to evaluate the cost of maintaining the Volt.
Note: the above is for highway driving, not commuting. Strictly for commuting, the Volt will break even at somewhat over 75,000 miles, depending on the cost of electricity.
I'll pass, thank you.