You mean the two-seater? Of course a full size 4-5 passenger car won't have as low a drag coefficient.
The EV-1 had the lowest drag coefficient (0.19) of any production car ever. Even the Camry (0.27) has less drag. The Volt (.29) could have at least tried to come closer. It just shows they're not pushing for economy as much as for PR.
Sure, its' called a Tesla. If you have $100k laying around, go ahead and buy one.
I will if they still make them in 5 or 6 years when I will be able to afford one.
So, a car that will work fine for half the population is no good? There won't ever be a single vehicle type that will fit everyone's needs. And since a lot of commuters sit in stop-and-go traffic, an electric engine that doesn't idle and waste power is perfect. Plus, you can try to charge the car at work to get 80 miles of battery run-time each day.
Good point. But I was thinking in terms of comparing it to an all-electric that would have the range for everyone. Granted this is currently an expensive option, but it wouldn't have been if GM had supported EV R&D in more than a token way.
No, you pay for the first 40 miles, but it is just more efficient and cheaper.
That's why I said it's LIKE a drug dealer, not that it IS one.
So, you are worried about it's looks?
I am not personally worried about the looks, but I'm worried that GM didn't want it to be a runnaway best-seller like the PT Cruiser was in it's day. Granted this is a weaker argument, but YOU try coming up with 10 reasons for anything!
What does he have to do with the performance of the car?
Bob Lutz is the co-chairman of GM. He is responsible for setting the direction of the company's marketing efforts worldwide. He has outright stated that he does not belive in global warming and this 'green' push is an inconvienience for US automakers. I have no confidence whatsoever that he is devoted to reducing oil consumption in any way at all. This car is designed to increase people's perception of GM as a company. It is not designed to move us into alternative energy sources.
Ok, you got me there. I didn't chack my facts. BUT, I was talking about the previous Insight, not the upcoming one. So I was kind of half right.
Wow, so a new type of car that is being produced for the first time that uses expensive batteries will cost more than a mass produced car that has been in production for years/decades? Thanks, Mr. Obvious!
My point was more about the bait-and-switch dilogue about the price over time, not much about the absolute price. Still, This kind of car would have been a LOT cheaper if any of the bigger companies had started actually working on it years ago when the technology became available instead of now racing to catch up. GM purchased the company that made the EV1 batteries and then quickly decided not to use or sell those batteries to anyone after they destroyed all the EV1s.
GM sells a hybrid SUV that gets "only" 24 MPG, but it's an 8 passenger vehicle
Oh, I was unaware that SUV's were typically full.
I was under the impression that the typical vehicle had one or two people in it, and that the typical family had 3.5 people.
Next time I see all those SUVs on the Phoenix freeways I'll try to remember that even though they all look nearly empty, each one has 8 passengers in it.
Thanks for the heads up.
So, to answer your question: No, I do not believe they controlled for imaginary variables.
...someone else use the same model in a 90 foot radius
This made me laugh. I had to stop using a wireless mouse at school because I got so much 'noise' from the other 20 or 30 wireless mouses in the same classroom.
1. Drag coefficient - Why not make it at least as low as the EV1? At higher speeds this is a huge factor.
2. Range - Today's Electric cars should be going hundreds of miles. Sure the 'average' drive is only 33, but that means many are going more than that. I know it's anecdotal, but I've gone 2 years at a time having to commute 90+ miles per day. This is like a drug dealer - I'll give you a free taste for 40 miles, but then you'll have to pay.
3. Design - It's obvious that GM isn't going for a show-stopper with the dumbed-down production version. It doesn't look any different than a Malibu.
4. Bob Lutz - This guy needs to retire. He had no qualms on Charlie Rose last month saying that he's be happier making muscle cars, and that fuel efficiency is only being pursued because of government policies -and not because of demand.
5. Grossly overstated fuel efficiency - There were several articles a few weeks ago discussing the debate about claimed millage. GM claims it's as high as 150mpg, and Motor Trend is more comfortable saying it's 48. Either way, this is lower than either the Prius or the insight, let alone any real electric cars.
6. Claims that this is a 'new' category of car. It's really not that much differernt than the competition. The fuel economy gets progressively worse the further you drive it between recharges, and it's in the middle of the pack for average hybrid economy. The design is boring. It's not the revolutionary concept that the EV1 was.
7. GM's Track record - If the previous and existing hybrids are any indication of commitment... There was a list on Forbes last year of the 10 least fuel efficient hybrids. Guess which Large American company made 7 of them? That's right it was GM.
8. Price - GM originally stated that the Volt would sell for around $30K. Although they havn't yet confirmed it, various sources are now reporting that it will be more like $40-$45K unless GM chooses to 'subsidize' the price -in which case it will not be sustainable. Not exactly a car for the masses either way. GM is in no position financially to continue to give cars away at a loss.
9. Who Killed the Electric Car? I know it's a hokey over-dramatized movie, but it makes some good points about GM, the government, the oil companies, the auto industry, and demand for electric vehicles.
10. GM's first plug-in hybrid was shown to the media 39 years ago, and even if this thing is released at the end of 2009, it's going to be 40 years late.
Where are you getting these figures? They're not exactly correct. The figures in the Wikipedia article are from an article published in January of 2007. The Volt will get more like 30mpg when driven over longer distances.
GM is doing a great job of making people think they're serious about this. There are about 10 reasons why this is laughable.
So NeXT may not have had stellar success, but SJ's other little project making cartoons wasn't exactly a failure.
You make it sound like Steve had nothing without Apple.
The success he had with Pixar in itself was a huge achievement. He bought it for $10M and sold it for something like $8B.
can someone explain to them the purpose of a cover song? A cover song's purpose is to get a band noticed via a recognizable tune, so they can then peddle their own original crappy songs immediately afterwards. It rarely works though. It DID work for Van Halen with "You Really Got Me."
In the context of GH3 though, who cares? It's a video game.
I own and use three Palms, a Palm III from 1998, a Palm T|T3 from 2003, and a Palm Treo 755p from 2007.
The Palm III is by far the most stable of the three. The batteries (2xAAA) last for about a month without use of the backlight. It has crashed maybe 5 times in more than 8 years I've had it. There are still thousands of very useful apps that run great on it. I upped the built-in RAM from 2MB to 8MB+2MB flash in 2000.
The T|T3 is and probably always will be the pinnacle of Palm's product design. The OS is not as stable. There are issues with the screen noise. The hotsync software is primitive at best.
But you can't beat the combination of bluetooth, aluminum body, 320x480 resolution, support for on-board application development (BASIC, Pascal, C etc), SDIO slot (only supports 1 GB), voice recorder, vibrating alarm, 400MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, compatibility with various keyboards and other accessories, [unofficial] support for graffiti 1, compact sliding design, networking capabilities, etc etc etc. I wish I'd bought two.
The Treo 755p is a barely-functioning mess compared to what the earlier product were. I got it just because I already have so much Palm software that I use and like, but both of my previous phones (Blackberry 7290, Blackberry 8700) were far more stable and didn't lag for 5 to 60 seconds whenever I tried to switch applications like the Treo does.
Palm needs to either focus heavily on the user experience like they did a decade ago, or get out of the business before their legacy becomes one of eye rolling and snickering.
The actual math in MBA classes isn't especially difficult. I took stats, linear algebra, logic, etc in my psychology undergrad. The bad part, at least in my full-time program, is that we have much more to do than we have time for. So if there is anything that is even slightly unclear, it requires a lot of effort to stay caught-up. The math itself hasn't been the main problem, it's applying the math correctly to very unfamiliar scenarios with very little explicit instruction.
Although your post is not worthy of a response, I will remind you that lack of success in high school math is not a causal indicator of success elsewhere, especially many years later.
Incidentally, insults are the purest window into a person's deepest insecurities.
I was consistently at the bottom of my class in high school math. I had to lie cheat and steal to get into community college. I eventually made it through a BA, and now a few years later I find myself in a full-time MBA program where math proficiency is a foregone assumption.
I told myself before I started my MBA that a couple of "...for Dummies" books and some online courses would get me caught up with the pack. I was wrong. It has taken a herculean effort through private sessions with professors and other students to keep me from failing out of Accounting and Statistics.
As great as online courses and the like are, there is no substitute for a good teacher. You will be amazed by how much more effective a tutor is than taking a self-directed online tutorial.
If you are the kind of person who is bad at math, you'll probably always be bad at math, but you do have to learn how to get by when necessary. Get yourself a private tutor, suck up the cost, and see the results for yourself.
It doesn't need to be tied to a particular player, as long as it it tied to a class of players, all of which include the royalty payment as part of the purchase. This is what they do in Canada, but without any tyrannical proprietary players or formats. Canadians are trusted to get content (that they've paid for through player and medium 'taxes') from either of the standard sources, be it Limewire OR Bittorrent. It's hard to knock the system they've got.
I grew up my whole life thinking that American Indians were descended from Hebrews who arrived in America in 600 BC. And by 'Native Americans' I mean Polynesians, Inuit, and everyone else native to North and South America and the Pacific Islands (as long as they weren't too black of course).
Then I read a story on the Internet about DNA research compiled by Simon Southerton. Guess What? His research confirmed what common sense, linguistic, and archaeological evidence also suggested: that Native Americans came from Asia.
As sad as it is, that was the most life-changing experience I've had so far.
I somehow 'found' a digital copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a week before it was released. It seemed to be a scan-to-text of some sort of editor's copy. It had various notes and comments interjected here and there. I wish I still had it, but I eventually got the real book; and I often clean out my questionably legal digital content.
Seriously, Lefebvre is known here in Calgary (where he is from) for donating lots of money to various social causes and institutions. Now all he'll be donating is a lot of spare time to the US 'PMITA' system.
What a shame that those backwards Americans are so high and mighty with their 'morals' and 'values' and what not. It's not like gambling is a huge crime either. Can't someone enjoy a night of online gambling in the privacy of their own home without big brother poking around? Where's the harm?
If Lefebvre had been arrested here in Canada he would have got house arrest at the most. I'm sure he'll do some jail time in the states though.
Sorry, it's not very often that Canada is good for too much. I have to flaunt it a bit.
David Larson (proposed the moratorium): Dave-Larson@fwps.org
Ed Barney (School Board President): ed-barney@fwps.org
General School Board email: schoolboard@fwps.org
Frosty Hardison: (253) 528-0343
I've been getting messages that I think are from within my company until I read them through a couple of times. We have six other branches and I don't know everyone's names. Some of these messages are like "Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I can now be reached at ext. 233. Hope all is well at the Calgary office." Then it will give a full phone number and sometimes an address. I traced one of the addresses to a mortgage brokerage in Toronto. It's almost as if they've been reading my legitimate mail and then making crap up that fits the profile of a typical message to me. And they're spoofing the "to:" field too. I hate that.
In November I went from never getting a single spam to getting about 100 per day on my Blackberry. Roger's Wireless automatically gives you a blackberry email address (in addition to any others you may set up) and doesn't give you the option to disable it from being pushed to your phone. Their filter system is too simple and insufficient to do what I need it to, so I have been forced to turn off message notification and just check and delete every half hour or so throughout the day. Rogers has not been helpful on the phone or via email. They tell me they're working on it. I'm ready to chuck my $600 phone out the next open window I see.
They are hard-wired and do not require our being aware of them. Instincts may lead us to the occasional irrational thought or behavior, but overall they tend to benefit us as far as survival and reproduction. Total rationality is not a natural by-product of evolution, and thus we have truthiness.
If you're on public property you can take whatever pictures you want This is correct. I worked as a private investigator a few years ago and the rule about surveillance was that you could film people regardless of where they were as long as you were on public property. For example, if they are inside their house you can film them or take pictures through their window, as long as they are visible from the street.
Slashdot Mirror
This already happened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_Salinity_Crisis#Replenishment"
You mean the two-seater? Of course a full size 4-5 passenger car won't have as low a drag coefficient.
The EV-1 had the lowest drag coefficient (0.19) of any production car ever. Even the Camry (0.27) has less drag. The Volt (.29) could have at least tried to come closer. It just shows they're not pushing for economy as much as for PR.
Sure, its' called a Tesla. If you have $100k laying around, go ahead and buy one.
I will if they still make them in 5 or 6 years when I will be able to afford one.
So, a car that will work fine for half the population is no good? There won't ever be a single vehicle type that will fit everyone's needs. And since a lot of commuters sit in stop-and-go traffic, an electric engine that doesn't idle and waste power is perfect. Plus, you can try to charge the car at work to get 80 miles of battery run-time each day.
Good point. But I was thinking in terms of comparing it to an all-electric that would have the range for everyone. Granted this is currently an expensive option, but it wouldn't have been if GM had supported EV R&D in more than a token way.
No, you pay for the first 40 miles, but it is just more efficient and cheaper.
That's why I said it's LIKE a drug dealer, not that it IS one.
So, you are worried about it's looks?
I am not personally worried about the looks, but I'm worried that GM didn't want it to be a runnaway best-seller like the PT Cruiser was in it's day. Granted this is a weaker argument, but YOU try coming up with 10 reasons for anything!
What does he have to do with the performance of the car?
Bob Lutz is the co-chairman of GM. He is responsible for setting the direction of the company's marketing efforts worldwide. He has outright stated that he does not belive in global warming and this 'green' push is an inconvienience for US automakers. I have no confidence whatsoever that he is devoted to reducing oil consumption in any way at all. This car is designed to increase people's perception of GM as a company. It is not designed to move us into alternative energy sources.
150 MPG is much better than the Prius, and 48 is the exact same as the Prius. And the Prius has no 'battery only' driving option. It's gas all the time. And the Insight is expected to only get about 40 mpg http://wot.motortrend.com/6300311/auto-news/take-that-prius-honda-insight-pricing-will-start-near-19000/index.html
Ok, you got me there. I didn't chack my facts. BUT, I was talking about the previous Insight, not the upcoming one. So I was kind of half right.
Wow, so a new type of car that is being produced for the first time that uses expensive batteries will cost more than a mass produced car that has been in production for years/decades? Thanks, Mr. Obvious!
My point was more about the bait-and-switch dilogue about the price over time, not much about the absolute price. Still, This kind of car would have been a LOT cheaper if any of the bigger companies had started actually working on it years ago when the technology became available instead of now racing to catch up. GM purchased the company that made the EV1 batteries and then quickly decided not to use or sell those batteries to anyone after they destroyed all the EV1s.
GM sells a hybrid SUV that gets "only" 24 MPG, but it's an 8 passenger vehicle
Oh, I was unaware that SUV's were typically full.
I was under the impression that the typical vehicle had one or two people in it, and that the typical family had 3.5 people.
Next time I see all those SUVs on the Phoenix freeways I'll try to remember that even though they all look nearly empty, each one has 8 passengers in it.
Thanks for the heads up.
So, to answer your question: No, I do not believe they controlled for imaginary variables.
...someone else use the same model in a 90 foot radius
This made me laugh. I had to stop using a wireless mouse at school because I got so much 'noise' from the other 20 or 30 wireless mouses in the same classroom.
1. Drag coefficient - Why not make it at least as low as the EV1? At higher speeds this is a huge factor. 2. Range - Today's Electric cars should be going hundreds of miles. Sure the 'average' drive is only 33, but that means many are going more than that. I know it's anecdotal, but I've gone 2 years at a time having to commute 90+ miles per day. This is like a drug dealer - I'll give you a free taste for 40 miles, but then you'll have to pay. 3. Design - It's obvious that GM isn't going for a show-stopper with the dumbed-down production version. It doesn't look any different than a Malibu. 4. Bob Lutz - This guy needs to retire. He had no qualms on Charlie Rose last month saying that he's be happier making muscle cars, and that fuel efficiency is only being pursued because of government policies -and not because of demand. 5. Grossly overstated fuel efficiency - There were several articles a few weeks ago discussing the debate about claimed millage. GM claims it's as high as 150mpg, and Motor Trend is more comfortable saying it's 48. Either way, this is lower than either the Prius or the insight, let alone any real electric cars. 6. Claims that this is a 'new' category of car. It's really not that much differernt than the competition. The fuel economy gets progressively worse the further you drive it between recharges, and it's in the middle of the pack for average hybrid economy. The design is boring. It's not the revolutionary concept that the EV1 was. 7. GM's Track record - If the previous and existing hybrids are any indication of commitment... There was a list on Forbes last year of the 10 least fuel efficient hybrids. Guess which Large American company made 7 of them? That's right it was GM. 8. Price - GM originally stated that the Volt would sell for around $30K. Although they havn't yet confirmed it, various sources are now reporting that it will be more like $40-$45K unless GM chooses to 'subsidize' the price -in which case it will not be sustainable. Not exactly a car for the masses either way. GM is in no position financially to continue to give cars away at a loss. 9. Who Killed the Electric Car? I know it's a hokey over-dramatized movie, but it makes some good points about GM, the government, the oil companies, the auto industry, and demand for electric vehicles. 10. GM's first plug-in hybrid was shown to the media 39 years ago, and even if this thing is released at the end of 2009, it's going to be 40 years late.
Where are you getting these figures? They're not exactly correct. The figures in the Wikipedia article are from an article published in January of 2007. The Volt will get more like 30mpg when driven over longer distances. GM is doing a great job of making people think they're serious about this. There are about 10 reasons why this is laughable.
So NeXT may not have had stellar success, but SJ's other little project making cartoons wasn't exactly a failure. You make it sound like Steve had nothing without Apple. The success he had with Pixar in itself was a huge achievement. He bought it for $10M and sold it for something like $8B.
This reminds me of a quote about having nothing to fear. I'm not sure why.
I own and use three Palms, a Palm III from 1998, a Palm T|T3 from 2003, and a Palm Treo 755p from 2007. The Palm III is by far the most stable of the three. The batteries (2xAAA) last for about a month without use of the backlight. It has crashed maybe 5 times in more than 8 years I've had it. There are still thousands of very useful apps that run great on it. I upped the built-in RAM from 2MB to 8MB+2MB flash in 2000. The T|T3 is and probably always will be the pinnacle of Palm's product design. The OS is not as stable. There are issues with the screen noise. The hotsync software is primitive at best. But you can't beat the combination of bluetooth, aluminum body, 320x480 resolution, support for on-board application development (BASIC, Pascal, C etc), SDIO slot (only supports 1 GB), voice recorder, vibrating alarm, 400MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, compatibility with various keyboards and other accessories, [unofficial] support for graffiti 1, compact sliding design, networking capabilities, etc etc etc. I wish I'd bought two. The Treo 755p is a barely-functioning mess compared to what the earlier product were. I got it just because I already have so much Palm software that I use and like, but both of my previous phones (Blackberry 7290, Blackberry 8700) were far more stable and didn't lag for 5 to 60 seconds whenever I tried to switch applications like the Treo does. Palm needs to either focus heavily on the user experience like they did a decade ago, or get out of the business before their legacy becomes one of eye rolling and snickering.
The actual math in MBA classes isn't especially difficult. I took stats, linear algebra, logic, etc in my psychology undergrad. The bad part, at least in my full-time program, is that we have much more to do than we have time for. So if there is anything that is even slightly unclear, it requires a lot of effort to stay caught-up. The math itself hasn't been the main problem, it's applying the math correctly to very unfamiliar scenarios with very little explicit instruction.
Although your post is not worthy of a response, I will remind you that lack of success in high school math is not a causal indicator of success elsewhere, especially many years later. Incidentally, insults are the purest window into a person's deepest insecurities.
I was consistently at the bottom of my class in high school math. I had to lie cheat and steal to get into community college. I eventually made it through a BA, and now a few years later I find myself in a full-time MBA program where math proficiency is a foregone assumption. I told myself before I started my MBA that a couple of "...for Dummies" books and some online courses would get me caught up with the pack. I was wrong. It has taken a herculean effort through private sessions with professors and other students to keep me from failing out of Accounting and Statistics. As great as online courses and the like are, there is no substitute for a good teacher. You will be amazed by how much more effective a tutor is than taking a self-directed online tutorial. If you are the kind of person who is bad at math, you'll probably always be bad at math, but you do have to learn how to get by when necessary. Get yourself a private tutor, suck up the cost, and see the results for yourself.
I for one welcome our new asexual unitard-wearing eunuch overlords.
I grew up my whole life thinking that American Indians were descended from Hebrews who arrived in America in 600 BC. And by 'Native Americans' I mean Polynesians, Inuit, and everyone else native to North and South America and the Pacific Islands (as long as they weren't too black of course). Then I read a story on the Internet about DNA research compiled by Simon Southerton. Guess What? His research confirmed what common sense, linguistic, and archaeological evidence also suggested: that Native Americans came from Asia. As sad as it is, that was the most life-changing experience I've had so far.
I somehow 'found' a digital copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a week before it was released. It seemed to be a scan-to-text of some sort of editor's copy. It had various notes and comments interjected here and there. I wish I still had it, but I eventually got the real book; and I often clean out my questionably legal digital content.
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.htm l?id=9971c427-4587-4619-a577-8a8f991e72f1&k=66571
Seriously, Lefebvre is known here in Calgary (where he is from) for donating lots of money to various social causes and institutions. Now all he'll be donating is a lot of spare time to the US 'PMITA' system. What a shame that those backwards Americans are so high and mighty with their 'morals' and 'values' and what not. It's not like gambling is a huge crime either. Can't someone enjoy a night of online gambling in the privacy of their own home without big brother poking around? Where's the harm? If Lefebvre had been arrested here in Canada he would have got house arrest at the most. I'm sure he'll do some jail time in the states though. Sorry, it's not very often that Canada is good for too much. I have to flaunt it a bit.
David Larson (proposed the moratorium): Dave-Larson@fwps.org Ed Barney (School Board President): ed-barney@fwps.org General School Board email: schoolboard@fwps.org Frosty Hardison: (253) 528-0343
I've been getting messages that I think are from within my company until I read them through a couple of times. We have six other branches and I don't know everyone's names. Some of these messages are like "Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I can now be reached at ext. 233. Hope all is well at the Calgary office." Then it will give a full phone number and sometimes an address. I traced one of the addresses to a mortgage brokerage in Toronto. It's almost as if they've been reading my legitimate mail and then making crap up that fits the profile of a typical message to me. And they're spoofing the "to:" field too. I hate that.
In November I went from never getting a single spam to getting about 100 per day on my Blackberry. Roger's Wireless automatically gives you a blackberry email address (in addition to any others you may set up) and doesn't give you the option to disable it from being pushed to your phone. Their filter system is too simple and insufficient to do what I need it to, so I have been forced to turn off message notification and just check and delete every half hour or so throughout the day. Rogers has not been helpful on the phone or via email. They tell me they're working on it. I'm ready to chuck my $600 phone out the next open window I see.
They are hard-wired and do not require our being aware of them. Instincts may lead us to the occasional irrational thought or behavior, but overall they tend to benefit us as far as survival and reproduction. Total rationality is not a natural by-product of evolution, and thus we have truthiness.