Posted on 02/21/2008 7:27:30 AM PST by george76
I saw a lady smoking a cigarette in a Prius the other day. Struck me as funny.
Watts that you say?
I drive a Prius, bought in Nov. 04 now has 110K miles. The battery still does great. Haven’t had the first problem, other than some people assuming I am a lib. I enjoy straightening them out on that, though.
Volts don't kill.
A static charge on a door handle is measured in the thousands of volts. It's meaningless.
What kills is amperage, and as little as 20 milliamperes can stop your heart. This makes most all electric appliances potentially fatal. All of them.....
If you look at any telco switch room, most all of the equipment runs on 48vdc. They consider 48 volts the maximum that dry skin can come in contact with and not overly conduct.
That being said, 300 volts is enough to push whatever amount of milliamps through a body to stop your heart. And unlike AC
which tends to throw you on contact, DC will cause involuntary muscle contraction, you can’t let go.
We had a cold snap this morning......Plays hell with batteries, increases loads, and both of these cars likely tripped their internal protection devices.
“I checked them out a few years ago, and found out that the Honda Civic Hybrid would have gotten worse mileage than the regular Honda Civic, except that they added additional fuel saving features to the Hybrid.
Considering the minimal mileage difference and the increased cost of the Hybrid, The owner would have had to drive over 300,000 miles to break even, assuming the batteries didn’t have to be replaced.”
==
Me too. Test drove the Echo or some such thing. I didn’t buy because too many unanswered questions about safety ,
maintenance, costs etc. I would rather a diesel. Funny how the big diesel pickup trucks are so popular but like said the passenger diesel treated as a bad step child. Heck diesel motor lasts for so long seems much more envirolly-correct. But then enviralnuts only want us walking or on bicycles.
Yeah, so???? What's your point, that complete greenhorn newbies should start off making $40/hr to do relatively low skill level work???? No wonder the US auto makers are going bankrupt in a hurry. Journeyman electricians, who actually have to go to school and learn a great deal about electric theory, only start out at 40% of journeyman wages when starting their apprenticeships. They receive raises as they accumulate hours in the field and pass the classroom tests. It can take them 4 years to become a journeyman.
Hybrids are the perfect car. Sealed up, electronics, etc where you can’t do anything yourself and the dealer/manufacturer makes money off service agreements. They are disposable cars, with a very predictable life since batteries only have a lifespan that goes so far. They are overpriced with huge profit margins since they are in vogue among those wanting to “save the planet.” The Hybrid is to cars what the disposable camera is in photography.
Klein must have gotten his certification from a box of Fruit Loops. Current kills, not voltage.
“And unlike AC
which tends to throw you on contact, DC will cause involuntary muscle contraction, you can’t let go.”
from personal experience, you have it backwards.
I agree about diesels, and am very eager to get one for my next car. However, VW tells me that they don’t have enough production capacity to export large numbers to the U.S., considering the high demand in Europe (for once, the decadent Euros are right about something). No other mfr. is taking up the slack. I wonder if the Japs went for hybrids because they are fascinated with complex technology, and have the quality manufacturing to make it work.
new nano lithium technology developed at Stanford U. will allow lithium laptop type batteries to hold about ten times their present charge. This will change the hybrid equational alot. We will be seeing electric cars going 500 mile per charge soon and the electric rates compared to expensive gasoline equates to about 150 miles per gallon. The oil companies have done all they could aligned with the car makers to keep the staus quo in poor mileage combustion engines. But that will be coming to an end soon, thank God.
If you read the whole article it states the links for safety info; unfortunately only Toyota allows you in to actually read the manual - Motorcraft and Honda won’t get you there.
Ford, motorcraft, won’t work - 404 error and Honda has a subscription access plan aimed at technicians.
The Toyota battery pack weighs 100 lbs and is recyclable through Toyota, they list a phone number just for this.
Maybe in urban areas, but try $22-24K for a lot of areas of the country for an out of college degree.
Where I live, Springfield MO, the average wage (overall, not starting) is $29,995 with the average household income of $48,738.
But the general rule for casual contact with an open conductor is between 1K to 100K ohms. (Grip a pair of test leads from an Ohmmeter and see how much you can vary the reading by squeezing harder.)
Taking the lowest figure, that's 300 mA, enough to kill, if the current path were through the heart. Taking the highest figure, 3 miliamps from one hand to the other hand is not enough to kill.
As I said, if you simply touched 300VDC, you'd probably be safe, but I certainly am not willing to prove it.
Also, the "cannot let go" only counts if you wrap your fingers around the bare cable and squeeze. If you brush against it with a finger, all of your arm muscles will contract including your biceps, and you will "let go."
Happiness is a Prius with a Bush ‘04 bumper sticker.
DON'T DO IT!
I realize there is a world of difference between AC and DC, but 440 volts AC will blow you off the ladder and across the room. If your hands are damp, you'll be dead as you fly across the room.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.