Or get a trike and not have to balance the dang thing.
Posted on 04/16/2006 10:16:07 PM PDT by neverdem
IF you make your way over to the Javits Convention Center for the New York International Automobile Show — or if you've gone to any auto show in the last year or so — you'll know that hybrid cars are the hippest automotive fashion statement to come along in years. They've become synonymous with the worthy goal of reducing gasoline consumption and dependence on foreign oil and all that this means for a better environment and more stable geopolitics.
And yet like fat-free desserts, which sound healthy but can still make you fat, the hybrid car can make people feel as if they're doing something good, even when they're doing nothing special at all. As consumers and governments at every level climb onto the hybrid bandwagon, there is the very real danger of elevating the technology at the expense of the intended outcome — saving gas.
Few things these days say "environmentally aware consumer" so loudly as the fuel-sipping Toyota Prius. With its two power sources — one a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine, the other a battery-driven electric motor — the best-selling Prius (and other hybrids sold by Honda and Ford and due soon from several other car makers) can go further on a gallon and emit fewer pollutants in around-town use than most conventional automobiles because under certain circumstances they run on battery power and consume less fuel. For this reason, federal, state and local governments have been bending over backward to encourage the sale of hybrids, with a bewildering array of tax breaks, traffic lanes and parking spaces dedicated to hybrid owners.
But just because a car has so-called hybrid technology doesn't mean it's doing more to help the environment or to reduce the country's dependence on imported oil any more than a nonhybrid car. The truth is...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
IIRC they also showed buses in the LA area running on hydrogen fuel cells. At the time I saw this I really believed we were on the brink of a fantastic energy revolution. I wonder what happened.
He's supposedly got patent number 6,362,718, so presumably someone could build a replica based on the information in the patent document.
SMUG alert.
"SMUG alert."
Good episode.
I can tell you where to go on the pilgrimage to Salt Lake City, but first I need to know your bona-fides : age, sex, level of science education, electric car mechanical abilities, etc. This isn't for just anybody, you don't leave a loaded gun in a nursery for children to play with; just look at the abuse of credit cards(debt), translate that lack of restraint into giving everyone in the world whole atomic bombs worth of free energy(iran and kooks with nucs)and you see what I mean. Thus mail me via FR and I'll decide whether you merit it. It'll be either a wild goose chase or deadly serious new energy development, a matter of faith vs fear to you.
Ah yes, the fearful and un-believing.
Go-ood fer YOU!
What YOU don't understand is that the investigative team I was part of in 1995 spent months looking into the MEG among other technologies. We did it for the TV show Encounters. There's nothing to it. Has nothing to do with fear. If it's such a hot technology, how come 11 years later, it's still not on the market? Oh, right, I forgot, he just needs a little more seed money. Bovine Juice.
I want "Kashmir Effect" devices, or even such things as the Lutect 2000 to work. Time and time again, it always comes down to "We just need some more money to go into manufacturing".
<< .... government subsidies to lower the price when the technology won't pay for itself is another story. >>
As in grossly energy and Capital negative corn based ethonol, for another example of the absolute bloody lunacy of placing the keys to the United States Treasury in the hands of the organized criminal gangs of universally corrupt failed lawyers and other RICO-racketeering economics-illiterate lusters after unearned and undeserved power loosely known as the United States "congress." And its Socialist Internationale alligned and systemically-stupid permanent bureaucracy and that hapless mobbed-up-unions controlled ratbag pack's every-bit-as-corrupt snake-oil-salesmen-like "advisers," "contractors" and "suppliers."
Perhaps?
Ah yes, there is no Lamb shift, no casimir effect, no ZPE, no 2/3rds of the universe is dark energy(quintessence), no A-B field, no string theory, no Yang-Mills experiment(nobel prize), no 50 aspects of magnetism, no "quantum wierdness", and of course no MEG; funny we haven't known of such wisdom before, why hasn't science heard about you yet? Is not a tree is known by its fruit?
I still love the South Park episode about people who drove hybrids it was freakin classic.
Successful motorcycling is all about balancing demographics. If one were to plot a sample of people involved in motorcycle accidents over the course of a year that also includes the following positive factors you would find that motorcycling has a risk not much different than driving in some tiny hybrid...
~ Blue Jays ~
I'm surprised this was published in the New York Times.No suprise that the author of this piece, Jamie Kitman, a writer for Automobile magazine, found his way into the NY Times.
Kittman is a genuine car guy from the Left. He built his NY Times/leftist credentials with an article published in Nation, The Secret History of Lead, a conspiracy-expose on the corrupt 1920s introduction of lead into gasoline by the evil "cabal" of GM, Dupont and Standard Oil with government complicity. Nation touts the article as evidence of the need for strict government regulation of industry.
While Kitman finds corruption in the industry and its government partners, Nation's solution, more regulation becomes absurd. The prime missing ingredient to this story is competition, be it ideas, technologies or solutions. GM's hold on the automobile market was enshrined by FDR's New Deal, which set labor, material and sales prices, thus killing competition. Dupont and Std. Oil and its descendants, also benefited from FDR's folly, and using that leverage they were assured that no market alternatives to the lead-additive would arise. Kitman's article is a good one, but it misses this key point.
When government controls business, business will end up controling government.
As for Kitman's take on Hybrids, I agree with him. The good old internal combustion engine is far from over.
There is a mojor problem the way most people drive regular cars by braking when they don't need to.
I live in a rural mountain area with winding roads. I have to laugh when following some drivers that brake at every curve in the road.
You judge your speed and distance to the curve and rate the curve for the proper speed. You decelerate to the curve to get the desired speed at arrival and then accelerate smoothly through the curve. Try to stay in the highest gear.
Don't need no hybrid thingy.
You're absolutely correct in that people apply their brakes WAY TOO OFTEN due to not paying attention to the road, terrain, and prevailing traffic conditions.
I once made a bet with a friend that I could drive from home to a destination 155 miles away and only use the brakes a dozen times or less. Scored myself $20.00 that day by utilizing my manual gearbox and keeping a sharp eye on traffic. The highway portion of the trip was the easiest part to manage.
~ Blue Jays ~
Or get a trike and not have to balance the dang thing.
Balancing a motorcycle is like balancing a rolling quarter. Once moving, it is quite stable. Couldn't tell if you meant to include the [/sarcasm] tag or not!
~ Blue Jays ~
Don't know what South Park is. We've known for years what "gravity" is and thus how to do anti-gravity, I know a couple of the people involved. But stop and consider : if everyone in the world had their own "flying carpet", that would immediately lead to species suicide, can you see why?
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