Interesting movie

Who made it, Algor ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Sony Pictures, directed by Chris Paine, who seems to be a rookie - worked on production staff of other documentaries.

Has anyone done an apples-to-apples comparison of energy consumption, normalized vehicle weight, etc.?

Electricity doesn't just come for free.

I vaguely recall something on the news this past week that some of the hybrid car performance specs were more hype than real, and that a gasoline engine alone was more efficient.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

There was a review and interview with the producer on our local PBS the other night, that movie got a 4 star review and the guy who filmed it knew what he was talking about. Since I think any car not running US made grain ethanol or charged off a basketball sized local nuke or fusion reactor is not a viable alternative, I did not pay more attention to the details as the guy spoke, but that movie is probably a must see. Its his first film, and yes he's more of a skilled geek then a film maker "artiste".

IMO Hydrogen is a joke, hybrids are a future collectors item. We probably toss away enough wheat and corn in this country to solve a sizable amount of our fuel problem. I for one would not mind riding a bus for the daily commute, and we're still gonna need crude for making polymers. Just dont take away my car on weekends!

BTW, in our local paper, the Beacon Journal, yesterday local sources of asphalt say their price is rising 30% or more a month for feed stock (sludge ) from the refinery. What goes on most roads is a blend, only

5-10% is actually petrol content, but still the state of Ohio predicts a major decline in road rebuilding. Rebuilding will not be canceled, just "set back" or "delayed" according to DOT. Here in the pothole kingdom of the world, that means we probably should just suck it in and build Autobahn style gravel bedded concrete super roads, the cost is now going be about the same.

Steve Roberts

Steve Roberts

on

Do you have a link to share?

It is pretty commonly accepted that ALL cars get less mileage than their EPA ratings, since no one drives that course.

Ok, did a google, here's the PBS connection:

Steve Roberts

And here (from the Beacon Journal) is asphalt/concrete costs:

Steve Roberts

[snip]

It was on the "news". Given my propensity to have Fox running in the background, try there.

A "tin can" car will get better mileage.

My '61 Renault Dauphine got 45MPG, but it only weighed around 1300 pounds, 35HP, IIRC.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Top Gear in the USA panned the Prius, saying they got only 40-45MPG but in a diesel VW Lupo, 70MPG. Basically said that if you want to go *that slow*, you should be driving a small diesel.

When you're young, those little cars seem so nice. Now I don't know how one can exist without a Q45 in the garage ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

The engineering tradeoff has always been between high efficiency and low polution, difficult to get the best of both. The diesel wins on fuel economy because of the high compression ratio, but unfortunately that produces lots of NO3(NOx) because of excess O2 in the chamber at higher temps. Gas engines were pretty much all forced below 9:1 to keep chamber temps down, and NO3 production down, and with it efficiency drops like a rock - especially because the onboard computers nowdays are forced to keep the mixture richer so the catalytic converter has the right chemical input to function, rather than seek out the lean burn sweet spot.

The green folks have always hated diesels because of the high sulfer that used to be in the fuel, and the pure carbon puffs when the mixture is rich. The sulfer has largely been gone for the last decade, and turbos pretty much get rid of the carbon puffs. Unfortunately the NO3 still stings the nose.

The fuel shortage could pretty much be erased by increasing mileage by the 30% or better that diesels can deliver. We can also keep building cars below 2200lbs that kill people at rates of 2-5x what larger (safe) cars/trucks/SUVs do ... in the end, most people that can afford safety, will choose it over economy ... which is why that when CAFE regs removed heavy cars from the street, the market shifted to SUVs. If the industry COULD build safe 3000lb cars without CAFE interference, we would probably see the SUV's largely disappear and fuel economy rise because of lower frontal area and less undercarriage drag.

IF, we could produce diesel stationwagons and sedans, and not run afoul of CAFE, the fuel shortage should largely disappear, and we would not have 6000lb SUVs on the road, except for those folks that actually need something that heavy and large.

A few years back, when local green activist were calling SUV drivers "baby killers", I dug out the NTSC statistics that showed that the little tiny cars and small SUVs mandated by CAFE were the real killers, as the vast majority of deaths in the stats were light cars in single car accidents, and next was multiple light car accidents, with a tiny fraction of death/injury being light cars with heavier vehicles. The stats pretty much documented being able to call the green (anti-car) folks that forced CAFE on the industry the real baby killers, by creating a fleet of small cars with poor crumple zones, that really do kill kids and babies because they lack the ability to absorb collision energy in sheetmetal, resulting in recoil forces that cause severe injury and death .... or in the case of hitting trees or other stationary objects head on, high G stops, which even with air bags, kill or maim the occupants.

In the years since, the percentage of small car and SUV accidents has risen, as people have moved to SUVs for safety .... and sadly with that has been poor (sporty) engineering of SUVs to provide an attractive truck by CAFE standards, that was also increasingly unsafe because of rollovers (too much tire, and narrower track with high CG). GO Figure ... every time the government trys to do social engineering, the market has a way of doing what it will. In this case, the public would have been much better off with safe stationwagons, rather than SUVs, just because some idiots tried to FORCE the public into unsafe little cars to meet quotas mandated by CAFE.

Wrong argument. Woman in the video said her equivalent cost was 60 cents per gallon of gas. Around these parts the true cost of gas and electricity favors gas, if anything, so this would mean the total energy use for electric was in fact less.

The right argument is to focus on the cost of batteries, and the up-front vs. savings tradeoff. These days it looks a bit better for all-electric cars, so we're starting to see some available, but it still means a much higher up-front cost.

Maybe, twisting the statistics for a wide-open place like Arizona, but for in-city commuting, like here-abouts, with all our stop and go, the hybrids kick butt bigtime. But, they still cost more up front. And there's the worry of reliability: Will they suffer a catastrophic on-highway failure, and, will they suffer $10k-repair failures? The evidence so far seems to be, no. My assistance engineer's hybrid has been going, and going and going...

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

Uh? Give me some scientific fact to back that up. The report I saw said eliminate the battery weight and the IC-engine-only system did better. Remember we're talking leftist-weenie-sized cars here ;-)

Nope. The report I saw was based on stop-and-go rush hour traffic.

Total cost per mile ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Bogosity meter alert!

1) *ALWAYS* tell us how big these damn movies are; not everybody has DSL or cable... 2) How in the !*#$*@#$ does one find and *save* such a file to re-play? 3) *IF* it can be found and saved, how does one play it?

Timex?

The bunny?

The roadrunner and the fox?

The Renault Dauphine and the UK Ford Fiesta compete for the honour of being the first car where the paint was thicker than the metal underneath.

--
Tony Williams.