Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years?
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 3:12 PM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro albm...@centroin.com.br wrote: Why there are no natural gas cars in the USA? There are. I see them all the time around here. Some public utilities run all their vehicles on compressed natural gas. Here in California, CNG vehicles can use carpool lanes with a solo occupant. I'm also seeing more dual-fuel badges on new cars -- gasoline or ethanol. Our neighbor has a big SUV that is ready to run on corn. Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Doug Pensinger Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 11:50 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? Dan wrote: But, let's just take 30. At $1.50/gal, that's 5 cents/mile. Lets say these cars are kept for 150k, which is on the high side...that's 7.5k for gas. The break even point, assuming CDs pay zero, with the MSRP discount, is close to $6.00/gal. And, that's comparing with a smaller car. and: They talked about 5 people, they talked about 240 miles, but never said that 5 people could be taken 240 miles. My guess is that the 5 person seating is tight, and only for the 80 mile version of the carotherwise they'd explicitly say otherwise (If I were the project manager I'd be all over the tech. writer's back to make sure that the capacity was stated explicitly if it existed...if it wasn't there, I'd be happy with what they wrote). Now tell me Dan. Does your Escort get 30 mpg with 5 adults aboard, or are you engaging in the same kind of deceptive language you're accusing others of? OK, I didn't state things precisely correctly. I've measured the 30 mpg driving back and forth to be with Teri while she was at seminary. This trip is 300 miles, with about 30 traffic lights and a few stop signs. What I was getting at is that the 80 mile version seats 5, while the 240 mile version uses the space that passengers can sit it for the extra batteries. So, five people can no longer fit in the car. If the car were to degrade to 220 miles with 5 people instead of 1, then that's not a big deal. But, 80 and 240 are very different numbers. And since all the other manufactures of similar cars (Toyota, Chevy) are in the 40-100 mile range, having a car that uses the same fundamental technology (the wheel design is not going to change things by factors of two) and is more than a factor of two better sounds rather fishy. Not that nine out of ten cars has more than one person in it. And by the way, gas prices around here are back up to $2/gal and will probably go higher soon. So if your getting 23miles/gallon (with your five people in the car) for 150k at $2.50/gal that's 16k for gas. California is special in that it has gas blends that are more expensive and tend to get slightly lower gas mileage. But, then, virtually everything costs a lot more in California. :-) When I was selling my house, I got great amusement considering the multi-millions I would get for my house out there. And if batteries become cheaper and wind/solar interests buy up used batteries to store power generated at off peak times, http://www.its.berkeley.edu/sustainabilitycenter/newsandevents/CEFISrelate d_sandia_report.pdf the maintenance cost of electrics is probably a lot cheaper than gas powered cars that are much more mechanically complex. First, I got a not there when looking for the paper. Second, batteries will have to become many orders of magnitude better for storage of power generation at off peak times for use at peak timesparticularly if we are thinking of things like wind power which would be close to economically feasible right now if there was such a storage mechanism. Let me run some numbers to give a feel for this. Let's say we have a 200 MW wind farm (say 300 MW nameplate, allowing for nominal winds to below nameplate), and will need to store 100 hours worth of energy to make it feasible to use it as a stand alone facility. That means we'd need 20 GWh of storage. According to http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Battery-Energy.html storing this energy with the type of advanced Li-I batteries we've been seeing in the best cars, we'd have to pay 80 billion for the storage. The windfarm itself costs only 300 million in my example, so you see that battery storage is far away from economical for this purpose. That's why folks are looking at lowering the cost of conversion to hydrogen and compressed air storage downhole. Now, I'm not saying that finding a cheaper better battery is impossible. Rather, I'm arguing that it will take a breakthrough. Thus, I'd argue for the government funding nanotech and nanochemistry as the best means of approaching this. If we can get Li-I batteries to increase their capacity by say 10x, while holding their cost constant, then electric cars become economically feasible. But, if we don't, then we can subsidize electric cars with hundreds of billions and we still won't have anything more than an expensive subsidy program, like ethanol. Good engineering, by itself, can cut costs. But, the engineering that I've been associated with that has drastically cut costs have involved game changers from other fields (e.g. drops in computer prices that allow for the modeling of complex EM problems in days instead of centuries). Good manufacturing
Scouted: HAL's Pals: Top 10 Evil Computers
HAL is 17 today. Sort of. http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/01/top-10-evil-com.html Nick ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years?
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of xponentrob Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 9:11 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? - Original Message - From: Dan M dsummersmi...@comcast.net To: 'Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion' brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 1:24 PM Subject: RE: Scouted: U.S. Heh! I'm aware of the math involved. Frex: http://www.gunaxin.com/chevy-volt-bmw-mini-tesla-roadster/4055 Worth reading. Especially the part where he stated he has no idea why gas prices dropped so much. :-) The problem with breaking down the math is that it pretty well preaches to the already-decided. People are going to buy what they want to buy unless they just can't afford to, and that is likely the only math that counts. That pretty much means that some people will take a premium hit if they believe that there will be other indirect benefits. Then too, it must be repeated that these are initial estimates, and that the prices will inevitably lower. It is just a question of how much, and that kind of market forcasting is near impossible at the moment for anyone. But, to first order, curve fitting of past prices aren't bad for things that are technology based (this clearly doesn't work for commodities that show both highly inelastic supply and highly inelastic demand). That is why bioengineering is an area that has potential; its costs are dropping a factor of 2 per year. Battery costs aren't. Now, we only need a factor of 10 for batteries, so it is possible that nanotech will provide a solution. So, I'd say fund nanotech, not the present technology, which won't give us the home run that is needed. Vaporware? The Tesla can be bought. The others are still being configured and are not available for sale. I've always been skeptical about what the price and performance will be. The engineering rule is that projects take twice as long and cost twice as much. Cutting this factor down, because they are in prototype stage, a conservative estimate is that costs are 30% higher than discussed. They talked about 5 people, they talked about 240 miles, but never said that 5 people could be taken 240 miles. My guess is that the 5 person seating is tight, and only for the 80 mile version of the carotherwise they'd explicitly say otherwise (If I were the project manager I'd be all over the tech. writer's back to make sure that the capacity was stated explicitly if it existed...if it wasn't there, I'd be happy with what they wrote). Second, the 240 miles would probably be under ideal conditions. Exactly the same as with gasoline vehicles, only no one ever questions this. For some reason I find that humorous. Because we have real personal benchmark against which we can measure the difference and because someone other than the companies themselves test MPG ratings? You also have to factor in the lower costs of using electricity as an energy source. I was assuming 0 electricity costs. Depending on where one lives, gas is 3 - 5 times as costly as the equivilent in watts. What is the value of a vehicle you may have zero maintainance with in the first 5 years? Like my computer power supplies? The car that isn't built yet is like the backup quarterback when the team is struggling.no problems are reported. Eventually, I think the answer is Yes. I'd say the answer is it depends. If the money is thrown at electric cars now, before the battery breakthrough happens, it will be as useful as ethanol. I don't think there is any question that there is a need to get away from carbon based fuels and from millions of mobile units burning them at various rates of inefficiency. IMO ethanol is not really a helpful long term solution. I agree, but bioengineered fuels are not ethanol. There are algae that exist right now that produce aviation fuel with 1000x the efficiency of ethanol. The basic process is taking CO2 and H2O + solar energy to make complex hydrocarbons and O. These can be burned, producing CO2 and H2O. The net effect of the cycle is constant CO2, no net emissions. Now, there are problems with these algae being suspect to infections by fungi. But, with bioengineering exploding even faster than computers did, its quite possible that we can bioengineer solutions to this problem. The fact that venture capitalists are dropping good sized investments in startups in this field (Sapphire Energy has received 100 million in capital) indicates that there is at least some potential here. It may not work, there may be problems scaling up that are unanticipated. But, there exist in that field the same sort of fast learning curve that we had seen with computers between say 1955 and 1980. I expect such taxes are coming, but phased in over a number
Re: Scouted: HAL's Pals: Top 10 Evil Computers
Nick Arnett wrote: HAL is 17 today. Sort of. http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2009/01/top-10-evil-com.html In terms of body count, HAL wouldn't even score 100. But, as I saw in Terminator: The Sarah Chronicle Series, you are anthropormorphisizing (or something like that) machines. Alberto Monteiro ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years?
- Original Message - From: Dan M dsummersmi...@comcast.net To: 'Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion' brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 12:56 PM Subject: RE: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? First, I got a not there when looking for the paper. Second, batteries will have to become many orders of magnitude better for storage of power generation at off peak times for use at peak timesparticularly if we are thinking of things like wind power which would be close to economically feasible right now if there was such a storage mechanism. There are a few companies currently promoting business plans wherein downtown office buildings would purchase *used* current technology Li-ion auto batteries to store off-peak power for re-use during peak hours. Storing power on-site would have some advantages. Let me run some numbers to give a feel for this. Let's say we have a 200 MW wind farm (say 300 MW nameplate, allowing for nominal winds to below nameplate), and will need to store 100 hours worth of energy to make it feasible to use it as a stand alone facility. That means we'd need 20 GWh of storage. That doesn't resemble any plan I've seen. What I've seen has storage only mitigating peak usage for 24 hour cycles. If the wind doesn't blow, you just lose out on savings. According to http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Battery-Energy.html storing this energy with the type of advanced Li-I batteries we've been seeing in the best cars, we'd have to pay 80 billion for the storage. The windfarm itself costs only 300 million in my example, so you see that battery storage is far away from economical for this purpose. That's why folks are looking at lowering the cost of conversion to hydrogen and compressed air storage downhole. I think we discussed this about a year or so ago. One of our wind power discussions. Now, I'm not saying that finding a cheaper better battery is impossible. Rather, I'm arguing that it will take a breakthrough. Thus, I'd argue for the government funding nanotech and nanochemistry as the best means of approaching this. Already occuring. Industry is also funding considerable reseach on it's own. A lot of good reseach results have already come in as a result of battery nano-research. There is already a Li-ion battery that will recharge to 90% of capacity in 10 minutes and full charge (from dead) in less than an hour. They are working on manufacturing techniques to reduce cost and increase reliability, but that news is around a year old. If we can get Li-I batteries to increase their capacity by say 10x, while holding their cost constant, then electric cars become economically feasible. But, if we don't, then we can subsidize electric cars with hundreds of billions and we still won't have anything more than an expensive subsidy program, like ethanol. When manufacturing capacity comes online here in the US costs should come down fairly dramatically. The problem currently is that there are only a few manufacturers, almost all overseas, and none can supply enough to cause a price drop. But there is a LOT of money to be made even with lower prices, so there are a good number of companies vying for a piece of the pie. xponent Numbers Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years?
- Original Message - From: Dan M dsummersmi...@comcast.net To: 'Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion' brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 2:05 PM Subject: RE: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? -Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of xponentrob Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 9:11 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? - Original Message - From: Dan M dsummersmi...@comcast.net To: 'Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion' brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 1:24 PM Subject: RE: Scouted: U.S. Heh! I'm aware of the math involved. Frex: http://www.gunaxin.com/chevy-volt-bmw-mini-tesla-roadster/4055 Worth reading. Especially the part where he stated he has no idea why gas prices dropped so much. :-) Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Seems like there might be a little fallout. The problem with breaking down the math is that it pretty well preaches to the already-decided. People are going to buy what they want to buy unless they just can't afford to, and that is likely the only math that counts. That pretty much means that some people will take a premium hit if they believe that there will be other indirect benefits. Then too, it must be repeated that these are initial estimates, and that the prices will inevitably lower. It is just a question of how much, and that kind of market forcasting is near impossible at the moment for anyone. But, to first order, curve fitting of past prices aren't bad for things that are technology based (this clearly doesn't work for commodities that show both highly inelastic supply and highly inelastic demand). That is why bioengineering is an area that has potential; its costs are dropping a factor of 2 per year. Battery costs aren't. Now, we only need a factor of 10 for batteries, so it is possible that nanotech will provide a solution. So, I'd say fund nanotech, not the present technology, which won't give us the home run that is needed. Well.short to midterm. we don't need a homerun, we just need a single. We don't need an electric car that matches a gasoline powered auto in every specification. Hybrids will do that job well enough. We need electrics for city driving and commuting. This involves some changes in habits, but nothing drastic. Most families own 2 vehicles and what most people are proposing is that 1 of them be more efficient and clean. If you put together a series of singles, you can get a score. It doesn't have to be a perfect vehicle right off the bat. Virtually every car is more vehicle than people need on a day to day basis anyway, so it isn't as if folks are going to be suffering if they own an electric or a hybrid. Vaporware? The Tesla can be bought. The others are still being configured and are not available for sale. I've always been skeptical about what the price and performance will be. The engineering rule is that projects take twice as long and cost twice as much. Cutting this factor down, because they are in prototype stage, a conservative estimate is that costs are 30% higher than discussed. They talked about 5 people, they talked about 240 miles, but never said that 5 people could be taken 240 miles. My guess is that the 5 person seating is tight, and only for the 80 mile version of the carotherwise they'd explicitly say otherwise (If I were the project manager I'd be all over the tech. writer's back to make sure that the capacity was stated explicitly if it existed...if it wasn't there, I'd be happy with what they wrote). Second, the 240 miles would probably be under ideal conditions. Exactly the same as with gasoline vehicles, only no one ever questions this. For some reason I find that humorous. Because we have real personal benchmark against which we can measure the difference and because someone other than the companies themselves test MPG ratings? Wellthe government establishes MPG ratings, and they do it with only one passenger, the driver. I don't see that your criticism amounts to much in this case. (Ever notice the YMMV disclaimer? I think that is especially applicable in this discussionG) You also have to factor in the lower costs of using electricity as an energy source. I was assuming 0 electricity costs. Depending on where one lives, gas is 3 - 5 times as costly as the equivilent in watts. What is the value of a vehicle you may have zero maintainance with in the first 5 years? Like my computer power supplies? The car that isn't built yet is like the backup quarterback when the team is struggling.no problems are reported. I can think of 2 ways to respond here. I have often installed frequency drives in areas that were hot and had constant vibration. I expect
