The Chevy Volt: What The Press Is Saying.

I’m lifting some quotes from Peter Valdes-Dapena’s article on CNNmoney.com today, detailing his drive experiences so far with the Chevy Volt [link]:

“How well will General Motors' Chevrolet Volt drive once it gets past its 40 mile all-electric driving range and starts to rely on power generated by its gasoline engine? … I wanted to drain the battery as fast as possible and see what happened next.

“What happened was both imperceptible and impressive. Forced to start generating its own electricity on the fly, the Volt's performance changed not a bit. Criticism that the Volt, while running on gasoline power, would perform like a cinderblock looks to be wrong.”

 

“Off-the-line acceleration was dialed back a bit, GM told me, to protect the test car from a jolting, tire-screeching start. Production cars could be a little quicker to jump out. The rush from 15 miles per hour to 60 was actually more striking, providing a respectable punch of power when the "gas" pedal hits the floor. Volt drivers aren't going to be challenging Camaros to drag races, but they'll have plenty of power.”

 

“There's no mechanical connection at all between the Volt's 1.4-liter engine and its wheels…The biggest difference between a gas-power versus an electric-power car is that there's no transmission. Electric motors don't need gears or gear shifts.”

In other words, all transfer of energy to the wheels goes through the electric motor. The Volt is an electric car that carries its own gas-powered generator. [hmmm… I hear Honda makes a good gas generator…<grin!>]

 

“Sports sedan handling isn't what most Volt customers will be after. The Volt feels more enjoyable to drive than a Toyota Prius…”

 

“…the Volt is designed to go 40 miles on a fully charged battery. That's plenty for most American's daily commutes and errands. And if you want to drive further or simply don't charge it, no worries. You can go about 300 miles before you need to recharge battery or refill the tank.”

Valdes-Dapena does point out that other non-hybrid electric cars are designing around huge banks of batteries to get 100+ miles of range, but that won’t get a driver to Seattle without a recharge. If he’s right on the 300 mile range, that’s comparable to a traditional gas-powered vehicle. I’ll bet the gas tank’s only between 5 and 10 gallons.

“The car is expected to be heavily subsidized, so car buyers could get one for about $32,000 after federal tax rebates.

Considering the fact that many drivers could go weeks without needing to refill their gas tanks, and given how good the Volt seems so far, that's probably not a bad deal.”

Thorium as an energy source?

Ongoing reading on energy issues and sustainability led me to this gem:

Nuclear Power Using Thorium, in Wired Magazine.

The synopsis: thorium is much more accessible than uranium, easier to prepare, leaves very little dangerous residue, and creates a much more controllable reaction. From the article:

“The concept of nuclear power without waste or proliferation has obvious political appeal in the US, as well. The threat of climate change has created an urgent demand for carbon-free electricity, and the 52,000 tons of spent, toxic material that has piled up around the country makes traditional nuclear power less attractive. President Obama and his energy secretary, Steven Chu, have expressed general support for a nuclear renaissance. Utilities are investigating several next-gen alternatives, including scaled-down conventional plants and “pebble bed” reactors, in which the nuclear fuel is inserted into small graphite balls in a way that reduces the risk of meltdown.”

The synopsis: thorium is much more accessible than uranium, easier to prepare, leaves very little dangerous residue, and creates a much more controllable reaction.

Stable Oil?

Really?

CNN/Money has an interesting article on the Oil Industry. If you buy in to what they’re saying, the message is that we’ve reached a stable point in the oil industry, but we’ve learned anew the lesson not to depend upon petrochemicals. [link to article]

“The energy intensity of the U.S. economy has actually dropped by about 2% a year every year since the early 1980s. In the next couple of years Deutsche Bank expects it to decline by around 3% as people buy more fuel efficient cars and respond in other ways to the high prices of 2004-2008 and as government conservation measures kick in.

“With economic growth expected to remain at a sluggish 2.5% or so over the next couple of years, that translates into an actual drop in U.S. oil consumption.

Apparently, this is what the US Government is saying, too.

The article raises the question about countries like China, who are emerging as first-world contenders. There’s an interesting take on that, too:

“by the time hundreds of million of Chinese are buying cars, the fleet could very well be all-electric.”

Could there be a softening of the geopolitical situation around petroleum?

“geopolitical flare-ups in oil-rich nations are much less apt to affect prices now that the world has the ability to produce much more oil than it is using. Indeed, this lack of spare capacity was an underlying reason oil prices got so high in 2008. That year, spare capacity hit a low of 1 million barrels a day, a mere tanker load away from demand exceeding supply.

“Now that number is almost 4 million barrels a day, and expected to grow to 4.5 million barrels a day by the middle of next year.

"There's so much spare capacity right now," said Armstrong, noting that oil prices in the $70 range are still high enough to insure new supplies are being brought online. "It's very difficult to see prices much higher."

A mere super tanker away from exceeding supply? Whoa. That’s some SERIOUS Just-In-Time manufacturing. No wonder the Somali pirates were getting $10M ransoms for hijacked tankers. If the supply now exceeds demand, the going rate for a hijacked tanker has just gone down, too, I bet.

Over at www.gasbuddy.com, I used their charting tools to show US gas prices (and my local market) over the past 72 months. The presumption is that we could expect prices to hold steady at 2005/2006 levels for a while.

Algae to help with Battery Advances?

from the article:

"The algae-based paper sheet batteries hold up to 200% more charge than regular paper-based cellulose batteries, and they can recharge in as little as 11 seconds. Eventually, they could be used in any application that requires flexible electronics — for example, clothing or packaging that lights up. Perhaps most importantly, the algae batteries could one day cut down on e-waste from conventional metal batteries."

[link]

Around the World in a SOLAR PLANE?!?!?

The Solar Impulse project aims to do exactly that [link].

Low speed taxi tests just took place… successfully.

Prove the ability to circumnavigate the globe in a solar powered aircraft and we’ve changed the game again.

Electricity from Slow-Moving Water

Off Make Magazine’s blog, I’m snipping most of the Make blog entry here:

Capturing the same powerful forces that destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shortly after it was built in 1940, researchers at the University of Michigan are developing a new way of generating electricity with the slow moving currents found in most of the rivers and oceans of the world.

This technology is hoped to be easier to site than traditional windmills and hydropower generators.

[link]

So, I’m posting this here for the alternative energy expert in the family – R!  Enjoy!

 

==

This idea is particularly interesting to me, as a resident of the Pacific Northwest, where our massive and fast-flowing river system has been throttled by dams that continue to threaten the river ecosystems. I’m not going to get all ‘environmentalist’ here, but a technology that allows for widely distributed power generation from other water currents provides yet another way to relibably go locally off-grid. Don’t have reliable solar at your Alaska cabin? I bet you’ve got a nearby stream or river…

What if --- really. What if we really could breach dams like Bonneville? Dams who’s PRIMARY reason for existence is power generation? It’s too much to target Hoover Dam or Hech Hechy, because they’ve been built to create water reserves, not power. Still, the more we’re able to decentralize the creation of electricity, the more we’ll be able to move away from the dinosaur power plants of the 20th Century.

How We’ll Power Off-Planet Outposts

From the Technology Review, published by MIT:

“Tests prove the feasibility of using nuclear reactors to provide electricity on the moon and Mars.

“Researchers at NASA and the Department of Energy recently tested key technologies for developing a nuclear fission reactor that could power a human outpost on the moon or Mars. The tests prove that the agencies could build a "safe, reliable, and efficient" system by 2020, the year NASA plans to return humans to the moon.

“Nuclear power is being considered for lunar and Mars missions because, unlike alternatives such as solar power, it can provide constant energy, a necessity for human life-support systems, recharging rovers, and mining for resources. Solar power systems would also require the use of energy storage devices like batteries or fuel cells, adding unwanted mass to the system. Solar power is further limited because the moon is dark for up to 14 days at a time and has deep craters that can obscure the sun. Mars is farther away from the sun than either the Earth or the moon, so less solar power can be harvested there.

“To generate electricity, the researchers used a liquid metal to transfer the heat from the reactor to the Stirling engine.

“’They are very efficient and robust, and we believe [it] can last for eight years unattended,’ says Lee mason, the principal investigator of the project”

[link]

The Reverse Air Conditioner

Simple, recycled, nearly zero-cost. Yet amazingly effective at capturing passive solar heat.

Window frame, aluminum cans painted black, stacked like an array of chimneys. Convection pulls cool air in from below and ejects lots of hot air from the top. The author says 105 degrees, in fact, without having the prototype properly insulated or sealed. YIKES!

http://ecotechdaily.com/2009/07/01/free-heat-from-an-old-window-and-some-soda-cans/

Green GT Electric Supercar

Up-and-coming Swiss auto company GreenGT recently unveiled plans for a fully-electric vehicle that is heralded to be the most powerful and cutting-edge electric race car ever built. Designed with the famous Le Mans race in mind, their Twenty-4 vehicle is currently undergoing development and will boast two 100-kw electric engines that provide 350-400 horsepower and a top speed of 171 mph.

 

Thanks to Jorge Chapa for posting this update to the inhabitat.com website, and for slashdot for running a link to it.

Batteries That Use Air

This article posted to the UK paper, The Telegraph, and covered by slashdot, indicates some new technology for making sustainable battery technology.

The cells are charged in a traditional way but as power is used or 'discharged' an open mesh section of battery draws in oxygen from the surrounding air.

This oxygen reacts with a porous carbon component inside the battery, which creates more energy and helps to continually 'charge' the cell as it is being discharged.

The applications are in longer-lasting batteries and smaller battery payloads needed to support an electric device, whether a cell phone or a car.

[link] to the article

From BoingBoing – Segway & GM Collaborate

 

A two-person electric car, courtesy Segway and GM. 35mph, 35 mile range. I have to presume NO FREEWAYS. So, in all, a great in-city runabout.

For most of the US it won’t replace a car; it’ll merely reduce (drastically?) the amount of driving one does. Since we won’t avoid having to buy a car too,  price will have to be way down there … less than a motorcycle, I’m afraid.

Let’s use me as a case study. In my, ahem, 25 years of working, this vehicle would have been suitable for my commute for the first 15 years, but not suitable for the last ten years. Having said that, though, I’d still have needed a car for all the travel off-commute. But then, we have a family of four, and we live in the Western States. Do business on the East Coast for a few weeks, and you can start to see how this vehicle would address a whole bunch of in-city needs when you have the opportunity to rely on Amtrak and other non-car transport to get from city to city.

I love one of the comments on BoingBoing, though.  The reader say:

“Makes you look like Captain Pike.”

I practically died laughing at that one. What? You don’t get the Captain Pike reference? You know… Original Star Trek. Pike was the…. oh heck, here’s a photo….you’ll remember:

That’s Pike on the far left. From The Menagerie.

The Global Petroleum Economy and Oregon

Note:  I blogged this to another site yesterday. But it bears reposting to the family site as well. Just as a data point, I bought gas today at $1.58.

 

 

This chart is sourced from GasBuddy.com. I used their tools to plot the Portland area average gas price against the US national average. We're all pretty acutely aware of the rapid run-up, followed by the plunge in gas prices. What's on this chart really just confirms what we all know already, right? As the head of a household, I look at the 2008 chart and I breathe a sigh of relief. I felt the pain in June when it cost $100/tank and my family spent almost $800/month just on gasoline. I shake my head a little and chuckle when I realize that our family road trip to southern California coincided with gasoline's all-time high (figures...) I feel better knowing that our gasoline, food, and part of our utilities now fit inside July's gasoline bill. That's how this graph affects me.

But the gas data takes on some new meaning, when charted on a six-year scale. From this vantage point, you can start to see how gas prices affect us all. It becomes a larger issue than my own pocketbook. Here's what I mean:

Imagine if this graph represented your paycheck. I don't care whether you were overpaid or not, if your family income went through this sort of change, it would be destabilizing to say the least.

Now, what if this were the income stream for a company? Or the income stream for a country? For Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, et. al, this in fact, is their country's main revenue stream. Viewed from a long-term perspective, the plunge in the price of oil is probably going to do us more harm than good as a global economy. So, what's good for my family checkbook right now may be worse for lots of families globally (again, mine included) over the longer term.

Oregon's state plan, as led by Governor Kulongoski, to increase Oregon's sustainable energy programs is intended to reduce the impact of oil in our local economy by reducing our need for oil to run our region's economic machine. With our oil dependence reduced, whipsaw changes in petrochemical markets don't transfer so easily into our economy. In the short term, we may pay a premium (in the form of reduced tax revenues) in order to encurage the building of the infrastructure. That investment comes in the form of Business Energy Tax Credits (BETC's) in which the state trades short term monies for long-term stability in the economic machine.

It starts to make sense, doesn't it, when you see it all from the right vantage point?

Hypermiling - from CNN Today

 

This guy www.cleanmpg.com claims techniques to get up to 50 mpg out of his unaltered Honda Accord. Also claims his techniques will work on any vehicle, though - as always - your mileage may vary.

CNN did a piece on him, and pointed at the website. I havent' fully investigated, nor tried his techniques, so I can't vouch for the effectiveness. But he claims to have been at this research since 2001.

Check it out for yourself...might want to wait until the CNN crowd has stopped overwhelming his server, though.