Mileage Math Mania
There might be a case for buying the Volt or other hybrids, but it isn’t based on economics. It is based on bragging rights, on showing everyone how concerned you are about Mother Earth. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these things, but you have to be pretty darn rich to afford them.
There is another problem with this economically inefficient activity. Many years ago, I toured the first big solar power demonstration plant in the Mojave Desert — Solar One, near Barstow, California. It was very impressive: a vast array of mirrors, reflecting sunlight onto a boiler. There was a lot of electricity used in making all the glass for the mirrors, the electric motors, the boiler, the computer systems controlling all this, the posts holding the mirrors, and aluminizing the glass to make the mirrors (a very energy intensive process). I asked the tour guide: “How do we know that the system is a net producer of electricity? Even if it is a net gain, how much net gain?” She had no idea.
Eventually, I received a letter that admitted: They had no idea. The enormous subsidies that went into this project made it impossible to figure out what (if any) net gain there was. Energy is a major part of the cost of many alternative energy systems, and energy costs money.
How much energy is going into making the batteries that go into these hybrids? How much energy is spent transporting the batteries from China? How much will be spent recycling those batteries at end of life? When you see one of the “Save Mother Earth” projects that requires federal tax credits and is still a bad economic deal for the buyer, my immediate suspicion is that it is hiding an enormous energy input that destroys most of the ecological reason for doing it.
There may well be a case for the government subsidizing basic research or demanding new technologies. Throughout American history, such subsidies or government purchases have often more than paid for themselves in technological development and economic growth. Interchangeable parts and the development of the vertical milling machine are both results of government musket contracts in the 1790s, for example. Microprocessors and the Internet have similar U.S. government origins.
R&D encouragement, however, is not the same as subsidies to production, which can introduce severe distortions without producing much of value. Corn ethanol subsidies are among the most obvious of these — but in another ten years, we are probably going to see a lot of “green” technology, such as hybrids, fall into the same category.
If you are rich, and want everyone to admire your commitment to Mother Earth, by all means, buy a hybrid. If you want to help drive the cost of hybrids down so that they are more reasonably priced in the future, buy a hybrid. But don’t buy one because you are going to save a bunch of money on your commute — you are going to be disappointed.
What strikes me as funny about electric cars is that nobody seems to analyze how much your electricity costs will go up if you plug in one of these monsters every night? Is it like running a huge air conditioner when powering up a car like the Chevy Volt? Electrical costs where I live are sky high, so I’m going to add to that by plugging in a car every night? And I guess if you live in an apartment you’re just out of luck, because where are you going to plug it in? Electricity is NOT free and you will get stuck with the cost. When you add the increased electrical bill to the already high cost of the car itself, you lose even more money. So I would be buying this car why?
Liberty 46: “Hater!!!!!!!!!!”. (Sarcasm off.)
Has any body figured out how many miles per Kilowatt hour. (Or, is it Kilowatts per mile?) Here in NJ I pay $0.116074 per kWh. And, the price of maintainence at the dealer or at a cheaper private garage? Can a private garage even do repairs on these?
As God said on the 7th day when he was resting and admireing his work at creating the world, “Oh! I forgot something. There will be no free lunch”.
Where I live, electricity costs 6.5 cents per KWh–but only until I break through the magic ceiling to the next level. I don’t do so now–but if I were charging up an electric car every night, I might! The solution, of course, is to install photovoltaic panels to recharge your car, or to run the meter backward in the day to cover the cost of recharging your car at night. That will run some additional money.
The photovoltaics might well make sense at current dropping prices, and since I have some serious doubts about the future of American civilization, they may make sense regardless of cost.
Those photovoltaic cells are also relatively unfriendly to manufacture environmentally speaking.
I am well aware of the problems. The retail price of PV panels has now dropped below $2/watt–which is fast approaching competitive with what I pay for power. I don’t know what subsidies (other than tax credits) are going into these, but I can believe that PV panels might actually make sense, and perhaps in the near future.
For me, peak electricity demand is to run my air conditioner in summer…which by wild coincidence is very nearly the same as when peak solar power supply happens.
I work with a guy that bought an electric car. (Yes, he is a self righteous prick)
When he plugs the thing in the wheel on his electric meter nearly spins off it’s axle. When I ask him how much his electric bill is he wont say, but turns beet red in the face. In fact now matter how much I bait him he wont talk about the car at all. He has begun driving his Ford F-100 to work again.
classic
Exactly!!!! Bravo!!
Liberals are completely ignorant of history.
All of the issues with with electric cars were sorted out by the market 100 years ago. Gasoline powered cars didn’t just win, they put electic cars completely out of business.
Electric vehicles certainly were impractical a century ago because of the low energy density of batteries, and they may still be impractical for that reason–all the more reason to let the market (and not a subsidized market) decide. Still, if someone figures out how to make this work, it would be very good indeed. Electric motors are more of a leap up from gasoline engines in reliability and maintenance than gasoline engines were from steam engines.
Actually there’s a lot of analysis about this. The claim is that recharging will happen at night, when other electrical demand is down, that is, “off-peak”.
Thus it will not increase “peak demand”, which is the most expensive electricity to produce. Bear in mind that the generators run 24/7. (It’s not practical to turn coal, nuke, or hydro on and off at short intervals. Natural gas, yes, which is why “peakers” are mostly gas-fired.)
However, to achieve this will require “smart” chargers, because most people will plug in their cars when they get home at 5:30 PM or so, which is close to the daily peak, especially in summer. (The power company can tell a “smart” charger when to run.)
The cost is not that much. Full charge on (for instance) the Ford Focus Electric is 23 kwh, which would cost me about $2.50.
On the other hand, the demand of a charger will be considerable. To charge a Focus Electric in one hour would require a dedicated 23 kw circuit – 100 amps at 240 VAC. (A typical household circuit delivers 25 amps at 120 VAC.)
Fast charging (in the three minutes or so required to fill a 10gal gas tank) would require something like 1,000 amps at 480 VAC. Supplying that from line power will be difficult; people are looking at banks of ultracapacitors to store slowly accumulated power for quick charges.
All costly and inconvenient in various ways, but $10/gallon gas would be costly and inconvenient too.
Clayton,
Your Corvette illustrates another example of the diminishing returns of shrinking cars to improve economy. You have a large V8 that is very efficiently loafing along at highway speeds, while smaller cars with smaller engines are doing only marginally better. The so-called “Smart” car is a prime example of that. 40MPG highway? No wonder the things are barely selling here.
There is another way to get outstanding mileage without going to extremes in technology or downsizing. Volkswagen has proven that with their diesels. My 2002 diesel Jetta averages 48 MPG and is a very enjoyable car to drive. I find it almost comical that the recent entries of a 100MPG challenge had to resort to cars which were barely more than covered 4 wheel bicycles with tiny single cylinder engines to only double the mileage I get, with the A/C on, no less.
I’m not impressed by “toy” cars like the Smart, or the Fiat 500. And I will never pay BMW prices for a Chevy compact like the Volt. I’m driving a very low mileage 1989 Honda Prelude Si. On a recent trip I was getting 31 mpg on the highway. Why is it so difficult for today’s cars to do as well? Perhaps because automotive “enhancements” have eaten into and consumed all the efficiencies of the last 22 years. Good luck finding a car that weighs just 2,700 pounds today, or drivers who will accept a 0-60 figure of 10 seconds.
You have identified a significant part of the problem. I went through Harrah’s Car Museum in Reno a couple of years ago, and it struck me that part of why cars like the 1904 Oldsmobile could get astonishingly good gas mileage was that they weighed almost nothing, and expectations for acceleration and top speed were modest. That’s what makes the Smart or the Fiat 500 good gas mileage vehicles. Weight is the enemy! Safety requirements have considerably added to the weight–not just consumer demands.
As an example, my first new car was a Datsun B210. It weighed less than 2000 pounds. In spite of the primitive state of engine controls, and an automatic transmission (boy, was that a mistake), it was able to get 27 mpg quite easily around town. A modern car version would probably get well above 40 mpg. My daughter’s Cobalt commonly returns in the high 30s around town.
By the way, acceleration isn’t the problem unless you use it. If I set my Corvette’s cruise control at 55, it will give me 32-35 mpg. I wonder what a 1500 or 2000 pound car built with similar technology could do. Imagine the old Opel GT with a small V6. I suspect that 40 mpg would be completely practical–and it would sell very well indeed.
I once owned a 1969 Datsun 2000 Roadster. This was a 140 MPH car that got 35 MPG on the highway. Mid 20s around town.
Oh, it did that at 85 MPH, too. That’s where the engine was happy as a clam.
Given some decent aerodynamics (say, like an RX7 or similar sized sports car) and some computerized fuel injection and ignition, I would not be surprised to see it get 40 MPG on the highway.
How? Same answer as yours, Clayton. Light weight, simple engine system. No smog junk, no plastic (heavy) bumpers, etc.
Why is it that the Europeans can get far better mileage than we can with similar cars? Actually, with more powerful cars, in many cases. Are their cars that much less safe than ours? Do they pollute far more than ours? I suspect not.
So what’s the problem?
Are the EPA and the NHTSC in the pocket of the “Green” movement, deliberately making our cars inefficient so that we’ll be forced to abandon internal combustion engines?
The thought has me drooling!
But who would buy it? It would be a highly efficient, very stylish commuter car. Most Americans drive to and from work alone. The Pontiac Fiero was originally sold internally to GM as a “commuter car” because admitting that they were building a sports car would have been horning in on the Corvette’s exclusive within GM. It is unfortunate that about the time the V6 Fiero started to get close to being a real sports car…Pontiac killed it.
I have a ’98 Acura Integra GSR with a quarter-million miles on it. When I was commuting against the commute, mostly on the freeway, I was getting 32mpg overall – 29 if I had the A/C on. Now that I commute into San Francisco, and don’t use my car for work travel, and spend lots of time semi-idling at the Bay Bridge toll plaza, I get 29 mpg – 27 if I use the A/C a lot.
I paid $17k for it in 2001, when it was 3 years old and had 34k miles.
I *don’t* drive gently, except when I’m in very congested traffic. I accelerate hard on uphill onramps, I cruise at 75-80 mph when traffic allows, etc. But I’m still getting 30 mpg in a sports car big enough to take my wife and both kids with me.
Clayton, once again you have made simple points in an interesting way. Forbes, Consumer Reports and other main stream magazines have made some of these same points. It seems that only the lame stream electronic media (TV) does not want to look at the electric car in a rational way. Maybe because it is their socialist who is pushing the “green car.”
Volt at $40,280, minus Aveo at $11,965= $38,315. That $38k doesn’t go for gas, it buys “VIRTUE!”
I drive an SUV. It’s not bad on gas, around 18 in town and 25 on the highway. But that’s not why I drive it. I have disabled family and friends, and I need a larger vehicle for them. Ever tried to fit a walker or wheelchair into a compact car?
Bottom line, I don’t drive an SUV because I “want to destroy the planet” as some lefties would allege… I drive it because I need a big vehicle, and because, honestly, I think it’s a heck of a lot of fun to drive–it’s not a big Suburban, it’s a mid-sized SUV.
Or, for the same price, you could buy a BMW 335d. You can get 36 mpg on the highway – and get to 60 in about 5 seconds.
I’m waiting for BMW to bring their 1-series diesels. Screw hybrids.
Where I live, the more electricity a resident uses, the higher the rates (they jump up by tiers). So as you recharge your electric car, it adds not only that expense but makes everything else more expensive to run (your toaster, tour AC, your hot water, your lights…).
Before this is going to be anything more than an ecofad, the utilities are going to have to change their tariffs to have a special low rate in the wee hours of the morning. Then you set the charger to come on when the cheap rate comes. Of course, this will require a new meter that can bill by time of day.
Those pricing “tiers” can be murder.
Here in NorCal, my marginal kW-hr is over 30 cents as a residential customer.
Might get a better tariff if I had a time-of-day meter but it would still hurt.
Yet another reason that I am glad that I no longer live in Northern California.
I drive a base model 2010 Prius – not because I want to “save the planet” or any of that nonsense. I’m a conservative who likes conserving my money. The base Prius cost me about $22K and it fits my driving needs. It gets a bit better than 50 MPG in town. On two recent 2500 mile road trips, I averaged just under 49 MPG at highway speeds. Not too shabby. I live 15 miles from work and expected Obama’s policies to drive up the gas prices (and they did!) so the car made sense for me. I tend to keep cars for about 10 years and we’ll see how it plays out in the long run. A Prius certainly wouldn’t make sense for people with large families or other needs but that’s what the freedom of the marketplace is all about.
I’m looking for a “Drill Baby Drill” bumper sticker so I can watch liberals’ heads explode. There is some concern about getting my car “keyed” which is why I don’t normally put bumper stickers on any vehicle I own.
At $22K, a Prius might well make sense. (I drove a Prius rental car some years ago in D.C. I rather liked it.)
I curious: Why would your Prius get better mileage in town than on the highway?
Grizzly,
The reason is that the hybrid technology is at it’s best in stop and go traffic, where the brakes are generating electricity. In addition, the lower city speeds result in higher mileage than highway speeds. On the highway, a hybrid is effectively a standard car, but with a small and efficient engine, and in the case of the Prius, great aerodynamics. Hybrids typically use “Miller” or “Atkins” cycle engines, which are more efficient than standard engines, but apparently do not have the ability of standard engines to perform under a wide range of conditions. Otherwise, I would think that automakers would use them more often.
Good explaination. The whole point of hybrid technology is to capture some of the kinetic energy used in braking and coasting and store that in batteries for use in accelerating. You get a lot of that with stop and go in-town driving.
When going at steady highway speeds, all of the energy comes from the gas engine. I did notice that when driving in rolling terrain (e.g. Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee), there was some hybrid benefit. The car could store energy while coasting downhill and use that to help make it up the next hill. Still, almost all of the power is coming from the gas engine, not the electric motor.
I think I might have been inaccurate when I wrote about the price of the Prius base model. I bought mine in April of last year when all of the Toyota braking controversary was impacting their sales. IIRC, I ended up paying about $22K after trading in my 10 year old car. I think the normal price for the car is about $26K. The price might be higher today due to increased demand caused by high gas prices and production problems caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March. From a purely economics point of view, I would’ve been better off buying a Corolla but being a big conservative geek, I like driving one of the geekiest cars on the planet. All it needs now is a “Drill Baby Drill” bumper sticker so I won’t be lumped in with all those liberal Prius drivers out there (who are among the most hated people on the planet).
I am dumbfounded that what I studied in graduate school, engineering economics, is now attempted by a population which has been notorious for avoiding math and science for two generations. Life cycle cost analyses can define which among a set of options is cheapest for the purchaser. I am continuously amazed at media reports that tout what is cheapest for the utility, government, or the earth god gaia, but not for the guy who forks out the cash.
Once upon a time, when engineers designed things, the focus was on the golden rule: He who provides the gold, should get what he wants. Today, we see billion dollar investments, like the Chevy Volt, that make no commercial sense at all. The only reason to buy such an expensive car is to save the world. This is the sole commonality of all alternative energy sources: they all cost too much. The sole reason to consider them is to save the world.
And, for what it is worth, my old bicycle gets well over 10,000 miles per gallon of gas (I never calculated the rate of consumption). People who rave about gas consumption for an electric car, are either dumb, comics, or con artists.
The difference and cost involved also assumes paying cash for the car. If you get a loan for that 40 grand, the interest you pay will eat away even MORE savings.
My guess is that many of those buying a Prius “to save the planet” are paying cash. Luxuries like that are very appealing to multimillionaire socialists. (My experience working in California is that the intersection of those two sets is very nearly perfect. There’s nothing weirder than having a guy who races his vintage Ferraris on the weekend blathering on about the brilliance of Noam Chomsky.)
For my money, electrics will remain at best a niche product in the vehicle sector. Natural gas and clean diesels are the future. The former is clean and plentiful, while neither requires a radical restructuring of the industry or the support infrastructure.
I was once an enthusiast for solar energy projects like the Barstow tower, but today I’m far more skeptical. Cramer is right that few have truly worked out the numbers, but the current state of technology shows it’s a losing proposition. The energy density is too low (requiring massive amounts of land), there’s no viable way to provide 24/7 reliability (thus it must be backed up by “conventional” power), the materials required are mostly sourced in China, and it’s simply not cost-competitive. The solar plant is also typically far from the customer, meaning transmission lines and the associated losses. Absent government mandates and subsidies, there wouldn’t be much of a solar industry.
Two interesting Israeli innovations announced this week address energy issues from different angles. One is a glass panel that not only blocks heat while passing light, but generates electricity in the process. It’s intended as replacement glass for office towers, and the Sears Tower in Chicago will be an early test case. A second generates electricity during the treatment of waste water, making for a net gain in energy. (GE and Conoco-Phillips are investing in the process.)
When I was a punk engineer, not long out of college and single, I interviewed for a job at Solar One as a startup engineer.
So I looked into it and discovered the folly of the whole enterprise and passed on the job.
Of course, having to move from Mill Valley in Marin County to god-forsaken Outer Barstow may have also been a factor in my decision.
How ridiculous: in Mill Valley your own decent views would of the Pacific, the Bay, and Mount Tamalpais. In Outer Barstow (and my mother lived at the time in Outer Barstow the other direction) you could go down to the Southern Pacific hump yard and watch them sort railcars.
Clayton, in the process of debunking one EPA fraud, you stepped right into another. Yes, I said fraud. The 95 mpg number is pure, adulterated fraud. It’s based on a 100% efficient conversion of fuel to electricity, which is thermodynamically impossible. For commercial power generation, the number is 30% for older coal plants, to slightly north of 50% for very modern gas fired plants. That makes the actual equivalent mpg in the 35-50 mpg range. Not quite so impressive.
But the EPA is conspiring with GM to defraud the public. Ralph Nader, where are you?
The EPA number isn’t accurate? Next you are going to tell me that the government lies to us!
Obviously, if this doesn’t make sense even with the 95 mpg number, the real number makes the case even more dubious.
Um, the energy conversion at the power plant clearly should not be included in the EPA’s mileage estimations reported to the customer. Customers don’t pay for the theoretical Kw/h the coal (or whatever) could have delivered, they pay for the Kw/h actually delivered – after the inefficient conversion process. The energy lost to inefficiency is completely irrelevant to the customer.
What exactly does the P.E. you attached to your name signify?
Dear Mr. Cramer,
There are a couple of other costs of electric vehicles that are not frequently discussed.
1. The lithium-ion battery is the only type that makes sense and there are no better batteries in prospect. Li-ion batteries inherently have a half-life of about 3 years, even if you leave them on the shelf. They lose power continuously. Thus, after 3 years you have half a battery. Ya gotta get a new one every 3 years. At a current estimated cost of $6,000 for the Volt battery the Volt will sell on the used market for its scrap value.
2. Infrastructure costs. Residential electricity is distributed at a high voltage and stepped down to household voltage by “pole pigs”. You’ve seen them. They’re the things on the poles that look something like 55 gallon barrels. Each one services a number of residences, the average being about 10. If electrics become ubiquitous and households increase demand much of the electric distribution system in the country will have to be revamped. The costs are mind boggling.
Roy
I’ve seen the claim that a number of Toyota Priuses used as taxis in Vancouver are approaching 180,000 miles and many years of service with the original batteries in them. I think those are lithium-ion batteries. Admittedly, the Prius is careful to make sure that they never get below 50% charged–unlike the Volt battery.
I can see your point about the transformers if recharging electric cars were going to exceed the current power consumption limits of the average home. I am skeptical that this is the case.
Roy has a valid point, but it’s not quite quite as dire as he presents it, because even under the rosiest forecasts, penetration of electrics will only be a couple of percent by 2020. But even with charging occurring primarily at night, the transformers (Roy’s “pole pigs”) won’t have a chance to cool down like they do now, and more will be needed. The utilities are going to have to furnish these, and it will have to be charged to the consumer one way or another. This isn’t that expensive to do on poles, but in neighborhoods where the wires are underground, this could be very expensive.
I learn something every time I interact here! Is the lifetime of transformers dependent not on peak demand, but integrated demand over time?
I’ll defer to Larry on this (power is not my specialty), but I think it’s closer to integrated demand over time, but not exactly. If the transformers can’t cool down, their lifespans are greatly shortened.
It’s pretty spectacular when one of them blows up.
Search Youtube for “transformer explosion” and get an eyeful.
We’ll see plenty more of these if electric cars are pushed.
Life is inversely related to temperature, and average temperature is related to integrated demand, so that’s basically correct. It depends on the particular transformer, and how closely it’s sized. And it also depends on the weather, and a lot of other things.
Life is inversely related to temperature, but the average inverse temperature (i.e. what affects lifetime) is not 1/(average temp) but is the harmonic average of temperature, which is dominated by the high temperatures that occur at peak loads. As such, upping the base power at night will have a minimal impact on transformer lifetime – unless it affects the weather…
Confused by the P.E. appended to your name.
Okay, so it’s only a few percent by 2020. But I think the point here is that, if the leftists have their way, we’ll ALL be driving electrics as soon as possible. So regardless of WHEN it happens, the widespread use of electric cars DOES require massive upgrades to our electric infrastructure, both in our ability to PRODUCE it and to DELIVER it.
In other words, the hidden costs are ENORMOUS, and there is no net reduction of energy requirements.
Even if we disregard these costs, it’s a zero return investment, AT BEST!
The Prius uses a Sealed Nickel-Metal Hydride battery.
http://www.toyotapriusbattery.com/faq.html
Lithium Ion battery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
“The maximum life span of a Lithium-Ion battery in ideal conditions of use and storage is about 3 to 4 years. Due to actual storage and use conditions, average life span observed on a large estate is closer to 2,5 years.”
http://www.ingenico.com/fr/produits/services_apres_vente/utilisations_du_terminal/batteries/#_Expectancy
Lithium-ion is the only viable alternative because of the capacity to weight ratio. When you talk about extending range the only alternative is to add more batteries. The weight of the batteries plus the weight of the vehicle required to carry them very quickly approaches the point of negative efficiency.
In re Infrastructure:
http://www.quanta-technology.com/sites/default/files/doc-files/Survey-PEV-Impacts.pdf
The implications for residential power were stated by a senior executive of a major utility company at an industry conference. I have been unable to find it on the web.
Actually, Clayton, the Prius uses less expensive and less efficient Nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries. They may not have the capabilities of Li-Ion, but they’re half the price and last longer.
I ran the numbers once, making some assumptions on the LiIon batteries used, and if you drive only an electric car approximately 20 miles per day it ends up adding about 25% to the electricity usage of a typical house.
Had to graph this out myself. The point of diminishing returns is about 20mpg, and the 80% solution is about 33 mpg.
Gee, that’s the range most cars in the market fall into. Funny how that happened.
Very much correct.
This is why it’s useful to think of these in terms of gallons/100 miles, rather than miles/gallon. (This is, for once, a place where the Europeans actually have the right idea.)
10mpg is 10ga/100 mi; 12.5mpg is 8ga/100mi. 17mpg is 6ga/100mi. 20mpg is 5ga/100mi.
See a pattern?
(25mpg is 4ga/100mi. 33mpg is 3ga/100mi.
50mpg is 2ga/100mi.)
So the difference between 20mpg and 33mpg over 100 miles is… 2 gallons, or about $8 at today’s prices.
Makes it clearer that you’re saving 40% of your fuel cost, rather than “60% more efficient”.
That’s exactly the issue. The US EPA averages miles when they should be averaging gallons. As R. L. Hails pointed out above, his bicycle gets better than 10,000 mpg. Try averaging that number in with a bunch of Hummers and see what fleet average mpg you get.
This ain’t rocket surgery; it’s junior-high pre-algebra.
“Interchangeable parts and the development of the vertical milling machine are both results of government musket contracts in the 1790s, for example.”
Not a very good example, especially relative to today. The early 19th century was the age of invention. Just about anything that was done was an improvement on what came previously. What the government is not able to do by subsidizing research into wind, solar, fuel cell, electric car and battery power is force gains in efficiencies. We are not much better off with these technologies than we were 40 years ago when the push for these sort of technologies began, after the Arab oil embargo. We have a bunch of idiots in DC who have no concept of what is practical or isn’t. It’s just political crony capitalism, involving firms like GE and Chevy, among others.
Really. The ridiculousness of that argument boggles. As if the internet wouldn’t have otherwise come into existence. And btw Clayton, the US government didn’t create the microprocessor, the first microprocessor was the Intel 4004, which was contracted to a private customer for use in a calculator. Yes the government was a significant customer for a lot of logic products along the way, but no, they didn’t single-handedly cause any of it. And even if they did, that doesn’t prove that it wouldn’t have happened anyway.
The Boeing 747 was an outgrowth of the C5a program. Do you really believe that we wouldn’t have wide body jets now if the C5a program didn’t exist? At best, you can argue that they accelerated the technology by a few years; it’s risible to suggest that it wouldn’t otherwise have happened.
“And btw Clayton, the US government didn’t create the microprocessor, the first microprocessor was the Intel 4004, which was contracted to a private customer for use in a calculator. Yes the government was a significant customer for a lot of logic products along the way, but no, they didn’t single-handedly cause any of it.”
Starting about 1960, National Security Agency demands for dramatically faster mainframes for cryptanalysis drove substantial improvements in performance. NSA wanted 1000x increases in speed, and pushed on makers such as Texas Instruments to help them with making that possible. There are a number of defense and space projects during this period that also pushed the outside of the envelope in the area of electronics: Atlas; the Polaris program; manned space flight. Now, of course, the electronics in them is pretty amusingly backward. It wasn’t then.
“The Boeing 747 was an outgrowth of the C5a program. Do you really believe that we wouldn’t have wide body jets now if the C5a program didn’t exist? At best, you can argue that they accelerated the technology by a few years; it’s risible to suggest that it wouldn’t otherwise have happened.”
The development of any new technology involves both enormous capital investment and a perceived demand for the product. Teflon, for example, largely comes out the Manhattan Project’s need for materials that would allow the gaseous diffusion concentration of U-235. Could Boeing have built the 747 with the C5A program? Sure. Would they have done so? Maybe, eventually. More importantly: do you think, without World War II, that we would have aircraft technologies like today?
Government subsidies and encouragement aren’t always a good thing. The enormous land grants given to railroads to expand westward dramatically improved economic efficiency…but you wonder if the pressure on the Plains Indians would have been as dramatic and sudden without the expansion westward that the railroads made so possible.
Nobody thinks that government investment changes what is possible to eventually be developed. What is risible, however, is your equation of the benefit in microprocessors now, vs. microprocessors eventually (replace microprocessor with technology of choice). The speed up of development of key technological innovations is a substantive good that positively affects many people’s lives, and dismissing it as something that would have come about “eventually” totally misses the point.
The technological innovations of the 19th century come from a number of sources. One of them is that the U.S. Constitution provided for a consistent and readily available patent system–something that had been more of a royal or parliamentary favor in Europe. But there was a conscious decision by the U.S. government to replace the old, largely handcraft strategy for making of muskets with something more efficient. Many technical advances that come out of this play a part in making the U.S. a world leader in technology.
…. The contract for muskets with interchangeable parts was won by Eli Whitney (inventor of the cotton gin).
Because accurate measuring devices were not available technology at that time, the goal of being able to exchange parts between different muskets was NOT achieved, until several years after Whitney’s death.
You’ve oversimplified what happened on this. Whitney was one of many musket manufacturers awarded these contracts. Interchangeable parts was indeed something that Whitney promised but did not actually deliver. The problems of measuring tools was substantial. The first attempts at producing tooling lead to solutions, along with the contemporaneous invention of the screw-cutting lathe in England. My book Armed America has some material on this; I had to cut out about 40,000 words about the development of American gun manufacturing to get it to a length the publisher wanted.
Not crony capitalism but rather smart marketing. According the industry analysts Toyota loses money on each Prius they sell, but it’s a great marketing tool. It brings people into the showrooms where the dealers usually steer them to profitable models. It’s a fundamental principle in the industry that more showroom bodies is the key to more sales.
It’s called the halo effect, and is part of why Chevrolet builds cars like the Corvette. I’m sure (especially when I have repairs done) that they make piles of money on Corvettes, but the same engineering talent and capital invested elsewhere would probably make more money. However: it would not produce the positive image for GM of producing one of the top sports cars in the world (at least, below $100,000), and what is clearly the most cost effective sports car. (Yes, the Porsche will probably spank the Corvette, but not my much, and not at anywhere near the price.)
Until Walmart starts offering plug ins count me out of buying the electric car thank you.
This reminds me so much of the episode of “Top Gear” where they drove a prius around their test track as fast as they could while following it in a supercar costing several hundred thousand dollars. The supercar ended up using about 2/3 the fuel for the test run as the prius. I very seldom see any prius’s being driven at or below the speed limit. Having driven one in my duties when I worked for the city of LA, I know that driving at or below is the only way to get the advertised miles per gallon. From my observations, most people who buy them don’t seem to really care about the fuel mileage.
In a span of 19 days, I had to make two long road trips in my Prius due to a family emergency. The trips were over 1200 miles each way. Due to the short notice, buying airline tickets would’ve been prohibitively expensive so I drove my car, taking a bit over a day and a half each way.
I drove my car at or slightly above posted interstate highway speeds (65-75 MPH depending on the state). Before starting on each trip, I reset one of my odometers too keep track of the distance and mileage. For the first trip, I averaged 49.4 MPH. On the second trip, I averaged 48.4 MPH. This is without any attempt at hypermiling or anything other than ordinary driving. For most of both trips, I was averaging over 50 MPH until I hit high winds driving across Kansas. I’ve found that the Prius is very vulnerable to headwinds, sometimes dropping to about 40 MPG at highway speeds when the winds are high. While I’ve never done it, I’m sure that driving near the car’s max speed will cut into the mileage sharply like those headwinds do.
A hybrid like the Prius is usually optimized for city driving. I routinely get over 50 MPG in town even along my preferred route which has 55 MPH speed limits and a lot of traffic lights, meaning there’s a lot of stop and go driving. It’ll get significantly better mileage at lower speeds. I’ve read that the Honda Insight hybrid gets slightly lower mileage in town than a Prius but may be better optimized for highway driving. It’s also at least a couple thousand dollars cheaper than a Prius, too. I test drove one and almost bought it but my wife liked the ride of the Prius better.
There are other cars such as some of the VW diesels that’ll get better mileage on the highway than just about any hybrid. From what I’ve read, they’re good cars, too. Normally, most of my driving is in town where a hybrid makes more sense.
“Drill Baby Drill” so the price of gas will come down and we won’t have to worry about gas mileage.
Excellent comments from all. I suspect there are more MA’s and Ph.D’s here than there were in the design team for the Chevy Volt.
As an ex- lab rat myself (who got decent grades in high school math), my question about the Volt is, has anyone calculated the amount of emissions from coal-or-oil-fired power plants resulting from the kWh’s needed to recharge one?
Like it or not, the majority of our electric grid is powered by fossil fuels, and barring an outbreak of sanity in Washington (i.e., getting realistic about the need for new nuclear and hydroelectric power sources), it will be that way for a long time to come. Holy Wind and Holy Sun just won’t cut it, period.
With that in mind, the “rationale” for the Volt, or any other electric vehicle disappears completely. If the electric power for it is not coming from an “environmentally benign” source, it’s not doing a solitary thing to “save the planet”- it’s just hiding its emissions by moving them somewhere else. Somewhere a lot “dirtier” than a modern ICE vehicle, whose tailpipe efflux is mostly water vapor thanks to a generation of improvements in emission controls.
If the electricity comes from coal or oil, the Chevy Volt is nothing but the “green” version of a 19th Century traveling showman’s “patent medicine”. Or, as it was called back then, “snake oil”.
cheers
eon
STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!
You’re not allowed to ask that question! STOP IT!
A lot of analysis and calculation has been done on the potential impact of large numbers of electric vehicles drawing on the grid.
As noted, most of the energy will come from coal-fired generators, but that’s been considered too.
One point: yes, most of the emission from a tailpipe is water vapor. That’s always been true. Carbon monoxide, sooty particulates, unburned hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides are never more than a few percent of the total emissions, even in old, badly tuned engines. But even a few percent was enough to create the smog that blanketed most cities. The emissions level has been reduced to a fraction of a percent, but it’s required heroic levels of technology to achieve that, and there are a lot more cars on the road.
Fossil-burning at a big generating station isn’t much more efficient than an internal combustion engine (especially after one allows for the energy cost of transmitting power to end uses). But it can be much cleaner: an IC engine burns its fuel in explosive bursts which leave nasty byproducts. It takes elaborate tuning and after-burn equipment to cope with them. Continuous even burning (to heat a boiler) is much easier to manage.
Factor in the mining for metal in batteries; the cost to tax payers, the enviromental impact of old batteries it adds up to ANOTHER GOVERNMENT LOOSER
You could have taken the credits from the clunkers program or rebates and bought functional used cars for those in need.
FYI the Chevy JOKE is being bought by GE who in turn got a major jet engine order from Prx O blama…unions won GE won Middle East won and the taxpayer got screwed…he’s a Socialist Scumbag
“I had to cut out about 40,000 words about the development of American gun manufacturing to get it to a length the publisher wanted.”
Ouch! You should get it published somewhere else; why not self-publish a Kindle version or something? I’d certainly pay a few bucks to read it.
It’s on my list of things to do, but first priority is getting my next book published: My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill. That is going to have to be a Kindle sort of book because publishers aren’t interested in the subject anymore. My wife the English professor just finished bleeding all over it, so I need to start folding her suggestions and corrections in.
Dear Mr. Cramer,
I note that my comment at #13 is awaiting moderation. I trust that you are examining the references and checking them out. It takes a while to follow all the inferences.
I would also note that the idea that Carbon Dioxide is a “pollutant” has entered the lexicon. I do believe that that idea has been thoroughly and effectively debunked. It is “junk science” with some rather sinister motivations driving it.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Roy
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