Roughing It the Modern Way
August 29th, 2011 - 3:15 pm
THe power has been out here for a little while now — long past the duration of the UPS battery I keep the computer and the wifi router plugged into.
But I have an iPad with eight hours of battery life and a solid 3G connection. From there, I can work, read a book, watch a movie on anetflix, whatever. And if the power stays out longer than Ruhr hours? Then out in the garage, there’s one of those car jump batteries with the power outlet on it.
I love the 21st Century.
Well, the Cell Tower, Switches, Fiber Optic Backbone and on and on all run on electricity taken off the grid. They also have battery backup designed to run for a week but rarely exceed two days because useage is so high. So you can see we actually have less than a 48 hour window to oblivion.
Why’s the power out out there? Did Hellstorm Irene actually reach all the way to Colorado?
We lost power for about an hour-and-a-half on Saturday evening. And that was before the high winds hit. I was all resigned to two+ days of candles and lamps. But it came back, and we never had a problem after. My in-laws were without for two days. But they survived.
And now the long-range projections are for Katia to maybe hit the East Coast. Oh. Joy.
Dunno what happened. But a miles-long strip of northern El Paso County was without power for 45 minutes to an hour this afternoon.
This highlights one of the secret advantages of the Prius. A couple years ago I read a story about an ice storm in the north-east (Massachusetts, I think) which caused widespread power outages. Some areas lost power for a week or more. In winter.
…Except one fellow who had a Prius in his garage, next to an inverter. He ran lights & a space heater while keeping fairly cosy. Used about three gallons of gas during about 10 days of no power.
Do that with either a straight-up plug-in, or IC engine.
Sure. Just attach said IC engine to a ~20kw generator head, and you can enjoy trouble free power for every electrical implement you have for as long as your diesel or natural gas / propane supply holds out. Which, with the money saved from not buying a POS Prius, less the generator cost, would last several months.
Congratulations on missing the point and being a smarta$$ at the same time.
First, one would have to actually purchase a generator; an investment of several thousand dollars not counting installation. Then there’s the investment in fuel, which fuel & generator would lay dormant until such time as you actually needed it. A very large sunk cost. A Prius -on the other hand- can be used every day.
Second, I don’t understand why conservatives/libertarians find themselves obliged to bad-mouth the car at every opportunity, unless you enjoy echoing whatever Rush Limbaugh belches forth. Our esteemed host does go after the Volt on a regular basis, but that’s due more to government involvement (including subsidy) and very high price.
The Prius -on the other hand- is much less expensive, has sold over 2 million units worldwide compared to the Volts less than four thousand, and J. D. Power and Associates rated the 2011 Prius’ reliability at 8.0 (Very Good) with a safety rating of 10.0, and an overall rating of 8.9
Thats some “POS.”
“A Prius -on the other hand- can be used every day.”
I suppose that depends on your definition of “used”. Drive around at a reasonable speed while getting worse mileage than most economy cars simply so you can anonymously advertise your brand of “making a difference” smugness? Yes, they work pretty well for that. Drive around at an apocalyptically slow speed in the left lane so you can actually achieve something close to its advertised economy figures, while pissing off every rational human on the road? Yeah, they also work pretty well in that regard.
However, so far as actually accomplishing the proported goal of economy in every day use, they are generally terrible and are shamefully outclassed by a number of vehicles that actually do achieve a pretty high mpg figure when driven normally. The VW Golf/Jetta TDIs come to mind, as does the Fiat 500.
Ignoring economy, the Pruis as a car is atrocious. The build quality is laughable, the performance is pitiful, the handling comical, and the price absurd. The fact that two million idiots have purchased one does not suggest it is a good car any more than Microsoft’s sales figures suggest they make good software. They were purchased, by a very wide margin, by people whose only goal is to advertise the fact that they don’t care about cars, don’t like people who do, or simply don’t know any better. If they actually did give half a damn about driving, economy, saving the planet or what have you, one assumes they would have actually investigated the market and found any of the numerous cars that accomplish those goals much better than a Prius. However, instead they followed the herd to the nearest Toyota dealer because it was “the thing to do” for people of a certain inclination.
This is exactly the same mentality which resulted in Honda’s Insight, which is by all measure a much better car, being entirely ignored by the ~2% market of idiots who would buy such a thing in the first place.
Personally, I’d rather spend $5,000 on a big generator, $1,000 on a lot of diesel, and have ~$24,000 left over from the typical purchase price of a Prius to buy a car that isn’t as interesting as a plain cheese pizza.
I trust you have a bicycle-powered generator just in case. Put the munchkin to work, Harrr! Pedal you wretch! Or it’s over the side with ye!