Record Temperatures and No Radical Solutions in Sight

At least we aren't seeing images in the news any longer such as Senator Imhofe's kids building a snow igloo and asking Al Gore, "What Global Warming??"

But we are seeing an increase in sites such as "Carbon War Room", filled with earnest pronouncements ("There is no Planet B") and endorsements by high profile individuals (such as Richard Branson).

So what's a good litmus test to divide the committed from the conversationalists??

My idea, really.

Make 34 miles-per-hour (55KMph) the maximum speed attainable, physically, by any motor-driven land vehicle on the highway (excluding emergency police, fire, medical).

If you endorse this idea, you are for immediate action to stop Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). If you say, "It can't be done" or "I don't want to drive so slow" or "No one will accept it" then, really, you are not committed to saving the planet...our only planet.

So be realistic.  This idea of "maximum attainable speed" is the only large scale idea that can be implemented in three or four years, that can significantly affect AGW.  Maybe if China would reverse and destroy many coal-fired power stations, it might equal this idea.  And maybe they would, if a sacrificing idea such as "max attainable speed" was actually drawn up and implemented.

Reader, you should go back through my previous posts in this blog.  There are a lot of details and side-issues in the old posts that I will pass in this second post for 2012.  But let me say, all issues and "..But" comments have been thought out.

Here are the salient points:

Existing vehicles can be retrofitted so they can be restricted to 34 mph top speed.  The mechanism would be an escapement (that's the mechanism that makes old clocks go "tick tock") mounted on a vehicle's axle.  At even 1 million new electric cars a year, we're never going to replace 220 MILLION vehicles on the road today, in time to save the planet.    Cannot be done!


Vehicles could be fitted with escapements that would all be initiated on the same day, so you would not have a mix of high-speed and low-speed drivers.  Everyone goes from current conditions, to low speed, on the same day.  And, I would make it mechanical, so no one could have a 'cheater switch' and go back and forth from low-speed to high-speed as it suited them.


Cars that don't need to be safe at 60, 70, 90 mph, can be lighter and smaller, and use far less steel and energy to construct.  Highways would use less concrete, and so forth.  The savings in fuel are immediate, but the savings elsewhere are enormous.

A new industry of retrofitting existing autos will small, two-cylinder engines would create considerable employment benefits.  No more smog tests, no more Highway Patrol, less money for insurance.

Mass transit, such as rail, would receive an enormous boost, and that would be energy saving as well.

Most people are violently opposed to this "low speed" vision of the USA.  They think of themselves, and how BAD it would be, driving to a ski resort or grandma's house.  A hundred years ago, there were no ski resorts...!!  There is huge myopia in the current world, comparing what has been, what is, and what will be if the humans on planet Earth don't come together in a sharing way, letting go of privilege in a time of required sacrifice.  Too many people think "Doing Something For the Planet" is turning off lights, or recycling aluminum, or driving a Prius at 70 mph.  That kind of commitment is useless, considering the scale of the problem.  It will take worldwide sacrifice by all that can afford it.

The heatwaves in the spring and summer of 2012 are the delayed responses to our increased CO2 production in the 1980s...long before China began taking coal production from 700 million tons in 2000, to over THREE BILLION TONS in 2008!!  We have a huge problem to come, and simply reducing the maximum attainable speed of motor vehicles, by making them unable to exceed 34 mph, will seem head-slappingly obvious in hindsight, by 2040.

2012 - And the Fast Car is Still King

Now in 2012, for the first time in a long time, I have a very long commute each workday, and it's done by automobile. I try to keep my speed down, in order to save real money (about $10 per day if I can go 55 mph instead of 65+ mph). Let's face it....like all longtime drivers on the road, I trade time for money. And lowering your speed to a 'crawl' of 55 invites an atmosphere of extreme tension the entire (one hour) drive. At a slow speed, you incur the obvious wrath of drivers who feel you are in your way.

Then there are the NASCAR wannabes. Even if you are traveling well above the 65-mph limit, they get on your tail, pass in the tightest of circumstances, and weave down the road. It's entertainment!! Not transportation. And Detroit is still doing its darnedest to sell cars that easily accelerate from 65 to 85...that makes them fun!!

Why a Device to Restrict Speed Must be Mechanical

To retrofit current vehicles in the 220 Million Vehicle fleet in the USA, so that they could only travel at a maximum of 34 miles-per-hour, an escapement mechanism would need to be fitted, and everyone would activate it on the same day, by pulling out a strip that bring the mechanism into engagement. If it was simply electronic, it would be too easy to rig up a "on-off" device, undetectable, that would allow a person to disengage the restricting device whenever the felt like it.

Once 34 mph became reality, smog shops would go away, replaced by "new engine shops". Why carry around 500 pounds of engine, when a quiet two cylinder engine weighing one-tenth the amount, would do just fine?

Mentioned to me at the Commonwealth Club today was how politicians would regard such a proposal as an unspeakable act. Certainly, "Third Rail"-type-of-thing at this time. But consider, if you suggested to people, after Pearl Harbor in 1941, that enlisting in the Marines in 1942 meant dying by torture on a tiny atoll in the blistering Pacific....50/50 chance....who would do it? People did risk it, not because they wished to give up their life and lifestyle, but because more was at stake......

...since this is only about losing our planet as we know it, of course we all want the status quo!!!

I went to the Commonwealth's Club Event today, "Energy Innovation, Overhaul or Tweak?" and handed out the wrong URL for this blog. I handed out "www.maximumattainablespeed.blogspot.com", and, of course, it is only "www.maxattainablespeed.com". Shows what a little pressure from public speaking will do to the memory hardware!

Anyway, I was able to ask a question, the theme of this blog, about making all road vehicles (emergency vehicles, police, excepted) physically restricted to a top speed of 34 miles per hour.

That's physically restrained...not a "speed limit". A physical alteration to the 220 million vehicles that are in the US of A. What the good news about that is, if the USA were to show the fortitude to go through with the switch, the rest of the world would no doubt follow, in due time. In places like Venezuela, where gasoline currently sells for six cents (yes, SIX CENTS!!) a gallon, there would be a lot of headscratching....but they don't build many cars in Venezuela. All new cars, after a period, would be 34 mph (55kmph) max speed, so....

Dan Reicher, a presenter at this event, thought 34 mph was chosen because signs that said "55" as the speed limit would only need to be changed from "mph" to "KmPH". I gave him the quick rejoinder:

"You would not need any speed limit signs!!"

Nor would you need even ten percent of the current California Highway Patrol structure. See, that's the thing about lowering the physical maximum speed: the externalities, the savings, would be tremendous is ways that barely surface when one speculates about the possibilities.

Road construction is one huge finanacial area. Unknown to most economic historians, newspapers in the 1918-1920 era ran editorial outcries against paved highway construction: "Why should public money benefit a few wealthy car owners?? They don't need our tax dollars to make paved roads for high speed, when most of us don't own cars!!"

In 1917, there was one car per nine citizens in the United States. That was the same rate in mainland China in the 1990s!! Think that market is nearing saturation??? Not Even Close!!

The difference between the costs of roads carrying traffic at 60mph and over, and under 40 mph, is tremendous. In most counties, your permit fees for building a house???? Sixty percent is consumed by the road-building department.

We are not addicted to oil, but addicted to speed.

Design Challenge: 1000-pound car competition

Each year for the past seven years, the Los Angeles Auto Show has generated a design competition. This year, the design challenge is to build a 1000-pound, four-passenger vehicle:

http://www.laautoshow.com/DC10/

This coincides with a recent report on the desired use of carbon fiber in the manufacture of automobiles in order to save weight and improve mileage. This report stated that if each new vehicle manufactured in the USA used just six pounds of carbon fiber, that volume would consume the entire volume of carbon fiber manufactured currently in the USA. And most of that goes to the military. And, it is still a costly material compared to steel.

Remember how the US DOT resisted the use of headlights other than round headlights, for about twenty years after many shapes were in use in Europe? The same problem is going on with the carrying capacity of automobiles. Unless a car can carry four people, it simply doesn't sell very well, and generally (Porsche excepted) never makes a profit. Since most (85%) of vehicle trips are solo, driver-is-the-only-passenger, why not recognize this fact? Why not make a "core vehicle unit", with a solo driver/passenger in front (and room for an unplanned second rider behind) and then sell "extra passengers" bolt-on units? Heck, even a bolt-on "boat trailer" unit, for those once-every-two-year excursions to the lake (instead, people buy four-door trucks weighing 5000 lbs., and drive it solo 240 days a year, pay a ton for insurance, pay a ton of $$ in gasoline, pay a ton of $$ in the initial cost).

I write about a modular vehicle because the "1000-lb concept car" was already done years ago by GM. Their car, the "Ultralite" was created in the early 1990s. It achieved 100mpg at 50 mph and had a top speed of 135 mph, and 0-60 in 7.8 seconds. However, the materials alone to build the car cost $13,000, the frame being 100% carbon fiber over a foam core. Astoundingly the frame still weighed 450 pounds. Why? Because the car had to safely resist forces with four people in the car, downhill, going 135 mph. Once again, the marketing requirement that cars perform safely at nearly double the top legal speed limit adds unnecessary expense to the objective of traveling from A to B in a motor vehicle.

I say mechanically limit speed!!

Diesel fueled car with small engine gets 119 mpg

Sometimes people don't believe me when I say that if vehicles on the US roadways could only travel at 34mph maximum speed, that it would be in a very short time that cars would be manufactured that got over 200 mpg, and I would guess, approaching 400 mpg. You see what the students get at the Shell and SAE Supermileage contests. The methodology is out there, if the top speed is reduced.

Recently it was reported that a car (shown above) built way back in 1984 achieved fuel mileage (diesel fuel) of 119.1 miles-per-gallon, while traveling North to South, border to border, Canada to Mexico. Here is the story link:http://www.gizmag.com/avion-sets-fuel-economy-record/16381/

Besides the fact that this car was put together in the 1980s (the laws of Earth aerodynamics are the same now as then) notice in the article that very little horsepower is required to move this car at highway speeds. The reason we typically have 300 horsepower on tap in the typical American car, is a car without "passing power" or acceleration off the line, simply will not sell in this country.

Ford Mustang Drives only 43.9 mph for 17 hours

Ford has recently touted the fuel efficiency of their new Mustang V6:



http://gas2.org/2010/06/25/ford-mustang-v6-gets-48-5-mpg-around-bristol-race-track/2/



They achieved 48.5 miles per gallon. It reinforces my claim that slower speeds create better mileage, because energy is not needed to overcome aerodynamic drag. In addition, they only stopped to switch drivers very few times over seventeen hours. Acceleration of a heavy body uses up a considerable amount of energy. So, fewer changes in speed (that is, constant speed over a long period of time) will offset a heavier car, because constant speed means effect of the weight of the car is considerably reduced.



The energy efficiency of this particular v6 engine is particularly enhanced over typical engines in that the valve-timing is micro-adjusted many times per second. Instead of a V6 engine of several liters displacement, imagine that technology applied to the 125-cc engine that achieved this mileage:

http://gas2.org/2010/01/26/guy-mods-honda-motorbike-to-get-214-mpg/





...and this guy is not going around Bristol Motor Speedway. This is regular, real road mileage.

The weight of his vehicle is 231 pounds, 88 pounds heavier than the stock motorbike, so it again shows that weight is not as huge a factor as aerodynamics. And you cannot change the physics: as the Mustang test generously demonstrates, cutting your maximum speed increases any vehicle's efficiency. That is the "why" of 34 miles-per-hour. If the Mustang had traveled at a maximum of 34 miles per hour, I have no doubt that their mileage would have been in the 50-miles-per -gallon range (and the drivers bored tremendously going around an oval that slowly).

Transocean/BP Oil Blowout in the Gulf and Calls for Sacrifice

The British Petroleum (BP)/Transocean Macondo Project Gulf oil spill has revived talk about getting serious and concrete here in the USA about cutting our consumption of energy, especially petroleum. The images of the death of creatures and the fouled shorelines have placed the consumption of petroleum issue before the American citizenry in an ongoing, unavoidable way, day after day after day. President Obama addresses the nation about the spill, commentators weigh in.... the petroleum consumption issue is getting its deserved attention.

Surprising to me (because of the typical vitriol I have received because of my call to make the maximum attainable speed for all motor vehicles 34mph) is the awareness, voiced more and more, that it is us consumers that are really the source of this accident. Believe me, no one would be drilling an expensive, deepwater well if it were not economically viable. The increasing demand for oil by China and India, and our modest, longterm US increase in total gasoline consumption (already at 25% of world oil consumption) are the factors that create the business environment that spawn highly technical, highly complicated attempts to secure oil from extreme locations worldwide.

In his 1994 edition of his book "Alternative Cars in the 21st Century" (SAE) Robert Q Riley notes the following state of affairs regarding the use of the automobile as transportation:

(page 36)

"The fundamental mismatch between vehicle mass/size in relation to that of its payload is often unspoken; perhaps because it is so universally accepted and difficult to quantify. Much depends on the synergy of the system, and even more on the operating conditions at the time the energy trail is audited. On the most simple level, when a 1600kg (3500lb) machine transports an 80 kg (175lb) occupant on a local trip to the market, the available-energy pie is divided so that approximately 95 percent gets the car to the market and the remaining five percent gets the occupant there. More specifically, about 82 percent of the latent energy in gasoline is wasted when it is converted into mechanical power, which just pollutes the air and get no one to the market. Of the 18 percent left, about a third goes to overcoming air resistance and the other two-thirds is consumed by inertia and rolling resistance, of which the occupant accounts for a small portion. In this scenario the occupant gets 0.006 of the fuel's energy, the car gets 0.174, and 0.820 is wasted. Since the automobile is responsible for 99.4 percent of the total energy consumed, and it tenaciously resists improvements in energy efficiency, minimizing the car itself is the most straightfoward way to reduce its portion of the energy budget."

See anything in this analysis about "addiction to oil" or "love of consumption"?? No, in most circumstances, drivers of cars are oblivious to the fact that less than ONE PERCENT of the gasoline consumed by an automobile, actually moves their human body from point "A" to point "B".

Less than ONE PERCENT!!

We aren't going to minimize car weight or magically affect air resistance by going to electric cars. We can only minimize weight when (1) cars do not need to safely travel at high rates of speed (2) cars do not need to accelerate to sixty miles an hour, in less than ten seconds, because otherwise entering a freeway may be hazardous (3) engines and drivetrains are reduced in weight. We can only cut the fuel spent on overcoming air resistance losses, by traveling at a lower speed. No other way to do this, aerodynamically, unless you move to a different planet, with a different atmosphere.

There is not much that conversion to electric cars will do to cut energy consumption in the next twenty years. We have a fleet of 220 million vehicles here in the USA. No one is building even a million electric cars per year, and if they did, it would take forty years to turn over the current fleet to a majority of electrics. Expensive and heavy electrics, I might add. What do you read about the Tesla roadster? In most cases, the blinding acceleration is touted. The Tesla roadster is doing nothing to blunt our "addiction to speed".

If citizens of the world really wanted to "sacrifice" to drastically curtail our petroleum consumption, the answer is quite straightforward. We need to retrofit all existing vehicles, so that they could go no faster than 34 miles an hour, top speed. This can be done with a mechanical escapement, the same thing that regulates "tick tock" clocks. A new "escapement industry" would provide jobs in an endeavor that would have a much longer lasting benefit than simply "paving more highways" as the ARRA is currently doing. The ARRA paving work is actually increasing petroleum consumption, by allowing vehicles to comfortably, sustainably, drive 75mph where previously, rough surfaces kept speeds below 65 mph.

Once all vehicles are fitted with escapements nationwide, and "drop day" takes place (everyone goes slower at the same time, same day), then the real energy savings begin to kick in. Existing vehicles won't really increase mileage much (ten percent?) but what will happen is, a "further modification" industry will kick in. Why not replace your v8 engine with a small, 500cc engine and eight-speed transmission? With a subsidy similar to the "homebuyer subsidy" it would be foolish not to drop two hundred pounds off your vehicle's weight..... which a smaller 500cc displacement ICE powerplant would do!!

New cars would be lighter, and there is where the real fuel savings would take place. Without the added structure for safely running at 80mph, cars would be built with far less materials. Less tire weight, less rubber, less suspension, less frame, less glazing weight. In less than five years from the "drop date" event, new cars with good old, proven, (smaller) gasoline engines would be routinely achieving 100 mpg and better. And the cost of ownership...insurance goes down, maintenance goes way down, tire replacement, etc.. Traffic enforcement becomes virtually nil. Highways last longer.

Is going 34 miles an hour top speed, doable? Is it worth it? Consider that during World War II, Americans built zero cars for the domestic market. ZERO!!

...and we can't slow our SUVs to save the planet??

Making It a Law, or Making It Impossible???

I've gotten a few new readers to this blog, and that's encouraging. I want to briefly go over one aspect of my idea that is really central to my "real world" application of cutting our "addiction to speed".

My proposal is to retrofit every car on the road, with a mechanical escapement. That way, there's no cheating about the top speed your car can go. You physically cannot go faster. Downhill, clutch in...no.

Where do we use escapement mechanisms today? In watches and clocks. This YouTube video is a great way to be introduced to this 500-year old mechanism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIOd7Bpuw9U

I think ya gotta copy & paste with this blog.

If an escapement mechanism was fitted to the back wheel(s) of every vehicle (incl motorcycles), it would have the following consequences:

Everyone could start driving more slowly, with a max speed of 34 mph, all at the same time. You get the mechanism installed, it stays un-deployed until a "National Drop Day". Then, on that date, you pull a chord from underneath your car, the device is irretrievably deployed, and you stick the little sticker ("oil drop", "American Flag", "dollar sign") on your bumper to show that it is functioning. Everyone complies at the same time. No cheating. You can see the device from behind the car.

A much-needed cottage industry of building these devices, and installing these devices, would suck up a lot of UAW workers, and other auto workers, currently unemployed. Because they are mechanical, and not electronic, it would be easy to design, test, and install mechanical devices.

We have a lot of UAW and parts-plants workers either unemployed or driving huge distances (1000 miles) to new jobs. Why not locate these "escapement manufacturers" at old auto plant locations?? We have to cover 220 MILLION vehicles! That's a lot of immediate work!

Ever heard of dashboard radar detectors? There is a whole cottage industry devoted to evading the law and driving beyond the speed limit. I don't want to start another "evasion industry" by using electronics to limit speed. When such a "box of wires" does the speed control, it is not apparent why it is failing when it does fail. You're just staring at it. Without proper devices, no one could tell why it isn't functioning. Second, a whole "evasion industry" could easily create "cheater circuits". Imagine, six months into everyone driving 34mph top speed. You're on I-5 at midnight. Very few CHP are even monitoring the roads. You simply "switch off " your speed limiter, and go seventy for a while. Then, you switch it back on! Who can tell??!! A little bragging, and pretty soon everyone "with a brain" is using such stuff. With a mechanical escapement, you could build an elaborate system of cheating, but it would be much much more difficult. And, instead of staring at a little black box, the Highway Patrol could tell right away if you were sporting an extra-legal design/build. You just look ten seconds under the car.

Simply posting a speed limit, and turning everyone into lawbreakers, more or less, would be nigh impossible. Really hard to enforce.

If the USA led the way, other countries would follow. And, in countries like India, where they already make a $2500 car unsuitable for extreme high speeds, the cars would get even cheaper.

Car manufacturing would be on a path similar to the shoe industry. It used to be, everyone had one pair of shoes. A shoe was built to be worn on either foot. Then design advanced to "left shoe, right shoe" then better treads etc. Specialization went up (flip flops for the beach, running shoes, dress shoes, ski boots, hiking boots) and every one wore a pair depending on conditions. Prices (in real terms) went down. I would predict, with slower speeds, cars would get cheaper, and we'd actually own MORE cars! Specialized cars.

Right now, you see a jacked-up pickup with $5000 in extra suspension and lights, etc., taking ONE GUY to work, you have to think, "Would I ever wear my ski boots to the beach??!!"

If it was your ONLY footwear, you would!! That's what our world of cars is like today.

Remember, in World War II, the United States really changed the personal vehicle landscape. They didn't produce any cars, for years!! That was a sacrifice. A real sacrifice! This is only a modest change, just to save the planet.

Where my data originated

I'm getting some feedback on some of my physics, and statements about energy used by vehicles to accelerate, etc.

My source for my data is a book by Robert Q Riley, "Alternative Cars in the 21st Century". It was first published in 1994, so some of the data cited is research done in the 1980s, or early 1990s. Riley has put out a second edition of his book, and he has a website as well. In his first edition, he writes (page 106) "Aerodynamic drag is a product of the vehicle's frontal area, its drag coefficient, and the cube of its speed. The cubic increase of drag in relation to speed makes aerodynamics a major consideration when designing high-speed highway vehicles."

In my windpower research, I have also come across the "Vee-cube-d" power of wind, regarding wind energy and wind speed.

My Answers to Recent Comments

Just a note to a reader who looked for my comment on Paul Kedrosky's blog. I made a "post" to his blog about some topic he wrote about, and put a link to my blog after the signature blog. You won't do a successful search on his blog and find something Paul Kedrosky wrote about me, or this blog. That didn't happen. So searching won't find it. It happened maybe seven months ago.

Another post mentions starting the idea of a maximum speed with simply posting a speed limit, to roll out the program with a "law" and taking it from there. The country is already in a big enough state of total acrimony, that we don't need a gigantic increase in collective anger created by ticket-writing.

Addicted to Speed, NOT Addicted to Oil

The further that the words and deeds of President George W. Bush fade into history's unvisited areas, the better I feel. These days, the phrase "Addicted to Oil" isn't heard too much. What should enter the conscience of a world that currently builds a new car every 4.5 seconds, is the phrase "Addicted to Speed". As a spectator sport, auto racing is among the most patronized of all sporting events in the world. And the onlookers do not swoon and gasp at the sight of fuel loading or fuel consumption.

Every adult is addicted to speed! Faster times getting to work, getting anything done, communicating...Top highway speeds in the 1940s were less than 50 mph. Off-the-assembly-line vehicles before 1950 had engines that produced well under 100 horsepower, even for the most luxurious production cars.

What I advocate with this blog is making every vehicle on the roadways and highways mechanically constrained, so that no vehicle (well, perhaps bicycles), not a car or truck or motorcycle, could travel faster than 34 miles per hour...downhill, pedal to the floor, all out engine screaming....55 KM per hour... that would be it. It would affect less than twenty percent of the time we spend traveling, increase gas mileage tremendously, and cut manufacturing costs dramatically.

Now, not one of the high volume producers of automobiles would dream of advertising less horsepower, less acceleration, less ultimate maximum speed. In a perverse way of explaining their performance parameters, some manufacturers claim their cars are "electronically limited" to a top speed, usually this "limited speed" is in the neighborhood of 130 miles-per-hour!! This is an insane speed to attempt to attain on any highway, anywhere, as road hazards, side traffic, other vehicles, as well as the driver's skill make it nearly certain that a bad outcome would ensue after a very short period of traveling at such a speed. Yet these kind of technical "wow's" are what sell cars. And, they drive up the price of cars.

If road vehicles were physically constrained to attain a maximum speed of 55 kilometers-per-hour (34 mph) the benefits would be enormous and long-lasting. Read some of my very first entries into this blog, but notice the mileage of the 2008 SAE Supermileage winners to the right of this message. How did they do so well? They had no big "design and engineering" groups aiding their effort, and, they were all students! Here are the three reasons:

• The vehicles were very light
• The engines were very small
• The aerodynamic drag created by a vehicle below 35 mph is very small

Remember, as speed increases, the aerodynamic drag goes up by a power of three: if it takes two horsepower to move a vehicle at 30mph, it takes eight horsepower to move the same vehicle 60mph! And by the way, the amount of horsepower it takes to move your typical 3000-lb car at a constant rate of 60 miles per hour??? Fourteen horsepower!

So why do cars have big V8 engines, touting 300 horsepower??

Everywhere you look, advertising for passenger vehicles tout acceleration numbers and top speed numbers. Being able to accelerate briskly to 60 mph is a major selling point. A recent Ford Mustang commercial showed a "father and son" out at night in a new Mustang, with the father admonishing the son, "This is not a toy..." and then uses the car as the ultimate toy by burning rubber and accelerating wildly, then stomping on the brakes to illustrate, "THIS IS FUN"!

It is a toy! Ford wishes you to lust after a toy! That is what sells cars.

The best part about a change to a mechanically-fixed maximum speed: present vehicles can be retrofitted. Instead of waiting for a turnover in the current 220 million cars and trucks on the road in the United States, they can be set up with inexpensive escapement mechanisms, similar to those that regulate the speed of a mechanical clock or watch. You don't have to wait five, ten, or twenty eyars for a big impact. A big impact can arrive in as little as twelve months after the decision is made. New industries that would (1) build the escapement kits (2) build and retrofit engines of smaller size and lighter weight would be welcome in a time of high unemployment.

Talk about "saving the planet" with electric cars and hybrids makes no sense when you consider the numbers: there are 220 million cars and trucks current extant, on the road, in the United States!

TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY MILLION VEHICLES!

People are talking about the impact the Chevrolet Volt might have..when it ramps up to a million vehicles a year...it is a minor number compared to the operating fleet! If a million hybrids, a million electrics, all hit the road and replaced a vehicle, it still would take twenty-five years to convert to a sizeable number of the overall fleet!

My idea of speed-reduced vehicles won't save Detroit, or the rest of the current automotive industry. Because of factors of scale, current manufacturers cannot save themselves. Lighter cars with lighter engines do not need to be smaller, but they will be easier to manufacture, because the ability to travel safely at high speeds means heavier frames, heavier motors, heavier tires.... all these things are more expensive, the higher the potential top end speed. Can you name one golfcart manufacturer? No, but it's not an automotible firm like Ford or Nissan.

If the top speed were a mechanical constraint (not a roadsign or law to be voluntarily obeyed) it would be less than two years before vehicles getting 200 miles-per-gallon were manufactured and sold. And not "Dodge-'em" looking vehicles, either. The reason the "SMART car" and others of a similar nature are so small, is that they must be able to go over sixty miles an hour, or no one would buy them. And, they could not reach that speed and be large, because the dimensions-x-speed require a heavier frame, heavier wheels, a larger frontal area with more air resistance at sixty...there goes the mileage!!!

A commitment to mechanically-constraining all vehicles to a slower speed would create all sorts of beneficial externalities, including cheaper roadbuilding. It would take less commitment than World War II, where there was a complete cessation of personal cars being manufactured, and fuel was rationed.

It would be a commitment to a saner, safer, "cooler" world (less carbon dioxide emissions).

Volkswagen's L1 Concept: All About Weight and Aerodynamics

Volkswagen first introduced their "Concept" back in 2001 or so, but now it is purportedly set for actual production. What is holding things back is the ability to create a carbon-fibre body

cheaply enough so that the car is competitively priced. This car will have the capability to exceed any posted speed limit (75 mph) and is called the "L1" by way of its early antecedent.
The L1 updates an idea Volkswagen has been kicking around since 2002, when Dr. Ferdinand Piëtch, then the chairman of the board, drove the 1-Liter microcar from Wolfsburg to Hamburg. The car drew its name from the fact it needed one liter of fuel to go 100 kilometers. The 1-Liter was a technological marvel built of carbon fiber and magnesium, but it was so ridiculously expensive VW knew it wasn’t practical. Piëtch shelved the project, figuring it wouldn’t be financially viable for another decade.

Read More http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/09/volkswagen-l1-concept/#ixzz0nMg1J2tX

Note the frontal area. Small. It is all about aerodynamics. Length of a vehicle doesn't matter as far as drag is concerned, so the second passenger is behind the driver. Volkswagen made a similar, less aerodynamic one-person car in the 1980's that was never brought to market. It could not be profitably made. Same with GM. Their "Lean Machine" (a three-wheeler that leaned into turns, created by hot-rod/performance GM engineers) was a rave with test audiences, but could not be profitably produced.

People often buy cars based on the "maximum case" carrying capacity. Ideas like "if I go to the airport and pick up my brother's family, where will I put them if I own an L1?" are reasons they give not to buy this car, even though their brother has never brought the family (or even the wife) on a trip via flying! Or the soccer team which they never transported. Or the camping trip they never took. For such one-off events, for Gawd's sake, rent a proper VAN for a week, pay the $500, and save by driving a small car the other 51 weeks of the year.

Automakers say two-seat cars don't sell, are not profitable. Well, major automakers are not profitable. They have to start accepting alternate variations on the core product.

The Volkswagen L1 could have an even smaller engine, and could forget about carbon fiber, if the car only attained a sub-40 top speed.

Feedback on this Blog

Recently I mentioned this blog on Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed and consequently received remarks, but not about the idea of limiting the top speed of vehicles on our highways.

In summary, every response was name-calling, which takes no thinking whatsoever, and even less keyboard effort. But, that is the Internet: a place where one can anonymously pass judgment and fulminate against anyone, long after you have alienated every one of your physical actual friends and acquaintances. Your ex-friends can geographically hide. Open season on anything that moves on the Internet, so spray away. It's not hitting a target that counts on the Internet, it is simply the pleasure of "pulling the trigger", seeing your words in print. Truly...that is the hiding place of the weak.

I did publish on the blog a message from Barry which supposes I am attempting to "say" something other than what I have published in this blog. Heh, electrons are cheap. I write out all that I want to say. Do not 'interprete'. I only suggest that you take fifteen minutes and read this weblog from the first to the last, because all the "problems" with this idea of limiting top speed are addressed in many of the first entries.

Finally, I want to remind readers that we all have the natural bias to assume things can always remain the way they exist in the present, as long as we resist change, vote it down, rally against change, keep our "freedoms". No question, when the automobile first hit the streets, people wanted their horse-drawn wagons, did not want gasoline, noise, etc. They wrote laws like "3 mph top speed, with a man on foot walking in front, waving a red flag" because they loved their horses, they loved the way they "had always done it." It used to be a tradition, on Christmas Day in this country, that every able-bodied male went out with a gun, and shot every single bird that moved. Robins, eagles, pigeons, everything. Where did that tradition go??!!

We now have 300-plus million people in the USA. There were 180 million when I began driving. Things cannot remain as we wish they could. The planet has six BILLION humans, and growing.

As a consequence of the population growth, some things will go away, sooner than you think.

Transportation, or Toys?

Pretty obvious that the automobile transportation industry is only fractionally involved in transporting people from "A" to "B". This pictured truck probably has seldom if ever gotten off a paved road, but undoubtedly has in excess of $5,000 in modifications that are completely unnecessary for moving people to school or work, or to go shopping. We all like our toys, and everyone likes something about their personal vehicle. But in this country, vehicles are more toys than transportation.

But the world cannot take it no mo'. The realistic, mature fact is, there are simply too many people on the planet, and putting money into non-functional but expensive add-ons is simply unsustainable. The huge losses all across the automobile industry, worldwide, leaves no doubt that this is true. We cannot have a nation where one person in fifty grows food, and ten in fifty sell chrome-plated-this and super-shock-absorber-thats.
I get SAE's monthly magazine, and I see even in 2009 the auto industry still swooning, still pouring enormous amounts of research and money into seven-speed transmissions, muting noise at eighty miles per hour, more elaborate fuel delivery systems for V8, V10 engines, for more horsepower per cubic inch displacement. These don't add value to transportation on the highway, because these incremental "advances" are only functional above 70 mph!.

Advertising that a car has an "electronically limited top speed of 155 mile-per-hour" is desperation...desperation grown of shrinking sales. Acceleration and an unusable "top speed" may help -sell- a particular type of car, but simply focusing on tactics to increase sales by offering "better high-speed performance" leads to a nationwide fleet of cars that cost too much in total operating cost (fuel, insurance, depreciation) for the value they provide in getting from "A" to "B" efficiently.

If the maximum speed a vehicle could travel was physically constrained to 34 mph (55kmph), engines could be very small (two cylinder most likely) and mileage would quickly surpass 200 miles-per-gallon in new, clean-sheet designs. Once you have a lighter, inexpensive vehicle, and no excessive oil importation, then you can begin adding spinning hubcabs and jacked-up suspensions... fuel efficient cars DO NOT have to be tiny Prius econo-boxes, IF they don't have to go 70 mph!

In addition, let's enjoy the reduced carbon output as we simultaneously return sanity to transportation.

Nick Adenhart and the crash that killed him

As a baseball fan, I was very shocked to see the headline that announced that Nick Adenhart had been killed in a car crash. He had just pitched the night before. How could it be? Where would he have been, as a member of a professional team in the midst of their season, where he could be out driving, and then be so foolish as to risk life and limb?



Ah, the terrible details. Nick Adenhart was only a passenger in a car that was hit by another vehicle going NINETY MILES AN HOUR. Two other people, the driver Courtney Stewart and passenger Henry Pearson, were killed, both of them instantly. A fourth, John Wilhite, was "internally decapitated" but has remained alive.



Now as my blog makes abundantly clear, I am advocating a speed (top speed, cannot physically exceed) of 34 miles an hour for all vehicles on our roadways, as a means to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to cut carbon dioxide emissions down to pre 1970 levels. But apropos to the crash that killed three people and ruined the life for the driver of the other vehicle, and probably the critically-injured passenger, you have to ask yourself:



Why does ANY vehicle on the road, need the capability to exceed the speed limit? Why??



Are we required to maintain a "free-for-all" type of playground for speeding? Isn't 70mph as a top speed, for Porsches and Corvettes, as well as the Minivan that was traveling 90mph and killed three people...NINETY MILES AN HOUR on a regular four-lane boulevard... isn't 70mph enough? If you want high speed, buy a racing car. But don't mistake transportation for entertainment. Driving is a privilege, and not a right.



No manufacturer should be building cars and selling them to the public, that can exceed the speed limit. There is no rational, reasonable reason for doing so. And in light of the fact that drunk drivers with no license continue to drive and kill people, should there be some basic manufacturing guidelines to deal with reality???!!



There was one other car at that intersection of Orangethorpe and S. Lemon, facing the Adenhart car. The driver saw the speeding minivan flicker in the periphery of his vision. He was lucky. Courtney Stewart did not see the minivan. Had it been traveling at only 70 mph, would she have seen it? Would she have also paused.



I would say, speculatively, yes, she would have. Chrysler contributed to this accident, IMO.

Why build a car that can go ninety miles an hour?

To kill people??



By the way, if "my world" were in existence, and the top speed was only 34 mph, there would have been no crash, no loss of life.

The Ridiculous Phrase "Addicted to Oil"

Perhaps when our current president George "Dubya" Bush leaves office, his utterance of "addicted to oil" will finally vanish into history.

However, some electric car enthusiasts wish to prop up the phrase for their own promotion. I sincerely hope they abandon it.

Today, January 1st, 2009, an article on fuel consumption was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Though prices in California have dropped from the $4.50 per gallon to the $1.69 per gallon range in only six months, consumption volumes show no sign of increasing. In fact, most predict consumption will continue to drop. Does this sound like an "addiction"??

Hardly.

What every adult is addicted to is speed! Faster times getting to work, getting anything done, communicating....Top automotive speeds in the 1940s were less than 50 mph, and few cars could get above 80 mph. Now, you cannot sell a car without brisk acceleration, a nice top speed (130 is often touted).

Nearly a year has passed since I began this blog, and no one has disputed my claim that if we simply made cars, trucks, and buses incapable, mechanically, of exceeding 35 miles per hours, that we would soon not be importing foreign oil, the price of fuel would drop, the price of cars would drop, the amount of carbon entering the atmosphere from petroleum consumption would drop below 1980s levels worldwide, vehicular deaths would drop to an incredibly low number, the list is long for the fallout from the effect.

And, the best part about a change to a mechanically-fixed maximum speed: present vehicles can be retrofitted. Instead of waiting for a turnover in the current 220 million cars and trucks on the road in the United States, they can be set up with inexpensive escapement mechanisms, similar to those that regulate the speed of a mechanical clock or watch. You don't have to wait five, ten , twenty years for a big impact. It can be as little as twelve months after the decision is made!

Talk about "saving the planet" with electric cars and hybrids makes no sense when you consider the numbers: There are 220 million cars and trucks on the road! 220 million! People are talking about "ramping up" electric vehicle production to a million cars a year..."ramping up"!! The same with hybrids. Buying and driving a electric-gas hybrid in order to "commit" to change is absurd in face of the 220 million vehicles on the roads, NOW, in the United States. If a million hybrids hit the road and replace (most hybrid purchases do not replace existing cars, just shove them to the back of the driveway) traditional gasoline-exclusive vehicles, it will take a century to have an effect!!

My idea of speed-reduced vehicles won't save Detroit, because Detroit as it's currently set up, cannot save itself. Cars that operate at reduced speed are not in as many accidents. If vehicles begin to appear that get 100-200 miles to the gallon, the existing fleet simply will not turn over fast enough to support the Big Three (and many other vehicle manufacturers) because of the longer life for the average vehicle. The size and scale of the current automobile manufacturing structure will not allow a reconfiguration to a smaller volume of output without continuing financial losses...forever.

However, we would save Planet Earth, we would become more sane as a society, more human in our schedule and relations to others. It would take less courage than entering World War II, and cost the country nothing but its attachment and nostalgia for "the old days".

Four Die in High Speed Crash

Just a brief note about four Pacific Union college students who died in a terrible crash early on November 16 2008. Such a needless waste of lives, cut down in their prime age, because the driver was speeding. Just another of the "good externalities" of limiting the mechanical top speed of all road vehicles to 34mph (55kmph) would be the tremendous reduction in tragic deaths and accidents. The California Highway Patrol would probably trim to 10% of its current size. Autobody shops, employing over 240,000 people in the USA at present, would no doubt be reduced substantially, but... that is a good thing!

Deaths from high speed chases...remember this blog when you hear of one.

The Demise of the Big Three Automakers

Here in the eleventh month of 2008, much media conversation is taking place regarding the massive financial losses at GM, Ford, and Chrysler, and what can be done. Unfortunately, my prescription for low speed will do nothing to help them survive. If a virus of enlightenment stormed the planet, and everyone decided, "Yes, let's limit top speed, to save gasoline and the resources going into building vehicles." the impact would be a negative as far as earnings for the Big Three, going forward. Unit costs for vehicles would drop for materials, even with the addition of a mechanical escapement to limit top speeds. Worse though, the existing national fleet of vehicles would extend their mechanical lives with the reduction in mechanical wear, and fewer crashes. Sales of slower cars manufactured after a "top speed" imposition would probably drop to 50% of current sales. Sales of retrofit drive trains (e.g., small two-cylinder engines and variable-speed transmissions) would be gobbled up by OEMs eager to replace reduced component orders from the Big Three. Ford, GM, Chrysler, are simply too large to be nimble, and would be beat at the retrofit game.

At present, the automakers have worked themselves into a corner from which there is no escape. Competition from better made cars from Nissan and Toyota have forced them to create a quality of car that is more expensive, but is replaced less frequently. There has been a concomitant increase in the cost of labor and materials for this quality, and an inability to reduce costs by workforce reduction. A laid-off UAW worker retains 95% of his working salary.

The US government loan to the managements of these firms will do nothing but allow a swollen inventory of unsold vehicles to increase. Bankruptcy will stop all payments to suppliers, perhaps negate the UAW contracts. The federal government should then make long term, substantial loans to suppliers and unions, to take away the costs to the Big Three as the receivership managements work to restructure the three large automakers into corporations that have an economic future.

Currently, no automaker in its current form, whether Toyota, Honda, Ford, GM, has a future past 2020. We might as well begin the death and rebirth of the transportation industry now in 2008.

How to Retrofit Current Vehicles

If it was legislated that all motorized vehicles could attain a maximum of 34 miles-per-hour, downhill, in neutral, fully-loaded, gas pedal mashed to the floor.... how would this be possible? How could you possibly prevent any existing vehicle from traveling over 34 mph? What would make this possible?

Answer: by use of one of the mechanical marvels that is the cornerstone of our modern civilization: the escapement mechanism.

About 95% of adults over 25 are familiar with grandfather clocks, and clocks not powered by electricity. How are these clocks powered? Well, in most instances, either weights or a spring.

One might wonder, since you can rapidly lift the weights in a grandfather clock by pulling the chains, or wind a timer or small clock or wristwatch in a matter of seconds, why doesn't the clock hands, the timer pointer, the second hand, just spin very fast and unwind at the same speed as you wound the clock?? Why does a clock that took seconds to wind up, take hours and hours to wind down?

The answer lies in an invention created over five hundred years ago: the escapement. This mechanism enabled clockmakers to create accurate time pieces and create a modern society where time could be accurately told without a sun-dial, or by dripping water (which were pretty inaccurate anyway).

Without going into details, an escapement is a basically a toothed wheel and lever arrangement, the interaction of which creates a "tick tock tick tock" sound you hear with a mechanical clock.

Here is a wikipedia animated view of an escapement in action:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasshopper_escapement

This toothed wheel and lever set-up has been created in an amazing varieties of ways, all to do one thing: to limit the maximum speed at which the rotation of a drive shaft(no matter how great or small the energy stored in the weights or springs) will attain.

So that is the key: an escapement mechanically limits the top speed. An inexpensive escapement could be fitted to one or both rear axles on an existing vehicle, to be "tick tocked" by a peg or pegs fixed inside the rotating rear wheel. No matter how much engine power was applied, the wheel could only turn so fast before the escapement mechanism reached its maximum velocity.

People talk about a "methanol economy" or a "hydrogen economy", yet those systems require vast (40 billion dollars? 400 billion dollars??!!) expenditures just for fueling. And what about cars and trucks?? How many thousands of dollars to retrofit the vehicles? You cannot retrofit.

"Oh, it's impractical! You'll have to buy a new car!"

The Vice Chairman of General Motors, Bob Lutz, recently spoke at a seminar on fuel-efficient vehicles. He stated that meeting the 35-mpg CAFE standard set for 2020 will cost new car buyers and additional $6000 to $7000! An add-on escapement mechanism that could keep any existing vehicle to 34 miles per hour would cost less than $50 when mass-produced!

It would not take much ingenuity to create an escapement device that would NOT hinder operating speed until it was activated. Once everyone was set up, a date could be set (July 4th, 2010?) where everyone pulled out the cable, activating the device, and we'd all drive more slowly, simultaneously.

Isn't it time our society got reasonable about transportation and saving itself??