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.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
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.
Monday, April 20, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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".
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".
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 5, 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??
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??
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