Hybrid race cars

[JR.]

A recent court decision upheld the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions..... This is scary to me... http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

Shuttering coal power plants faster than they build new NG plants could be a peak output problem. It seems like they should be able to convert old coal to NG but modern turbines et al are probably so much more efficient that it isn't worth conversion. Not to mention NG pipelines are underdeveloped so NG is not in the right places... coal plants are probably near coal deposits and/or railroads.

There is a new coal plant in MS coming on line, built next to a huge coal seam in Quitman (near me), but this plant was started before the current administration and MS is fairly energy friendly, with several nuke plants.

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i wouldn't worry about electric cars, pure electrics will not sell well enough to be a problem, unless the government literally gives them away. Which I would almost expect if we have another 4 years of current admin.

JR

[mediatechnology]

pure electrics will not sell well enough to be a problem

There was a recent JD Powers(?) survey of hybrid and EV owners.
I think there were only about ~33% of the respondents that would by another hybrid or EV.
~67% would go back to an ICE-powered car.
When they excluded Prius owners the re-purchase rate was <25%.

Toyota may be the only one that's close to getting it right.
I see a lot of Prius's (or is it still Prius, "Pre-eye?") on the road here.
Never seen one stranded either.
Never seen a Prius towing anything.

Flywheels for fixed-location energy storage do make sense.
IIRC there's a UPS or Generator manufacturer that uses them for ride-through.

I'm not making any investments in super-capacitor-powered or battery-powered passenger aircraft any time soon.

[JR.]

For something else disturbing the military has been undertaking a massive investment in using bio-fuel. In what world do we have so much money that we can spend several X what we should for military fuel? Perhaps another back door way to gut military effectiveness.

The most recent proposal from the house military budget committee is trying to outlaw bio-fuel use that isn't cost competitive (like all of it).

I wonder if the bad guys feel better if they got killed by a drone using bio-fuel?

At least a lot of military vehicles are painted green..

JR

PS: The electric car commercials still make me nuts... how dumb are people? (rhetorical I know how dumb they are).

[mediatechnology]

"Electric Car Road Rage"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2 ... road-rage/

[JR.]

Funny... I wonder if they throw down with light sabers, or meet in some virtual alley to fight in a game.

JR

[mediatechnology]

Well, he originally decided to key one car out of anger then realized that he had no key: The Ford EV only had a pushbutton fob.

So I guess they did have to resort to light sabers.