Unrest in Egypt

[Kepler]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

As for Risk...I say go for the Ukraine! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzLtF_PxbYw

The only clever moment in the entire history of that show.

 

[MavKato]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Frankly the biggest problem is getting off the dime. Look at cell phones, plasma TV, etc. Technology always takes a bit of time to get ramped up...but once its under way, the new paradigm shifts from archaic status quo to ongoing innovation. Cars need to be added to the latter column.

Edit: About a year ago, I had an interesting discussion with a poster here. This guy (can't remember who) had the position that society was stuck with an approximate limit of MPG (might have been about 70ish). And that was based on physical limitations. I significantly disagree...really the sky's the limit for nearly any other technology...why should automobile MPG have any such limit?

part of the problem is the added requirements of safety equipment in cars. every pound added decreases fuel economy. you start requiring a dozen airbags, stability control, backup cameras, etc, it increases the weight. also, the fact that a honda civic is now larger than the original honda accord, cars are growing in size. honda introduced the fit because the civic had grown so large that they needed a new sub-compact car.

 

[leswp1]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

part of the problem is the added requirements of safety equipment in cars. every pound added decreases fuel economy. you start requiring a dozen airbags, stability control, backup cameras, etc, it increases the weight. also, the fact that a honda civic is now larger than the original honda accord, cars are growing in size. honda introduced the fit because the civic had grown so large that they needed a new sub-compact car.

Part of this is American silliness. At one point before President Oil came in the cars were of a reasonable size. Now everything bigger is better. If you don't own a tank you can see out the back window without the back-up cameras. Less huge cars on the road and less need for the extra-super-duper protection. Go to Europe. Are their cars any less safe than ours? You could put a regular European car inside half the monstrosities we drive.

 

[bigmrg74]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Part of this is American silliness. At one point before President Oil came in the cars were of a reasonable size. Now everything bigger is better. If you don't own a tank you can see out the back window without the back-up cameras. Less huge cars on the road and less need for the extra-super-duper protection. Go to Europe. Are their cars any less safe than ours? You could put a regular European car inside half the monstrosities we drive.

True, and no suburbian soccer mom really needs to haul the kids around in a hummer. Now, if she was living up on a mountain that was prone to landslides or something, then yeah, it might make sense. But how often do you think most of those Hummers even got off asphalt? At most, maybe 50 percent of them did that if you include the one time where they had to park on a lawn somewhere.

 

[Patman]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Part of this is American silliness. At one point before President Oil came in the cars were of a reasonable size. Now everything bigger is better. If you don't own a tank you can see out the back window without the back-up cameras. Less huge cars on the road and less need for the extra-super-duper protection. Go to Europe. Are their cars any less safe than ours? You could put a regular European car inside half the monstrosities we drive.

Who the hell is "President Oil"... SUVs were becoming a big deal in the 1990s... I know because I remember the Boy Scout parents who had them to match some of their egos... so unless "President Oil" is "President Clinton" I'm not sure what you're talking about. I assure you as I can remember one overly aggressive woman who really needed her truckasaurus as a projection item.

edit: IIRC, doesn't Top Gear's Clarkson mock our over-protected vehicles?

 

[Patman]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Frankly the biggest problem is getting off the dime. Look at cell phones, plasma TV, etc. Technology always takes a bit of time to get ramped up...but once its under way, the new paradigm shifts from archaic status quo to ongoing innovation. Cars need to be added to the latter column.

Edit: About a year ago, I had an interesting discussion with a poster here. This guy (can't remember who) had the position that society was stuck with an approximate limit of MPG (might have been about 70ish). And that was based on physical limitations. I significantly disagree...really the sky's the limit for nearly any other technology...why should automobile MPG have any such limit?

Aren't you the same person who believes computers don't have a limit either? Some people treat the Manhattan Project as evidence that we can do the unthinkable given enough resources. Our research capacity is miles beyond that present in 1945... its certainly not for lack of trying.

I know unh_hockey has opined a bit because he has worked in alternative fuels, though I couldn't say for certain if it was him.

 

[Handyman]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

The only clever moment in the entire history of that show.

Seriously...the list of ways that you suck and have no taste grows by the DAY!

Do all people that go to snobby stuck up schools like Cornell lose all perspective of what is good and funny in the world?

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Aren't you the same person who believes computers don't have a limit either?

Yes we know. Clock speeds have increased each and every year from 2 MHz in the 70s to 3.5 GHz today. But technology will stop now. Uh no. No doubt...automobile combustion engines have progressed surpising little in 100 years compared to the rates of other technologies.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Yes we know. Clock speeds have increased each and every year from 2 MHz in the 70s to 3.5 GHz today. But technology will stop now. Uh no. No doubt...automobile combustion engines have progressed surpising little in 100 years compared to the rates of other technologies.

Yeah, it's a shame that not a single person has ever been working on that problem during that entire span.

You really are uneducated if you think todays' cars' gas mileage is a "lack of attention" problem. This is a problem of laws. Not human ones - the ones you can't change even if elections have consequences: the laws of physics and economics.

 

[alfablue]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Part of this is American silliness. At one point before President Oil came in the cars were of a reasonable size. Now everything bigger is better. If you don't own a tank you can see out the back window without the back-up cameras. Less huge cars on the road and less need for the extra-super-duper protection. Go to Europe. Are their cars any less safe than ours? You could put a regular European car inside half the monstrosities we drive.

les
You are forgetting your youth. Big, heavy, poor fuel economy cars have been part of the automotive market in the US forever. We have been convinced that size is a good thing. Recall the massive cars of the 60's and 70's. The Caddies with 500cc motors in them were MASSIVE.

Although, the common belief that fuel economy has gone down as an overall fleet isn't correct- I've seen some decent research done by DOE and NHTSA showing that the fleet fuel economy has gotten better ever since they've been tracking it in the late 70's. That's all cars.

But it doesn't help that a) there's more people now driving than 30 years ago, and b) we are all driving farther.

Europe has a different economic model, and has since the end of WWII- they tax oil a LOT, since it's been a difficult commodity for them vs. us. So that leads to smaller cars that get better fuel economy. It helps that they also started with smaller roads- but you can see that in old European based cities in the US like San Juan, too.

If gas was cheap, and space was plentiful, I'm quite sure, European drivers would be driving a lot of the same kind of vehicles. We all drive with our wallets.

 

[alfablue]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Yes we know. Clock speeds have increased each and every year from 2 MHz in the 70s to 3.5 GHz today. But technology will stop now. Uh no. No doubt...automobile combustion engines have progressed surpising little in 100 years compared to the rates of other technologies.

You really belive this? There hasn't been much progress in the last 100 years?

The power increase from 100 years ago for the average car is staggering, even from 30 years ago- modern family sedans have more power than large trucks of the 70's and 80's.

That went along with a pretty sizeable decrease displacement. Just 30 years ago, it took 5.0l v8 to make 150hp (yes, it was choked mainly due to emissions), now it's common to see 2-2.5l I4's to get more power. 5.0l V8's are in the 400hp range.

Fleet fuel economy has gotten better, even with the upsizing of cars due to market trends. I wish I had the direct links to DOE papers, but as I just posted, that's lost on preception, larger population, and more miles driven per person.

And emissions.... wow... 40 years ago- pre rules, a well running car would emit 3-5 grams/mile of NOx and HC's, 20-30g/mi CO- from the running engine, another 5g HC lost due to evaporation, and another 5-10g/mi of pollutants from blowby. Now, cars can't dump blowby- it gets reburnt, evap emissions are <0.05 g per day on a hot day, and the new car fleet average of burnt emissions is 0.05 g/mi HC, and 0.060 g/mi NOx.

Seems like we've come a long way.

And that does not even point out where we are going. By 2024, states that use California's rules- evap emissions go down (still being worked out), and powertrain emissions for the fleet goes to 0.030 for NMOG + NOx (summed).

So we are going farther.

Not that it has much to do with the daily action in Lybia, were people want personal freedoms. Which impacts an oil source.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Here's the solution to oil importation:
- switch to electric cars (more efficient than internal combustion, zero emissions from the cars themselves, and some percentage of that power will be renewable via wind/solar)

You also need to caveat your efficiency comment to "in the propulsive device itself."

A complete electric vehicle system including the production and disposal of batteries, power transmission, increased rolling resistance (due to carrying around heavy batteries), etc is significantly less efficient than gasoline, which is why it's so much more expensive. Even "material costs" are often the result of inefficiency. Exotic materials for batteries are expensive because they are rare, and therefore take huge mining and refining operations to produce in bulk, which uses tremendous amounts of energy, etc.

 

[leswp1]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

les
You are forgetting your youth. Big, heavy, poor fuel economy cars have been part of the automotive market in the US forever. We have been convinced that size is a good thing. Recall the massive cars of the 60's and 70's. The Caddies with 500cc motors in them were MASSIVE.

Although, the common belief that fuel economy has gone down as an overall fleet isn't correct- I've seen some decent research done by DOE and NHTSA showing that the fleet fuel economy has gotten better ever since they've been tracking it in the late 70's. That's all cars.

But it doesn't help that a) there's more people now driving than 30 years ago, and b) we are all driving farther.

Europe has a different economic model, and has since the end of WWII- they tax oil a LOT, since it's been a difficult commodity for them vs. us. So that leads to smaller cars that get better fuel economy. It helps that they also started with smaller roads- but you can see that in old European based cities in the US like San Juan, too.

If gas was cheap, and space was plentiful, I'm quite sure, European drivers would be driving a lot of the same kind of vehicles. We all drive with our wallets.

Exactly my point. I am remembering the massive push for fuel efficiency that produced cars with better gas mileage when we had the oil embargo and also seeing the push of SUVs, trucks, etc that had poor gas mileage become more popular when we were all big on ourselves and the economy was booming. The point being American silliness- we could drive more efficient vehicles. we chose the huge inefficient ones because 'we can' until gas doubles in price then everyone wails that they can't afford to drive. Meanwhile the need for the gas affects what we can do in the world and who we are 'friends with ' in the international community.

 

[bigblue_dl]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Part of this is American silliness. At one point before President Oil came in the cars were of a reasonable size. Now everything bigger is better. If you don't own a tank you can see out the back window without the back-up cameras. Less huge cars on the road and less need for the extra-super-duper protection. Go to Europe. Are their cars any less safe than ours? You could put a regular European car inside half the monstrosities we drive.

Some of us don't fit in small cars. I rode in State of Hockey's car yesterday, my head hit the ceiling, and my knees hit the dash.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Did it look like this? http://www.nerdnexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/verytallman.jpg

 

[walrus]

Some of us don't fit in small cars. I rode in State of Hockey's car yesterday, my head hit the ceiling, and my knees hit the dash.

I wonder what happens to my ability to drive when smaller
Cars become the norm

 

[Priceless]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

[video]http://www.spike.com/video-clips/9qyjmp/the-detroit-project-talking-heads[/video]

 

[bigmrg74]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Did it look like this? http://www.nerdnexus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/verytallman.jpg

Pretty much what it feels like for me, and I'm 6'4". Some of the cars do have lower seats and that helps somewhat, even if that means I have to sit further back.

Who the hell is "President Oil"... SUVs were becoming a big deal in the 1990s... I know because I remember the Boy Scout parents who had them to match some of their egos... so unless "President Oil" is "President Clinton" I'm not sure what you're talking about. I assure you as I can remember one overly aggressive woman who really needed her truckasaurus as a projection item.

edit: IIRC, doesn't Top Gear's Clarkson mock our over-protected vehicles?

Eh, Top Gear tends to mock us in general anyways.

 

[leswp1]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

Some of us don't fit in small cars. I rode in State of Hockey's car yesterday, my head hit the ceiling, and my knees hit the dash.

True but the average (shorter than you and wally) person can fit. You probably don't require a Hummer to put yourself in.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: Unrest in Egypt

You probably don't require a Hummer.

I require a hummer. Get your *** over here.