One important issue not receiving enough attention is efficiency increases forced by population growth. The Earth is a finite system: resources do not grow as population does. This means that to maintain the same results (standard of living, &c.) as population grows, efficiency must increase. This is important for issues such as land use, food [...]
This week David Pogue did a good story for CBS about Better Place, a company trying to do what I have been talking about for years. This is a modernized version of the old Edison-Ford electric car plan of the 1910s. I hope more car companies join Nissan and Renault in this project. Now is [...]
I finally fixed the electrical problems in the tailgate of my Subaru Impreza. Four wires were broken where they pass from the frame of the car to the frame of the tailgate. I tried to fix the problem a while ago, but couldn’t locate the source. My multimeter gave correct readings, but nothing worked. The [...]
I’ve been doing some research into car fuel economy and how easy it would be to increase the efficiency of cars. Two things I needed to find were how long cars last and how many miles they are driven. I found an interesting Department of Transportation study with equations for this information. Car lifetimes are [...]
Two news stories could lead to Chrysler surviving the current economic panic, and becoming a strong company again. The first is Chrysler’s deal with Fiat. The second is Obama’s order for the EPA to reconsider the Bush administration’s rule disallowing California from implementing emissions standards less lax than federal standards. This potential rule reversal is [...]
“Drill, Baby, Drill!” We have heard this phrase constantly since the Republican convention. The thought behind this chant is that increased American oil production will lead to lower gas prices. This idea is based on supply and demand. With a constant demand, increasing supply should lower the price of a resource. Drilling in the US [...]
(This is a re-post from last week. The original post disappeared in the server change.) I saw a graph of car and bicycle production in The Economist. The article was On your bike: Obesity and high oil prices are good news for the world’s biggest bikemaker. This was one of the many recent stories on [...]
One day, when I still drove to work, the front right brake on my car stopped working well. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I suspected the ABS, but I talked to a mechanic and a brake engineer. They thought it was a problem with the brakes. I knew the pads and rotors [...]