Automobiles
mikethemadbiologist | June 29, 2011Monday, The NY Times had an interesting story about Zurich, Switzerland's intentional policy of making car-based transportation utterly miserable--and thereby convincing people to use other transit options:
While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear -- to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 2, 2011Dan Froomkin has a great article about the role that financial speculation plays in driving up gasoline prices*. Keep in mind that even Goldman Sachs, the largest oil trader, admits that speculation drives up oil prices. But what really disgusting is how this speculation-based rise in prices serves as a wealth transfer from, well, just about everybody to oil company executives (italics mine):
By and large, the oil companies' profits are not finding their way back into the communities from which they came; are not being used to create more jobs; and are not being invested in new equipment…
mikethemadbiologist | July 11, 2010One of the biggest environmental challenges we face is trying to make the outer suburbs and exurbs more energy efficient. The basic problem is that suburbia requires a car. That is a huge energy consumer and CO2 producer. Lance Mannion describes the problem very clearly:
To the degree that going green sounds like a plan to make us move into cities and give up our cars for bikes and buses Americans will resist and resent conservation efforts, and I suppose that's how it might begin to sound as soon as the discussion switches from solar panels and fluorescent light bulbs and paper or…
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2010(from here)
Well, it's not a jet car, but Terrafugia has made a flying car:
The Terrafugia, a small airplane that can drive on roads and has been billed as the first "flying car," is now one step closer to becoming street- and sky-legal.
The vehicle has cleared a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulatory hurdle for craft classification by weight. A full-fledged production prototype might be just around the corner, according to multiple reports.
At issue was Mass.-based company Terrafugia wanting its Transition vehicle to be classified as a "Light Sport Aircraft" by the FAA so people…
grrlscientist | March 18, 2010tags: public service announcement, Sussex Safer Roads Partnership, seatbelts, automobiles, vehicles, safety, safer roads, Embrace Life, streaming video
This is a very touching public service announcement (PSA) by the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership, asking people to always wear their seatbelts when in a moving vehicle. Is there an Academy Award for PSAs? If so, this one deserves to be nominated!
mikethemadbiologist | January 31, 2010If you live in a city, you're probably familiar with Zipcar. It's the car rental service that let's you rent by the half-hour, which is very useful if you don't own a car, and need one to run the occasional errand. Guess what comprises five percent of Zipcar's fleet:
Hello [Mike the Mad Biologist],
You may have seen it on the news already, but just in case, we wanted to let you know that Toyota has announced a recall on several of their vehicles due to an accelerator malfunction.
The 2009 and 2010 Toyota Matrix is the only vehicle in the Zipcar fleet affected by this recall, and makes up…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2009Add this to the list of symptoms of post-partisanship depression. Do you remember Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who was originally nominated by Obama as Secretary of Commerce because he was viewed as a moderate? Well, 'moderate' Gregg (did I mention that he almost joined the Obama Administration were it not for opposition from we Dirty Fucking Hippies?) has this to say about recent legislation:
American government changed last night. "We are now functioning under a parliamentary form of government," says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) in a conversation with NRO. "An ideological supermajority in…
mikethemadbiologist | December 19, 2009With some sadness, we read that GM is killing off Saab, although spare parts will still be made. The BBC's Jorn Madslien explains how a well-engineered car line died (italics mine):
When its owner GM bought Saab, it was seen as a brand that could become the US automotive group's European luxury brand.
But the quirky cars did not attract a broad enough following, so it failed to make money.
GM's solution was to cut costs by sharing ever more parts with Opel while, at the same time, toning down their design.
Such moves alienated traditional Saab customers without gaining new ones. New product…
mikethemadbiologist | July 30, 2009...for pedestrians? The Boston Globe reports that Boston is trying to implement a citywide bike sharing program:
They intend to roll out what would be the nation's first citywide bike-sharing system next spring, making hundreds of bicycles at dozens of stations across Boston available to anyone who can swipe a credit card.
If all goes as planned, Bostonians and visitors will ride these bikes to run errands, reach their workplaces, travel from tourist site to tourist site and from meeting to meeting. All of this, officials say, will make drivers and bikers more respectful of each other, and…
mikethemadbiologist | February 21, 2009We should make gas taxes part of a car's purchase price. It would certainly beat Transportation Secretary LaHood's proposal of a vehicle mileage tax (and is there any stupid idea that Republicans won't embrace?):
Some surprising news out of the Department of Transportation today as Ray LaHood suggests that the Obama administration is considering taxing people based on how many miles they drive. A vehicle miles traveled tax, as the proposal is often called, has been under consideration in states like Rhode Island and Idaho and has, not surprisingly, proven pretty unpopular. First, it's a tax…
mikethemadbiologist | December 11, 2008David Leonhardt does a good job of explaining the lies surrounding the bogus $73 per hour compensation that the Big Three autoworkers supposedly receive--even if he does so rather elliptically. Here's how that $73 figure is reached:
You'll notice that past compensation is a big part of the problem. As Leonhardt puts it:
The crucial point, though, is this $15 isn't mainly a reflection of how generous the retiree benefits are. It's a reflection of how many retirees there are. The Big Three built up a huge pool of retirees long before Honda and Toyota opened plants in this country. You'd…
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2008One of the things that I don't write about much on the blog, but that I do follow with great interest is urban planning and transportation (yes, I need new hobbies). Among the glitterati of blogtopia (and, yes, skippy invented that phrase), there's a lot of discussion of how to develop better transporation policy. I find these posts to be really annoying, with the exception of Atrios who writes about his attempts 'to turn your suburb into midtown Manhattan' (he, at least has a sense of humor about it).
I should be the last person to be annoyed by these posts. I live in a city, don't own a…
mikethemadbiologist | November 28, 2008Jeffrey Leonard, an environmentally friendly businessman (no, really, he is), makes an interesting case for jumpstarting the economy and Detroit by offering massive government-based rebates for their cars, including the gas guzzlers (italics mine):
Skeptics will have two major objections. The first is economic, and the second is environmental. Those who object on economic grounds would argue that Detroit has gotten into trouble because it produces poor cars at high cost, and that handing billions to the industry to help it sell more cars would simply reward a failed business model. Those who…
mikethemadbiologist | November 24, 2008From Bloomberg News:
Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government is prepared to lend more than $7.4 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers, or half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, to rescue the financial system since the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.
When I read this, a line from a movie* kept running through my head:
With a lie this big, we can get away with anything.
Seriously, we have no conceptual means to grasp something of this magnitude. And tell me why we can't lend Detroit $25 billion? That is one three-thousandthhundredth of the package to…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2008I haven't a clue as to how to proceed about the potential auto industry bailout, and anyone who can say with confidence about how the largest industrial bailout in U.S. history will play out is kidding themselves. My instinct is not to lose U.S. controlled industrial capacity on national security grounds. But to follow on something driftglass discussed, there seems to be one group of people who aren't getting blamed.
-link to driftglass
-list as questions the three fuckups
Are salaries and benefits relatively 'high' for auto workers?
Sure (although nobody cares to comment on the 'high'…
mikethemadbiologist | October 15, 2008Atrios describes one of the hidden, but very important costs of parking, especially in cities--parking:
I think self-driving cars are going to be here some time after flying cars, my jetpack, and Glenn Reynolds' sexbots, but this little thought experiment is useful for highlighting that while we talk about highways and roads and whatnot, the biggest problem with cars generally is parking. They take up space. Lots of it. That space reduces density most places, and reduces the benefits of density in places where it exists.
A hidden gem in the Boston area is the MIT Museum (kinda like…
mikethemadbiologist | July 18, 2008...at least in Houston, Texas. With non-automobile transportation options in the news, on of the interesting things is that the actual entire cost of automobile transportation infrastructure--that is, roads, is rarely discussed, while it is almost always raised with mass transit. But, by way of Ryan Avent, lookee what happens when the lifetime cost of highways is accounted for (italics mine):
The decision to build a road is a permanent commitment to the traveling public. Not only will a road be built, but it must also be routinely maintained and reconstructed when necessary, meaning no…
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2008I like the Smart Car, particularly if it comes with bunny ears. But this is not keeping with the design philosophy of the Smart Car:
(from here)
Besides, how the hell do you even get in the car?
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2008No, I'm not referring to the Jetsons. By way of Phronesisaical comes this story about an air-powered car:
BBC News is reporting that a French company has developed a pollution-free car which runs on compressed air. India's Tata Motors has the car under production and it may be on sale in Europe and India by the end of the year.
The air car, also known as the Mini-CAT or City Cat, can be refueled in minutes from an air compressor at specially equipped gas stations and can go 200 km on a 1.5 euro fill-up -- roughly 125 miles for $3. The top speed will be almost 70 mph and the cost of the…
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2007There are two recent and very disheartening stories about energy technology. The first has to do with the new standards for automobile gas mileage in the U.S.:
The proposal, which would require automakers to achieve 35 miles per gallon on average, is similar to a measure that was passed in the summer by the Senate but was bitterly opposed by the auto companies, who argued they did not have the technology or the financial resources to reach that goal.
The auto companies gave up their long-held opposition to fuel- economy increases not long before the Senate version was passed, but proposed a…