February 2007 Archives

Americans, who make up about 5 percent of the world's population, are responsible for 45 percent of the world's carbon emissions from cars and light trucks.

The generation, born in the years between the end of World War II and the early 1960s, has driven every major automotive buying trend since the late 1970s, when baby boomers began to gravitate away from Detroit's large V-8s towards boxy imports built by Toyota and Honda.

In the 1980s, they dissed station wagons in favor of minivans.

Dean Crumbling, of Dover, has been dabbling in electric cars for the past 30 years. Years ago, he built a working electric car out of a wrecked 1970 Toyota. He currently drives a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid with a CVT.

He happens to have a 28 volt aircraft generator/motor hanging around the garage that would power an electric car project that he would like to sell. 292-3829

Anyone have a bad experience with an electric hybrid in snow?

I keep seeing stories pop up like, Prius Stalls in Snow; Owners Steamed. I don't have any experience with driving Toyota's Synergy in the snow. My hybrid car is a manual transmission without traction control. Aside from the low ground clearance, it's fine. I solve that with a 13 year-old 4x4 Toyota short bed pickup, that mostly sleeps in the garage the rest of the year.

The EPA has given us a taste of the new, supposedly more realistic mileage figures, that will be adopted with 2008 vehicles by showing what current models would get under the new standard. Remember, a 20% drop in mileage in a car that gets 50 mpg will look like more than a car that gets 15 mpg.

A Toyota Prius currently rated city/highway - 60/51 will be 48/45

At the other end of the spectrum....

A 4WD Ford F-150 currently 15/18 will be 12/16

Check out this handy tool to see what your car would have been rated at if it had a 2008 EPA sticker. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm

...uses carbon briquettes made from corncobs to store methane, the main component in natural gas, at a density of 180 times their volume and at one seventh the pressure of conventional methane gas tanks. The storage system is the first to meet the U.S. Department of Energy’s storage density target of 180-to-1 by volume, set in 2000, said Peter Pfeifer, principal project leader and professor of physics at University of Missouri, Columbia.

The storage system also allows methane to be stored at a lower pressure of 500 pounds per square inch – the same as in natural gas pipelines—helping car makers fashion fuel tanks in any shape.

The Harford Community College's Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Expo will be held April 13-14 from 9 AM - 4 PM.

Exhibits will include Energy Efficient Vehicles - Fuel Cell, Biodiesel & Hybrid; Energy Efficiency and Green Building Design; Solar Hot Water, Thermal, and Lighting Systems; Remanufactured/Recycled Products; Straw Bale Construction; Photovoltaic Panels; Wind Power Systems; and Geothermal Heating & Cooling. Workshops on Global Warming, Passive Solar Energy, and Sustainable Design.

Pay out of pocket or pay higher taxes.

Rabbittransit will not be able to start an express bus service to Maryland right now because of the statewide transit funding crisis, but it hopes to offer the next best thing: vanpooling. (ydr.com)

Pennsylvania faces a crisis in funding transportation. The more immediate crisis is finding the funds to avoid steep cuts and fare increases in mass transit.

Less pressing, except for the occasional bridge collapse and highway unfit to drive, are the state's 5,913 structurally deficient bridges and 8,528 miles of roads in poor condition. The deterioration of the highway system will continue without an infusion of additional funding. A task force appointed by Gov. Ed Rendell pegged that amount at $1.7 billion annually to provide an acceptable standard of transportation. (AP)

No...the Monitor and the Merrimack, with their steam boilers, haven't been adapted to fly.

The Airforce is testing a synthetic fuel blend that could be made domestically from coal or natural gas as they seek to wean its dependence on foreign crude and defray soaring fuel costs which came to $4.7 billion last year.

Actually, the concept isn't new. Fischer-Tropsch fuel, named after the two German scientists who developed the catalytic process in 1923, converts natural gas or coal into liquid fuel.

GM of Canada announced today that its Oshawa Truck Assembly Plant will be the first plant in Canada to produce hybrid vehicles. The new Two-Mode Hybrid Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra is scheduled for sale in the fall of 2008.

Mike Harvey of Knoxville, MD converted a 92 gasoline powered VW Cabriolet to electric with parts available to anyone with the desire to build one.

Designed for a range of 70-80 miles per charge; the car has enough range to cover Harvey's 58 mile round trip commute to Dulles, Va.

The problem apparently is that the weight of a passenger on the rear seat backrest could bend the wiring terminal, potentially damaging the insulation and causing the short (in the converter). http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/02/honda_to_recall.html

See Honda recalling Civic Hybrid sedan

When I purchased a hybrid in December 2004, I steered away from the Toyota Prius for one simple reason. I hate demand hype.

Waiting lists, dealer demands, price premiums – Ug!

(Tokyo-AP) _ Honda plans to recall more than 45,000 Civic Hybrid sedans manufactured between September of 2005 and September of 2006. to repair a voltage converter defect that could stop the car's engine.

Perhaps in honor of our National Parks, General Motors has named their new SUV-like crossover, the Acadia, (17/25 mpg) in honor of the Maine treasure - following in the footsteps of their other trucks and SUV's like the GMC Denali, Yukon, and Chevrolet Colorado.

Acadia National Park's 57 mile car-less carriage road network, entirely independent of the motorized vehicle roads, was conceived before 1920 by those who saw an impending conflict with nature and the rapidly expanding use of the automobile.

Interesting article on the ethanol machine that is building steam... we desperately need a hero.

Increasing corn-ethanol gives you MORE pesticide contamination, MORE drilling for gas, MORE air pollution from E85 & refineries, MORE greenhouse gasses as they move to coal to power refineries, MORE demand on our water system, MORE water and air pollution, MORE soil erosion, and LESS land protected in the Conservation Reserve Program.

So while many environmental groups are in favor of both corn-ethanol and land conservation, they are opposed to pesticide contamination, expanded drilling, water and air pollution and are very concerned about global warming. But there seems to be a complete disconnect when it comes to ethanol production.http://www.energybulletin.net/25558.html

Early experiments with steam heating sometimes ended with disastrous results. However, by the late 19th century, steam heat was quite commonplace and had great acceptance. Between fear and function came the fascinating world of gravity flow hot water systems which continued on during the age of steam.

This example of a gravity flow hot water system found at www.oldhouseweb.com

The electric water circulator hadn’t been invented yet, actually electricity wasn’t very reliable, if it existed at all and heating controls were very crude, so the dead men decided to harness the basics.

Exxon Mobil’s $10.4 billion second-quarter profit, announced today, was the second-best quarterly performance ever for a publicly traded company. (AP/MSNBC)

According to a study out Feb. 15 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey and Alaskan agencies found that oil levels in the sands around the Exxon Valdez spill site (1989) are much the same as they were when tests were done five years ago. The study says oil has seeped down 4 to 10 inches. (USA Today)

Seventeen years ago, scientists predicted that the oil would be long gone by now.