X-rated Bob wroteTry to drive with the odd-numbered gears only - 1, 3 & 5.
Could someone explain the reasoning behind this one please? I'm not sure I get it.
G-Man wrote
Here's a lame one, but it works for me. Make a packed lunch to take to work, for me I have to travel all day so I was grabbing lunch wherever, and was spending like 200 bucks a week on crap like pies and burgers and cokes. Now I take 2 big 1.5L bottles of water and a healthy lunch with me and the savings are there.
It might seem lame at face value but it's a brilliant suggestion. I can't say that I'm very diligent at packing my own lunch but what I do these days is to have a loaf of bread, margarine and some jams at work so I make my own sandwich for lunch. It's not the greatest lunch but I can see the difference in my budget.
X-rated Bob wrote
Manfred Klose wrote
i am really looking forward to a day when electric cars will be available.
not hybrids.
I can't see it happening. The new infrastructure to support such vehicles would be a massive undertaking. The electrics that are available at present don't have a great range and where do you "fill" it up? Think about people going to Oppi in electric cars. Assuming they get there, how do they all fill up at the other end? Do you allow private electricity generation companies? Imagine the increase on the load on the grid when everybody plugs in their electric to recharge when they get home. Etc.
The hybrid is the best bet. Small petrol engine and you recover and store kinetic energy all the time to recycle via the electric motor.
With the way things currently stand, of course, you're right. But there's no telling what infrastructure might be available in future. There is always resistance to new technology, or not even resistance but let's call it lack of faith. With the advent of digital cameras lots of people disregarded it as an interesting idea but something far inferior to traditional film imaging. Agfa maintained this lack of faith and ultimately went bankrupt when digital cameras became the dominant technology.
Similarly, when Magellan produced the first mass market GPS device, many people didn't really see a real use for it - mostly due to the lack of infrastructure. There was no Google Earth, Tracks 4 Africa, Garmap routable maps or any such thing. If you found yourself outside of the military or land surveying purlieu, you'd have very little use for a GPS. Well, you can see now that things have changed in a big way. The infrastructure is there and it's growing still.
I suspect the same will eventually happen with electric cars. You're quite right, there is no viable infrastructure to support widespread use of it now but it will get there and as the infrastructure develops so will the cars until eventually electric cars will have more "megapixels" than conventional cars and they will edge out the conventional car industry and some massive "non believer" car manufacturers might follow in Agfa's footsteps.
X-rated Bob wrote
If you're interest is in the ecological aspects of "cleaning up" driving then the electric car is IMO an illusion. It just moves the source of the emissions. A large number of exclusively electric cars would mean increasing grid capacity all over the world, which means more power stations. Again the hybrids are a winner, or will be once they get the regenerative systems working efficiently.
You're quite right, but I do think though that there are more options for generating electricity in renewable ways that producing fuel. Earth will someday run out of fossil fuels but we'd still be able to generate electricity through wind farms, hydro-electric plants etc. In the long run, I think electric power has a better prognosis than fossil fuels. But yes, until renewable forms of electricity become the norm, every watt-hour that we consume is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions just as bad as those fumes from our cars' exhausts.
