I keep thinking back to this Microlino at Fully Charged Live. Reusable water bottles became acceptable, being vegan is now cool, and so is wearing vintage clothes. So who is going to step up to the critical task of making small cars fashionable? The trend towards giant SUVs is ludicrous, incredibly wasteful and dangerous, and bad for our cities. If you must use a car, it should be as small as possible. Where are the micro-car visionaries/influencers? WE NEED YOU. #cars#SUV#climate
In 2016 we were in the Netherlands, and we decided to fly to Germany to visit the Audi museum in Ingolstadt. Would you like to see some photos from that trip, #weirdcarmastodon?
How about a visit to an amazing automotive museum? This one is in Los Angeles, it's called the Petersen and if you're in LA, do put aside a day to go visit this place. Gorgeous building, incredible collection. Buy a pass to enter the Vault, no cameras allowed but you get to see more of their collection, tucked in the basement. All sorts of vehicles!
I’ve spent much of this year examining car bloat, the process through which smaller vehicles are being replaced by increasingly massive SUVs and trucks.
What I’ve learned: Huge cars are terrible for society, often in ways that are hidden.
Some basic facts:
◆ >80% of US car sales are now trucks/SUVs.
◆ Models keep expanding. For example, the F-150 is now ~800 lbs heavier and 7 inches taller than in 1991.
◆ EVs can make the problem worse due to huge batteries.
"The priority should not be to replace every car with its electric equivalent but rather to rethink #mobility in general.
"Placing so much focus on the automobile and even now the electric automobile is not the way that we solve our mobility problems, but rather it's time to invest in #transit, in #cycling, in walkable cities, to get people out of #cars altogether," they said."
Concerned about microplastics? Research shows one of the biggest sources is car tyres
A lot of the emphasis on reducing microplastics has focussed on things like plastic bags, clothing, and food packaging.
But there's a growing body of research that shows one of the biggest culprits by far is car tyres.
It's increasingly clear that we simply cannot solve the issue of microplastics in the environment while still using tyres — even with electric-powered cars.
"Tyre wear stands out as a major source of microplastic pollution. Globally, each person is responsible for around 1kg of microplastic pollution from tyre wear released into the environment on average each year – with even higher rates observed in developed nations.
"It is estimated that between 8% and 40% of these particles find their way into surface waters such as the sea, rivers and lakes through runoff from road surfaces, wastewater discharge or even through airborne transport.
"However, tyre wear microplastics have been largely overlooked as a microplastic pollutant. Their dark colour makes them difficult to detect, so these particles can’t be identified using the traditional spectroscopy methods used to identify other more colourful plastic polymers."
"Microplastic pollution has polluted the entire planet, from Arctic snow and Alpine soils to the deepest oceans. The particles can harbour toxic chemicals and harmful microbes and are known to harm some marine creatures. People are also known to consume them via food and water, and to breathe them, But the impact on human health is not yet known.
"“Roads are a very significant source of microplastics to remote areas, including the oceans,” said Andreas Stohl, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, who led the research. He said an average tyre loses 4kg during its lifetime. “It’s such a huge amount of plastic compared to, say, clothes,” whose fibres are commonly found in rivers, Stohl said. “You will not lose kilograms of plastic from your clothing.”"
"Microplastics are of increasing concern in the environment [1, 2]. Tire wear is estimated to be one of the largest sources of microplastics entering the aquatic environment [3,4,5,6,7]. The mechanical abrasion of car tires by the road surface forms tire wear particles (TWP) [8] and/or tire and road wear particles (TRWP), consisting of a complex mixture of rubber, with both embedded asphalt and minerals from the pavement [9]."
I was just thinking about learning how to drive. I learned how in cars with manual transmissions. Now days we are hard pressed to find new cars with manual transmissions. I'll bet most people born in this century don't know how to operate a manual transmission, probably most towards the end of the 20th century as well. Here's another thought, try to find a new car with windows that you crank up by hand. Hmmm ... I remember the first car that I bought where the dimmer switch was on the column instead of the floorboard, it took me a while to figure that one out.
“Cars are evolving to match the new paradigm. Soon, things like steering wheels, pedals and rear-view mirrors will seem ancient. More practically, we will all be better able to optimize our time and attention to focus on more important tasks, family, work, and self-care.” - Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr
Whoopsie! Sydney's road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.
For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney's Central Business District.
It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it's turned into a giant car park:
"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.
"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.
"Those travel delays have now blown out."
So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?
'Dude! Just one more lane!'
From the article:
"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.
"That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks."
The solution to “autobesity” is NOT to change car parking spaces. It’s to fix the root of the problem and get rid of these over-sized, wasteful, dangerous and unnecessary vehicles.
“More than 150 car models are now too big to fit in average car parking spaces, according to analysis conducted by Which?.”
I'm from the UK where in general there's only a stop sign if it's needed, such as a junction where you can see absolutely nothing on one side. Otherwise usually there's a give way line instead, to let people slow the car right down to look, but not need to stop if it's unnecessary....
Very interesting to hear what #Toyota NA CEO Ted Ogawa has to say about #BEV investment in the US.
Essentially, Toyota is ignoring EPA guidelines about BEV mix and focusing entirely on customer demand, and they will not make BEVs in numbers higher than expected demand lest they waste their resources.
Toyota’s now-well-known reticence in jumping into the BEV bandwagon, preferring to sell #PHEVs instead, may prove to be the better bet. The EPA is likely to reduce their mandate for 50% BEV new car sales by 2030. If they do, then Toyota’s strategy would have been proven right.
In the years to come, all Londoners are going to be proud that it led the way on low-emissions policies and reducing lethal air pollution. We will look back on the argument about the newly extended Ultra-Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) like we do on past rule changes to outlaw child labour, betting on animal fights & defecation in public places.
Of course highly polluting vehicles have to go. You can argue about the mechanisms for managing it, but not the principle behind it all.
Below is the full-text of a Mozilla campaign email I received. Mozilla's consumer buyer's guide Privacy not included reviews apps and consumer electronics to help the general public choose products that better respect their privacy, and occasionally organizes petitions & campaigns to push for privacy regulation and...
Think about a pedestrian/cyclist being hit by a car: the person with the lowest carbon footprint, space use, noise and pollution production hit by a high carbon, space-guzzling, noisy and polluting box of metal.
Roads are for people, not for cars - cars have their uses, but that does not imply that the whole system should be built to satisfy their merest whim.
So well done Wales for making 20mph the default speed limit in residential/built-up areas.
The US Department of Justice announced that it's suing eBay for selling 343,000+ "rolling coal" devices that enable automobiles to violate the Clean Air Act. Fines could reach $2 billion.
"Instead of giving the biggest incentives to the biggest batteries, government policy should focus on electrifying the vast majority of daily trips, which start and end at home and could easily be handled by vehicles with 100 miles of range or less.... That means incentivizing e-bikes, plug-in hybrids, and other small battery electric vehicles, not holding fleet electrification hostage to the 5 percent use cases."
Looks like the Boring Company's Las Vegas tunnels are going about as well as you'd expect from an Elon project...
"The muck pooling in the tunnel at the north end of the Las Vegas Strip had the consistency of a milkshake and, in some places, sat at least two feet deep. ... At first, it merely felt damp. But in addition to the water, sand and silt—the natural byproducts of any dig—the workers understood that it was full of chemicals known as accelerants.
"The accelerants cure the grout that seals the tunnel’s concrete supports, helping the grout set properly and protecting the work against cracks and other deterioration. They also seriously burn exposed human skin. At the Encore dig site, such burns became almost routine, workers there told Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration. An investigation by the state OSHA, which Bloomberg Businessweek has obtained via a freedom of information request, describes workers being scarred permanently on their arms and legs. According to the investigation, at least one employee took a direct hit to the face. In an interview with Businessweek, one of the tunnel workers recalls the feeling of exposure to the chemicals: “You’d be like, ‘Why am I on fire?’”"
I'm fine with the soft, whirring spaceship sounds that some EVs emit as a safety feature to alert people that they're moving. The new Dodge Charger EV comes with a deafening 126 dB roar, which is just plain obnoxious.
When one turns off the ignition, the windscreen wipers should immediately stop in whatever position they are at. The wipers should not return to their rest position.
It is a time-honoured tradition that one would stop the wipers in their upright position, as a means to hold a windscreen blanket in place. This means the blanket stays in-place, & acts as a frost prevention measure.
My current car, and two previous vehicles, return the wipers to rest.
A rising road toll in the US. A rising road toll in Australia. Journalists give 1000 reasons why it could be happening.
And they studiously avoid mentioning the growing proportion of massive SUVs and pickup trucks on the roads. If they mention it at all, it's only in passing: https://youtu.be/Hb5_RUNeC0g?si=uuns6D1I6fGINdpU
But.
If you have larger and heavier cars, with larger blind spots, of course you're going to have more fatalities!
It’s an unpopular opinion among EV purists, but I think hybrids will reduce a lot more carbon emissions than BEVs, for the simple reason that way more people can switch. Even without access to charging outlets, hybrids are far more efficient thanks to their regenerative braking. With access to outlets, they are as good as EVs within their electric range, which will account for most of the daily commutes of their owners, and all with far smaller batteries and better costs of ownership than BEVs.
The way to eliminate emissions due to personal transportation is not to put people in BEVs. It’s to eliminate commutes and massively invest in (electrified) public transportation.
Toyota claims battery breakthrough in potential boost for electric cars (www.theguardian.com)
Japanese firm believes it could make a solid-state battery with a range of 745 miles that charges in 10 minutes
Why are there so many stop signs on American streets?
I'm from the UK where in general there's only a stop sign if it's needed, such as a junction where you can see absolutely nothing on one side. Otherwise usually there's a give way line instead, to let people slow the car right down to look, but not need to stop if it's unnecessary....
Mozilla campaign: Good news and bad news (foundation.mozilla.org)
Below is the full-text of a Mozilla campaign email I received. Mozilla's consumer buyer's guide Privacy not included reviews apps and consumer electronics to help the general public choose products that better respect their privacy, and occasionally organizes petitions & campaigns to push for privacy regulation and...