Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Gale Hawkins]

The World’s Most Popular EVs Aren’t Cars, Trucks, or Motorcycles

This seems to be a popular starter EV option for many.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I got banned from radio shack because I was coming in and drooling on their tandy's.

In graduate school the guy that had the contract for note taking had a Kay Pro the kind that was called the lugable and the keyboard on would snap up and look like a suitcase and then it would unsnap in you could do your typing.

I used a Kaypro luggable for a year or so at work. My home machine was a Reynolds and Reynolds TC1000, a Z80 CP/M machine originally developed by DEC (I think) as a smart terminal. It came with VIM software and a 300 baud internal modem, plus MBasic and a Wordstar clone.

 

[kenmbz]

I had a generic CPM machine with new fangled (at the time) 8 inch floppies. The drives plugged directly into a wall outlet.
Had a SWTP 6800 with cassette interface.
Later used TRS80, C64, C128, pet20, Amiga, Atari 400/800, apple 2E and early Mac. Coworker had a apple box that had jumpers soldered in by Woz himself (guy was going to UC at the time, did not really know him, but thought the computer was cool) BW tv hookup and only uppercase if I remember correctly.

I did a lot of early game programming (think rooms with text and low res static pictures). Got so frustrated alpha testing games that I still don't like to play them.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I just saw a news report about the drought in the West, the over depletion of the Colorado River and the impact on desert farming in Arizona. Some farmers are trying exotic crops that require less water. Others are selling their land. I'm wondering, who would buy desert farmland with inadequate water? Answer: it is being converted to solar panel arrays.
Lots to unpack there, but Mark Twain said it best. "Whiskey's for drinking, Water's for fighting".

I think that phrase is much older than Mark Twain.

 

[California]

"Mark Twain said it best. "Whiskey's for drinking, Water's for fighting"." I think that phrase is much older than Mark Twain.

Fer Sure!

I assume Twain learned that, when he came west to see what the Gold Rush was all about. Water was scarce for mining, and valuable. Well worth fighting over. (Not a pun!) But its more generally applicable all over the West. Then, and now.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Sweden had a public election on keep or shut down nuclear, this happend many years ago and to day in not so sure people would have woted to close them today.

Germany did go in to panic after Fukushima and the result we see now.

Here in Norway we felt Tjernobyl accident, we got quit a bit of downfall, sheeps was radioactive and had to go on special diet before slaughter, wild fish and game was unhealthy to eat in large quantities so the risk is there.

I was in Europe during Chernobyl. I dodged south of the Pyrenees where the air currents kept the radiation away. I still ate iodine.

I don't know how many carbon moderated reactors Russia has, but they are not common in the rest of the world. Fukushima was an engineering oversight. They forgot about tsunamis. If they had put their diesel generators on a platform instead of in the basement, there would have been no problem.

My state has a moratorium on reactor construction until a permanent nuclear waste storage facility is in operation. We didn't know about the Cascadia fault when that law was passed, but any new reactors would have to meet current seismic projections.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Well, the easiest reduction on pollution would be reduce consumption, make ting last long and be easy to repair. Reduce the use of plastic and use metal as metal is possible to recycle for ever, how have we got to accept at a car to be almost a disposable item? Rust, engineered low life with rust, unrepairable parts and labor cost to make it uneconomical to keep it alive.

We buy and buy the same products many times over and over again whitout any added value just design to fail, why is this not an issue?

When I was a kid, a car was worn out at 70,000 miles. Then the Japanese taught the world how to build reliable vehicles. Today, any vehicle will run 200,000 miles without major repairs, and many make it 300,000+ miles. That's pretty good for a machine that takes a beating. In the US, the average age of passenger vehicles is 12.1 years.

Plastic is a big weight reduction. It costs money to haul metal around.

 

[California]

My state has a moratorium on reactor construction until a permanent nuclear waste storage facility is in operation. We didn't know about the Cascadia fault when that law was passed, but any new reactors would have to meet current seismic projections.

That reminded me of the abandoned Bodega Bay nuclear plant, an hour north of San Francisco. It got as far as digging the foundation - where they discovered the San Andreas fault beneath the site. End of project.

I wish I had picked up an 'informational' brochure available at the construction visitor center. 50 years later and I still remember one paragraph in the pretty but non-informative brochure: Approximately "For Nervous Nellies - this plant will provide a unique opportunity to learn the effect of radiation on marine life."

 

[DieselBound]

i think I'm going to go off grid, after being on grid with the solar net-metered stuff. If its off grid, I get to do it. To re-instate being On grid, I have to hire sanctioned, approved people to have my snow damaged system re-approved by the local utility. ... $$$$. If I can just do an EV car off grid entirely, I'm all in. Its a 4KW Solar System.

4kW isn't likely going to work. If you're really off-grid then you most likely have a well, or pumps that require electrical power. I have a 7.5kW generator that operates everything I have that is electrical- no cars, no cook stove or heating, so electrical loads are low (water heater and well pump operating at the same time would just about max things out).

I probably already mentioned a story of someone I know who was looking to go off-grind in a more suburban (rural-lite) area. He had a Nissan Leaf and eventually figured that he couldn't do the house and the car via PV.

 

[California]

A longwinded article on the radiation pollution emanating from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation (eastern Washington state), where the first bomb research was done. Today its a huge repository for nuclear waste and is draining into the Columbia River.

Basically the article says are no known solutions for nuclear waste.

Cold War, Hot Mess | VQR Online

www.vqronline.org

It wouldn’t take much for a tank to fuel a massive explosion, one that ... director of the watchdog group ... says could spread radiation over a staggering area: Washington, Idaho, Oregon, “probably Utah and maybe Canada. Some of the tanks at Hanford reached the end of their design life during the Vietnam War. It’s hard to overstate the danger. ... the consequences of a tank fire would be on the order of Fukushima.

The Department of Energy (DOE) has adopted a closed-door approach to managing nuclear sites, which exacerbates anxieties over these risks. ...program needs a certain amount of secrecy,” says ... manager for radiological emergency preparedness at the Washington State Department of Health. “But radioactive material getting into the general public does not need autonomy.” As the local newspaper, the Tri-City Herald, reports, this has happened multiple times in the last five years.