Advocacy & Safety - Electric car

Here is a short article about an electric car company in Atlanta. I don't know a whole lot about electric cars, but I certainly like the idea.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20011209/bs/emotion_mobility_plant_1.html

I wouldn't get too excited. If it looks like being any sort of threat to the oil-powered ones, the oil companies will just wave the chequebook and make it disappear like they have every other innovation in this area over the last 25 years. And could someone tell whatever site that came from to lose those friggin' pop-up windows?

Originally posted by Steele-Bike
Here is a short article about an electric car company in Atlanta. I don't know a whole lot about electric cars, but I certainly like the idea.

Zowie!

I've come up upon a few electric powered vehicles on my bike. I just never seem to get close enough to read the name!

Anyway, electric vehicles are not a bad idea, since the technology is getting better and the need for pollution reduction is increasing.

Of course, the hybrid electric/gas powered cars boast great gas mileage.

Did you know that electric cars have been around since the beginning? No not the begin of time, the beginning of the automobile. :D In the 1900's there were cars with electic motors and lead acid batteries, really not too much different than todays electrics. They never really caught on though. In the '70s there were many companies experimenting with electric cars.

Well, personally I'd rather just do away with cars all together, but I do admit that electric vehicles have the capacity to be much more efficient than internal combustion vehicles. Plus of main interest to me is that they are quieter. I hate all the noise that cars, trucks, and motorcycles make.:mad:

I spend my 40 hours a week at a retirement community where I do carpentry work. The place is laid out alot like a college campus. It would really make an ideal carfree city. Anyway, most of the residents have cars and some use their cars to drive everywhere they go around the community. Other residents use those electric mobility scooters, some have golf carts and a few even ride bikes or trikes:beer:

I seems crazy to me that these people live in such a perfect place to be carfree but they still have cars. Old habits die hard I guess.
Oh, getting back to the topic. Most of the residents that drive cars would be much better served by an electric car. Short trips are torture on a conventional car.

As a society, we urgently need a paradigm shift in our road planning. Specifically, many people own cars and SUVs because they frequently have to venture out onto major arterial roads or freeways. If more people could get from Point A to Point B on nothing but traffic-calmed local roads with 30mph/50kph or lower speed limits, they would gradually shed the excess vehicle weight, opting for bicycles, E-bikes, scooters, Segways, golf carts, etc. Instead of widening our interstate highways, we should be building low-speed frontage roads parallel to them, with grade-separated interchanges.

Oh, pullease!
If I hear the term paradigm shift one more time, I'm gonna blow chunks!!!

Originally posted by John E
As a society, we urgently need a paradigm shift in our road planning. Specifically, many people own cars and SUVs because they frequently have to venture out onto major arterial roads or freeways. If more people could get from Point A to Point B on nothing but traffic-calmed local roads with 30mph/50kph or lower speed limits, they would gradually shed the excess vehicle weight, opting for bicycles, E-bikes, scooters, Segways, golf carts, etc. Instead of widening our interstate highways, we should be building low-speed frontage roads parallel to them, with grade-separated interchanges.

I'm not convinced this would make any difference. I see people driving distances around here that would be literally quicker to walk (I'm talking 50 metres or less. I frequently see people drive from one parking space to another inside the same parking lot). The way I see it, there are two main reasons people drive:

1. They're too damn lazy to do anything else.

2. The cost of doing so is so massively subsidised.

The only real solution is to transfer those subsidies from private to public transport. However, that isn't going to happen while certain industries and interests have the mass media by the balls and the general public (the great unwashed) are stupid enough to believe everything they read.

Originally posted by John E
As a society, we urgently need a paradigm shift in our road planning. ... If more people could get from Point A to Point B on nothing but traffic-calmed local roads with 30mph/50kph or lower speed limits, they would gradually shed the excess vehicle weight,...

Perhaps we need a paradigm shift in our use of the term 'paradigm shift' (get the bucket Alex).

My problem with the above concept is that if you have low speed limits you don't need traffic calming unless you believe that the majority of people are not going to obey the speed limit. Putting traffic calming and low speed limits in is an admission of defeat in educating motorists properly.

I used to live in a medium density neighbourhood with 40km/h speed limits and traffic calming, although at least they didn't use speed humps. Frankly, it was a pain in the arse. The streets were too narrow, sightlines were short, and the way people drove around it was anything but calm. The whole area had a closed in, claustrophobic feel, and despite the idea that streets such as these should be ideal for pedestrianing, there was nothing to walk to, so no-one did. People still had three or four cars parked in front of their houses, but since the streets were too narrow to park on, and the garages were too small to be practical, people ended up parking on their front lawns. Frankly it was a sh!thole that wasn't improved in the slightest by low spped limit, traffic calmed streets.

I now live in a dead end street. It has no traffic calming and is very wide and dead straight. Being a dead end street, it doesn't get a lot of traffic, but what traffic there is drives responsibly. There are a lot of families with young kids on the street, and they regularly play in the street, just like kids should be able to. I guess the fact that everyone that drives down the street knows at least a few of these kids, they tend to be a bit more cautious of them.

See if you can guess which I prefer, and which one works better from a traffic handling point of view.

Personally I don't think any infrastructure can solve the problem of maniac drivers. My observations have been that traffic calming seems to bring the maniacal behaviour even more to the forefront. For residential areas a better solution is to keep the streets nice and wide with no 'calming', but limit access only to those living or visiting the residences on them. You tend to care more about not running into people when you know them, or at least see them every day.

As to the idea of getting from A to B on traffic calmed, low speed limit streets, that really isn't going to practical until point A and B are much closer together. Rethinking the way we build roads is secondary to rethinking the way we build towns and cities. yes roads are important, but they are only there to serve the citizens by allowing them to get to places where things are actually done. It's the arrangement of these places that are of primary importance and which defines the nature of the road system.

The long term solution is to decentralise our cities. Reduce everything back to a more human scale. Live and work in the same local area. Get to know the other people in the area.

In the short term, traffic calming is useless. We need driver calming, and that can only come from within each individual, although it can be helped along by an education system that discourages development of the ego. I won't go off on that subject right now. I've ranted enough.

Originally posted by John E
As a society, we urgently need a paradigm shift in our road planning. Specifically, many people own cars and SUVs because they frequently have to venture out onto major arterial roads or freeways.
John, the thing that really makes me want to puke is car exhaust.

Car driving has gone from being a convenience to a necessity. If I owned stock in automobile companies, this would make me ecstatic.

One strange fact is that, when roads are widened to "reduce congestion," the result is always increased traffic.

I, for one, have voted myself out of the illusion (or, "paradigm," if you will,) that cars are the only, or best way, of getting around.

Originally posted by Pete Clark

John, the thing that really makes me want to puke is car exhaust.


Yeah. I remember a plane flight from the Gold Coast to Sydney a couple of years ago. That night there was a full moon, and it shone brightly from the time we left the airport at Coolangatta. However, when we started descending toward Sydney, it became a very dull brown in colour very quickly.

I was on the phone to a friend the other night who reminded me just how bad the public transport system is down there (his comment was "it's all cars").

Originally posted by Chris L
I wouldn't get too excited. If it looks like being any sort of threat to the oil-powered ones, the oil companies will just wave the chequebook and make it disappear like they have every other innovation in this area over the last 25 years.

It's not all the oil companies.. Well, most of it is, plus the fact that the countries in the hands of an oil tycoon.. But, that aside, i'm filling up my tank today and i'm reading the sign on the thing and it occurs to me that the actual gas price is .85 cents a gallon and the taxes total .40 cents per gallon! (State and Federal in MA) So, for my grand total of $32.00, that's a hell of a lot of tax! Uncle Sam would be having a stroke if suddenly we were all using less gas.

Actually, Uncle Sam would probably be a lot better off. Governments actually spend quite a lot of $ on fuel subsidies that keep the price lower than it otherwise would be. Your retail friend mightn't want you to know that, as "blame the government" is always a popular excuse.

Interesting point, but I don't know much about how that one works. I had even seen some signs on a few gas stations that went on about the tax being the entire problem, i'll still believe it is a good part of it though there seems to be many sides to the story.

85 cents/gallon is a heck of a lot cheaper than fuel in Australia (and that's before you even convert the currency), and it's subsidised here. As I said before, retailers will always want someone else to blame when Joe Lardbutt complains about the "excessive" price. Governments won't stop the subsidy as it would be political suicide to do so.

Me, I'm just glad we're dealing with a finite resource. A price increase will happen eventually, I just hope I'm still alive to see it.