July 29, 2008 at 8:56 am
I drive I-25 quite a bit and I still see alot of big SUVs and pick-ups being driven at 70-80 mph, so the cost of gas must not be impacting those people. Your idea of moving electric motors to each wheel is just what Volvo is doing with their new C30 hybrid. It should be out in a year or two.
July 29, 2008 at 8:56 am
I think there are lots of issues with short food supply caused by subsidised maize production in USA, palm oill and sugars and loss of forest. Some renewables have some promise, I personally think lots of nuclear poer stations are the way to go - but lets use a safer design than those (westinghouse?) pwrs.
Thing is, oil is used for a lot more than moving cars and things round - where do you think plastic comes from. In years to come I can see old landfill sites being harvested for plastics...
July 29, 2008 at 9:11 am
Yeah, corn ethanol bad.
I'm not sure about nuclear. Isn't something like 4-5 billion per station? With that kind of money, we could do a lot of retrofitting for solar and better efficiency, more jobs, etc, if we're going to pump that kind of money into each energy district, without all the hazardous waste and risks. Maybe if our technology gets better though.
July 29, 2008 at 9:16 am
i've taken up riding the bus, which costs me a $1/day versus driving 20+ extra miles costing $4/gas/day. its only when its economically convenient, will the consumer really change behavior.
corn and sugar for biofuels is prohibitively expensive. the research is heading towards algae.
[font="Arial Narrow"]bc[/font]
July 29, 2008 at 10:25 am
I hear your complaints of your fuel costs. If the US were paying the fuel prices you all are paying, I'm scared to think of the inflation felt world-wide!
As I understand it, UK has much higher fuel taxes than the US... (FYI -crude oil prices are a world market) so look to your own government to reduce your taxes.
July 29, 2008 at 10:39 am
I drive past corn fields every day to work (and have at least 2 ethanol plants within 40 miles of my house... anyone like the smell of rotten corn?)... and I worry about the price of food. Personally I say lets use the oil while we have it... I don't want generations down the road to be out of fertile ground... but hey at least they'll have cheap oil!
Back on task... I owned a 06 Nissan Titan - flex fuel. Ran E85 for about 4 months (though my goal was to go a whole year). I don't have the specific numbers anymore, but ran about 30% worse fuel economy. At that time E85 was only 20% cheaper so I couldn't bear it any longer. It's not good to switch back and forth so at that time I figured if E85 sustained 45-50% cheaper it would be worth the effort (and stopping for fuel A LOT more).
Another Ethanol hypothesis... can any back me on this one? I live in Minnesota where everything is 10% ethanol (except E85!). In Iowa I can fill up with pure gasoline... Have taken a few road trips and noticed that my fuel range increased from 325-350mi / tank to over 400 mi. I do 80% highway driving at home so city/highway difference can't account for it.
I did sell the truck once fueling it up was over $70. Now my minivan is $70! I'd consider a hybrid if I wasn't in deer country! I'll stick with my paid-for sedan.
July 29, 2008 at 10:44 am
bc (7/29/2008)
i've taken up riding the bus, which costs me a $1/day versus driving 20+ extra miles costing $4/gas/day. its only when its economically convenient, will the consumer really change behavior.
Not quite. It has to be realistically convenient as well. For me to use public transportation to work, I would have to drive more than 1/2 the distance there, which then would leave me between 5 and 10 miles to actually use public transportation. I still have to deal with the parts of my drive that are the worst bottlenecks before I reach the point where I can take public transportation. In this case, I have no real options other than to either move or find a new job if I want to use public transportation. I'm in the suburbs, too, so it's unlikely that I'll see decent public transportation for a while.
I like the idea of public transportation, but in some areas it's just not a realistic option for people. Similarly, it's better fuel-wise for my family to ride a jet, bus, or train across the country. Price-wise, it's cheaper to drive and thus we will choose to drive until such a time as those figures are changed.
I agree that the economics will increase the way move around the country, but sometimes the prices just aren't reasonable.
July 29, 2008 at 10:48 am
Chad Renstrom (7/29/2008)
Another Ethanol hypothesis... can any back me on this one? I live in Minnesota where everything is 10% ethanol (except E85!). In Iowa I can fill up with pure gasoline... Have taken a few road trips and noticed that my fuel range increased from 325-350mi / tank to over 400 mi. I do 80% highway driving at home so city/highway difference can't account for it.
Yeah - that's pretty much a given. Ethanol just isn't as efficient as gasoline. However, it's subsidized and lobbied for pretty heavily. Thus, we have that mixture of Ethanol and gas at the pumps. I know that TX (and other states) are trying to push for lifting the requirement to use Ethanol just because it's bad for fuel efficiency. Add in the fact that we're paying for it through our taxes to start with and it's just not worth it. Find alternative fuels, but stop trying to push corn ethanol on us - it's not ready for prime time.
July 29, 2008 at 10:49 am
Someguy (7/29/2008)
Some questions:1) I hear that the batteries in a typical hybrid need to be replaced around 80k - it that true? If so, it completely outweighs the gas savings, even at today's prices.
I bought a 2005 Prius in Sep of 2005 because at that time I was commuting 130 miles per day round trip. I put on about 30K miles per year, but changed jobs the beginning of this year and now work only about 6 miles from home, so the mileage is just creeping up. Currently my odometer reads close to 74900 and I have not had any trouble with the batteries being recharged through the system. The service costs for the Prius are lower than any car I've ever owned -- it's about $500 or less a year.
I have owned Toyotas since the mid-90's and have been very pleased with how little expense there is in regular maintenance. The car I had before the Prius was a Toyota Avalon, which I ran up more than 120000 miles on, and it never needed a major repair. Before the Avalon I had a Ford Crown Victoria, and it needed a complete new transmission before it reached 80K.
I had a Volvo from 1975 to 1985 and it was the most expensive car to keep in service of any of the cars I have owned -- by the end of its life I was paying over $2000 a year [in mid-80's dollars] just in regular services because only the dealer knew how to service a Volvo locally. I should have turned that car in much earlier but I was too stubborn to admit it was a lousy car.
July 29, 2008 at 10:55 am
Peter Schott (7/29/2008)
I know that TX (and other states) are trying to push for lifting the requirement to use Ethanol.
Sounds like a place I could get used to! ...that and the BBQ...
July 29, 2008 at 11:03 am
icocks (7/29/2008)
The government could save a packet on the bureacracy involved in adminstering road tax and wouldn't have to pay for vehicle tracking systems or for consultants to indulge in endless studies into which roads need pricing & at what levels. The savings could then either be passed back to motorists, or used to pay for more useful things like hospitals.But then simplifying things & avoiding unnecessary expense is hardly the job of governments is it?
You can't eliminate the studies. First, if you eliminate the studies, you're no longer funneling money to businesses that desperately need the funds, so you'd increase unemployment. Second, without studies, you'd have to come to a decision more quickly, and that means taking a stand. If you have studies, you can push the decision point to the next sorry lot that comes after your administration while still seeming to do something about it. Finally, it is not government's job to save money. If you save money, it reduces your budget for the following year and forces your department to be smaller, reducing your importance.
[/sarcasm]
Yes, I've worked in government for too long and watched too much Yes, Minister. 😀
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
July 29, 2008 at 11:54 am
What a great discussion on this subject matter, and for the poster who said this does not relate to SQL Server work, speaking as the head honcho of a large IT department, IT DOES because every worry that impacts my staff, impacts their work and thus impacts MY bottom line. So blog-on folks – its great stuff to read!
I am curious however as to how many of you have any telecommuting options with your company? I have advocated for a telecommuting policy in every company I have worked for over the last 20 (almost 30!) years. As a former developer I am all too well aware that we can be a strange breed and some of the best code crunched in the history of programming was no doubt done by someone in their gym shorts and tee shirt, comfortably plunked at their own home desk. Sure, not a great vision maybe, but I have had some great programmers deliver great work via telecommute.
From an executive standpoint, telecommuting is a big time, money and productivity saver. Consider a person who drives 50-100 miles each way to work, calculate the time lost on the road and now especially, the fuel costs and a good telecommuting plan can be like a raise to a valued employee.
But that said, in many circumstances I had to convince my employers of the value of the plan. Too many worried that if I let my staff, especially programmers, work from home they would sit around eating bon-bons watching old Arnold Schwarzenegger flicks! Not so – in every case I instituted a telecommuting plan, productivity increased. As well, there has been only one time in two decades that I had to remove a person from the list of acceptable telecommuters for lack of productivity.
So I say yes to hybrids, yes to driving on used french-fry oil – but if you want to save on gas overall, stay out of the car entirely! A bit dumb to point out the obvious, but if you never have to start the engine, you don’t burn a drop of gas.
As well, as I have often pointed out to co-exec's - "We have the technology to do this - so do it!!!"
July 29, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I would love to telecommute, and loved telecommuting when I was able to do it as a contract database developer, our house in Cloudcroft is on the top of a mountain in the Lincoln National Forest: I could sit with my wireless laptop in the little treed glade in front of our house and do database development. It was during that time that I got married and moved 500 miles away. I finished the contract on time, including a couple of trips from NM to Phoenix to train the people taking over the project.
In my current position, as a DBA, it'd be nice but I don't think they'd like me moving back to Cloudcroft, some 100 miles away. As it is, my average daily commute is about six miles, round trip. I'd just prefer living in the mountains than back down here in the desert, up there is much easier on my psyche. It doesn't matter that my servers are stable and that I can remote in to any of them, there's too much of an "if you can't see 'em, they're not working" attitude here. I don't have to account for every minute of my working time, but I still don't think it'd fly.
As it is, I'm giving some thought to hooking up with these people[/url] when it gets time for me to move on.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
July 29, 2008 at 12:08 pm
In the winters in Denver, we have 10-15% ethanol at all pumps. Supposed to reduce smog, which is a problem here as well.
I like the idea of telecommuting more and more. Heck, this entire site was built by 3 guys who ran it for nearly a year before we met in person!
July 29, 2008 at 12:42 pm
At my last job I could work from home anytime I didn't have to be at a client site or need "face time" with other people at the office. I usually worked at home at least one day a week, and more importantly to my own lifestyle, would frequently leave the office early, put dinner on, and keep working so that there would be something healthy and homecooked for the kids to eat when Daddy picked them up from daycare.
My current job doesn't have this flexibility, at least not yet. But it has other benefits so I am not complaining, and since my commute isn't too bad I am not worrying about it.
--
Anye Mercy
"Service Unavailable is not an Error" -- John, ENOM support
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -- Inigo Montoya in "Princess Bride"
"Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice." -- Will Durant
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