I read several letters from readers responding to the myths about electric vehicles. In 1972, I was co-founder of an electric vehicle company that designed and built an electric highway vehicle from the "ground up." I personally commuted every day to Boston from an outlying suburb. The vehicle was designed with a two-minute battery exchange pack and the idea was to charge at night when the demand for power is low. Electric utilities run out of power during the day when the demand is high and they have surplus power at night. There is no reason to have fast charging during the peak hours if the batteries can be charged in the evening.
In fact, the utilities have spent millions to produce systems which would store energy at night from the grid in order to use it during peak hours, which would reduce the need to build new generating plants. We sold our vehicles for $8,500 in the mid seventies and everyone was excited about the idea but they did not buy the vehicles. If everyone were concerned about energy and pollution, the most popular car in America would be a Metro or equivalent. We can solve the problem in this country when we raise the taxes on gas until it's $4 a gallon like overseas.
I enjoyed your column, The case of the murderous momentum (DN 07.16.01). As a designer of highway safety attenuators. I am very familiar with the importance of handling momentum during crash events. I had to chuckle at your question, "Should you hit the on-coming car or the brick wall?" I had just read a good lawyer joke:
A policeman walks up to an accident victim and asks, "Are you hurt, sir?"
He gets the response, "How do I know, I'm not a lawyer!"
What advice would a lawyer give on hitting the on-coming car or the brick wall? If the on-coming car is a nice Lexus, Mercedes, etc. (i.e. good insurance) then go for the car. If the car is an old beater, then hit the wall and sue the property owner for placing it too close to the roadway, for not shielding it, or some other reason. Obviously the accident was not your fault.
I really enjoyed your editorial on planning for the worst and hoping for the best (DN 07.16.01). I have published some parallel sentiments in the San Jose Mercury in a piece entitled "The Flaw of Averages," which you can find at www.stanford.edu/~savage/flaw/. Keep up the good work.
Sam
L. Savage Director, Industry Affiliates Management Science &
Engineering Stanford University
Regarding your comments about imitating animals on a cell phone (DN 07.02.01), you would surely attract attention if you had the sound of a coyote when the phone went off in a restaurant. I don't know what city you live in, but we would consider the sound of a boar more appropriate when your cell phone goes off in the restaurants I frequent.
Your Breaktime article (DN 06.18.01) and the mention of toilet paper design reminds me of the joke about the X-15 rocket plane.
It was designed to fly 4,000 mph. But when it reached 3,000 mph, the wings came off. The engineers couldn't figure out why the wings failed until they put a notice on the company bulletin board asking for suggestions on how to solve the problem. One suggestion was to drill a row of holes where the wings joined the fuselage. Desperate, the engineers tried it and it worked! When they went to thank the person who put in the suggestion, they learned it was the man who cleaned the restrooms. Asked how he got the idea he said, "Did you ever try tearing toilet paper on the perforations?"
I really enjoyed reading your article about the development of ornaments to adorn your cars (DN 05.21.01). I thought that you might be interested to know that in the U.K. it is now illegal to have any object protruding from the front of your car for safety reasons.
This new law includes the well-known leaping Jaguar, so although those lovely new S-Types being driven around the States have the Jaguar ornament, those in the U.K. do not. I believe you can buy one to put on your desk if you want to!
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