Out of the Box Ideas

[bobover3 (imported)]

You've got it right, Clysmaniac. Hard to imagine that ISDN was once thought to be the very cutting edge of technology. All it offered was simultaneous voice and data on the same line. For this, AT&T tried to charge more than it would for two lines - one for voice and one for data (because it was so cutting edge, you see). Customers could do the arithmetic. I remember trying to sell ISDN to big institutions. No one bought it. The polite ones tried not to laugh.

[moi621 (imported)]

Are we agreed that electric personal vehicles need interchangable batteries for cross country driving, extending practicality. Although normally people drive a few miles a day not requiring a battery change out. Electric vehicle owners could opt for a family vacation knowing they can change out battery packs as a gasoline vehicle may fill up its' tank. Agreed?

And do we also agree these personal electric vehicles need to have access to light rail lines for reasons self evident, either by direct wheel contact or on a single vehicle carrier or light rail converter.

Any objections?

Moi

[fhunter]

No big objections.

Just one question - is it possible, to cram any effective engine + generator + some small battery/capacitor bank + fuel tank in the space reserved for the battery? This way we can solve the problem of long range travel.

PS. Have you by any chance read this: http://vitus-wagner.livejournal.com/316663.html

It is in russian, a looong discussion on electric vehicles and alternatives.

[dfinder (imported)]

In most of my 30+ years of professional career, I've spent at least a part of my time working on one sort of industry standard or another. In some cases the work was useful and effective - such as the work of JEDEC to standardize pinout and behavior of ICs such as DRAMs. This standardization process, with the participation of memory-chip companies around the world, led to increased competition and lower prices (sometimes ruinously low, from the corp. point of view). We saw the ugly side of trying to bypass standards when RAMBUS Co. and Intel collaborated on an ultimately futile attempt to leapfrog and ignore industry standards for memory chips. The lawsuits went on for at least a decade.

Then we spent some years on Futurebus. This effort was supported by lots of computer companies and the U.S. Navy, among other groups. It was ultimately futile and a waste of effort because it dragged on far too long and too late, just before the industry put forth and settled on PCI as the defacto standard backplane bus. PCI rapidly became the standard and a standards group formed to ensure updates and enhancements (to 64-bit for example) were all compatible. Futurebus was swept away by the PCI tsunami.

Finally I spent several years working with a group to standardize all the internal interfaces in mobile phones. This group includes virtually every manufacturer of cell phones and the components that go into the phones. You can't be in the business and ignore this standards group; you ignore it at your peril.

Note for all these organizations, there is NO direct government involvement or pressure. It's all within the industry, for the industry - people who believe their business will be better with standards than without. Standards leads to more competition leads to lower prices leads to more volumes sold around the world. That's what they want.

Finder

[erikboy (imported)]

No big objections.

Just one question - is it possible, to cram any effective engine + generator + some small battery/capacitor bank + fuel tank in the space reserved for the battery? This way we can solve the problem of long range travel.

PS. Have you by any chance read this: http://vitus-wagner.livejournal.com/316663.html

It is in russian, a looong discussion on electric vehicles and alternatives.

Cheap energy seem to be cease to exist. Slowly but steady oil prices rise. At the current technology we do not know any better high density energy packing device than simple gasoline tank.

Storing huge amounts of energy into small spaces is hazardous. We all know how Li batteries could explode if it's stored energy will be released uncontrolled.

SUV's with high wind drag and rolling resistance will fade slowly into history. It really comes to energy. Energy that is needed to travel one mile. Driving speeds like 60mp/h would be a thing of past as energy loss to wind drag is unacceptable. We will see quiet and small cars that move slowly and have bicycle tires. 60% of cars have only single seat, as everyone own a car or two and driving around with huge and useless mass is has unacceptable energy loss. Every travel route is carefully planned. Perhaps electrified railroad importance will grow once again to cover longer distances more efficiently and faster.

Air travel will probably be a luxury thing. Most things can be done via high speed data connections. Virtual meetings etc.

That is something how the world will look like after 50 years.

It is really a problem of price of energy kW/h plus energy packing and safety problem.

[Arab Nights (imported)]

Wall Street Journal, May 10, page B8, 'E-Cars Coming to Paris Streets.'

Vincent Bollore, a French mogul, received a contract from Paris to ease congestion and pollution. By December there is supposed to be hundreds of small electric cars available at charging stations around the city. By next March there is supposed to be 3,000 cars.

The business plan is to charge subscribers $17 a month, a refundable $210 deposit with each use and $7 per half hour of usage. The cars will have a max. range of 110 miles and top speed of 80 mph. The client goes to a sidewalk hut with a video connection to an operator, registers his/her drivers license and credit card and is issued a badge that unlocks a nearby car. When done, the car is returned to any of the charging stations in the city.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Zipcar and others already do this in the US. They don't use electric cars, though they do offer Prius hybrids. Cheaper too. $8.75 an hour (M-Th). $13.75 an hour (F-Su), compared to the French $14 an hour.

[Riverwind (imported)]

As apposed to lets say Enterprise Rent a Car where you can get one for 24 hours for about $35 to $40 dollars...........

River

[Arab Nights (imported)]

A lot of the world has to pay a lot more than in the US to move their buns by car. They are used to higher prices.

[curious_guy (imported)]

Another Out of the Box, Idea

Mid ocean surface water lacks nutrients.

Therefore plankton have a hard time thriving.

The natural means to bring nutrients to the surface water

is via, upwelling along continental shelves, as brings

nutrients to the surface and being closer to the sun light,

plankton thrive.

As these areas are pretty well poisoned along with estuary type

ecosystems, why not bring it to mid ocean.

Float some floats for intertidal life zone recreation.

Disperse some floating "Miracle Grow" or create an upwelling from

the ocean floor below -

Soon will be plankton, small fish, larger fish, birds, a fishery.

And the plankton trap CO2, a green house gas.

My memory is very good but it is not perfect. I might have misremembered some of this.

Three to five years ago I watched a minisearies on the Science Channel about Geoengineering. Daniel Kammen was one of the judges on the show. The show does not seem to be on IMDb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoengineering

They tested six or eight different ideas to cool the Earth. One of the ideas was to make a device that used the energy of the waves to pump mineral rich water from the deep Pacific ocean to near the surface. The first device broke very soon. They redesigned the device to make it stronger. The new device worked for about two days. When the team examined the area about a week later, they found that the fish population had increased dramatically.

I think that the device was by far the best idea shown. I think they should have followed up and strengthened it again but as far as I know, they did not.