Nissan Leaf : 73 Miles from Consumer Acceptance

Article first published as Nissan Leaf: 73 Miles from Consumer Acceptance on Technorati.

So let's say you have a car company, Otto's Autos, and you just manufactured a long-awaited car that runs on an unconventional fuel source - oh, I don't know, marshmallows.  The only tailpipe emissions are smores, and ain't nobody complaining about that.

Of course, marshmallows aren't found at every traffic intersection throughout the country.  And the last thing your customers need is to sputter out on a major highway for lack of 'mallow.  Should such a thing be a regular occurrence, the ensuing PR nightmare would hit a frenzied pitch.  You (Otto, remember?) would watch your stock swiftly sink, and you may find yourself looking to dump 35,000 engines that run on internal confection .  And worst yet, eBay fees just went up.

Gotta love parables.  They help you see a greater truth without having to endure the hard-fought struggles that wisdom usually requires.  And it's a real-life one, at that.  Nissan Motor Company is dropping the mythically-hyped Leaf this winter.  Unlike the Chevy Volt, the $25,000 Leaf has no gas engine at all, giving it sole claim to the title of first all-electric vehicle to reach dealerships.

Nissan touts the Leaf's range at 100 miles between charges.  But a week ago, in stepped the EPA to set the record straight: under normal driving conditions, the Leaf's range is actually just 73 miles.  Given that range anxiety is one of the inhibiting forces stifling consumer adoption, this was a heavy blow to a public that ordinarily expects three hundred miles between fill-ups.

The American car-buying market is a stubborn bunch.  An average year's worth of driving (12,000 miles) will cost a Leaf owner less than $500 (using the conservative figure of 4 cents per mile, which of course depends on your electric utility rates), while a gas vehicle will soak you closer to $1500 (25 mpg at $3 per gallon).  The proposition, then, is this: are you willing to stop to recharge every seventy miles in order to have a car that reduces our nation's dependency on foreign oil, (marginally) cleans up the environment, and saves you a grand a year in operating costs?

The Nissan Leaf waiting list of more than 20,000 hopeful buyers seems to think you will.

But it's all about those seventy-three miles.  That number will scare the coal-powered daylights out of people.  Where does seventy-three miles get you, anyway?  To the forefront of the electric car revolution, that's where.

Image source: insideline.com

To Kill a Kill-a-Watt

Killy, during better times.

Have you ever lost a best friend?  I don't mean like in the mall or something.  I mean for good.  And I don't mean 'for good' to mean 'in order to defeat evil'. I can hardly imagine a situation arising where that would be an effective tact.

My best friend was Kill A Watt­™ by P3 International.  Yes, that Kill A Watt­™, the one that runs you $25 and lets you monitor the electricity appetite of all your hungry gadgets. Does your best friend's name have the word "trademark" in it? If he's Mark Tradesman, yeah, okay, I guess, but mine's no man at all.  He's a machine.  A watt-killing machine.  Or at least he was.  Cue flashback interlude.

We used to laugh together.  "Can you believe my refrigerator?  It's so powerful!"  "Yeah. EnergyStar? More like EnergyBlackHole!" "Dynamite astronomical reference, Killy." "Thanks."

That's just one example.

Together we studied the energy consumption of all my appliances.  We judged their instantaneous power draws.  We evaluated their electricity usage over long periods of time.  We never figured out what to make of the other buttons.  We didn't care.

How much energy does my microwave use, Killy?  Eleven kilowatt-hours per month.  Is that more or less energy-intensive compared to my oven?  I don't know, the oven runs on 240 V and my Kill-a-Watt only measures on 120 V lines. Anti-climactic, I know, but even the best superheroes have flaws.  Come on, you know you watched the first season of Heroes.

The perp, lookin' all smug...

But our time together was cut short.  Killy was cut down in the line of duty.  With winter approaching, I made the decision that I'd be keeping my nighttime central heat at a nippy 61° F, and supplementing with a ceramic space heater in my bedroom.  Naturally my next step was to gauge the watt-hours I would be racking up.  I was offsetting $3.49-per-gallon heating oil, but burning lumps of coal to stay toasty.  It proved fateful.

My Bionaire BCH9221 ceramic tower heater ran me $70 at Home Depot, less here.  With an electric thermostat, a remote control, oscillation, it had all the earmarks of a real energy saver for my heating needs.  Operating at 1500 watts means that four hours of use per night amounts to 6 kwh daily flung onto your electric bill - nearly 200 per month.  But the impact of turning down a furnace a whole five degrees that runs at 4000 watts and guzzles precious petroleum, well that's truly significant. 

Let's get to the lesson.  Fifteen-hundred watts of electricity flowing through one outlet - no problem.  But flowing through an extension cord into an outlet that also shares a laptop, and, on that somber, black night, a floor lamp - that's what we call a suicide mission.  What I discovered the next morning was graphic.  If you have children in the room, specifically plastic ones, you may want to shield their eyes.

Killy, 2010 - 2010

How does one go on from here?  Can I waltz into my local hardware store and snag a replacement?  Well duh.  Will it be the same as the glory months Killy and I spent together one magical Summer and Fall?  Is it ever?  If question marks cost a quarter each, would our society be more declarative?  Who can know?

Kids, relish your time with those who matter to you.  You never know when a surge of electrons will fry their internal components and melt their exterior casing.  No metaphor here.  I just miss my Kill A Watt.  Trademark...

Eagles Land on Top of Power Rankings - Not in American Football Of Course, But Still

The Philadelphia Eagles just learned that the line for Stadiums With Cleanest Energy Sources apparently condones frontsies.

Upon further review, the turbines appear to be on-sides.

A $30 million project is soon to be underway at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the footballing Eagles.  The facility will enjoy all its power from renewable sources.  The project includes 80 wind turbines and 2500 solar panels.  It will also feature a cogeneration plant relying on biomass and natural gas.  The Eagles just scored a touchdown environmentally, which reminds me - when faced with the opportunity for glaringly obvious word play, you just need to go for it.

The Linc: one of Philadelphia's finest drinking establishments - now with football!

Such a project is unprecedented in the sports world.  And time will be the judge, but it ought to be the first in a wave of progress in this arena.  Sporting complexes are highly unproductive energy hogs.  Consider a dedicated football stadium - open for business an anemic two-tenths of one percent of the time (eight home games lasting three hours each).  Compare that with an office building, which operates more than 20% of the time - a one-hundred-fold difference.  Both the stadium and the office building are still constructed the same energy-intensive way, but one sits idles almost constantly.  It seems that city governments should be mandating such progressive stances on energy.  Want to build a new stadium?  No problem - now when does the solar array go up?

It should be noted that Lincoln Financial Field will not hold the title for world's most energy-sustainable sporting arena - that honor goes to Taiwan's Kaohsiung National Stadium.  Built in 2009 in preparation for the World Games, it features nearly four times the solar capacity as the Linc.   The Taiwanese don't front.

I don't know whether to attend a professional athletics event in it or wrangle it into a box.

Are Your Hot Water Pipes Insulated? Mine Weren't, and Gosh Do I Feel Foolish.

What am I, an idiot?!  Politely don't answer that.

For all the "care" I allegedly have for this planet, I haven't had insulated copper pipes.  Eight years I've been living here.  Eight years, no insulation on my hot water pipes.  I'm disgusted.  Am I an idiot or what?  Politely continue not answering that.

It's exactly like this.

Shake it off.  We learn, we grow, we et cetera.  I studied the labyrinthine maze of copper tubes that hang from the ceiling in my musty cellar, right-angling every-which-way like that one screensaver.  Some pipes carry hot water.  Some cold.  Some inexplicably do nothing, which may come in handy during a future Home Alone-esque booby-trapping, the specifics of which I can't yet envision.

Oh, it's already remedied.  Don't you worry about that.  Yeah, about thirty bucks worth of polyethylene foam sleeves, and my copper's nothing short of cozy.  It was remarkably easy.  They comes in 6-foot lengths - 1" diameter or 3/4" diameter, both of which I needed about thirty feet worth.  A 6' length runs you about two and a half bucks.  They're pre-slitted along one side making it a breeze just to slip them over the pipe.  They also have adhesive strips so they seal nice and tight.


It's a long video, yes, but with a host like Passionate Pat, ten minutes feels like a mere twelve.

Yup.  Just yesterday morning I heard my furnace a-purrin', so I descended, felt all the pipes, and whichever ones were hot got a brand new sweater.  And it all seemed very obvious to me - if the metal itself is emanating heat, that heat's being stolen from my water!  Same goes for the hot water tank itself.  Give it a bear hug and if you suddenly feel a rush of second-degree burniness, your tank needs insulation.  Most new tanks won't be hot to the touch, and thus can go au natural.

How much money will this save?  Well, considering the average home (two adults, two children, and heavy, heavy debt) spends about $630 annually on hot water, and this foam should last a good ten to fifteen years, even a mere one percent efficiency boost saves twice the cost of the insulation itself.  And if that savings is more like fifteen percent, it's like someone knocking on your door in ten years time and handing you ten crisp Benjamins.  (They're worth more crisp, obviously.)

It's a Hold Up! You'll Get it When You See the Photographs.

Is there anything more iconic than a pair of disembodied hands cupping the Earth to complement a fluff piece on environmentalism?  Or, alternatively, the fast-fading globe manufacturing sector?  Today's answer is no, and it's brought to you by every stock imagery entity in existence.

The one you see above is the standard.  The perennial go-to.  This shot is so well-worn that the prominently featured America only has forty-eight states.  That atmosphere is so old, there's only 275 parts per million of carbon in it.  Damn, I am just ripping on the age and ubiquity of that photo! 

Ah, but there's more:

With the hands in black and white and the Earth glowing, it conveys the sense that we are but a transient species, a speck of dust passing in the wind in the great rolling meadow that is the everlasting planet.  Plus, printing in black in white, way cheaper.

Three hands?  Wait.  Is it three separate people, or did the original dude get his buddy - oh, no, all left thumbs.  Yeah, that's three people.  And what view is this?  Are we looking at a pole?  Come on, folks, we center on America for the same reason North is always up - so I can recognize stuff.

A lot of hands.  Presumably children's hands, okay, I can work with that.  The Earth is a weighty orb, let's give it the support it needs.

Hmm.  Hands on...top.  Wait that's not even the Earth, is it?  Hold your sphere-o'-sky-shot how ever you like.

The "Taking Communion".  And you gotta wonder - is it a turtleneck?  You just know it is.

Yes, good, now this one speaks volumes.  The hands are the Earth.  Mind, body, soul.  One hand is black, one hand is white.  I see in this picture the confluence of all things.  And yet part of me takes exception to earthface.

Whoa there!  Come on!  That's our only one!

Skeleton hands.  Naturally.  Centered on the Middle East.  Telling.

Oh dear.  That robot's big!  Doesn't it make you feel small?  And extinct?

Now that's what I like to see!

Business Gentleman 1: I think that was a transaction that benefited us equally!
Business Gentleman 2: I agree.  I'd call it a win-win!
Business Gentleman 1: I'd call it a win-win-win!
Business Gentleman 2: Who's the third 'win'? 
Business Gentleman 1:  Oh, right.  Yeah, just win-win.
Business Gentleman 2: Right.
Business Gentleman 1: Red Lobster?
Business Gentleman 2: Red Lobster.

Love in the Time of Al Gore

He's all, "now wait just a second!", or something.

Image Credit: TopNews.in

From time to time, we need to step back and remember why it is we do the things we do.  Some things we do because we have to - going to the dentist, for instance.  No one loves seeing the dentist, save, I suppose, dentists' spouses, and even they fall into ruts, and yes, that was a cavity joke.

But this post isn't about periodontic passion.  It's about restoring the very intimate connection each of us have with things that matter to us.  I, for one, love correcting people's spelling and grammar errors, especially those of eating and drinking establishments.  I care greatly for supercheap whiteboards, and you should too.  I also love misleading link text, like this solar array in New Mexico.

And I started this blog because I care deeply about contributing my resources - snarkitude and broadband internet access - to solving what I feel is our generation's defining challenge: growing our planet from 6 billion people to 9 billion people by 2050 using an energy source other than the several we're currently depleting at a dizzying pace.  No less than the welfare of posterity is on the line.  And I like wagers where you go all in, even though we kinda went all in by accident on this one.  We played with house money for the past two centuries, and we just realized the house is on the brink of bankruptcy.  A bankruptcy that falls under one jurisdiction only - Mother Nature's.  And let's just say she's doesn't plan on abiding by the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA).  On a side note, the house seems to be well-stocked on nested analogies.

So let's all drink up (we, uh, we're drinking, right?) to reaffirming our personal convictions in this world of ours, whatever they may be.  Whether it be a love of golf, an aching desire to see the ice caps, or just a burning need to Facebook friend all the living cast members of Cheers.  What matters is not the object of our pursuit, but rather, our pursuit.  Damn, yo.  That's some fortune cookie ish right there...

I leave you with something that should make you all smile, unless you're the type that hates synchronized puppy play.

Gettin' the Blog Back Together

I'm on the left.  That's Gary on the right, and Phil off to the side.  Phil's got a bad back.

Nice little sabbatical.  I went the standard route - you write thirty posts, you take two months off.  This is very normal here on the internet.  Respected bloggers would agree, the next-to-last thing you want your site to suffer from is "too much fresh content syndrome".  The last thing, of course, is malaria.

Hey, what's happening in the world of energy?  Any like, fixes yet?  I know one thing - every time I flip a switch, a light still goes on.  Which is actually an issue, because it's supposed to turn on the ceiling fan.

So does this mean we're back, providing unique insight on the energy sector, the conservation movement and everything related to that dreaded word that is a color and start with "gr-" but is not grey, grullo or granny apple smith?  I dunno.  We'll see.  But I can tell you one thing: this post goes out to all my fans.  Of which there aren't enough to start a basketball team. And I won't say exactly how many there are, but man could they put together a foursome on the golf course.  There's four.