There really are smart car buyers, y'all!

Here's some good news for those who wonder what is contributing to some degree to the lessened demand for the formerly out of control gobbling up of more and more foreign oil for gas. The source of this data about this Mercedes built car, is copied from: http://www.green-metroplex.com/Assorted/Fuel/Efficient_Cars.html

 

20,000 Smart cars have been ordered in the USA as of Oct. 2008

 

TERRY BOX of The Dallas Morning News reports that Dallas resident Patrick Zipper on

Thursday became the 20,000th buyer of a 33 mpg, Mercedes built, Smart Car since the micro vehicle was introduced in the United States 10 months ago. Source:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/103108dnbussmartcar.3a26e56.html 

Mitsubishi is building a micro electric vehicle

Mitsubishi Motors of Japan has jumped into the mini-Electric Vehicle arena in a big way. Here's a link to their micro website. You'll need a broadband connection to enjoy this short but intensive four Flash Pages of views introducing their latest hot car project. Tip: Remember to use your outside mouse button to find a menu to get you back out of enlarged views of these Flash Pages if you enlarge portions of them along the way, too. Beautifully designed high tech site. wr

 

This is a picture of Mitsubishi's 100 mile range <Plug-in> Micro Electric Vehicle.

It features Li-Ion battery under the floor and rear mounted DC Motor under a

recessed rear deck. Access to the motor through the hatchback fifth door and

rear deck panel. This first in a series design is Mitsubishi's response to the

Kioto Accord calling for Zero Emission Vehicles...

Energy saving tip; from the trenches.

My sister-in-law, who is on social security, was in a fix. As I understand it, her apartment living room has a large, 5 x 8 picture window facing west. It has no protection from direct solar gain, at all. Curtains and slat shades could not keep out the heat in the afternoon, which made the room uninhabitable for much of every day. Her limited funds are made more distressed by the enormous electric bills the air conditioning causes in the summer as a result of her cheaply designed apartment's design flaws.

 

My wife took it upon herself to take a half roll of solar screen left over from our own energy saving make over project of last year, over to her sister's place and taped it directly onto the window molding around that bad boy window. Around sun-down this evening my sister-in-law called to tell us that the heat difference was so reduced that she was forced to turn off the overhead fan she usually had going full speed, during the day, in the living room to help cool that space by circulation. The ceiling fan made that room feel too chilly to keep it going along with the air conditioning! And, oh yeah, she can live in that room, again.

 

I have long been an advocate for mechanical, deciduous and other shade methods so I won't rant about this topic. Suffice it to say that if one does NOT allow heat into a space in the first place, one need not pay good money to air condition it back out of that space in the second place. If you are interested in information about solar mesh screening, take advantage of the link to an article about the energy savings potentials using shade and solar screening below. There are an extensive number of web pages and articles as well as links, as resources which make it abundantly clear how cost effective a bit of shade can be on ones energy bill, immediately and year after year. At our home our kilowatt-hour comparisons from prior years is steadily and regularly less each year as we continue to retrofit our home with energy reducing measures. Sun screening and shade have paid us back handsomely in the form of significantly lower summer electric bills in spite of higher cost per kilowatt rate changes from utility companies. Check it out.

http://www.green-metroplex.com/Definitions/Deciduous.html 
 

From the desktop of Warren Richardson   D/FW Metroplex, pro-active

mentor for conversion to energy alternatives and carbon footprint reduction.
Moderator of http://dfw-alt-e-caucus.blogspot.com/ and

Webmaster of http://www.green-metroplex.com/ ... You are invited to come

and see how cost effective, and even profitable, it can be to go green!

Oops - ten cents per kWatt solar cells... not just per Watt from thin cell solar arrays.

My mistake. I meant to say, "Thin Film Solar Cell technology is well on the way to being able to make 10 cents per kWatt energy which is cost competitive with today's coal fired energy." That's 10 cents per kilowatt pumping directly into your abode folks not 10 cents per Watt. Energy from the net grid costs about 6 cents per kWatt. They mark it up and charge about double or more (TXU = 13.9 cents per kW). If you had a Thin Film solar array on your roof you could make them more competitive such that you'd only pay for and build the max capacity for your average electric loads - not large enough to satisfy your peak summer loads which would make utilities actually loose money were your array larger.

     Which is to say - if you have a thin film style solar cell system on your roof you could afford this energy for electricity into the future; while reducing your carbon footprint. 

     If you (and you and you, etc.) never do nothing to upgrade your electrical input but buy coal fired power - your children and grandchildren will eventually be forced to buy the new finagled environ-suites that are being shown on the net. They are the ones with plastic bubble head-hats that import forced air blown through a filter to reduce smog contamination from all the sulfur dioxide belching from the ten to 15 coal fired plants currently on the permit trail by TXU located about due down wind from DFW - near and around Waco. Animal food farmers will pass along the cost of raising your food in environ-shelters separated from direct contact with outside atmosphere, too. Food plants will be greenhouse raised or expensive pollution resistant strains will be harvested from outside fields and then processed to remove the acid from rain that will eventually be embedded in the plant sugars; some already are, but are not causing the health watch authorities to yell rape, yet.

     All the above are a synopsis from various enviro, national & international health and other sources which I research on a regular basis. wr.

 

I'm a Republican Capitalist but I still flinched when I heard Bush speak about market adjustment.

On April 30^th of this year President Bush made several state of the union statements. One comment, almost a sidebar and almost impossible to pick up on was that, "The consumers and the free market will adjust the rising costs of energy." It was buried in his rhetoric, and it was not an error in his fielding of several questions as to what the government could or would not do about the current economic upheaval caused by rising fuel prices. Implied are the forces that will lead consumers to purchase more fuel-efficient vehicles burning the fuel that are currently in deep reserves within our own borders… Which is, oh by the way(?) expensive to extract; even with the new technology he harped on about… most must be steam heated to even make it liquid enough to flow up from a wellhead of the environmentally sensitive sites that this oil is under.

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One must recall that our president was and is an Old School Political Capitalist. While the bin Lauden royal family of Saudi Arabia bailed his floundering nincompoop oil enterprises out of trouble on more than one occasion and underwrote much of his successful political career costs over the years, he is none the less convinced that he or any other government official can do nothing but allow the free market to correct the costs of energy, I.E., The Law of Supply and Demand. That law dictates that if a commodity becomes too expensive for survival, market forces will produce an alternative balancing force to compensate and bring equilibrium to the market. Old School Political Capitalists believe that they can screen themselves behind rhetoric to mask the bare fact that they don't give a rat's behind one way or the other since they are in the catbird seat, and their futures are secure so long as they don't upset the political machines that they are the figureheads of. Captains of industry, the ultra-wealthy and politicians are the U.S. royalty, as you know.

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In addition – our government is now separated from market forces in that they legalized their pay and compensation such that it comes from THE GENERAL FUND, not from constituent taxes – as such their pay and benefits can be painlessly adjusted for ANY swing in cost of living that impacts the greater unwashed (you and me). Guess what? Federal energy funding comes in no small measure in the form of excise taxes on raw oil and refined oil. These GO INTO THE GENERAL FUND. Thus the money is laundered and has no taint of constituant contribution when congress gives itself another pay raise or two.

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So… as I have ranted before. The government is firmly and determinedly out of the loop on the realities of living with spiraling gas prices. We – the greater unwashed must, Must, MUST make the adjustment in favor of physcal solvancy, not by wailing at the stone wall that is our federal government – but by buying into the one kind of energy that cannot be turned into a commodity and traded on the open free market, for better or worse which actually IS based on supply and demand…

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We must personally collect "Free" Solar Energy:

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Invest in solar energy electric power and store your excess energy in batteries that run your car, and the net grid. That is where it can be drawn back into your home or business at nighttime, too because "off the grid" battery storage per say is not cost effective. Thin Film Solar collectors that have the potential of driving the cost of electrical energy down to 10 cents a watt (competitive with fossil electric energy) are arriving on the market as we speak. Toyota has rethimpked its position to bury the high efficiency Li-Ion battery it owns the patent on and is in the ground breaking phase for building a facility to put them into next years' Prius Hybrids with 50 mpg capability and make them plug-in capable off the factory floor. (As has been restated time and again – Toyota resisted the conversion to plug-in hybrid as a standard model due to the certainty that its after sales replacement parts industry would suffer a terrible hit if it went to battery powered vehicles… an industry wide problem that blocks change.). Compressed air "suburban dual fuel vehicles" with ranges around 200 miles are on the market and they only use domestic electric powered air compressors for their stored high pressure energy which combined with a gallon of E85 gas can go 100 miles. 

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Check it out. Then: Buy smart.

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Signed: Warren Richardson, a Republican and a Capitalist... End.