Prius to be fitted out with solar panels:
Toyota’s goal is to sell at least 1 million hybrid cars a year in the early part of the next decade by offering the fuel-saving system on more vehicles.
However, solar power is not seen as a viable way to power cars. Independent tests on Prius cars have shown that they could travel no more than a paltry 15 kilometres a day on solar power alone. Solar panels are also expensive due to rising silicon prices and storing energy is difficult, said a source with knowledge of Toyota’s plans.
“It’s more of a symbolic gesture,” said the source, who asked not to be identified. “It’s very difficult to power much more than that with solar energy.”
Tailfins and bullet bras! What will they think of next? (h/t Photoonist at Lucianne)
Pretty much realizes O!s energy policy.
Hey, lookee! More moving on:
A California group submitted a proposal Monday to rename a sewage treatment plant after President Bush, calling the initiative a fitting tribute to the outgoing chief executive and the “mess” he’ll leave behind.
The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wants to switch the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
“It’s more of a symbolic gesture,â€Â
Does this pretty much sum liberal ideology, or what?
Do they do anything that actually makes a difference or is everything appearance?
If they put half the energy into righting some of the world’s wrongs that they put
into projecting an image of caring about the world they’d be a force to be reckoned with..
As it is though.. they’re just a bad joke.
Yeah, but when everybody in your neighborhood drives a prius it’s hard to brag about how green you are. With solar panels… It opens up an entire new wave… you can be the first this time!
Meh. You could have them retrofitted.
Ohnoes. For real, just cause I live in Los Angeles and cause of that I have more than a passive familiarity with stupid, what this will do is mislead my friends and neighbors into thinking that we have solar powered cars now. No, really. They’re that stupid. Next thing you know I’ll be hearing hey we don’t need to drill any oil anymores we have solar power cars now. And I will say to them oh I never thought of it that way. Good point. Just cause it’s not my job to educate these people.
How much money will people waste on this useless gesture? Wouldn’t it be better spent on fruit for Michelle’s kids?
I think I meant “passing” but I guess passive works just as well.
I think they should all switch their pacemakers to solar.
Good grief, why don’t they just get a bicycle and be done with it?
…they are stupid, stupid, stupid.
Don’t blame me when renaming Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant puts it on the list of al Qaeda targets.
A terrorist attack on this plant would redefine the term “dirty bomb” forever.
OK. Let’s go over this again.
Oil and natural gas are the most efficient fuels we have, no matter how much the government subsidizes bullshit.
Solar? Ever check into the maintenance costs?
Fuel cells? Promising, but anybody know how much it costs to replace the platinum when it is pooped?
Wind power? A total joke unless you live on Mt. Everest.
Bur it feels good, don’t it baby?
Well. I’m with the lemmings. NO MORE OIL! We can easily drive ourselves (and most of the rest of the world) over the cliff with (fill in the blank) power.
Logic has fled these latitudes and longitudes.
I fully support the proposed name change.
As the years go by marked by the flowering of functioning, secular democracies throughout the mideast, culminating in a true peace between Israel and the Arab world, the products of the Bush Doctrine will come to be hailed as landmark historical achievements, rivaling the freeing of the slaves or Washington’s leadership of the Continental Army.
Build a HUGE sign, visible for miles.
Then buy a boatload of body bags, because progs exposed to that sign will be dropping dead of spontaneous cranial infarction by the dozen. It’ll be like “Blade”, only with smellier vampires.
Anywhere else in America hundreds of unburied corpses would be unsightly. In ‘Frisco, the event will mark the first time in decades that the residents don’t smell the urine and feces that constitute the normal landscape of down town.
Oh hey. Here’s a handy list of companies based in San Francisco.
The Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy. Bank of America. Levi Strauss & Co. and also Del Monte Foods. Jamba Juice. Hills Brothers Coffee. Dwell magazine. Fuck these tacky bastards I think.
Solar panels are great when you need to supply power to some device far from power lines and generators. For cars, they are ridiculous.
I had a liberal aquaintence(sp?) who, upon viewing solar panels mounted on tanks in some stupid movie (supposedly powering them I guess), thought that we could do that if we would only develop the technology enough. I tried to explain the concept of the sun only providing a set amount of energy per square foot, but I think he never got it.
That is the liberal solution to our problems. If we spend enough on alternative energy, it will somehow work. Not working yet? Spend More!!
Oh and also like a ton of gay porn companies.
Fuel cells? Promising, but anybody know how much it costs to replace the platinum when it is pooped?
You shouldn’t ever have to replace the platinum, but the bigger problem is just how are they going to produce the hydrogen .. electricity ? .. that makes it (for the most part) powered by coal. This is the same problem with
electric“coal” carMaybe the solar panel could power widgets inside the car, rather than the car itself. Like an expresso machine, or something.
Full Disclosure:
Don’t like the Bay Area, strongly DISlike San Francisco. I watched the Board of Supervisor live on public access cable in 1988 as they declined to address the exploding AIDS epidemic as a public health matter. Instead, they turned it into a Reagan/conservative/Christian hate fest. Their behaviour – their cowardice in the face of what was essentially the road chorus of The Village People (two hundred leather clad, bare chested gays crying about repression at the hands of Evul Establishment America…)
They wouldn’t require infected persons to be identified and logged.
They wouldn’t institute a public warning system to inform partners of people who showed up positive for HIV.
They wouldn’t consider closing the bath houses.
In short, they abandoned every single proven effective public health strategy and … blamed Reagan.
The Left has certainly been responsible for the deaths of more brown folks than any Republican president that comes to mind. That they held the rope for the trap that tens of thousands of AIDS victims fell through as well isn’t addressed nearly often enough.
ALSO:
Hell, I’d be proud to have a well designed treatment plant named after me. Try going a week without a flush toilet, then tell me what you think.
I don’t have a single utter compunction over boycotting gay porn companies. Wait a minute…do they include lesbian porn? Because I’d have to think that one through.
Well, if it comes right down to it we can always run our cars on producer gas. Plenty of coal.
I remember seeing some pictures of German cars during WWII that had been modded to run off a producer gas generator in the trunk. Just toss in scrap wood, coal…anything with lots of carbon.
That’ll make the hippies happy, I’m sure.
“And the band played on.”
Personally, I love visiting SF but would probably off myself if I had to live there.
Oh shoot. I forgot about the lesbians again. Maybe I need to write that on my hand.
do they include lesbian porn?
You’ll need to buy genuine, Union Label® lesbian porn. The kind with 100%-certified Genuine Lesbians. I hear Rosie O’Donnell is going to…er…come out with her own private label.
Maybe Toyota is more interested in fleecing the gullible climate-hysterics of the American public, then actually providing a practical electric car.
Certainly there is an American Company that is garnering some success if not the publicity.
Have you sent that to Mr. Reynolds, Darleen? He likes that sort of thing. Electric vroom-vroom thingers.
And, just as an aside, they should invite GWB to the dedication of the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
My $20 says he’d go. And make a speech. Smiling cheerfully the entire time.
I am more and more coming to believe that that’s a good quarter, maybe a third, of the Left’s complaint about George Bush. They’ve unloaded both barrels on him, reloading as the mood struck — and he’s still smiling. Still cheerful. Still making jokes. What does it f*ing take to get the b*d down?
For my past sins, or perhaps as one of my past sins, I own a copy of Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons by Kurt Vonnegut. Somewhere between its covers he describes the power of Protest as being approximately that of a cream pie of thus-and-so dimensions dropped from a certain height, also specified. Vonnegut was actually a fairly sensible individual before the Brain Eater took him, and that is one of the many things one can find, scattered among the blobs of self-indulgent bullshit, that is absolutely true. (I am unable to find the quote, because I am unable to read that much Vonnegut any more. Perhaps I should discard the book.)
Regards,
Ric
#14 I agree. Solar panels work great on isolated lighthouses and on lighted channel buoys (on the bouys they have these little spring whips that thrash about when the buoy rocks, to keep the gulls from landing and crapping all over the panels).
Otherwise, they don’t scale up that well.
I just threw out a bunch of books and it was a lot therapeutic I thought.
Oh. But what this shows Mikey is that solar panels are an aesthetic unto themselves now. Function has been liberated from form. It would be a lot gauche to demand that they actually have a quantifiable purpose I think. For real, on balance they’re harmless enough, and if they make people feel good then I don’t think they do any harm. The rolling blackouts will be on us soon enough either way.
I went through a Vonnegut period – I even saw him give a lecture at Miami of Ohio when I was an undergrad. The important thing, is that you go THROUGH the period. Advancing beyond. Coming out safely on the other side. I’m sure I still have the books around here somewhere, just not featured prominently anywhere.
Oh. My embarrassing Richard Bach period.
– The link supplied by Darleen is only one of several companies in America and elsewhere that are demonstrating commuter ready autos based on home charge electric power. For those that have homes properly equipped, the electrical power could be supplied for battery charge at essentially the amortizing of the cost of equipment over some number of years, minus any power rebates you’d receive for feed back onto the grid. Its entirely concievable, even with todays technology, and its improving every year, to put together a system that would leave you with a net gain, averaged over the space of a year, and accounting for weather, and all other factors.
– The “sotce” from Toyota may know their companies “plan” but he doesn’t know dick about solar. the problem isn’t so much the cost, thats a direct result of the level of mass production, same with the autos. Silicon is one of the most abundent materials on the planet, aside fromstupidity, and intentional industry protectionism.
– Recently the efficiency of solar cells broke the magic 40% barrier, with no reason that can’t increase. At 75% you could say goodbye to oil for any local commuter purposes.
– The problem isn’t cost, that can be mitigated by production volume, the problem is efficiency and area, you can only fit so many cells on a given sized vehicle.
– But wait. New approaches to light gathering are being looked at that promise to effectively multiply area by up to an oder of magnitude.
– As technologies improve steadily, at some point bring various ideas together will take local travel definitely in that direction.
– The emissions of electric a minuscule levels of out-gassing from battery reactants, which can, and are reduced even further with proper battery configuration to almost undetectable levels.
– One area seldom talked about is the rudimentary cost of parts difference. with 90% fewer moving parts it would be no contest for the electric over the combustible. Maintainance costs should come down markedly, since the equipment, tools, and training would be greatly simplified, and much easier to standardize, something thats always a good thing.
– But then again, where will all those Kragen and Delco people find jobs?
I don’t resent Toyota their gimick. I work in the rail/intermodal industry and, frankly, we’re not doing anything any differently than we ever did before the whole global warming B.S. Improved fuel economy and cleaner burning locos have been sought throughout the years and the concept of intermodal itself remains the same. The difference is that, now, we capitalize on those facts through marketing our asses off.
We didn’t name the game nor make the rules, but we’re damned sure going to play it to win.
As for the numbnuts who will purchase the new ‘solar’ Toyota, well…they get what they want, which is, really, an even more noxious level of self-contentment, and…25% more aromatic farts.
I hear Rosie O’Donnell is going to…er…come out with her own private label.
I just threw up a little in my mouth…
Curse you for that visual Sir! I must now go and scrub my brain
that’s neato
Everyone. Please be careful. You may be overwhelmed by smug clouds moving in from the west at anytime now.
Bah. Way back in ’92, Mazda’s 929 sedan had a solar panel in the roof which, at your option, could recharge the car’s battery or run an interior fan. If you have to park in the sun, and where I live you often do, this was a major boon. Then again, since it was Mazda, nobody picked up on it. (The 626 got oscillating center vents back in ’83 and kept them for twenty years; the rest of the world couldn’t have been bothered.)
Well, as an employee and a shareholder, I’m happy with the strategy but, the truth be told, as an individual I hate that such strategies lend credence to the environmental whackos and their causes.
Then, I look at my 401k statement, and I just don’t care anymore.
I keed, I keed
Phreshone
I still think that the Smug episode was one of the best ever. Clooney’s voice…grating…
Happy – it’s OK. We all have skeletons in our closet. I actually own an Andrea Dworkin book – “Man Hating” I believe. I keep it out of nostalgia.
#26 – Ric
I think that as a recovering alcoholic GWB has seen plenty of demons, and he has already berated himself so much, that the words of others mean nothing in comparison. He has already been humbled.
Right now I think he is fixed on the future and will let the present play out and the future give its assessment. He is a Methodist – God wills, and I did the best I thought – and all that.*
*The old Wesleyan brothers-type Methodists were not sunshine and summer Christians.
#29 haps – I do not disagree about the aesthetics – in their place they are very useful. It is that the place, now, is so limited.
Does anyone else remember the Vonnegut cameo in ‘Back to School’? And Thornton Mellon’s reaction when the professor said the author of the paper knew nothing about Vonnegut?
There are several scenes in that movie, dealing with literature, that would be right up Jeff G.’s alley. Like where the professor says you read the work, and not watch the movie, so that the director and the actor – or the professor – does not come between the reader and what the author is trying to say.
To deconstruct a story is to destroy a gift. Enjoy the gift, the story. To do otherwise is to be an ingrate.
#32 – Silicon? Sand? Saudi Arabia has a corner on that market too.
As does nearly every other place on the earth.
#44 –
Fortunately we have lots and lots of desert, and a few pretty good sized silicon “bitches”.
That we do, BBH.
#41 Mikey — Yeah, there’s that.
Louis l’Amour was fond of saying “There’s no stopping a man who knows he’s in the right and keeps on coming.” (I don’t think there’s anyone here who would either deny the principle or declare it entirely benign.) I do believe the spittle-flecked hysteria of Stage III BDS comes primarily from the pure, RCOB-generating frustration of not being able to affect the “smirk”. Bush is sometimes grave and occasionally sad, but he’s never downcast, never abashed, is never seen to trudge, shoulders hunched in despair and defeat. It’s got to be f*ing maddening.
Regards,
Ric
You guys are seeing a glass half empty.. I’m seeing it half full.. There’s a business opportunity here.. I’m seeing “Phonet” brand solar panel stick-on faux-panels.. that look just like the ones on the new Toys.. What a deal.. 100% of the smug at only 10% of the cost of the real thing.. and the kicker is they’d be every bit as effective at reducing your carbon footprint.. It’s a win – win..
I fully support the remaning of the sewage plant. Somebody forgot that the entire reason for these plants is to take all the shit various assholes have been spewing, and converting it into something non-toxic, if not exactly useful.
Sounds about right to me, won’t you say? Where would we be without sewage treatment facilities?
As far as the silicon reference is concerned, I think the issue is that the manufacturing facilities require finicky, ever advancing, technology on a beaucoupe scale, as in huge capital investment up front to be profitable.
The Rim technology companies are famous for cutting the legs out from under European and American companies that try to compete.
Micron publicized that they were going to build a huge plant here in Utah County, back mmmmm at eight or nine years back. It turned out they built the buildings and infrastructure and began a limited production facility, then entered into an agreement with a Rim outfit to use their chips at a sweet rate.
The buildings remain mostly empty to this day; there are some subleasees who do circuit board and other nasty work there, but once the construction was substantially complete it never did do much in the way of jobs.
Considering all the shit he’s taken from the left and the good he’s produced, I consider that a fitting tribute.
Ouroboros,
The only thing wrong I see is that you left out the diacritical mark: Phonét. No doubt it has already been trademarked by PACO Ltd.
Regards,
Ric
oh, TmjUtah beat me to it. It’s my understanding that there aren’t many places that make wafers and wafers take a while to produce. up to a month just for the ingot according to these people.
As Reich-Wing Troglodytes, aren’t we supposed to, you know, burn them?
No! You give them to Goodwill. And while you’re there you pick up more.
Oh. Goodwill doesn’t take books. Not here anyway. I took a couple boxes to the Discovery store I think it’s called. It’s run by I think the American Cancer something or other. But a lot of them were really arcane that I got from my insane dead uncle and I just ditched them. I would have liked to have found a home for them or eBay them but it wasn’t happening and they were doing an apartment inspection and they were in the way. Also at the time I was in an interviewy situation that would have meant relocating at least eventually so it felt good just to be rid of them.
While we’re at it, shouldn’t we just go ahead and rename San Francisco?
After all, it’s just so repressive-Christiany, isn’t it?
A democratic candidate (I missed which one, there’s six and they all make Saxby Chambliss seem…smart which ain’t easy) for senator in Georgia yesterday said that we could not drill our way out of energy dependence, that more drilling would not produce more gasoline and that we needed alternate energy sources for more gasoline.
My M. Scott Peck period lasted about a quarter of the way through his third book.
Our Salvation Army takes books. Also, my old church used to do a book sale once a year, and that was always good for unloading. Unfortunately, I usually bought just as many as I gave away. But, really, once they get to fifty-cents a book, how can you refuse?
neo –
I don’t know for sure, but a couple of years ago, when I was all excitedy about fuel cells, I seem to remember reading that eventually the platinum must be replaced. Until that time, this article said, it was pretty cheap to run one, but when “maintenance” time came, it would wipe you out because the platinum catalyst plate(?) had to be replaced.
Fuel cells don’t use elictricity, they generate it by combinig hydrogen and oxygen. I think that the catalyst is platinum, and eventually must be replaced. That is the reason that even the “green” (red)companies that have bought them only use them as backup power.
They really are promising, but right now, not in the same universe as oil when efficiancy is factored in. Plus the problem of where do you get hydrogen gas. And the problem of hydrogen being so explosive is another drawback. Witness the Hindenberg…
And, yeah, “cracking” the hydrogen is a problem, but I think some researchers are working on using natural gas and other “harvestable” gasses.
Don’t quote me here. I’m no expert, but this is just some of the stuff I picked up when I got curious about fuel cells.
I have a stock answer to all who try to tell me that tapping our own energy resources won’t help.
“You are full of shit, and stupid to boot”.
And that about covers it.
It would be neat if thor had good news on that lease deal. I will think happy thoughts.
What deal is that, haps?
Not really sure, just that a company wanted to explore on some of his family’s land. It really could be a good thing is all I remember. Not sure how long these things take though.
They explored on some land me and my brother and sister used to own in Oklahoma and that was exciting until it wasn’t.
I see via Insty that China is buying 100 reactors from Westinghouse.
Too bad they’re not allowed to build them here, eh? I’d bet that just one of those babies would counterbalance all of the Piouses ever built.
Westinghouse is Japanese now, no? Democrats didn’t make them feel very welcome so they decided to cast their lot with Japan. Democrats are so gay. Took a lot of jobs with them too. Really good-paying ones.
Yep, you’re right, ‘feets. Sold to Toshiba in 2006.
Sigh.
Maybe the solar panel could power widgets inside the car, rather than the car itself. Like an expresso machine, or something.
In the 90’s Mazda had solar cells embedded in the moon roof of some of their cars that were used to run the blower fan so that the interior of the car would stay relatively cool in the summer when parked. I thought it was an awesome idea.
On a normal gas powered car, if you couldget enough solar cells to run a lot of the accessories, you could probably save some gas. I know that when I converted my old 240 volvo to an electric fan I gained (what seemed to me at the time) a lot of power (not really, 1-2 HP and I also managed to burn through two batteries and an alternator because I wired wrong and it ran all the time. I meant to fix it, but you know how that goes. I got around to it eventually.)
That’s a smart idea, a dashboard espresso machine. That’s definitely the future. I’d dump Starbucks stock I think.
Lost Dog,
No. The platinum isn’t used up.
To make a fuel cell work, the platinum has to be deposited in a very thin layer, so thin it’s porous to protons. There is no technique for doing this cheaply. Fuel cells now made contain anywhere from ten to a hundred times as much platinum as they really need, because the fabrication technique isn’t there.
Fuels fed to the cell aren’t absolutely pure. Over time, the plates get contaminated by other substances, impurities in the fuel and materials migrating from elsewhere in the cell, that block the pores. At that point it’s impossible for protons to pass, and the fuel cell doesn’t work any more. You don’t have to replace the platinum, but you do have to melt it down, re-refine it, and use it to coat new cell plates. The platinum has to be replaced, but that’s not because it’s used up, it’s because it’s too contaminated to work any more.
The same thing happens in catalytic reactors. When you have to replace the one in your car’s exhaust, it’s because the catalyst has absorbed impurities and doesn’t do its job any more. Catalytic reactors[1] use palladium because it’s cheaper than platinum, but the same principle applies.
Regards,
Ric
[1]I refuse to use the mealymouth “converter” in this context. It’s a strong vessel in which a chemical reaction occurs.
Richard Bach actually wrote a pretty good book about flying a F-84 in Europe before he flaked out on the Seagull. That was one book I couldn’t finish. I didn’t finish War and Peace either, for a different reason.
Naming the sewage treatment plant after Bush doesn’t convey the message those pinheads think it does. First, it’s a dirty, thankless, necessary job that somebody has to do. He did it. Second, it says a lot about the sort of people who would do this sort of thing. The city council must have solved the rest of San Francisco’s problems already.
Well, Gavin Newsome’s ethics have been on public display. I’m not a Bush fan, but I believe most of his failures come from being a decent, caring guy. The input to the plant should be named for the mayor.
Heh. It’s never easy to unload a copy of the Necronomicon.
Hereafter and forever more, let the city by the bay be known by the name of Bunghole
City.
That hole on the other side of the Bay Bridge will be known as Moonville.
It also says something about their attitude towards the people who work at said plant.
That’s funny you would say that. The Necromonicon thing. He was an artist, my uncle, and one of the paintings of his I have under my bed is his “representation of pure evil.” He did it when he was young, and it hung in his dining room for most of his life. It was in a corner, and unless he turned the light on that’s attached to the frame, it looked innocuous enough. Turn on the light and bad freaking juju really a lot emanates from it. I haven’t looked at it since I moved in here. And all that was before he went mad. At least officially.
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