The Chevy Volt

Ars Technica has posted a review of the upcoming Chevy Volt. My first reaction to it was, "WOW, I SOOO need one." But, calming down a bit, its time to look a bit objectively.

1. 40 miles per charge
40 miles is both not a lot, and quite a bit. This is what it can do on a single charge before it has to fire up the gas motor for more electricity. According to the article, the total range between fill-ups should be north of 300 miles; 40 miles on pure battery and the rest on gas-generator. This means it'll have the same effective range as conventional cars, which is critical for consumer acceptance. So when you move from Chicago to Memphis, you can at least drive the car all the way there without having to pay to have it towed.

In my case the 40 mile range is very reasonable. My round-trip commute is rarely over 35 miles, even with side-trips. Weekend errand-runs are another story, but the large majority of the run would be done on electricity sucked down in my garage. So in our case, the effective miles-per-gallon should be very high.

But for people who commute 40 miles each way, it won't buy a lot. It'll probably mean a MPG rating comparable to some of the smaller hybrids, which won't really justify the cost of the car. However, as the article points out these people are not the primary target market for this car.

2. Cubic footage lost to battery
Even more than hybrids, the Volt has a lot of cubic footage spent on housing the batteries. This is not a car designed for road-tripping to Grandma's house, it is designed for trips under an hour. Looking at it, I see potential problems for those who are over six feet tall, or are well-padded in the hip.

For our average usage, this should be just fine. That trunk can handle our groceries and usual errand-swag. For larger cargoes, longer travel times, or hauling passengers, we have the internal-combustion station-wagon. As neither of us are vertically or horizontally enhanced, we should be able to fit inside it just fine. Considering that our current 'commuter' car is effectively a 2-seater, the Volt should be an easy drop-in replacement.

3.0 Glass cockpit
Continuing the trend brought on by the Hybrids, the Volt doesn't have analog gauges for things like speed, it has LCD screens. The thing I noticed is that the driver's LCD is markedly smaller than most dashboard displays I've seen. Considering the technical challenges of this car and the column inches Ars Technica devoted to describing the software development process for the car's hardware, I strongly suspect that early-adopters are going to have to put up with regular updates to that software.

Seeing as how the target demographic is urban commuters who live relatively close to their place-of-work, it is nearly certain that there will be some kind of 3G network available. OnStar is already usable in most of the US. I suspect that this channel could be used to push out software updates to the cars themselves. We'll see how this is handled once it actually hits the streets.

I like the glass cockpit, but I do like a certain density to my information display. At a glance, without twiddling knobs, I'd like to know at least speed and estimated miles before turning on the gas-powered generator, as well as the typical gauges like fuel-level and engine-temp.

And finally, if cars like these do take off, 220v outlets in garages are going to be all the rage in new construction.

PRT and self-driving cars

This morning I noticed that CNN had an article about a Personal Rapid Transit deployment in upstate New York. If you've been reading me a while, you know my opinions about PRT. In this case, I do side with the critics in that it is largely an infeasible gimmick. For the same reason that monorail systems like Seattle's monorail never really took off, PRT systems will also fail to thrive. This is because these sorts of systems require a separate right-of-way (RoW) to work, and both prefer elevated trackage.

At the same time, ArsTechnica is running a series of articles on the future of the self-driving car. Part One was posted last week, and is a good run-down of the state-of-the-art of automated driving. Part Two posted today and discusses some of the neat things you can do with a widely deployed 'auto-driver' system. Next week they'll cover some of the social issues that may arise. These sorts of systems take advantage of the pre-existing right-of-way we drive on every day.

The only way PRT will take off is through massive governmental buy-in. We can do it with today's technology, the only sticking point is paying for it and the time required to build it out. Any time you create a brand new RoW it costs massive amounts of money and time. The Interstate Highway System took decades to get into place and cost tens of billions. Even the most robust of Commuter-Rail networks took decades to really get to a good saturation point, at least in the areas where commuter-rail didn't already exist such as the Northeast Corridor, and even they started with pre-existing rail RoW already built.

The cost of a fully deployed PRT system can only be paid for by government. No one else has the finances available for a project of that size. An as with the interstate system, it'll take a long time to get the networks up and running. With massive buy in right now, PRT systems could compete with the kind of self-driving technology we're likely to have at grade in 20 years. The US Government certainly isn't going to fund anything this large, though the more socially minded Scandinavian countries may.

Auto-driver systems are far more likely to be present in US cities in 20 years. In my opinion, wide deployment, where most people don't bother driving themselves, may come in the 30-50 range. Once the personal autonomy issues are worked through, such systems have a wide social benefit as the selfish human driver with the limited point of view (only within sight) introduces certain inefficiencies in the highway system. These are the same benefits that proponents of PRT systems bring forward, and they're right. However, the chances of getting such a separate-RoW system in place are minimal here in the US.

Taxes and tax-credits

A friend of mine recently posted a short essay about what a tax-credit would mean for her and her family. In short, not as much as you'd think. But, read it for your self:

http://wiredferret.livejournal.com/1453125.html

VP Debate

My view of the 'winner' of this debate is the same as the Presidential one: they both won.

One of the things I keep hearing about Palin, especially in the wake of the Couric interview, is that they wanted the firebrand who accepted the nomination back. In light of her closing remarks, I think Palin did that.

However, I must point out that the speech she delivered at the Republican convention was written for "VP To Be Named Later" and personalized once there was a name. And the closing remarks were probably written well before hand and memorized. So, in that sense the Republicans got what they saw the first time; a confidant running-mate willing to fight. A well packaged running-mate.

As for Biden he managed to avoid foot-in-mouth disease, which was one of his marks for 'win', and also managed to not come off as condescending. About the only time he talked about Palin directly it was in complimentary tones on topics they agreed on. When he disagreed, the target was McCain. He laughed in self-deprecating ways, not mocking ways.

I say they both won because they did what they were sent out there to do, solidify support among the leaners. People who were deeply worried about Palin but wanted to believe, because the alternative was democrats, saw a confident woman who could field questions on national TV. People who didn't know Biden, perhaps they skipped the Primary debates, had a very complimentary introduction. Those who feared foot-in-mouth disease were reassured that it didn't happen.

In the grand scheme of things, I think this debate helped repair some of the damage done by the Couric interview, especially among likely McCain voters (among Obama partisans, though, there was plenty of new satire fodder). That said, I personally was very impressed with Biden's performance. Much as the last Presidential debate gave Obama a big boost in perceived competence in foreign policy, I think this debate will give the Obama/Biden campaign a similar bounce. So in the end, I think it'll be Biden who will get the longest post-debate bump.

Newspaper habits

I grew up in a household that had a regular newspaper habit. As I grew up, I kept it up. In college I also managed to get and read a paper of some kind, reading it over breakfast like I did growing up. After college, one of the first things we did when moving someplace new was start paper service. This continued until we moved to place where the newspaper was not delivered to my doorstep, rather to a box on a pole at the end of my driveway.

This killed my newspaper habit, but it took a while. The box-on-a-pole method of delivery is a result of where I live. I grew up in the inner city of Minneapolis, which like most midwestern cities was platted on a grid system. The same was true of our first post-college apartment, and where our first house was. Our current location is not on a grid, it's on the feeder/arterial system with no sidewalks.

Box-on-a-pole requires special clothing to retrieve the paper more than half of the year. This does not happen before breakfast. The doorstep delivery was simple, even when it was -15 outside. At that temperature, the paper-retrieval method of, "take deep breath, open door, grab paper, close door, let out breath," takes all of 3 seconds if done right, and even a mostly naked person won't risk frostbite. Box-on-a-pole requires a jog of many yards to get the paper, and that means environmental concerns loom large.

However, unlike most of my friends if I still had doorstep delivery I'd still be reading a newspaper. This is largely due to habit, a preference for the layout, and a desire to read my comics all in one page without all those blinking adverts, rather than a preference for the dead-tree version of my news.

Newspapers are dying out at a great rate, and it isn't due to box-on-a-pole in the suburbs (though I suspect it does have something to do with that). This is because the dead-tree version of news is anywhere from 4 to 24 hours of out date as compared to online versions of the same news, assuming an over-breakfast reading. For National and International sources there are much more frequently updated sources. For regional or state issues, there are typically local companies, typically TV newsrooms though ironically the largest newspapers also fall into this category, provide this information online as well. The one domain that the newspaper does have dominance is local coverage.

This is bad news for papers like the St. Cloud Times or the Alexandria Echo Press, as they have to compete for State coverage with papers like the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It has been suggested that these sorts of papers can survive by going "hyper-local," covering local issues to the greatest extent and leave national and international news to the online crowd. At the same time, publishing a dead-tree format newspaper is itself much more expensive than doing some form of ad-supported online presence from a distribution standpoint. Whether or not a news organization can survive on the online ad-stream of an expressly local news provider has yet to be proven, though.

The newspaper shares a problem with the big network newscasts, their consumers are still doing it mostly out of habit. Make a point of catching the CBS Evening News some time, and stick around for the commercials. The last time I did that, the top two products being pushed were luxury cars and medications. This suggests which demographic Nielson shows advertisers as the viewership of these news-shows. I know I stopped watching the big network newscasts when I stopped eating dinner every night with my parents.

I'm probably the last generation to consider these media types to be fully valid information vectors. Since smartphones can pull up cnn.com anywhere they have signal, you don't need to plonk down $.50 for a newspaper that's already very out of date. Or even watch the news.