Comments on: We’ve Got 35 Times More Horsepower in Our Cars Than in Our Power Plants

By: Patrick Hubert, FinÆnviro

Patrick Hubert, FinÆnviro — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:42:48 +0000

Funny, I couldn’t find any comment on the possibility of vehicles & power grids to complement each others, so here is my contribution :
- to address the general debate, of course you are right and (when urban planning permits) we can ride a bicycle to commute rather than a Hummer or a Ferrari… but to each their own, hey ? Just make sure there is a price tag to those externalities (GHGs, accidents, traffic jams etc.) and let people arbitrage. Or, like in China, prohibit non-electric scooter/motorbikes in big cities ;
- now this is 2010, and Tesla, Nissan, Mitsubishi and others are selling or about to sell 100% electric cars with a credible range (+/-100 miles), meaning they carry battery power of, say, around 30kWh+ per car. Multiply this by tens or hundreds of thousands, then millions, and you effectively have a grid on wheels. Call it vehicle-to-grid, smart grid, whatever, but this is about to do to energy and transportation what PCs & internet did to computing. And in effect it brings a solution to the “not always on” arguments against renewable energy ;
- seems far-fetched ? Just think how long it took for mobile phones to spread…

Best,

P.H.

By: Rosalina Daughtry

Rosalina Daughtry — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:32:42 +0000

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By: Gabriel Preston

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By: Mustang & Shelby » Blog Archive » We’ve Got More Horsepower In Our Driveways And That’s A Good Thing [Car Culture]

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:23:10 +0000

[...] writer Alexis Madrigal put together an analysis showing we have more power in our garage than in our power plants. The data is interesting but the [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:11:07 +0000

A week after I bought an emergency 5K watt power generator for my house I listened to the “purr” of my suburban’s engine and wondered why I couldn’t plug my house into THAT.

The other thought is which is more “Rube-Goldbergian” everyone has their own cars as we do now or there’s people mover conveyor belts everywhere with (perhaps) much fewer engines running those conveyor belts than are now powering our cars?

Finally as Obama is seeking to expand high speed rail in the US I gotta wonder if there’s a benefit to allowing cars on to these rail cars (think land based ferrys).

By: Speed

Speed — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:37:16 +0000

Alexis:
“It’d be interesting to see an analysis of how much the set of safety technologies adds to the cost of a car. Like, how expensive are seat belts — and laws promoting their use — and what role did they play versus much fancier, more expensive safety tech?”

The Cost Effectiveness of Airbags by Seating Position
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/278/17/1418
Lots of background material plus a valuable list of references.

You haven’t answered my question … How many horsepower is reasonable?

By: Alexis Madrigal

Alexis Madrigal — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:19:06 +0000

There are obviously circumstances where more power is better. You are clearly running close to capacity a lot, so it would make sense for you to have large amounts of HP. The fact is though that 75% of people are driving to work alone with a 2,000 pound exoskeleton. I don’t want to take away everyone’s car (I kinda love driving, at least outside the city). It’s a question of how to balance people’s everyday needs with people’s perceived peak needs.

By: David Chesler

David Chesler — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:08:47 +0000

I’ve sometimes got to carry my 3 kids plus more people and stuff. So when I got down to one vehicle, I kept the van — it’s cheaper to drive it to work than to pay a second registration and insurance on a 2-seater. (Sometimes I go to work by bus plus bike, but I don’t get any discount on my monthly parking, and I lose about a half hour’s pay for the same time away from home, and my marginal cost is $8 fare versus $4 for gas.) I’m currently one-upping the other drivers with a 1994 G20 with a V6 that I see can make 190hp — and I’ve got trouble maintaining 65mph going up a hill (or 55mph on a longer, steeper hill). It doesn’t seem like I’ve got excess power.

By: Alexis Madrigal

Alexis Madrigal — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:04:24 +0000

Your points on safety are well taken. I didn’t realize how much the fatality rate has actually come down. (A nice overview: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/barone/2007/07/30/good-news-on-auto-accident-trends.html). It’d be interesting to see an analysis of how much the set of safety technologies adds to the cost of a car. Like, how expensive are seat belts — and laws promoting their use — and what role did they play versus much fancier, more expensive safety tech?

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:53:40 +0000

“People’s needs have changed very little over the last fifty years and we have a lot more horsepower.”

I disagree with this statement. Over the last 50 years we have developed a “need” to survive crashes at highway speeds. This means cars need to survive crash tests and be equipped with air bags and seat belts and tempered or laminated glass, etc. Also, the migration out of the city centers and into the suburbs means that a larger percentage of the populous “needs” to have access to an automobile. And certain regrettable changes in diet, as well as an increase in the percentage of the economy working clerical rather than labor fields means that we are larger around the middle and “need” more room in our autos. Plus we generally live in smaller families than before, with bigger houses (because we are richer than we were) so we “need” more personal space.

Saying that our basic needs haven’t changed in the last 50 years ignores the fact that our needs are driven by where and how we live. And where and how we live have certainly changed in the last 50 years.