[geeks] electric cars

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:12:34 -0400
Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net> wrote:

> Also, outside of just a few urban areas, you really do need a car in 
> the USA, and you need to drive it many miles per year.  Even I, who 
> work at home most of the time, end up putting over 12K miles per year 
> on my car.

Yep.

I compared my gas costs to a friend's in the UK and in Germany, and
mine was double what his was, and I'm a fairly light traveler (city)
compared to most of my peers.

Too much sprawl.

> > It might be worth distorting the market by slowly raising petrol
> > prices to encourage the use of bio-fuels.
> 
> If you try to distort the market, the markets distorts *you* .

Yep.

Nothing wrong with encouraging alternatives, but you don't need to do
that by penalizing something.  That hurts the people who can't move to
the alternative, and market manipulation always gets us into trouble.

Better to encourage change by showing good alternatives.  Then people
will just want it anyway.

> My opinion is that a focus on more efficient heating and cooling for 
> houses, which accounts for some 40% of US oil and gas usage, would be 
> the easiest first step, rather than focusing on cars (trucks and
> trains aren't going to be changing anytime soon).

Agreed, and that doesn't account for the horrible design of modern
houses, and even worse, modern industrial and office buildings.

We basically build everything as a square box with no natural cooling
or heating, with arbitrary facing, and seal it up so it won't breathe.
That forces us to use force-air heating and cooling, and nearly all the
time.  This increases electrical usage, increases indoor pollution, and
makes life hell when the power goes out.

> Right now, you cannot build a house that is designed to be energy 
> efficient without basically violating the building code.

Ah, you see it too.

Do you ever get the feeling you are the only one?

A friend of mine lived in a neighborhood that was grandfathered for
building facing and other stupid regulations.  You know what?  The
idiots that lived there got together and petitioned the local
government to eliminate the allowance and force all houses to line up
in rows by a community building code.  

I saw the proposed layouts for new construction and not only was it
space and energy efficient, it was very beautiful.

Now it is a bunch of packed in boxes in boring rows.

They also mandated clear cutting the new plots to "keep the neighborhood
from looking dark and unappealing".

You see, even when you give people a chance...

> Every developer/builder corporation (like Toll Brothers, Charter
> Homes, etc.) has standardized on above-ground, balloon-framing (2x6
> and 2x4 lumber construction) , low to zero thermal mass, forced-air
> heating, homes with R19 insulation (which works out to less than R19
> due to thermal bridging).
> 
> Per the building code, each house will face the street it is on at a
> 90 degree angle - whether that is optimal for solar gain or not.
> Each house will have limited thermal mass - too much materials
> costs.  Etc etc.

Yep.

We are forced to build stupid little un-breathable boxes that cannot
exist without power.

It's not just about efficiency either.  Building codes also prevent a
lot of safer and more reliable electrical wiring, cable routing,
communications cable routing, modification and repair ability, and so
on.  It's across the board massive stupidity, and very few people even
realize it.

A small few cities have started reversing the laws to help curb energy
problems, ugliness, and the sprawl effect.  Repealing zoning laws is a
big step forward, and really improves the situation.

Zoning is about the most stupid idea ever.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["That which is overdesigned, too highly
specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome garantees, if
not failure, the absence of grace." -- William Gibson, All Tomorrow's
Parties]