Posts by John Robson 5244 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2008
And get a gel tractor saddle - your nether regions really dont need to be brutalised to exercise.
Except that if you have a very soft saddle then the pressure gets applied to places it shouldn't rather than your sit bones taking your weight and not more sensitive areas.
Of course if you really want comfort then don't bother with a saddle, go recumbent.
So what is your car allowance, and how much do you spend on fuel.
Because you might find that the sums aren't as bad as you think.
I shifted from buying my own car to a lease, and that was only possible because the costs of running an EV are much lower (additionally because motability offers very good value). But that's from buying cars with 80k+ on the clock to getting a new car on a lease without a change in cost.
The challenge is that 400 mile range is actually on the limit of current vehicles.
Personally I see 200 miles (real world) as a sweet spot - a 350kW charging capability (now being widely deployed in the UK, the electric highway is in new ownership) would mean that a 6 minute break every couple of hours is all that would be needed.
That's probably good enough for all but the most extreme road warriors.
Have a think about how often you need that - as an EV user I use rapid chargers a handful of times a year. Because I'm not tied to the vehicle whilst it charges... it just doesn't matter for 90%+ of miles, and 99%+ of journeys.
Personally I'd quite like a few more miles than the 140 I currently get, but it doesn't need to be much. The trick is to make the 10/20%-80% range sufficient that I want to stop and grab a cup of tea/mug of coffee and get rid of the last one.
That's ~140 miles (a stop and stretch every couple of hours is good for concentration)... So a 200 mile battery would fit that bill completely (140miles/70% (i.e. 10%-80%)). At 4m/kWh that would be 35kWh needed, if you want that in 10-15 minutes then you are looking at 140kW to 210 kW. Oh, look currently chargers are putting out 350kW (i.e. a six minute charge - just about time to go and grab a cup of beverage and lose the last one).
Driving an EV means you think about fuel in a different way, it's not a hassle to fill up, because it very rarely involves any time spent next to the car.
But you don't need a generator on site. We have this thing called electricity, and we can move it around the country very economically, and with very little loss, using these things called cables.
Given that there are ~32.7 million cars in the UK (2021), doing an average of 7400 miles (2019) at a reasonable 4m/kWh that's 60TWh, or a bit under 7GW (90+% of which won't be needed at service stations of course).
You might want a small substation.
You could better posit the potential benefits of a more distributed grid and install SMRs on such sites... They already have pretty good round the clock use, and therefore passive security, they are distributed through the country, with a bias towards higher population densities, but are generally outside those population centres.
An SMR on each of the 158 UK motorway service stations would only need to be 45MWe (and they are anything up to 300MWe) to completely cover all car transport needs.
Alternatively.... we installed 45GW of renewable generation in the decade between 2010 and 2020 - albeit that will be the easiest 45GW, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that we could install another 7 over the course of the next two decades (i.e. a decade after fossil fuelled cars are no longer available new - a reasonable, but accelerated, replacement cycle).
If you did go the (crazy) route of having a purely petroleum based power source for your EV fleet...
Then you get a higher thermal efficiency (larger engine), and therefore probably more miles per gallon than you would get in a dino juice car anyway. Additionally the waste heat can be used to heat the service station, and the exhaust can be easily controlled and processed with devices which don't have the compromises associated with packaging that treatment into a car - and those gasses aren't being released into the centre of towns where there are people breathing them directly (i.e. it's less bad in terms of location as well)
There are a relatively small proportion of people who can't charge at home (from the numbers I am aware of it's probably around 15%, certainly no higher than 20%), and for those people most charging will be done at other destinations: supermarket charging, workplace charging, shopping centre charging, car park charging...
Lots of places to charge - places where you will be there for a few hours... even a miserly 7kW (most home chargers) charge at ~30mph. So if you are going somewhere 15 miles away for an hour... you don't need anything other than a really slow destination charger.
It's a different mindset in terms of fuel, but it's not an "I'm disabled so I can't", or an "I can't charge at home so I can't use it all".
In terms of accessibility... It is irritating that many of the fast chargers aren't very accessible (often up a kerb), but at least they (for no reason I can fathom) tend to have access aisles.
Fortunately I can walk around the car, using it for support, so the accessibility doesn't significantly impact me - but the choices around access are really odd.
I quite like the idea of aluminium air batteries as a range extender.
At around 1kWh/kg already, with 2 being projected (and 8 being the theoretical limit) with a relatively easy fuel/refuel system (you'd need to recycle the hydroxide to make it feasible) you don't win any overall efficiency prizes, but... if you're using it as a range extender on rare long journeys rather than as a the primary drive source... then I think it could make some sense (though improvements to charging are almost completely eliminating the issue, I still like the idea of a drop in N00 mile pack.
It would also be something that you could reasonably carry one round permanently - no more range anxiety, because your 'backup pack' is enough to do hours of driving, and it's significantly lighter than an engine or any lithium ion battery pack.
A standardised 25kg unit to be swapped in and out would get you 100 miles currently, 200 projected, 800 theoretical - you could easily have a set of slots for those nice to be able to deplete one completely before swapping it back out.
You don't need to carry them around most of the time, then you drop in the battery, drive - use it to recharge the Li-ion battery, or just to do the baseload of the driving, and then return the battery at the far end in the same way that you return a calor gas canister when it's been used.
I may well have misread - 800km is alot less than 800 miles, I still think it's probably excessive for the vast majority, but it's quite possible to have vehicles with different battery capacities available for those who are willing to pay the extra.
Parallel hybrid trains are odd, I quite liked the explanation that Technology Connections gave about the volt's series hybrid layout, and that was a sane layout. The electric drive train does make some sense, but really - batteries aren't nearly as bad as you think they are.
If you are only stopping for 15 minutes in an 18 hour trip then you aren't getting nearly enough break to drive that journey safely - I assume you are making multiple such stops, but even so - driving for basically 18 hours straight isn't safe, and for various classes of vehicle isn't legal - that's at least two days (10 hours max each) of driving, with a required rest of 8.5 hours (three per week, the rest must be 10 hours).
So let's take a 16 hour road trip... at 70mph that's 1120 miles.
Looking at 350kW charging and 4m/kWh that's a total of 48 minutes of charging.
Except of course that you don't need to wait to fill up to start, nor do you require a full battery at the end - so you get "one battery charge" of range for free.
A 300 mile battery would therefore take just 35 minutes of charging on a 16 hour journey.
Take some number between those as a your estimate, depending on your tolerance for the orange fuel light.
I *really* like the sound of the electric motor in my car, or rather the lack of sound of the electric motor.
It means I can have a conversation with my wife, in a fossil fuel car she needs to wear a radio mic and I wear an IEM receiver connected to a neck loop with my hearing aids set to T loop setting.
" large number of people relying on on-street parking "
There really aren't as many of those as people make out.
A recent study revealed that a staggering 24% of households didn't have off street parking.
But then again 23% of households don't have a car.
The overlap is neither perfect nor random, but I think it's safe to suggest that 85% of vehicle owners have somewhere to charge at home.
Existing service stations are almost all served by "the electric highway", and their new owners are fitting banks of 350kW chargers throughout the network, so yes "they" can afford it.
Why lug around an engine and all that complexity when you don't need to.
The increased efficiency of large engines running in controlled conditions will offset transmission losses, and that's in the worst case when you don't account for any non fossil fueled power generation in the country. (25-35% for most small petrol engines, 35-50% for modern power plants)
Exactly - the same is true for an EV, rapid charging is the "last resort", or more often... only ever used on long journeys, where a short break is usually a welcome opportunity to stretch the legs, get some air and a fresh batch of coffee (and dispose of the last batch).
The vast majority of charging is (for the ~85% of households with off street parking for their car) going to be done at home, overnight, where the speed doesn't matter and the cost is very low (even negative at times).
Some of the remainder will be able to charge at work, where again speed isn't an issue.
Most of the rest will use fast (i.e. slower than rapid) chargers at various places throughout the week, whilst they are shopping or eating out.
That's slightly bogus though - petrol engines are so inefficient that it's not a reasonable comparison.
Additionally you don't need to babysit a car charger, I can go and get my coffee whilst it is charging, you're stuck holding a (heavy, unwieldy, certainly for smaller adults as well as any with any significant upper body weakness) fuel dispenser the whole time.
Is it a faster "charge"? yes.
Does that difference matter? no.
Why not?
Because fast charges are a tiny percentage of the energy that goes into a car. How often do you fill up at a motorway services rather than your local supermarket?
That option is basically going to be battery leasing. It could work, but it's so rarely needed by most that it's not a great option.
If you can charge at 350kW, which is fast becoming the new standard you can add 1200 to 1500 miles an hour... And remember this is only something that is likely on v long journeys (i.e. at a time when you need a break to relieve yourself, rent more coffee and have some food).
I don't particularly see the need for 800 mile batteries, it's completely overkill almost all the time - and adds cost and mass to a vehicle that doesn't need it. 400 mile battery with the capability of charging from 50m to 350m in 13 minutes would be far more sensible (it halves the cost of the battery if nothing else).
Remember that you don't have to supervise a charger like you do a petrol pump.
A 15 minute stop every 4-5 hours is hardly crippling to a journey.
If it is fully decommissioned I can see Musk using Hubble recovery as a starship test flight.
That would be spectacular. But what would you launch in its place? A more modern version of the same? Something with even bigger mirrors (either a 8.5m one to sit inside the starship fairing or multiple 8m hexagons to be assembled in orbit?)
The spectral capability of Hubble (particularly IR IIRC) can't be reproduced on the ground - it's not a matter of adaptive optics, but of atmospheric absorption.
Given current hardware, what would you add to a Hubble 2.0?
Or would we be better off skipping Hubble 2.0 and going straight to a moon based telescope? Musk is getting perilously close to being able to put a significant amount of stuff there after all (and by the time a Hubble recovery trip could be made)
SpaceX have the delta V and life support available on the dragon
What they don't have is the arm (though I am sure one could be deployed in the trunk) or the airlock or the EVA suits.
They could go all gemini and just vent the atmosphere until they get back in, but that doesn't seem like a particularly likely scenario.
So you want to issue driving licenses based on the ability to hold a conversation?
I'll wait until the autonomous systems have passed a driving test - until then I'll still be driving, and taking advantage of all the assistive features I can - whether those are things like ABS to assist me in "Oh shit" moments, or things like lane keeping and ACC that help me on a normal journey.
Yes - but it's not the condition for which most current ACC systems are useful. It's bit like complaining that your toaster doesn't make coffee in the morning.
ACC is there so that in dense traffic you can set the cruise control and if the vehicle in front slows by a bit you don't have to keep changing the CC settings, it's adaptive.
I have mine set to max distance and don't find people pulling in front of me more than they would if I was either controlling that distance myself or had it set to a closer distance. Nor does it slam the brakes on when they inevitably do so at a motorway junction.
"Dials (and knobs, switches and buttons) are easy compared to the multi-function touch displays much liked these days. I suggest if you are finding them difficult you may wish to assess whether you are actually fit to drive.'
I agree with your disdain for touchscreens as an in car interface.
However the closest I have ever come to another vehicle on the road was twenty year ago when I glanced down to grab the heater control. Massive great dial, so took no more than .1-.2 seconds to glance, but in that moment the vehicle in front started an emergency stop. I stopped with about 6" to spare, and was then overtaken by a small blue cloud that used to be part of my rear tyres.
My comment that driving was difficult wasn't that I found it particularly so - but that in general operating lethal machinery in public is difficult. The levels of concentration required to do it properly are much, much higher than most motorists manage. Reducing that level slightly, and reducing the time your eyes are away from the road at all, is a good thing.
Since I became disabled I have an additional cognitive load to deal with, and the aids are therefore even more important to me, previously they were useful gimmicks (i.e. I could do without them, but they were still an aid), now they are significantly important.
As a completely non driver aid example:
Keyless entry for a car. I had it, thought is was a fun gimmick, used it anyway. Replaced car, didn't have it any more. No big deal.
Then became disabled.
So now I come out of the supermarket, have to fish around in the bag for the key, open the boot, put the key back in the bag, put shopping and wheelchair in the boot, stagger round the car, fish the key out again, unlock the driver's door, put key back, get in, get key out for a third time, put key in ignition.
Because every action requires both hands, I can't just keep the key out - and suddenly keyless entry is no longer a gimmick but a major feature.
"No my disdain is for those aids that don't actually aid me,"
And since they don't help you they can't possibly help anyone else.
Remember when people didn't trust seatbelts, airbags, ABS... because they were potentially dangerous in some rare condition, or they interfered with you "driving" the vehicle.
">And as for the significant number of cars that will brake *for you* if they detect that you came off the throttle and went onto the brake very suddenly
Actually, a more important consideration is detecting that the car in front has started to slow and that you need to slow and potentially slam your brakes on."
Erm - that would be the adaptive cruise control technology you were just slamming - but in a state where it can't be turned off and is called collision avoidance.
“ The overwhelming majority of car crashes are the results of decisions or the lack of well before the brake pedal is applied, however firmly. ”
Well, there is that…. One could argue that that’s *all* incidents, decisions around maintenance and inspection being important decisions as well. But the point was that many people were hitting things when their (late) reactions were actually still “in time”.
Firmly of the belief that licenses should require retests every few years.
Firmly of the belief that various advanced driving courses should be mandated for higher performance vehicles.
Also firmly of the belief that keeping my eyes on the road is a good thing - and that’s what adaptive cruise control and lane keeping allow me to do.
Stopped traffic is a rather peculiar situation - most current systems don’t deal with it.
I don’t trust the car to slow/stop unless it’s already following something … You have to ask whether failure of the autonomous systems happens more of less often than failure of the nut behind the wheel.
Evidence at the moment is that it doesn’t. Both failure modes are catastrophic, but one system has the opportunity to learn from the mistake, whilst the other doesn’t.
So you think it’s easier to keep aware of all the vehicles around you when you also have to look away from said other vehicles.
That makes complete sense. /s
I do hope your disdain for driver aids extends to servo assisted brakes, ABS, power steering, and everything else that is basically de tiger at this point. And as for the significant number of cars that will brake *for you* if they detect that you came off the throttle and went onto the brake very suddenly - because many incidents weren’t the result of lack of braking capacity in the vehicle, but lack of brake pressure applied.
I am aware enough of what's going on, but the assistance virtually eliminates the cognitive load required to maintain gaze stabilisation. So I can take over at any point AND the assistance features are enabling me to do that for more than twice as long as I could without them.
I always welcome an additional set of eyes on the road, whether they belong to a passenger or the car.
Just because you can't maintain awareness of what's around you whilst assistance features make that easier doesn't mean noone can.
There is a point at which you start to trust the automated system too much, but that's a long way off for most automated systems at the moment.
No, my car hasn't been adapted at all.
Do try not to spout rubbish.
Of course I am still responsible for safely controlling the vehicle, as I would have been if I ran into the back of someone whilst ABS was installed. The fact that the assistive technologies more than double the amount of time I can spend the wheel is irrelevant to the responsibility for the vehicle.
This isn't a car that is advertised as self driving in any way, it just has some assistance features. Having been driven in a Tesla using auto pilot it is a remarkable system. It wasn't, last time I checked, level 5.
No self driving vehicle needs to reach perfection, it needs to beat the average human. That is a task which is probably well within our reach the majority of the time.
Heck, I'd even be happy with a motorway level of autonomy. Drive to the motorway, relax, then drive off the motorway in a fresh state. Just reducing the amount of tired drivers on the roads off the motorways would be a significant benefit.
The problem with the "but sometimes" is that you ignore the benefits of the "most of the time".
So what if the car can't drive you all the way to your destination, if it can put you within ten miles without several hours of fatigue then it has massively improved the safety of all parts of the journey.
Only as worrying as the incompetence of most drivers.
As a disabled driver I very much appreciate lane tracking and adaptive cruise control, even if my car doesn't seem to grok that dual carriageway NSL is 70 rather than 60, or that speed limits persist around corners. At least use the manual speed limiter setting is nice and easy to use.
And that's why the default window manager is usually fine. Gnome or KDE I don't care. On a lower powered box XFCE. Not a problem.
I used to use ion3 when I was doing more software dev than I do now.
Currently stuck with whatever apple throws at me, which is very annoying in certain edge cases, but generally works well enough.
Haven't done any serious work on anything from Redmond in a long while now. And that was on stuff that other people looked after, I basically needed something to run a set of shells.
Trivial cost per download, but when you are selling that data to anywhere up to the apparently 1 billion active iPhones in the world today...
It adds up.
I agree that the fact that the "big players" who release free apps aren't paying their way, but that's a different fish for Apple to fry.
"The cost for validating and hosting an app is the same whether 1 or a million copies were sold."
So you think their bandwidth is free?
There is an incremental cost, and a cost for the hosting, and it's not unreasonable to charge that on a per sale basis - i.e. those who can most afford to support the infrastructure pay most towards it's upkeep.
Whether or not 30% is reasonable is a different question, I think it's very hard to justify when it is for subscriptions or for in-app purchases, stuff that apple don't have anything to do with. Billing simplicity is only worth so much.
I'm not sure I'd suggest anyone carries around nitroglycerin, even if it does have a medicinal benefit, the more obvious risks are rather more severe.
The fact that smart speakers have found a place in so many homes is purely down to their benefits. There is certainly an argument to say that we now have sufficient compute capability in very low power devices that we don't need them to be cloud connected at all times, but we wouldn't have got to the point where it's possible to build a "disconnected smart speaker" without the work that was done on the connected versions.
It's like banning all cars because of the deaths motorists cause. Heck, we don't even ban the bloody motorists.
Nothing to do with the ultrasonics, but the advent of voice based assistants has been massive for many - to write them off in the way you did is seriously detrimental to those for whom they make a serious difference.
For most, I agree, they are a luxury - but you can't help throwing the baby out with the bathwater with such sweeping damnation of the devices.
"With enough influence, everything is fungible."
And that's what needs to be stopped - Do I see an easy and obvious solution? No, but then I am neither a tax accountant, nor and economist.
Do I think that a solution exists? I am convinced of it.
Do I think said solution would be implemented? I am convinced it would not, the obscenely wealthy pay for election campaigns in return for these loopholes (and direct contracts nowadays).
"The embarrasing thing is that we were an oil company, and we were supposed to know about such things!"
Brilliant - I've only been at one company that did DR processes well, and it doesn't come cheap (but it does come with great reliability, which is correctly more important in certain sectors).
The closest I've come to the failed diesel generator is working next door to a company that, supposedly, had it happen.
Given the number of people here who have claimed to have had it actually happen to them... I am more inclined to believe the reports.
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