Smalltalk with James Robertson

With the slack sales of the Volt, Chevy is thinking about some course corrections:

The battery pack is far and away the most expensive single component in the car and the thought is that a reduction of the pure EV range to just 20 miles (down from its current 30 - 50) could have a whopping $10,000 reduction in cost.

The trouble is, the price tag isn't the only problem - the range is. Why would anyone want a car with a 20 mile range (extended some by a small gas tank) instead of a regular car that gets 35 mpg, or a hybrid that does better than that? My 1989 clunker gets between 30-35 mpg right now, so I just can't see the point. And mind you, this is from someone who drives less than 5000 miles a year....

Technorati Tags: cars, ev, volt

I haven't tried "The Daily" yet, but John Gruber's review isn't making me more interested:

Why wait for The Daily when you can open Mobile Safari and see the home page for any of your favorite news sites in 10 seconds? The point of native apps is to provide a better experience than websites can offer. Watching a splash screen rotate a “Loading…” spinner for 80 seconds isn’t it.

I'm frequently on very slow wifi at hotels now, so that 80 seconds might turn into gosh knows how long for me. He makes a great point bout how Flipboard gets something in front of you fast, and then continues loading in the background. That's what this sort of news app needs to do.

Technorati Tags: media, iPad

If this comes to pass - Betelgeuse going SuperNova and giving us what looks like a "second sun" for a few weeks - it would be awesome:

When that happens, for at least a few weeks, we'd see a second sun, Carter says. There may also be no night during that timeframe

Hat tip Rob Fahrni

This is kind of amazing - Boston has retrofitted an ambulance for the extremely obese:

The ambulance is equipped with a special stretcher that can hold 850 pounds and a hydraulic lift with a 1,000 pound capacity

The part that made me do a double take though - a spokesman was quoted on the need:

The ambulance is likely to be needed two to four times a week, he said.

The key piece of the MSNBC write up on the Nissan Leaf for me is this:

Nissan says it can take as long as 20 hours to charge up the car using a standard 120-volt circuit. If you hook up to a 240-volt Level 2 charging station — which can be installed in your home for the estimated cost of $2,200 — you can cut that time down to eight hours or so for a full charge.

Mind you, I don't drive much. And once I start my new job (commuting by air to Dallas), I'll be driving my own car even less. Even with all that though, it just doesn't seem practical. I drive without air conditioning in the summer (my car's unit is broken), but - I'm not going to an office. If I were driving to work in this area, A/C would be an absolute necessity, unless I wanted to arrive soaked. Since running full bore A/C uses the same power that drives the car, that lessens range, and given the ridiculous recharge time (few people have a 240 volt outlet in their garage), it becomes even less practical.

The only way I can see this working is for the battery packs to get small enough that a "charge station" would swap your battery for a fully charged one, and charge you based on the power you received and the state of the battery you came in with. Otherwise, I can't see why I would buy something like the Leaf instead of a hybrid.

Technorati Tags: electric car, car

I was over on Facebook this morning getting the daily screencast online, when I noticed the big "go Vote" banner they are running. As it happens, I'm something of a contrarian on the whole "make sure you vote" thing. In fact, I'd prefer fewer people voted based on one small thing: if you can't name your current:

• Local representative (state and town/county)
• House of Representatives Congressman
• 2 Senators in the US Senate

Then please, do the rest of us a favor: stay home. An uninformed vote is worse than no vote at all. Pick whatever set of ideas you think represents you best; that's not the part that bothers me. Just make sure you have a a clue as to who is running, and what they all stand for :)

Technorati Tags: voting

This story from Chile - about how the miners trapped there are getting physical and moral support via a lifeline of small gadgets and other items - is really fascinating.

Technorati Tags: chile, miners

At the rate prices are dropping, I'm pretty sure we'll see "free, with mandatory ads" fairly soon:

As competition in the e-books device market heats up, Borders is cutting the prices of its leading eReading devices, the Kobo and Aluratek to $129 and $99.99 respectively. The Kobo was previously priced at $149.99 and the Aluratek was priced at $119.99.

Technorati Tags: e-readers

A volcano in Indonesia is erupting:

Towering clouds of ash are being spewed out of Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra and thousands of villagers living on its slopes have been forced to head to emergency shelters, mosques and churches.

This one hasn't gone up since 1600, so right now, no one knows what to expect. If we got an event like the 1815 Tambora explosion, it could be a real problem. That one gave North America "the year without a summer".

Technorati Tags: volcano