Recent Comments:
Subaru features STELLA electric car at G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit {Engadget}
Jun 29th 2008 10:07AM I honestly don't know which requires a larger paradigm shift in the general public, purely battery powered electric cars or fuel cell powered electric cars.
Everyone rags on hydrogen as smoke and mirrors but battery powered EVs have some serious hurdles to over come amongst the general driving public:
1. Every city in North America will need huge auto recycling facilities if Battery EVs take off because @ $20000 a piece for the battery there will be no such thing as a used EV market because just as people won't buy a refurbished cordless phone that does not come with a new battery, they sure as hell aren't going to buy a used EV without one, and for the cost of a new battery, well, you might as well just buy a whole new EV. So cars will be as disposable as cell phones, just creating a whole lot more waste to worry about.
2. Charge times. 10 minute recharges are as much a fantasy as the hydrogen economy. There are no fast chargers in existence and every EV will require a different charger. Install them at home you say? Hmm, except for every city in North America has it's own rules about how much wiring and electric current in homes along with the Stat/Province and federal rules. Lots and lots of bureaucratic red tap to over come there.
3. Cold weather. Existing batteries do not perform well in cold weather. Sure my gas powered car gets poor millage in winter to, but it does not get poor millage when parked at my place of employment for 10 hours in Winter. I don't want to lose energy while my car is parked outside for 3 or 4 months of the year.
4. Range. Sure the average commute is under 40 miles, but who wants to charge their car every night. People are used to getting a week or so out of existing technology. It will require a shift in attitudes of the buying public to accept a car that only lasts a day AT best on a charge. Oh sure, A Tesla Roadster can go about 200 miles on a charge, but a Tesla roadster is based on a slightly over sized go-cart of a car which is completely useless for the average commuter. The Tesla 'Whitestar' sedan and the Think Ox are purely vaporware for the foreseeable future so there are no EVs in existence that would even come close to meeting what the general car buying public would consider an acceptable daily commuter.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get off gas as much as anyone, but between fuel cells and battery EVs we probably still have 20 years to go before either of the technologies is at a point where they can truly make a significant impact in the market. Sure Honda is making 200 FCX Clarity's per year, and there will be a tiny niche market of battery EVs, but until at least our unborn kids are graduating from University, for the most part we'll all still be driving the gas powered cars we have for the last hundred or so years.
Joyswag: PlayStation 3 (40GB) {Joystiq}
Jun 3rd 2008 4:03PM I usually buy games at Best Buy
Motorola CTO Richard Nottenburg takes off {Engadget}
May 17th 2008 6:42AM Maybe as former Chief TECHNOLOGY officer we can blame him just a little for the turn Motorola has taken seeing as how they are a technology company and all, and it is their technology that has not progressed in about 4 years...
Maybe this guy's departure is a sign that the rest of Moto has started to wise up to reality and they are casting off dead weight to keep the ship afloat.
Joyswag: Win Grand Theft Auto IV on your platform of choice {Joystiq}
May 1st 2008 2:28PM PS3 please
Blew the $60 on a stripper so I need GTA VI to take out my frustrations in the virtual world
Famicom clone closes the circle with an NES cart for a case {Engadget}
Apr 22nd 2008 10:35AM It won't be your grand kids, it won't even be your kids. At the rate technology moves you'll see it in about 5 years lol
Bell ExpressVu considering FreeSat service for delivering OTA networks {Engadget HD}
Apr 11th 2008 5:09PM Perhaps they are just throwing the million or so folks around Canada with a free to air DVB box a bone.... I mean, Bell could still take a piece of the ad revenue and the installed user base is already there....
Starz drops $25 million on new logo, marketing initiative {Engadget HD}
Apr 1st 2008 1:53PM Well, no one said lots of money means that you know how to spend it. If anything that new logo is worse then their current one.
"are you ready" for things to suck even more?
Conceptual remote could slip right into Bang & Olufsen's lineup {Engadget HD}
Mar 28th 2008 12:03PM Umm, so it turns on the TV, controls the volume and has the ability to tune channels up and down...
This is an evolution of the remotes we've been using since the remote controls inception how?
I have over 1200 channels, I would not want to tune from channel 100 to 800 with that thing.
Pretty sure, functional no.
BlackBerry 9000 in the wild {Engadget Mobile}
Mar 28th 2008 11:41AM Sony is so gonna sue their asses for stealing a little to much of their PlayStation interface
Pininfarina's designs take off with Agusta AW139 Executive Chopper {Autoblog}
Mar 28th 2008 9:08AM Meh, only two and only 15" screens? The gansta in me is gonna have to give this one a pass
