Craig Vetter has been focused for a couple years on what he calls a "Freedom Machine". This would be a small/light motorcycle, with a full streamlined fairing, highly energy efficient, getting over 100 miles/gallon, and able to handle typical daily around town trips like grocery shopping. I met him at the Mid America Motorcycle Meet in July 2009 when the TTXGP team was there, and he said to me that we (TTXGP fans) were making history by bringing electric motorcycles to such an event. He had mentioned electric motorcycles in his freedom machine writings but dismissed them on those pages. It seems having TTXGP show up with race worthy bikes opened his eyes to the possibility. In any case he has signed up with the TTXGP rules Wiki hopefully to bring his long long experience with motorcycle design and racing to the writing of TTXGP racing rules.

In the 2010 State of the Union and immediately following announcements, the Obama Administration called for money for high speed rail transport. There are many high speed rail proposals being developed around the U.S. In California it would connect the LA area with San Francisco and some points in-between.

Rail transit is generally more convenient than either cars or airplanes. The typical existing rail transit is slightly faster than driving a car, slower than flying in an airplane. High speed rail would be closer to airplane speed with a smaller environmental impact.

$8 billion however isn't enough to pay for the whole system. It'll help juice the projects along, however.

Getting everybody to adopt electric cars just means people switch from one kind of car to another kind of car. It would do nothing about gridlock, the abysmal blight that highways are, and the horrible land use conditions imposed by cars. Much better would be to convert over to more mass transit. But the popular conception is that cars are the only way to get around and therefore the only form of "green transportation" which can exist is a cleaner sort of car. There is more problems to be solved than just making cleaner cars.

Nissan decided they don't need as much of the DOE loan as they thought. Hence they've told the DOE to reduce the loan.

There's a couple possibilities why they'd do this: a) Backing out of doing LEAF production, b) They've found a way to do the project with less money required, c) Battery prices are dropping (see b), d) There is some blowback against companies taking these loans, and Nissan wants to reduce their exposure..

Italy's CRP Racing To Build Motorcycle For TTXGP Race Series

Nov 26, 2009, ©Copyright 2009, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

From a press release issued by CRP Racing:

Zero carbon, clean emission motorsports today (26 November 2009) received a further endorsement that this really is the next generation of motorsports. Ground breaking Italian manufacturer, CRP Racing, announced that it will be building electric super sports motorcycles exclusively for TTXGP. The ‘Italian’ style bike, the eCRP1.0, is expected to launch at the Motorsports Industry Association (MIA) event Cleaner Racing Conference on 13 January 2010 at NEC in Birmingham. For the first time, an Italian company will bring to this ‘new’ world of electric motorcycles, its knowledge and experience which can only benefit all concerned. The eCRP 1.0 bike will be the first Italian electronic vehicle that will enter the TTXGP 2010 series which includes PRO1, PRO2 Isle of Man and circuit races across the globe.

CRP Racing eCRP 1.0 First Look

Azhar Hussain, Lord Drayson, Livia Cevolini (CRP Owner), Franco Cevolini (CRP Owner), Giampiero Testoni (CRP Partner)

CRP Racing eCRP 1.0 Specs

FRAME: Aluminum double beam

REAR SWING ARM: Aluminum Alloy

FRONT SUSPENSION: “Upside-Down” telescopic hydraulic fork OHLINS Stem dia. 43 mm

REAR SUSPENSION: OHLINS Hydraulic progressive shock absorber

FRONT BRAKE: Floating Braking Wave diskDisc dia. 320 mm

REAR BRAKE: Single Braking Wave diskDisc dia. 220 mm

CALIPER: Four pistons radial “Brembo” caliper

WHEEL RIMS: Forged Aluminum Marchesini Front Rim – Size 3.50″x17’’ Rear Rim – Size 5.50’’x17″

FRONT TIRE: Front Tire – Size 120 x 70-17

REAR TIRE: Rear Tire – Size 165 x 60- 17

WHEELBASE: Wheelbase –1376 mm

MOTORS: Dual DC “Agni 95″ electric motors.

VOLTAGE: 72 V

BATTERIES: 6 KW/h Batteries Pack52 packs (4 sets of 13 packs each)

CONTROLLER: Size 480mm x 150mm x 60mm

CHARGER: Zivan NG3 – 96 V

BMS – Battery Management System

WEIGHT: 175 Kg.

CHARGING TIME: 2h

ENDURANCE RANGE: 25 miles (depending on track conditions)

SPEED: 112 mph

Azhar Hussain, Lord Drayson, Livia Cevolini, Franco Cevolini, Giampiero Testoni

Image Source: Facebook
Spec Source: Road Racing World

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A proposal to move large amounts of wind and solar power out of the Southwest by linking the three separate North American electricity grids with state-of-the-art switching terminals and superconducting cables is now in hands of federal regulators.

Tres Amigas LLC has petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for two key rulings ...

...The three terminals would receive alternating-current power from transmission companies in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, and convert it to direct-current flows using solid-state voltage source converters. The direct current would move between the three terminals to carry out any of six possible transactions: Power could flow into or out of Texas, for instance by way of the two interconnections, or it could move between the interconnections directly.

The use of direct current and voltage converters will overcome the current barrier to power transfers between Texas and the interconnections, each of which is operating out of sync electrically with the other, a condition that would destroy equipment if an alternating-current connection were made today....

...Harris said in an interview that he purposely did not seek Energy Department stimulus grants for the new technology and proclaimed confidence that the project can be privately financed through debt and equity investments....

Transmission providers can use the Tres Amigas connection to buy the cheaper power in one grid for sale in a higher-priced region, and Tres Amigas will profit by moving the energy, the firm's FERC filing says.

FERC's approval of Tres Amigas' flexible pricing proposal is essential, says Raskin. "To maximize the value of this facility, we need to have a combination of long-term and short-term pricing authority. We are pushing FERC's precedents."...

The Tres Amigas petition to FERC says that because energy is converted from an AC wave to a DC electronic pulse and then back into an AC wave synchronized with the receiving grid, the electrons in Texas are not "free flowing" into New Mexico or Oklahoma, preserving Texas' separation....

The Tres Amigas project stands to make an interesting and vital contribution to the state of renewable electricity production in the U.S. (see Tres Amigas Project in New Mexico promises more renewable energy through better electrical grid connectivity for more information) The south-west and especially west-texas regions have a lot of solar and wind power. The texas panhandle region has an especially strong wind resource. Further the regions are lightly populated. This makes them attractive for building wind and solar power installations but the problem is how to get power produced in those facilities to the market.

It turns out the U.S. electric market has three power regions. They are the Eastern Interconnection east of the Rocky Mountains, the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) west of the Rockies, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). Further the Texas statewide grid that Texas is a jurisdictional thing maintained by Texas to prevent federal regulation of its utility industry. This is a remnant of Texas's past as an independent nation which chose on its own to join the United States.

The Tres Amigas project creates an interchange between the three regions so that power can be sold between the regions. Hence electric production facilities can be built in, for example, the Texas Panhandle area and then sell power to the rest of the country. If there were no power sale agreement or interconnect then a producer in the Texas Panhandle could produce all the electricity they want but could only sell it to Texas.

As explained in the linked NY Times article the project has to jump through a few hoops to retain Texas' status as having its own electric power grid that isn't subject to federal regulation. It converts the alternating current electricity used on the grid into direct current electricity for exchange in the Tres Amigas interconnect facility. By doing the AC-DC-AC conversion they avoid a "direct flow" of electricity keeping FERC's grubby hands off Texas' electricity.

Sigh.

"What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared? This isn't the story of how we might vanish it is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind." The premise for this series is rather cockeyed, just how would it come about for humans to disappear without any other effect? For some reason that's the question the series tries to answer, if people suddenly disappeared what would happen to the stuff left behind? I think that while the literal premise is cockamamie it does serve to demonstrate the real fragility of our society despite the illusion of permanence. It's worth watching these shows and to ponder the fate of mankind.

Each episode is a stunningly graphic examination of how the very landscape of planet Earth would change in our absence. It uses movie-quality graphics simulations to depict the likely fate of dozens of iconic buildings and cityscapes around the world. What would happen to the millions of animals in agricultural captivity? What about the household pets? What about chemicals and whatnot stored in warehouses? When does Mt. Rushmore or Stone Mt wither away?

A key element of the story is the resources currently required to maintain the cities around us. The planets weather and plants and animals all attempt to impose the natural order upon the planet. It is the action of humans that instead imposes human order. Humans have diverted rivers, buried landscapes under concrete, built massive steel or concrete buildings, etc. The thing is all those buildings require constant maintenance, some requiring more than others. For example the Golden Gate Bridge (in San Francisco) is constantly exposed to ocean air, fog, and other weather coming in off the Pacific Ocean. Crews are constantly repainting the bridge in order to keep it from rotting away. Without humans to maintain these structures they crumble away due to weather and other natural effects.

Concrete is a particularly interesting material. It is immensely energy intensive to make concrete. Once it's poured into place it looks rather permanent, but in truth it crumbles away over time. Concrete is unlike the stone used by ancient cultures in the buildings which have lasted millenia, concrete structures are unable to last very long. Hence all the concrete structures from sidewalks to highway bridges to prisons to sports stadia, they all will crumble soon enough, requiring demolition and rebuilding. It's a cost our society is saddled with and I wonder whether our society will find itself unable to pay the bills to rebuild that concrete infrastructure?

Rabies is another example. In the U.S. this disease exists in the wild and to attempt to keep the disease in check biologists work in the field every year distributing vaccinations to the wild animal populations. Without those biologists vaccinating the wild animals the disease would be unchecked.

The Kudzu vines in Georgia are another example of humans being employed to keep nature in check. If humans were not constantly cutting and pruning the Kudzu infestations it would blanked the whole of the southeast U.S.

This is an interesting meme in Life After People - that nature left unchecked by humans is chaos and disaster and destruction. Um. It seems to me that the natural biological life on this planet existed for a billion years or more before humans came along. The natural biological life on this planet does not require humans to tend and care for it, instead the natural biological life on this planet showed it can take care of itself. The chaos and disaster and destruction shown in Life After People is instead destruction of the buildings and artifacts of human life. Those buildings and other artifacts are an unnatural attempt to impose an unnatural order upon the planet. What the show depicts is the process by which the planet will reimpose natural order.

Each episode includes an example of a city which had been inhabited by humans, but was abandoned. Each of these places have undergone decay and destruction because humans were not there to maintain human order. Without humans to maintain human order these cities are crumbling and falling apart.

One example is Hashima Island in Japan. It was a city built on a rocky island in the ocean where the inhabitants operated a coal mine (mining undersea coal). But 30 years ago the city was abandoned and is slowly crumbling away. Another example is Gary Indiana, a city built because of a U.S. Steel plant and which was abandoned when the U.S. Steel corporation died. The city of Gary Indiana is largely abandoned with crumbling buildings galore. Another example is Angkor Wat in Cambodia, abandoned over 600 years ago when the Khmer Empire was defeated by invaders from another land. There the jungle has taken over, with tree roots growing into the temple walls and the primary occupants are the wildlife.

The scenario they depict is more than extremely unlikely. Just how would all humans disappear all at once without a war or massive disease? Short of divine intervention humanity is unlikely to disappear without a fight. It's not worth pondering too closely the precise story they depict but it's very worth while pondering an aspect of this story.

Human history is full of examples of empires who were unable to continue funding the empire. The cost of maintaining these empires became too much, and the empire collapsed. Sometimes the collapse was hastened by wars or famine or some such. There's no reason to think the current capitalistic empire that's slowly engulfing the world will be permanent. There are plenty of indications it's long term health is very precarious. What's fueling this world spanning capitalistic globalized empire is cheap oil, and as cheap oil runs low becoming expensive oil the globalization empire will collapse.

In some cases the buildings and cities attain iconic importance to human culture. Certainly buildings like the Washington Monument or the Capital Building or the "Big Ben" tower in London have huge symbolic importance. But without maintenance they will crumble and collapse as did the once-grand capital of the Khmer empire, Angkor Wat.

A few years ago I visited St. Petersburg Russia. It had been the capital of the Russian Empire. The Tsars of Russia had built their main palaces all through this city. It was apparent that the lustre of that city was mostly left over from years of the Tsars. The years of Communist rule had not been kind to the city, but it appeared that in recent years they had been refurbishing the city through extensive rebuilding investment. Russia would only be able to afford this because of its own recent economic boom.

Links: 

http://www.history.com/content/life_after_people

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People:_The_Series

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_degradation

This is a tale of globalized megacorporations gone awry. I want to say at the outset that I believe the current state of deregulated globalized megacorporations comes about because the government has been weakened to the point it cannot rein in corporate excesses. Corporations have proved over and over they cannot be counted on to behave according to enlightened self interest, instead corporations have proved over and over they are willing to lie, cheat, steal, poison, and otherwise act to destroy their customers or employees. Corporations have proved over and over they have no ethics and no compunction about anything in the pursuit of profit. This despite the fact that corporations are made up of people, people who are making the horrendous decisions that lead to unethical business practices.

The story is about Walmart - the great bugaboo hobgoblin of the progressive. I myself immensely dislike that corporation and never set foot in one despite passing by their store quite regularly (it's across the street from the Whole Foods). The story in this article just cements my opinion about them.

When you have a corporation that "delivers at least 30% and sometimes more than 50% of the entire U.S. consumption of products" that corporation holds an inordinate amount of power. Namely: Walmart.

A few years ago a pet food quality scare opened up knowledge about bad stuff in the food industry. It was learned an Ontario-based company named Menu Foods was producing a massively large proportion of all pet food sold in the U.S. They delivered pet food under at least 150 different brand names from the high-end, expensive brands like Iams and Hill’s Pet Nutrition Science Diet to more pedestrian ones like SuperValu. Then double clicking on this food source it became known that essentially all production of wheat gluten had come to be controlled by China.

It isn't just wheat gluten and pet food at issue. It's that Chinese companies have gained complete control over production of various essential product components.

The issue isn't about China, it's about the risk inherent in putting control over essential resources in the hands of any other country. For example the U.S. is entirely beholden to OPEC countries for oil imports, a fact which puts the U.S. at risk to being controlled by those OPEC countries. As was proved during the mid 1970's during the fake oil crises of that era, if a country were to control supply of vital materials, that country can wield economic warfare against other countries.

China in particular has managed to gain a really strong position over the rest of the world through control over production of all sorts of things.

For those Americans who believe in what we were taught in civics class and Econ 101, the most disturbing revelation was not even the fragility of our food systems, but that some of our most cherished beliefs about how the U.S. economy works appear no longer to be true. We are told that companies are engaged in a mad scramble to discover exactly what we the U.S. consumers want and to devise perfectly tailored systems to supply those want as efficiently as possible. We are told that our economy is characterized by constantly chaotic yet always constructive competition and that any American with a better product and bit of gumption can bring that product to market and beat the big guys.

The true situation we have is nowhere near the wide open competitive paradise we seem to have. Instead we have stores full of basically identical products whose differ only in the color choice on the labels. It's all the same crap inside each one of the products.

Until we elected Ronald Reagan president, both Democrats and Republicans made sure that no chain store ever came to dominate more than a small fraction of sales in the United States as a whole, or even in any one region of the country. Between 1917 and 1979, for instance, administrations from both parties repeatedly charged the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, the chain store behemoth of the mid-twentieth century that is better known as A & P, with violations of antitrust law, even threatening to break the firm into pieces.

Then in 1981 we stopped enforcing that law. Thus, today Wal-Mart is at least five times bigger, relative to the overall size of the U.S. economy, than A & P was at the very height of its power.

A walk down the aisles of a megastore like Walmart may make it hard to believe there is no real choice. The dizzying array of brand names and product choices certainly looks like a huge variety of choice. But the truth is that megacorporations own the majority of the brand names, they enter into fake competition between their own brands, and in any case outsourcing means the source materials behind each product is the same.

Article Reference: 

Mega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

Electric Motorsport Inc. (EMS), winners of the TTXGP Isle of Man 2009 Open Class, is back again for TTXGP 2010 series.

EMS is seeking sponsorship for the TTXGP 2010 series which includes North America kicking off at Infineon 14-16 May.

Todd Kollin, EMS President, said, "The TTXGP is going to get real competitive this upcoming year. Electric Motorcycles still have a lot to prove on and off the track. Such competition will really spur innovation and technology in the EV industry, pushing the limits of what is possible."

Among other things, Electric Motorsport Inc is an American motorcycle manufacturer which produces zero emission electric motorbikes and scooters. The company's Open Class winning bike the "Native TTXGP" was built in Oakland California and sported an American Made AC Induction drive system. The Pro Class bike is one of 3 Yamaha R1 conversions Built by EMS and Grywx Fabrication.

Todd continued, "We've been working in this field for many years and played a key role in introducing electric motorcycles to the USA. Winning the TTXGP Open Class on the Isle of Man was an amazing experience for the whole team." A month later EMS outperformed the field once again by leading all five heats at the Mid Ohio TTXGP eGrandPrix with their pro bike hitting an unofficial 110mph on the straight.

"Companies sponsoring EMS and other TTXGP teams will not only show the world that they are supporting emerging clean technologies but they are also doing it in the most competitive environment of Motorcycle GP racing. The EMS team is looking forward to the new race season and open to any sponsors who want to be a part of it. Just think of it as RC racing for BIG kids and on some of the most famous race courses in the world. Be there."

For more information contact Mary Donovan, Director of Communications
(m) +44 (0)7533 671949
(e) mary.donovan@egrandprix.com

"For China’s BYD, the Warren Buffett-backed battery company turned automaker, hybrid sales have been anything but brisk this year. Since launching its F3DM plug-in hybrid model in December 2008, BYD has sold “several hundred” of the vehicles, according to a Reuters report on Tuesday. That’s up from only 80 F3DM sales through April of this year, and less than 100 as of August." This amount of sales is quite below their originally projected 10,000 PHEV's for 2009. Hurm.

In early December I got to do a test ride with the Nissan LEAF which visited the SF Bay Area. The LEAF is currently on tour of the United States. I think they have a winner on their hands. The test car was great, handled well, etc, and I really love the attitude of their whole team.

‘The time for simply talking about electric vehicles is over - we need real action on the ground to make the electric vehicle an easy choice for Londoners.’ The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson The Mayors office has a plan to have over 100,000 electric vehicles in London and over 25,000 charging points. Today there are 1000 electric vehicles on London streets and an existing network of charging points. As American's it's illustrative to look at how other governments are addressing the need to green the transportation system. A Dec 30 Huffington Post article (discussed below) describes comparatively anemic plans in Boulder Colorado and other American cities, while many cities around the U.S. are planning infrastructure development using DoE funding related to the 2010 rollout of the Nissan LEAF (see Planning for the coming wave of electric vehicles).