What Drives Us episode

#382 Nikola and GM Sittin’ in a Tree

14 Sep , 2020   Video

Russell buys a used Prius from Paul and explains why he flew 1200 and drove for 17 hours to do it, GM and Nikola decide to make trucks, the Las Vegas CC buys a monorail, Puerto Rico plans out a better future, new ways to make energy and more.

Here’s awesome Google Doc Paul mentioned: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1HflVng6sYIb6Gs4pOKiDGtqU5YJ2-hgdM4pRNaT62gs/htmlview?fbclid=IwAR3Xzeh-U5AVI_bcfcSAqx_PIBAVAoka3CYSkpaLZ1xKs_x2dqy8KU05NZA#

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audio only,What Drives Us episode

#352 EVs Everywhere!

7 Feb , 2020   Video

1) Russell teases that he’s been invited to a Toyota AWD event. More details in a future show.

2) Simon Wecker, a guy in Berlin, Germany, pulled 90 cell phones – all with Google Maps active – through empty streets. Why? Because Google interpreted all that data to mean that the streets were congested with 90 cars, all barely moving along. The result was empty streets thanks to Google routing everyone around Wecker and his wagon of phones.

3) Hyundai is doubling their Kona EV production be adding a second factory. This is in response to the Kona’s massive demand, which Hyundai is not able to keep up with.

4) The new US Building Codes will call for new homes in the US to be manufactured “EV Ready”.

5) Rivian and Amazon are designing and building a custom EV Amazon delivery van. It’s kind of cute.

6) We’re relatively excited to see that there are EV trucks coming to market. Americans love their trucks so if we want to win them over we’re going to need electric trucks.

7) Toyota is introducing new technology to safe stupid people from themselves. This new software will detect when someone mashes the accelerator rather than the brake and make sure the car doesn’t surge forward. Because, let’s face it, unexpected acceleration was really human error all along.

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audio and video,What Drives Us episode

#224 Chevrolet Bolt Review And This Week’s News

30 Mar , 2017   Video

This week’s news and reviews…

Mark –

Mark goes into detail on his week driving the Chevy Bolt EV

 

Paul –

Tesla finds some new funding

 

Russell –

Uber news round-up: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Android Auto whips ass on Apple Car Play

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audio and video,Featured,Features,What Drives Us episode

#217 Tesla, Elon Musk, Trump, Faraday Future and more Disasters

9 Feb , 2017   Video

This week’s show starts with a fiery debate between Evan and Russell over Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Come for the excitement and stick around for the excellent news coverage this week.

Russell Rant/s…

You can’t have it both ways, Elon Musk is normalizing trumps craziness

Thanks Igor

For posting info on the prime availability in NY state via twitter

And so begins the walkback of shame

Fucking Uber

Mark

VW tells us how they will spend the $2B Dieselgate Fine

11 facts about the Bolt

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What Drives Us episode

Hypermiling in the Social Media Age

28 Aug , 2016  

I’m in the process of recording these articles in a series of videos.  Click the image to the left to watch them.  While there, be sure to subscribe to the channel.


-Tony Schaefer

A lot of people are seemingly (or actually) addicted to Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, InstaGram, and/or whatever new social media app / website just went online while I was writing this sentence. So much time is spent (some would say ‘wasted’) electronically interacting with people, the whole concept of social media has gotten a really bad reputation. However, it can be argued that there are  beneficial facets to social media interactions and the ability to instantly engage with multiple people regardless of time and distance.

This article will discuss ways in which you can use social media and internet communities to improve your fuel economy. When possible, links are provided to online sources; this is not a promotion of one site over another. If one of your favorite online resources is missing, let us know so we can include it.

Join a Hybrid / Car / Hypermiling Community

Have you ever heard of those car clubs or motorcycle clubs who just get together once and a while to talk about their cars or motorcycles. All they do is get together, hang out, talk car, and perhaps drive around. Sounds really silly, doesn’t it? Well, congratulations: now you can do all those things online!!

Thanks to Google, online car forums are really easy to find. In the forums, you can find information about driving techniques, how to perform regular (or not-so-regular) maintenance, or speculation about upcoming models and features. Some forums are broad in their scope while others are relatively granular. But they all have one thing in common: they are all sustained by a group of individuals with mostly the same interests and concerns as you. Because of that, it is usually pretty easy to be welcomed into the community and easy to form friendships with other forum members.

Here is a list of some online forums and communities. This is clearly just a partial list:

Send us links for your favorite online community or any other community you know of.

Create / Join a Fuel Consumption Challenge

A few years ago, a couple coworkers were curious about this whole hypermiling thing. The best way to get them personally invested was to set up a competition between them. Using a relatively simple spreadsheet, we used their car’s EPA numbers to gauge how their MPG improved by implementing some basic hypermiling techniques. The entire thing was based on the honor system so there’s really no way to vouch for its accuracy, but according to their self-reporting, each were able to achieve more than 10% above their EPA ratings. It’s hard to say whether they would have achieved these results had they not been competing.

When you know your results are going to be seen by others, you will try harder. This is why a little friendly competition might give you the push to kick your efforts up a notch or two. It’s not only competition that provides the incentive to improve; sometimes simply knowing others are watching is enough.

If you join one of the online communities mentioned above, see if they have a place where people can post their fuel economy averages. Many do. If you are using a spreadsheet to monitor your mileage, consider making it available online via Google Docs, DropBox, or any other online storage service. If that’s not possible, consider creating an account at Fuelly where you can enter your tank-by-tank averages. Then you can distribute the hyperlink to your Fuelly account.

Participate in Ride Sharing Programs

While this might not improve your individual fuel economy, it will reduce your overall fuel consumption.

Check around to see if there are any local web resources where neighbors can set up a ride-sharing program. You know, a good old-fashioned carpool. For example, check out NextDoor.com to find neighbors and start a chat. Find out if anyone works near you.   The best-case scenario would be if someone lives and works near you.

If you like your coworkers, at least a few of them, find out if they live near you or between you and your job. Some days, you can pick them up; other days you can park at their place and they drive. Either way, that leg of the trip is done with one car rather than two. Word to the wise: you have to really like that person because if it gets to the point that you can no longer stand riding them or if one of you gets a promotion and now it’s awkward, you will need to cancel the carpool. Of course, you’ll still see that person at work every day.

Use Waze

Waze is a free, real-time traffic service owned by Google (or Alphabet, whatever). It is primarily used via the phone app. As people drive, Waze uses geotracking to monitor their speed to provide everyone else real-time traffic information. Drivers can also manually provide information to the system such as backed-up traffic, a traffic accident, car stopped on the road, or even where the police are hiding today.

Once the user enters their destination, Waze evaluates all its information to determine the fastest and most trouble-free route. Unfortunately, Waze cannot apply hypermiling logic to calculate the most fuel-efficient route. But by directing you around stopped traffic, the amount of time you spend idling is greatly reduced. This will save gasoline and/or battery charge.

One note about Waze: you are providing your real-time location to the Waze application. As the adage goes: if the product is free then you are the product. If this makes you a little uneasy, just skip this suggestion.

Attend Driving Clinics or Seek Help from a Hypermiling Expert

In addition to the first suggestion promoting online communities, you might want to also look into local, real life groups. As a side note, it’s funny how we now have to distinguish things as being in real life (IRL).

These groups are usually formed and populated by like-minded people. Some of the events I’ve attended have been held in parks, parking lots, even car dealerships. In some states, it’s not legal to sell cars on Sunday but it is legal to have the service center open. This means a friendly dealership might welcome a group for a meeting.

At these meetings, technical car reviews might be provided, maintenance information, and tips from other drivers. It’s usually pretty easy to find someone who is achieving really good gas mileage and who is more than willing to talk with you about improving yours. Many of the meetings I’ve attended have include “ride alongs” in which the ‘expert’ hypermiler will ride with the learner, providing advice for improvement. I’ve performed several ride-alongs; trust me: people are happy to do it. Just ask.

Search your local area for car groups. Here are two groups on MeetUp.com that might help get you started:

Conclusion

In this day and age, it should be easy to find like-minded people which whom you can discuss fuel efficiency. Whether online or in real life, working with others – and maybe even competing – will certainly give you that extra boost to improve your overall mileage.

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Article,EPA,Hypermiling

Why we Hypermile

2 Apr , 2016  

I’m in the process of recording these articles in a series of videos.  Click the image to the left to watch them.  While there, be sure to subscribe to the channel.


Introduction

There are many reasons to hypermile.  A while back,  some friends and I came up with about five different and distinct reasons. I’ll try to recap them (assuming I can remember them). The point is not that there is one specific reason to hypermile. Nor is it to argue that any one reason is better than the others. The point is this: any reason to improve your car’s mileage is a good reason.

Save Money

This one is pretty easy.  The less gasoline you consume, the more money you save.  The problem is perception and association.  When people go to the gas station, they complain about the cost of gasoline.  But when they are driving, they act as though gasoline is free.  The problem is that people only feel the pain of purchasing gasoline when they are actually at the station.  After that point, they quickly forget. They fail to associate the pain of buying gas with the way they drive.

Perhaps it would help if we replace gasoline with something else.  If gasoline is $2.00 per gallon and you have a 15 gallon tank, that’s $30 for a fill-up.  If you took that same $30 and purchased several gallons of milk, you might think of it a little differently.  Let’s say your child poured a large glass of milk and only drank half of it before pouring the rest down the sink. There’s a very high probability you’d get upset.  Why?  Are you concerned that the world is running out of milk cows?  Nope.  Are you worried that milk might clog the pipes?  Probably not.  What really gets you riled up is the realization that you paid real money for that milk and your kid is wasting it.

Replace “milk” with gasoline and “kid” with you. Then you will realize it is no different than when you buy a full tank of gasoline and drive in such a way as to waste much of it.  Why is wasting gasoline perfectly justifiable when wasting milk pisses you off?  There is no difference between wasting money spent on gasoline and wasting money spent on other things.  People just need to see it.

FuelEconomy.gov provides a simple calculator. You can enter your current average MPG as “Car 1” and speculate a 5% MPG improvement as “Car 2”. This puts hard numbers right in front of you. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/savemoney.shtml

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, burning one gallon of pure gasoline produces 19.64 pounds of Carbon Dioxide emissions. Burning one gallon of pure diesel produces 22.38 pounds.

I have to admit that I see “pounds of CO2” and have no idea what that means. Thank you, Google! The Natural Resources Defense Council does the best job, in my opinion, of making this rather abstract concept tangible. In short, filling a balloon with one pound of CO2 would swell the balloon to about two and a half feet across. That’s about 8.2 cubic feet. Compare that to a basketball, which is 9.5 inches with a volume of 0.26 cubic feet. This means burning one gallon of pure gasoline releases the equivalent of 31 basketballs of pure Carbon Dioxide.

This is why running your gasoline car in a closed garage will kill you. And quick. Here’s the rub: we all live in one giant garage. So far, its enormous size has been working in our favor. But everything (yes, everything) has its limit. Every day the average American fills up about 57 of those Carbon Dioxide balloons, emitting 467 cubic feet of CO2. You know those 10-foot moving trucks? That’s about four and a half of those. And that’s just you on just one day.

Considering all the gasoline burned in cars in the US and all over the world would create a staggeringly large number, no doubt. So let’s add to it. Large amounts of oil distilled to produce gasoline are shipped across the oceans in large tankers running huge diesel engines, they add to the total. Then there are the gasoline trucks that make deliveries to the gas stations; they add to the total.

What does all this Carbon Dioxide have to do with greenhouse gas? In case you haven’t heard, CO2 is a heat-trapping gas. When it’s in the atmosphere, it becomes the glass ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping heat in the atmosphere. Everyone knows what it feels like to walk into a greenhouse and that’s essentially what we’re doing as we pump increasing amounts of Carbon Dioxide into the air. As though that’s not bad enough, CO2 is the longest-lasting greenhouse gas, which means your great-grandkids will be affected by your tailpipe emissions.

So it’s not enough to just consider your driving habits and calculate your contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. You have to consider everyone else and all the shipping and transporting that goes into making and moving your gasoline. But if we can find a way to consume less gasoline, fewer tankers would need to traverse the oceans and fewer trucks would be needed for deliveries. In the end, fewer emissions would be emitted all around.

Less Consumption and Fewer Imports (excuse my rant)

No matter who you talk to, they will all agree that it’s a good idea to reduce the amount of foreign oil we import.  The United States imports a lot of oil from countries run by regimes who use our money to fund the fighters who kill American service men and women.  The regimes themselves engage in atrocities we would never condone within our own borders.  Even though we don’t like them, considering we disagree with much of what they do, and ignoring that they fund the people who are willing to die in their quest to kill us, we continue to willingly send them more and more of our hard-earned money.

If we cannot convince Americans how to connect the dots between our gasoline addiction and our dying soldiers, then we are doomed as a country.  As long as we continue to fund both sides of the war, it will never end.

In this election year, there has been a lot of rhetoric about the need to secure our borders. A need to be more self-reliant and beholden to no one.  These people stand around pounding their chests, declaring their undying love for the United States, waving Chinese-manufactured American flags as they pledge allegiance to this once-great republic.  When they have finished their empty promises to protect the U.S. with their last dying breath, they climb into their unnecessary gas guzzling megatruck because a commercial was all it took to convince them that they aren’t manly unless they have best-in-class towing wrapped in military-grade construction, whatever that means.

So let’s set the record straight and expose the truth:

Like any drug dealer, many of the OPEC countries supplying so much of our oil have exactly one viable commodity.  Their entire livelihood relies on others continuously purchasing it.  Without the addicts purchasing their product, they would quickly go broke.  If Americans truly cared about gaining independence, if they actually wanted to undermine those who wish to cause us harm, they would realize that their addiction funds their own destruction.

Here is a page at Energy.gov discussing Energy and National Security: http://energy.gov/public-services/national-security-safety

If these chest-thumping Americans were truly serious about securing our borders, they would prove their commitment by being more concerned with how wasteful they are than how manly they appear.  If they truly wanted to undermine those who wish to destroy us, they would realize that by saving fuel, we could starve our enemies into submission.  Unfortunately, they are too brainwashed to see it and too addicted to care.

Less wear and tear on your vehicle

A huge majority of the hypermiling techniques hinge around driving in such a way that is easy on your vehicle.  For example, rather than accelerating as hard as possible, hypermiling teaches an acceleration method that doesn’t overwork the engine.  Once you have reached an acceptable cruising speed, you should let off on the accelerator to allow the engine to find its own sweet spot.  These two methods will extend the life of your engine.

Rather than racing to a stoplight, hypermiling teaches to allow coasting to naturally slow you down, or to use regenerative braking to decelerate.  People who use these techniques can see their brake pads last for many years.

Anecdotally, driving more efficiently will extend the life of your car and all its parts. This is evidenced by Prius owners who replace their brake pads after more than 100,000 miles. It’s hard – if not completely impossible – to find hard-fast evidence that efficient driving will absolutely extend the life of your car. There are simply way too many variables at play. However, there are too many people telling too many stories to disregard it.

Cleaner Air

No one with any grasp of reality would expect to be able to burn something without releasing gaseous emissions. I’ve already addressed greenhouse gas emissions, but there are other gases released. These typically stay lower in the atmosphere and form a brownish haze called smog (Smoke fog). To be clear, this has nothing to do with a gold-loving dragon in Middle Earth, but that would be awesome.

Some of the primary contributors to smog are nitrogen oxide, non-methane organic gases, carbon monoxide, various particulate matter, and formaldehyde. These are things you would never ever intentionally breathe if you had a choice. And yet, we drive vehicles that put them in our air, where we breathe them. So, I suppose, since we are the ones polluting the air we breathe, we are intentionally breathing them. It all works out.

Visually, smog makes clean air dirty. It looks bad to have a brown – or gray – haze lingering around your city. Health-wise, smog can make it difficult to breath. People who already have difficulties breathing can die from smog. Even those who are healthy should avoid smog because the gases in the air get into lungs and can coat the tiny air sacks. And just like that, people who were healthy before now fall into the “difficulty breathing” category.

Improvements in vehicle efficiencies have made great strides in reducing the emissions of smog-forming chemicals. But every little bit helps. If everyone did a little something, then together we could make a huge impact. In addition to driving more efficiently, start looking for the “Smog Rating” that is now required on all new car stickers.

Conclusion

Though many people tend to focus on a singular reason to drive more efficiently, there are many reasons. Regardless of anyone’s personal interest, it is in their interest to drive more efficient vehicles more efficiently.

If you find yourself trying to defend fuel-efficient driving to different people, you might want to re-read this article several times. It will give you a good starting point from which you can bring a person into the discussion and potentially help them see why fuel efficiency matters.

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