Tyre selection is more important than the type of power train in 95 per cent of cases.
Category: Technology
Another green scare
Posted by – 7 February, 2012
Why has Alan Jones bought into this Green scare?
Here is the other video:
Ford Falcon less than 8 litres per 100km
Posted by – 3 January, 2012
While not officially announced, Ford has let slip the fuel usage figures for the new Ecoboost Falcon in their latest brochure:
By injecting small amounts of highly pressurised fuel into the combustion chamber, the EcoBoost® engine increases fuel efficiency by up to 20%…when compared to the I6 petrol engine.
That works out to be 7.92 litres per 100km. Now Ford just needs to add in the ZF 8-speed transmission and lose some weight off the front.
The great ‘renewable energy’ con. Witness statement #355,555.
Posted by – 26 November, 2011
From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientsts:
………….meeting the world’s total energy demands in 2030 with renewable energy alone would takean estimated 3.8 million wind turbines (each with twice the capacity of today’s largest machines), 720,000 wave devices, 5,350 geothermal plants, 900 hydroelectric plants, 490,000 tidal turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, 40,000 solar photovoltaic plants, and 49,000 concentrated solar power systems. That’s a heckuva lot of neodymium.
Unfortunately, “renewable energy” is a meaningless term with no established standards. Like an emperor parading around without clothes, it gets a free pass, because nobody dares to confront an inconvenient truth: None of our current energy technologies are truly renewable, at least not in the way they are currently being deployed. We haven’t discovered any form of energy that is completely clean and recyclable, and the notion that such an energy source can ever be found is a mirage.
Clearly the Japanese have not heard of the NBN
Posted by – 24 November, 2011
I don’t know what might come of it, although it does go to show that the ALP government no nothing about innovation.
Japanese semiconductor group Rohm, working with Osaka University researchers, has showed off a prototype chip it says can pump an impressive 1.5 Gbps down a wireless channel using carrier frequencies in the Terahertz range.
The difficultvery difficult Terahertz band – frequencies between 100 GHz and 10 THz – has been the focus of a frenzy of academic research. Faster than conventional wireless frequencies (but still below the visible light spectrum), successful deployment here would unblock the bottlenecks that now confront wireless development.
Someone is bound to eventually solve spectrum efficiency and management issues.
What is the ideal vehicle for the zombie apocalypse?
Posted by – 31 October, 2011
It’s very good over potholes
and zombiesand rough-patched bitumen, where you can feel the poor surfaces, but not in a way that becomes tiresome. And that’s no surprise, because Ford has spent decades building cars for rubbish Aussie roadsand the impending zombie apocalypse.
What can I say? I’m sold. Consider that:
1. Regular fuels have a shelf life of maybe a year – ethanol blended fuels only a few months; and
2. LPG has no practical shelf life as long as the cylinder and valves that hold the gas are able to maintain a vacuum – a decade maybe.
That is really the only deciding factor. In a zombie apocalypse fuel supplies will collapse and what fuel is left over will be taken by the Army as it tries to restore order and exterminate the zombies. While some Army vehicles can run on a range of propellants, any civilian vehicle, no matter how tough and rough, fuel efficient or fast will last past a few weeks when all the good fuel supplies have gone. It is as simple as that. There maybe fuel still available in the tanks of cars whose drivers are dead, etc… but after a little while it will be no good. You’ll be pinging your way down the highway and then your fuel filter and injectors will seize up. Good buy engine, hello zombie lunch.
By contrast, Australia has the second largest network of Autogas outlets in the world, completely disproportionate to the number of LPG vehicles. The main users of Autogas are taxis, but you can be pretty certain that taxi drivers will be the first to be infected, if they aren’t already zombies now. That will reduce demand for Autogas nicely.
Falcon parts are also easy to come by and the Barra engine is incredibly reliable. It is common for LPG Falcon taxis to exceed 1 million kms. I hear the record is 1.6 million kms. So no worries on that front.
The Falcon LPI has a massive fuel tank and can take virtually any blend of butane and propane – potentially it could run on household LPG. And unlike many other alternative fuel vehicles, the Falcon can take on some dirt roads and has the power to get away from zombie hoards while also having enough room to store vital supplies – guns, ammo, water, food, pictures of the Queen and fuel. Even though the boot space is somewhat smaller than the regular Falcon, it is still huge by normal car standards. You’ll easily fit all your necessary supplies in the car, at least until you find fellow conservative travellers who are naturally self-reliant, hard working and ingenious and therefore able to establish regular fuel supplies, some semblance of limited government and civilization generally. The fate of left-wingers will be decidedly more grim, as they cry out for Big Government, Big Green, Big Union, Big Education, etc… They might gain some happiness knowing they are providing a food source for the earth’s new fauna. Who knows?