- Posts tagged Environment
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The End is Near
Prius Power
For all of the Prius drivers out there, the IRS just raised the mileage rate for business driving to $0.485 per mile. I've figured in the past that at $2.60 per gallon, my Prius costs about $0.06 per mile to drive. The maintenance thus far has been negligable. Driving a Prius to business events nets an employee about $0.42 per mile.
Compare this to our Pilot (about $0.13 per mile) there is $0.07 per mile incentive to drive the Pri-ii. If I have to drive to SF and back, that is about $10. Not a whole lot, but when doing it once a week, it adds up. Just another reason that the Prius makes sense.
technorati tags:prius, environment, irs, mileage, mileage-expense
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Well, This is Uplifting
It's Gettin Hot In Herre...
...but just having come from the land of the obese (known in America as shopping malls), I'm glad that no one is listening to Nelly's advice, at least not yet.
Fuck. I guess sometime in the past week, there was a major earthquake and the Bay Area, now sits directly on top of the earths molten core. I just got in my car and the thermometer read 111. Holly told me that it wasn't this hot when she lived in Ghana. You know that it is hot when people are reminiscing about how temperate it was in Ghana.
If you purchased an SUV this weekend, you're a dick. Seriously. If you purchased an SUV this weekend, in the midst of the hottest summer since the 1920's and a major crisis in the Middle East, I have to wonder, WTF? How could you be so oblivious to what is going on in the world? When have you ever seen anyone sweat at the British Open? If you did purchase an SUV this weekend, I'm sure you had a good reason for doing so though. Don't worry about the environment or the price of gas, it will all be good.
Now on to the golf. I wish that there was something to write aside from 'they should have given Tiger the trophy on Friday afternoon'. It wasn't even too exciting to watch. Sure DiMarco made it interesting at times. Yeah, it was nice to see a guy from Japan that no one outside of his immediate family has ever heard of, but it wasn't a tournament. It was less than captivating. Plus, in my pool, I got spanked so bad that I was out of it on Friday. So much for the Brits making a run at it. Thanks, SI.
Are the only people left in the US that still wear suits to work in IBM commercials? IBM, get a new ad agency that actually has a grip on what goes on in the work place. No wonder nobody buys your stuff. No one can look at your commercials and go 'Hey that looks like my company, maybe I should check their stuff out.' People see IBM commercials and think 'Boy, that looks like a shitty place to work.'
One thing to be said for the heat is that it has to be fairly good for retail numbers. I am sure that the people who run the shops in the mall are praying for this streak to continue. Especially in the Bay Area where 'You really only need air conditioning for two weeks a year'. Guess what, we're in it. I have to believe that there are some really good economic numbers around record breaking heat indexes and an increase in retail sales. The mall was packed. Shopping malls generally give me a migraine because I am not good with lots of people all going in different directions. It also pains me to see most of America continue to buy things that they don't need on credit that they don't have. Especially when 100 degree temperatures have made everyone in the area a little loopy and a lot uptight. However, I suspect that the high temperatures get people into the stores to buy stuff and if you watch the weather and you watch stocks, I bet you can find a direct correlation between rises in both.
I took the kids to see Monster House in 3D. Since I hadn't seen a 3D movie since Captain Eo with Michael Jackson in 1989, it was pretty cool. You still have to wear the dumb glasses, but none the less, it was a neat experience. It was a bit too scary for a 4 year old though, so I don't know if I would recommend it for that set. Especially in 3D. It was a little bit creepy to see a house reach out a snatch a little kid up. Maybe I won't be getting that Father of the Year award after all. Always 2007, maybe it will be cooler by then.
technorati tags:golf, heat, bayarea, monsterhouse, tigerwoods, britishopen, suv, environment
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Another Kick Ass Electric Car
I'm starting to see a trend here that I hope continues, privately funded high performance, electric cars.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about meeting Ian Wright of Wrightspeed at Bucks one morning. While the X1 is an amazing car, Wrightspeed's website makes it pretty clear that they will never release this car. Wa, wa, wa.
Enter Tesla Motors. I subscribe to Steve Jurveston's Flickr blog and today, he had a number of photos of the new Tesla Roadster, including this one. Yep, that is Governor Schwarzenegger ridding shotgun.
If you don't want one of these after reading the stats, check your pulse.
100% electric
0 - 60 mph 4 seconds
135 mpg equivalent
250 miles per charge
costs about $0.01 per mile to drive (compared to $0.08 per mile for my Prius or about $0.22 per mile for our Jeep)
Plus, per Tesla's website, these will be available to the public next summer. If they had an SUV or even a sedan (kids), I'd put my name on the list.
I love their marketing, too. They are going to accept orders via their website. If I've said it once on this site, I've said it 1,000 times, Detroit is dead. Could you imagine if one of the Big 3 or even the Big 6, 7, 8? (is Kia in there?) tried to compete against their dealerships and sell their cars online? Their business model would unravel in an instant.
Tesla has said that they will have Customer Care Centers, which I suspect will be a partnership with a dealership where they will get a cut, but I am guessing that this car will be made to order. Since it is put together at Lotus in the UK, it will probably always be a sports car company and nothing else, however, since it is slightly longer then the Lotus Elise, they might slap a hatchback type shell (notice how far back the rear wheels are?) on it and convert it to the fastest sedan ever created.
There is some question about the price of this car. I've read that it will be in the $80 - $100K range, which is unfortunate. I know that they need to make some money on each unit and I know that a small company like Tesla can't last forever on a loss leader and I suspect that their founder doesn't want to pull a John DeLorean, so they are forced to sell an expensive car. If Tesla can get this into the competitive range of the Boxer, the TT or the Z3, I believe that they would sell a ton of these things.
In the meantime, I wasn't planning on hitting Pebble Beach for the Concours next month, however, now that I know that Tesla will be there, I may head down for the day and look at the pretty people and prettier automobiles. Including the fastest and quietest one there, the Tesla Roadster.
technorati tags:electric, electriccars, teslamotors, lotus, prius
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Wrightspeed X1
