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29 comments on Nested comments broken. UPDATE: Fixed

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Generaly on February 5, 2006 - 10:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I will need a new vehicle in about a year, and I plan to buy a plug-in hybrid.  Why?  The main reason is that I remember the gas lines in the 70's, and we had a reminder of that during the gas panic here in Atlanta during Katrina.  

I predict that the coming increases in the volatility of gas prices will lead to times when it will be difficult to get gas, period!  With a plug-in hybrid, I will be able to get to work, etc no matter what the gas price and volatility.  I expect that this will be more important the as time goes on...

Because here in Georgia, most of our power is produced by coal and nuclear, I am also expecting the difference between the price of power and gas to grow, and grow and grow.  In the short term, I don't expect that I will save any money.  But, because we can burn just about anything to produce electricity, I am predicting that electricity will be the cheapest replacement for liquid fuels.  In addition, if electric (partially and fully) cars can be used to help with the peak production of electricity here in Georgia, we might be able to idle a few more natural gas fired peaking plants.  Which would help the reserve situation and therefore help with the natural gas price volatility.

Speaking of batteries, I searched this blog and didn't see anything about Firefly Energy's new lead-acid batteries.  I'm a chemical engineer who has spent a fair amount of time with lead-acid batteries and I can testify that this company has made some extremely important advances.  Not only do they have the technology, but also they have the backing of Caterpillar with some great management, $$$, and marketing channels to make a HUGE splash on the hybrid market!  I am excited!!!  Will this be the solution to all of our problems - Heck No!  But at this point, every little bit will help.

http://www.fireflyenergy.com

Check it out!

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LevinK on February 5, 2006 - 12:30pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yeap but the problem is that we are still to see plug-ins commercially available. AFAIK there is a whole subculture of converting Prius-es to plug-in hybrids; but

  1. this doesn't give you a fully functional plug-in hybrid - not enough batterries
  2. the total cost will be too north of my budget line

So for now I'm left waiting for such a baby to appear on the market. I think we can do something useful here at TOD if we start writing to car manufacturers that plug-ins have and will have their customers. Counterintuitively, these guys seem to represent the most conservative industry on Earth. They needed 5 years to pickup hybrids (yet on a limited scale), now they seem to be needing 5 more just to put a little more batteries and a power outlet.
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Engineer-Poet on February 5, 2006 - 2:26pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Do you have a link which gets past their flash-disabled-browsers-need-not-apply intro screen?
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Generaly on February 6, 2006 - 7:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is what happens when the web designers try to get too cute...

It appears that every page is a java creation of the home page - long story short - I couldn't get past the intro page....

Do you have a backup copy of IE for such things?

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Engineer-Poet on February 6, 2006 - 9:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I don't have IE at all.  Not only don't I have a license for it, I won't let it (or the rest of Windoze) in the house.

I was at the library and took a look at their page there.  The contact page is the only non-animated page I could find; I told them that their choice of style made them unfindable with Google (I tried) and asked them if they had a non-Flash version for people who don't want it.  We'll see what happens.

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Generaly on February 6, 2006 - 9:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
More links on the Firefly battery:

http://www.edc.centralillinois.org/page/147

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/01/firefly_energy_.html

http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=13346

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060112/20060112005093.html?.v=1

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