How Will You Travel for Thanksgiving?

Family. Friends. Stuffed bird. Grandma's pumpkin pie. The old homestead. Good wines and spirited conversation. Uncle Joe's special sweet potato bake. There are plenty of reasons why Thanksgiving is the most-travelled holiday in America.

This year, I've started early with seeing what's the best way to get where we're going, in terms of time, money - and carbon footprint.

Focusing on travel over a few hundred miles, I started at carbonfund.org's Carbon Calculator page, which has a helpful link to EPA's report on carbon emissions from travel. The data on high speed trains is from Vidya Kale's Climate Is Our Job blog. Its numbers are consistent with those on Wikipedia's page on energy efficiency in transportation.

There were a few surprises!

For instance, I've been under the impression that it's always greener to travel by train than by car. It turns out that depends on the train and on the car. The train is greener if you compare taking riding the Amtrak train (185 g CO2 /passenger km), to driving by yourself in a large or otherwise gas hogging car: driving solo in a Toyota Sienna minivan, which gets 24 mpg on the highway, your carbon emission is 227 g CO2/km. (To find the carbon footprint for your own car, use UnitJuggler's mpg to g CO2 /km conversion calculator).

However, if you bring six friends in your minivan, the boring trip becomes a social outing, and the footprint per passenger is reduced by a factor 7 (ignoring the slight decrease in fuel efficiency from loading the van): now the per passenger carbon footprint is only 32 g CO2 / passenger km. This is a lot better than that of Amtrak, and better even than that of my VW Golf TDI, which does 45 mpg on the highway, when filled with the four members of my family (39 g CO2 / passenger km)!

As long as you fill all the seats in the car, you can do better than even the average European high-speed train. Swiss trains have the smallest carbon footprint because a large fraction of their electricity comes from renewable and nuclear sources, and because of the high average occupancy of the trains (80%) and the fact that on average each track carries 90 trains per day, so the carbon emissions from building the tracks (even over and through the Swiss Alps) is shared by those 90 trains.

Even regular, not high speed, European trains offer a great alternative to driving: it's safer and more pleasant. And it's much greener than travelling solo in your car.

If Amtrak plays its game right, it could get its trains' emissions much closer to the European average. It's a matter of attracting more riders, which is far from a pipe dream: on the Eastern corridor, Amtrak trains are very popular, and nearly always filled to capacity. Those tracks are well used.

Right now, the US-wide average occupancy of railroad tracks is pretty low, even if you count freight trains. Many trajectories are travelled by Amtrak trains just once or twice a day. And each Amtrak passenger carriage, on average, is only 60% occupied. My own guess is that Amtrak trains use locomotives that run on older technology that those of European and Japanese high-speed trains. All this contributes to the larger per-passenger carbon footprint of Amtrak trains: 4 to 5 times larger than that of a typical European fast train.

Amtrak needs higher speeds to attract more passengers in this large country: In the midwest it does sort of okay (but not great), covering the 1000-mile distance between Denver and Chicago in just over 8 hours; that's an average speed of 125 mph. On the crowded Eastern seaboard speeds slow to an average of 69 mph. Taking the "fast" Acela train shaves a bit off your travel time, but only a bit, and it costs more than twice as much as taking the regular service. To put this in perspective: the record speed for passenger trains is 302mph, attained on a track between Beijing and Shanghai.

Cost & Speed Comparison: Amtrak, TGV, car

From To	New York Wash. DC	Denver Chicago	Paris Marseille
Distance (miles)	229 mi	1000 mi	483
Travel time	3h20m (2h45m)	8h	3h20m
Average speed (mph)	69 (83) mph	125 mph	146 mph
Cost (one way)	$ 82 ($ 199)	$ 110	$ 146
Amtrak cost per pass.	$ 0.36 ($0.87)	$ 0.11 /mi	$ 0.30 /mi
VW Golf cost ($4/gal)	$ 0.09 /mi	$ 0.09 /mi	$ 0.09 /mi

(numbers in parentheses for Acela trains).

 

At fuel prices of $4 per gallon and a highway efficiency of 45 mpg, my brave diesel Golf easily beats Amtrak's per-mile cost per passenger. When my family of four takes a trip, we're 5 to 16 times cheaper off taking the car than the train. No wonder the interstates are still jam-pack clogged with cars on Thanksgiving weekend.

Even so, there are signs of a renaissance in intermediate-distance rail travel, and I hope it will in time replace short-haul air travel which is truly wasteful of energy, and not necessarily a time saver. I can't wait to ride that planned high speed train that's to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. It's time for the country that gave birth to long-distance train travel to catch up with the rest of the world again.

For now, if you're travelling solo and your car does less than 29 mpg, you're better off taking the train, carbon wise. It's certainly more pleasant, with lots of people to meet, power outlets at each seat for your mobile devices and WiFi for connectivity: it beats staring at the tail lights of the car in front of you. If you count delays from traffic congestion, taking the train will be quite a bit faster. Only flying is faster, at least on long-haul trips.

By air and by sea

It came as a real surprise to me that Amtrak's per-passenger carbon footprint is the same as that for a long-haul airplane. If Amtrak installed high-efficiency, high-speed trains it could reduce travel time between Denver and Chicago to about four hours, which is less than the total time you spend travelling by air, if you count the struggle to get through airport security. Moreover, it could reduce its emissions by up to 80%.

Another surprise: in case your turkey is beckoning to you from Paris or from Prague, getting to Europe by flying is greener than taking a transatlantic boat cruise. This is because water presents a formidable resistance to anything trying to get through it, unless you're shaped like a fish. I guess cruise ships like the Queen Mary II, confined to the water surface, don't look remotely like a fish. So flying to Europe is greener and faster than taking a cruise on Cunard. And of course, it is much much less expensive.

Freight

But the story is different for freight. For air travel, all that really counts is the weight of the person or the stuff that needs to be lifted into the air at takeoff and kept there until the plane lands. So the per-ton, per-mile carbon footprint of air cargo is about the same as that for human passengers.

For boats, trains and trucks, it's much more efficient to transport stuff, which you can stack to the ceiling, than people, who need room to breathe and move around a bit during the journey. For a truck rolling down the interstate, it's mostly about air resistance, so the carbon emissions of moving cargo by air is much larger than that of truck transport. That, in turn, is limited by the size of the cargo container, so the truck's carbon emissions per ton of cargo moved is much larger than that for a boat or a train that can handle large numbers of containers per trip.

And this is why the 10,000 mile diet, that includes flying in raspberries from Peru in February, is bad for your personal carbon footprint.

 

The best thing to do for Thanksgiving? Source your food locally. And try not to travel too far. Whichever way you decide to go, you'll be one of an enormous crowd.

 

Review: 2013 Subaru Outback

By IFCAR, via Wikimedia Commons

I did a double-take on the school parking lot the other day. It was one of those "My, you've grown!" moments. Except I wasn't staring at a child. I had to look at the label on the back of the car to confirm that yes, it was indeed a Subaru Outback.

"Another two weeks, you'll be as big as your mom!" This usually elicits a smile from the mom, and a bewildered look on the child. In the case of the Outback, I'd say, "Another two years, you'll be as big as a GMC Yukon!"

This car played a trick on the CAFE requirements on cars' fuel efficiency: it grew taller in the body, acquired a higher ground clearance, and a few other features associated with trucks, and now falls in the category of light trucks. Thereby cleverly circumventing the stricter emissions requirements imposed on regular passenger cars.

Even so, the Outback on the school parking lot had the chutzpah to sport a "PZEV" label. It stands for "Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle", an emission bracket invented by some California clean air board who are more earnest about CO2 emissions reductions than about math, and you can get the certification for $300 when you order the car. I think one shouldn't spread around mathematical nonsense. Not even on the back of a car.

In the old days, the Outback (and before that the Subaru Wagon) was known as a "station wagon". It was beloved of countless families. It wasn't pretentious. It was long and low, and had very decent fuel economy for its time. It was a real family mover; it was capable of moving immense amounts of stuff, kids, dogs, cellos, furniture and such, and had the reputation of being indestructible.

But it has left all that behind. It has acquired high heels, sorry high wheels, and now calls itself a crossover. It sports the aggressive smirk worn by a lot of other cars in the current crop. Puts a whole new spin on that book title, "Farewell my Subaru".

The higher clearance actually comes in handy now that the nation's road infrastructure is crumbling, potholes and debris are thick on the ground, and road surfaces resemble the surface of the Australian wilderness after which the Outback was named.

In the US, it comes with a choice of a 2.5L, 4-cylinder boxer engine (173 HP) that does 21 / 28 mpg with manual transmission and better, 24 / 30 mpg, with the clever CVT automatic transmission. Or the 256 HP, 3.6L, 6-cylinder boxer hunk getting 18 / 25 mpg. That was about how well the Subaru Wagon did, back in 1985 when CelloMom was young.

You can get it with the usual features: overstuffed (heavy) power-adjustable seats, and the non-optional air condition unit, plus the full spectrum of distractive technologies built into the price, whether or not you choose them.

In the Japanese home market, Subaru offers the Legacy Outback exactly the same way (except, of course, with the steering wheel on the right side of the car), with the same engines.

In Europe the choice is different: Responding to pressure from EU fuel efficiency requirements, Subaru UK does not offer the Outback with the 3.6L engine. Rather it has added a 2.0L diesel engine to the lineup, which does 33 / 45 (cty /hwy) with a combined fuel economy of 47.8 mpg. Just kidding: that's per imperial gallon, and comes to 40 mpg_US.

The diesel still packs a torque of 258 lbs-ft, more than 247 lbs-ft delivered by the 3.6L gasoline engine available in the US and in Japan. Still can reach 120 mph. The 2.0D with manual transmission costs the same as the 2.5i with automatic transmission, but has about 40% better fuel economy.

In 2013, a car like this really should not do worse than 30mpg.

 

	Outback (UK)	Outback (UK)
Type	2.5i S Gasoline	2.0D S Diesel
Year	2013	2013
Emissions rating
MSRP	£ 28,875 $ 46,418	£ 28,870 $ 46,410
CelloMom Rating
Fuel Economy:
City/Hwy quoted	24 / 30 mpg_US	33 / 45 mpg_US
Avg. quoted		40 mpg_US
Avg. actual	28 mpg
Engine	2.5L 4-cyl DOCH boxer	2.0L 4-cyl SOCH boxer
Power	164 HP	148 HP
Torque	169 lb-ft @ 1800-2400 rpm	258 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm
Transmission	LinearTronic Auto AWD	6-spd manual AWD
Fuel	Unleaded gasoline	Diesel
Length, mm(in)	189 in
Width, mm(in)	71.7 in
Height, mm(in)	65.8 in
Weight, kg(lbs)	1573 kg	1534 kg
Trunk volume, liters(cuft)
Turning radius, m(ft)	11m	11m
Top speed, kph(mph)	120 mph	120 mph

 

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Actually, I hate the colour pink.

The girls' isles in toy stores creep me out. So when October comes around and there is an outburst of pink absolutely everywhere, even in the most unexpected places, in the shape of balloons, pins, socks, ski goggles, screwdrivers - I feel I have to wear my sunglasses all day.

Beside the pink, the whole "Awareness" thing saddens me. I mean, must we attain awareness only through buying the hoodie with the pink ribbon, or the make-up kit with the pink vynyl pouch, or the cookie with the pink frosting, the sale of all of which benefits cancer research? That's not awareness building: that's fundraising. At best. At worst, it's plain marketing.

Call me a naive, but it seems to me that too much emphasis is put on fighting cancer once it has arrived. But then it's already too late. Even screening for cancer, as useful as early detection can be, is not where the largest emphasis should lie.

Call me a hopeless naive, but I think the place where we really need to focus is on how to prevent cancer in the first place. We need to build awareness of what causes cancer, and what to do to minimise our risk. This takes more than "thinking pink" for a couple of days.

There is the work of getting informed. Following that, there is the difficult, day-to-day, unglamorous, ongoing task of risk reduction. Rather than buying things outfitted with a pink ribbon, it may involve not buying things. Saying no to cool things, yummy things, convenient things, attractive and desirable things. Things that have become a nearly inextricable part of our lives.

The call for prevention is worth shouting from the rooftops, year round. For this I would put on all the pink it would take.

 

Get the facts.

To start with, get informed. There is a lot of confusion and misinformation on breast cancer. Get over any fears you may have around this issue: knowledge is power

The Breast Cancer Action website summarises some key facts about breast cancer, and its link to environmental factors:

• Seventy percent of people with breast cancer have none of the known risk factors. The so-called known risk factors, like late menopause, having children late in life, and family history of cancer are present in only 30 percent of breast cancer cases.
  
• Non-industrialized countries have lower breast cancer rates than industrialized countries. People who move to industrialized countries from countries with low rates develop the same breast cancer rates of the industrialized country.
  
• Estrogen is a hormone closely linked with the development of breast cancer. Numerous synthetic chemicals, called “xenoestrogens,” act like estrogen in our bodies, including common weed killers and pesticides, plastic additives or by-products, ingredients in spray paints and paint removers, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), used extensively in the manufacture of food packaging, medical products, appliances, cars, toys, credit cards, and rainwear.

So genetic predisposition plays a smaller role than we were led to believe. On the other hand, environmental factors do play an important role.

Look at the list of products to avoid: all these are endemic, indeed pervasive, in industrialised societies. And a lot of the toxins in these items settle preferentially in fatty tissues, so breasts act like magnets for them, and tend to retain them. On the other hand, just as immigrants from non-industrialised countries can acquire an increased risk of cancer, by the same token it is possible for all of us to cleanse our systems: toxins don't hang around in our bodies forever.

It's easy to get discouraged by the length of the list. But consider this: our exposure to each individual toxin in each item is probably well within some safety margin. It is their combined effect, and especially their interactions, that cause havoc.

So even if you can't eliminate your exposure to all these toxins, you'd still come out way ahead if you manage to avoid as many as you can.

I will tell you straight up front (because I'm a truthloving geek and a naive one at that): it will require giving up on certain things. Ten-hour lip gloss, with pearl effect, is glamorous. Canned tomatoes are convenient. Oil-based paints do cover beautifully, and your brush strokes are never visible. Don't talk to me about those root-vegetable chips from that stay-fresh plastic bag.

There are alternatives. They either don't work quite as well, or require a lot more work on your part. Or both.

So what. These are our breasts we're talking about: they're part of who we are; we need them, for our babies - as well as for our own pleasure. We have better things to do with them than to offer them as housing for any toxins that happen to come along.

Besides, as we're cleaning up for ourselves, we're also cleaning up for our children, and their children. So here goes:

Risk Reduction Strategies

Your care and feeding:

• Exercise!
• Eat low on the food chain.
• Choose "clean" foods. Organic is best. If you can't afford all-organic, find out which foods are the most toxin-prone, and buy those organic.
• Avoid foods containing growth hormones.
• Avoid processed foods with ingredients you can't pronounce.
• Do not heat food in any plastic container.
  Non-stick pans are plastic containers.
• Avoid storing food or drinks in plastic containers. Not even water. This holds especially for foods with a high fat content.
  Note: most cans come with a plastic lining inside.
• Choose personal care products as clean of toxins as possible ("natural" is not a guarantee of "clean"). Your skin has a large surface area, and all of it is porous.
• Wear clothing made of natural fibers.
• Live slow. Get plenty of sleep.

Your home:

• Use soap as your main household cleaner.
• Keep air "fresheners" out of your house.
• Avoid synthetic carpets (with that "new carpet smell").
• Avoid upholstery with a no-stain finish.
• Avoid synthetic stuffing for mattresses and sofas.
• Keep a shoe-free house to keep from tracking in nasties on your shoes. Our soils are still laced with pesticides banned 30 years ago.
• Use a vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter.
• Avoid plastic toys for your children and your self.
• Don't use weed killers and pesticides in your garden.
• Don't drink from the garden hose (except figuratively).

Your car:

• Your car is not your living room, nor your dining room, nor your bedroom. It's a box that gets you from A to B. Don't linger in it.
• Avoid cars with the "new car smell" which indicates toxins outgassing from the car's plastic interior.
• Try not to buy a new car for your new baby. If you must, put chemical cleanliness on your list of things to check. Air the interior of your new car often and well.

Other exposures:

• Minimise radiation exposure: from deep-UV rays from the sun, from long-haul flights, from radon in the home, from medical procedures.
• Don't sit down on lawns that have only grass: a lack of weeds is a sure sign of herbicide use.
• Toxic chemicals at work: treat them with profound respect. Know your risks and your rights. Change your clothes when returning home.
• Try to free your life of plastic.

In short, live like you're chemically sensitive. You are. You just may not know it yet.

And these tips benefit men as well as women: after all, we humans all have a finely balanced hormonal system that we don't want to mess with.

These choices are in our hands, made individually by us. Then there are larger environmental issues that are outside of our personal control. When voting with our dollars isn't enough, or doesn't bring change fast enough, we need to get actively involved. There are lots of opportunities to help push back against the rising tide of pesticides, fertilisers, plastics, dangerous food additives, and other toxins. As Liza Gross says, "Think pink? I'd rather raise a stink."

Pass it on.

 

Selected resources:

Breast Cancer Action: calling for breast cancer prevention

Keep A Breast: "prevention is the cure"

Pesticide Action Network: advancing alternatives to pesticides

Skin Deep Database: Huge number of personal care products rated on toxicity by the Environmental Working Group

Healthy Child Healthy World: working toward a clean world

Plastic Free: Beth Terry frees her life of plastic; both book and blog are full of practical tips and advice.

Films:
The Story of Cosmetics - Annie Leonard
Bag it! - Jeb Berrier
Plastic Planet - Werner Boote

 

Fitting Three Children on Your Car's Back Seat

Photo by
only_point_five
via Flickr

"I hate to give up my hatchback, but with the third baby coming, we need to buy a minivan." You hear this a lot. Even if you have two young children, you can't offer a ride to a friend because the extra child seat won't fit in the back row.

Do manufacturers of child seats get a kickback from manufacturers of minivans?

What if a minivan is not your cup of tea? Maybe your driveway is extremely narrow. Maybe your city parking garage doesn't accept vehicles as tall as minivans. Maybe you're just not into looking like the proverbial soccer mom, even if you are one.

What are your options?

Nissan Qashqai+2
Photo by M 93
via Wikimedia Commons

Seven-seat gas sippers.
It's galling that the choices are so very limited for families of five. So I've gathered a collection of seven-seat vehicles that do 30 - 45mpg. The list includes the 7-seat Toyota Prius V (44mpg), and a few other cars with on-demand third-row seating. Some are crossovers. Some are minivans.

(I've nothing against minivans, actually: I used to drive a Vanagon, the last Volkswagen minibus that had its engine in the back. My family of four shared its use with my parents, who lived a few streets away: a private car-share scheme. And it carried all six of us comfortably.)

There's only one catch: most of these seven-seaters are not available in the US market (yet). I don't know why. I mean, if you can afford a Prius V, and you have a family of five, wouldn't you jump at the seven-seat option?

It may be a while before those gas-sipping seven seaters make it stateside, and meanwhile the baby is on its way, so we need a solution now.

Narrower car seats
Take heart, there are actually some options out there. A baby's hips are what, eight inches across? There is no reason why the baby's car seat should be 21 inches wide.

When my eldest was a baby, we went to Holland and were met by my cousin at the airport; he had thoughtfully brought a baby seat, which was a marvel of slenderness and light weight. Carrying it was much easier on my back than the bulky, heavy baby seat we had left in the US.

I settled the baby in the seat, and we were on our way. I didn't question the safety of the slender baby seat, which had passed Europe's stringent tests - after all, Europeans love their children too. The seat was made by Maxi Cosi, a Dutch manufacturer who understands space limitations.

Narrower seats are now available in the US: there are several brands that offer child seats with modest widths of 17 inches of less. Just check out the useful list at Carseat Measurements and Data. Three car seats, each 17 inches wide, would fit on my VW Golf's back seat, which has 52 inches clearance between the doors. If your car is wider than mine, you can afford wider car seats, and your choice is - no pun intended - widened.

 

Multimac
But the best solution I've seen so far asks you to approach child car seats in a completely new way: check out multimac. Based in the UK, multimac offers a complete system that can house three, or even four, children on the back seat, by seating them all in one continuous car seat that has three (or four) bays.

The whole thing is anchored to the seat belt hooks that normally accept the adult seat belts. Multimac claims its car seats significantly exceed the European crash test requirements. Available with bespoke upholstery. In the long run, this is probably cheaper than buying a string of individual car seats. It's certainly cheaper than buying a new and larger car.

Accessories are available that can accomodate babies in rear-facing seats, to toddlers, to children tall enough to need an extra head rest, all with height-adjustable 5-point harness. Their website shows a three-seater in the back of a Fiat 500.

The multimac comes with legs that rest on the floor of the car. We in the US are not used to seeing child seats with legs, apparently because, according to an article at shopautoweek.com, “The bench seat that is used in car-seat testing in the U.S. is from a 1970s model vehicle [1974 Chevrolet Impala, according to NHTSA] and is only the bench seat--there’s no floor to rest a support leg on.”

The same article confirms what many globetrotting parents have found: that many countries don't honour each other's child-seat safety tests: “The primary roadblock remains the opinions of those in charge of car-seat safety regulations. Whether one system is safer than the other is still being debated.”

So don't try to import a multimac on your own.

But I do hope that this sensible solution to a vexing problem will make its way to the US eventually.

Your other option? Ditch the car. Move yourself and your offspring by bike. Beats buying a new car and having your kids breathe new car smell. One intrepid mom moves her six children by bike exclusively. None of them brought a cello. But I could only dream of having lungs and leg muscles like hers!

 

 

You may also like:
1. So you want a seven-seat car that does better than 30 mpg
2. Narrow booster seat
3. A Transportation Growth Chart for Your Family
4. Licence To Spill

 

EV Battery seeks TLC for Long-Term Relationship, Hates Temperature Extremes both Cold and Heat

Batteries are just like babies: Babies are happy only when the temperature is just so. When it gets cold, we need to bundle them up. They don't like too much heat, either: we're constantly being warned to not leave our babies in the car in the summer.

About leaving things in the car: when it comes to the car battery, we don't really have a choice. I mean, I've never seen anyone unhook their car battery, lovingly put it in a stroller and haul it inside to protect it from extreme weather.

Leaf Battery Pack
Photo Mariordo via Wikimedia

Yet that is what it would take to increase the lifetime of our car batteries. With very few exceptions, batteries as we know them now rely on chemical reactions to store and deliver energy, and those reactions, as well as the undesirable ones that degrade the electrodes or the eletrolyte, are highly temperature dependent. Whether based on lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, or lithium ion technology, rechargeable batteries do best around the same temperature that's comfortable for humans: right around 70F (about 21C).

I would have loved to own an EV, especially since I've switched our electricity provider to one that delivers energy from renewable sources. Our EV would have been greener than Kermit the Frog.

What stopped me in my tracks is this graphic from battery manufacturer Discover Energy Corp., which neatly summarises the argument from an article in Technology Review. One should take the numbers with a grain of salt, but the overall trends are striking.

The green bars show capacity, or how much energy you can get out of a battery after it's charged, as a function of temperature. Cold weather is not kind to batteries, as it makes the chemical reactions slow down, and with a good freeze you can lose a large fraction of the battery's capacity (compared to its capacity at 25C (77F) ).

We knew that.

What we are learning very quickly now, and especially if we are owners of electric vehicles, is that high temperatures are even less kind to batteries. While the energy capacity increases with temperature, the lifetime of the battery decreases. Rather precipitously. As in, by 50% for every 8-10C the temperature rises above 20C. If you keep a battery at a constant 50C (122F), its lifetime would be cut by a factor of 10.

What does this mean for your EV?

One thing it says loud and clear is that EVs love places like the Pacific coast. Don't we all? Temperatures are pleasant year round. You don't get scorched, you don't get your backside frozen off. Batteries like that too.

Hybrid and EV owners who live in colder places will tell you that they get less fuel economy out of their cars in winter than they do in the summer: that's the effect of capacity decreasing as the temperature goes down.

And now several owners of Nissan Leafs in Phoenix, AZ, are finding that the searing temperatures of Arizona summers have done a number on the lifetime of their batteries, consigning their EVs to the dreaded Turtle Mode.

Not only did it get hot in Phoenix this summer, a car in the sun is the best demonstration of the greenhouse effect: Light from the sun comes in through the windows and gets absorbed in the upholstery and the dashboard - which is often a dark colour so you don't have to squint through its reflection to see the road ahead.

Dark things warm up faster when put in the sun than light-coloured things (ask anyone with black hair). It's true that dark things also radiate away the heat better than light-coloured things (wood stoves tend to be painted black). But that radiated heat, being deep in the infra-red, doesn't escape through the car window: this is the greenhouse effect.

Here is what happens when you park a car on a sunny day when it's 26.5C outside.

This video doesn't mention what colour the dashboard is. It almost doesn't matter: the astonishing thing is that right above the dashboard the temperature shoots up to 83C (181F) - within 45 minutes! Just google "baking cookies on a car dashboard"; I was amazed to see how many people know about this effect. (By the way, don't try this cute trick in a new car: your cookies would end up laced with new car smell, which is toxins outgassing from your car's interior).

The video says that the rest of the car's interior (measured at a seat) heated up to 47.3C (117F) in about the same time. That means that the difference with the outside temperature was 21C (38F). It might take a bit more time for the heat to reach the engine and the battery tucked away in the nether regions of the car, but eventually that will warm up also.

On July 3, 2012, the temperature in Phoenix, AZ went up to 118F (48C). That's already pretty close to the upper end of a battery's operation range. If you're in the habit of parking your car in the sun for long periods of time, it would be enough to push it over the edge.

I suppose if you live in a place where summers are hot, you could park your EV in an air-conditioned garage - but that sort of defeats the purpose, wouldn't it?

Perhaps it's time to face the fact that EV technology is a place-specific solution, the way you can't expect to grow banana trees in the field in Quebec, and a snowboard would be kind of useless in Louisiana.

 

Where EV batteries thrive:

If you are considering buying an EV, you might check the climate maps to see if your region is EV-friendly. The USDA Hardiness Zones map for growing plants is a good indication of minimum winter temperatures. My guess is that things might turn grim for your EV in Zones 1-4, but that it could be fine (with care) in Zone 5, the same zone in which you would wrap your prize roses in burlap for the winter. Zones 6 and up are fine.

This graphic of mean maximum temperature in July comes from Climate Source. Areas indicated in red are probably not too healthy for an EV. Depending on how conservative you are (after all, an EV battery costs $10,000 to replace), you might want to avoid the orange areas as well. Phoenix lies in that deep-red area in the south of Arizona.

These maps are good for the big picture of climate in the US. You'd do well to get the scoop on your local neighbourhood which might have its own microclimate - as an EV is not designed to wander way off home base, anyway.

 

Caring for an EV battery:

If you are determined to own an EV even in a non-ideal climate (I get that: I think EVs are marvellous things), and you don't want to wait until next-generation batteries are invented that don't rely on chemistry, there are several things you can do to mitigate the effects of your local climate and to extend battery life. And as with humans, it's easier to deal with the cold than with the heat.

If you live in a cold climate, you might want to keep your EV in your garage at night - that's where the charger is likely to be, anyway. When you go out in the winter, try to park it out of the wind, which would cool it down very fast (that's why it's called the "wind chill"). An underground garage is ideal, the deeper the better.

Photo ATIS547 via Flickr

On the other hand, if you live in a hot climate, keep your EV out of the sun as much as possible. Park it in the shade, catching as much of a breeze as possible if there is one. Find an underground garage, which is always cool in sumer, or else a multi-story parking garage (the more concrete on it the better) between some high-rise buildings. But an even better place to park is on a lot covered with solar cells that can charge your EV while you go about your business.

At the risk of adding to your range anxiety, I should also point out that frequent short trips in your EV, with charging in between, gives a longer battery lifetime than longer trips where you (nearly) deplete the battery before re-charging. Any Toyota dealer will tell you that they have yet to replace a Prius battery while under the 10-year warranty, anywhere in the US. This is because in a hybrid, the battery never gets depleted as much as in an EV before the gasoline engine kicks in and re-charges it. And it turns out the number of charge-discharge cycles that make up a battery's useful lifetime decreases with the depth of discharge: that is not to the advantage of the EV.

Finally, try to avoid the fast-recharge mode. It's convenient but tends to degrade either the electrodes or the electrolyte in the battery, leading to decreased lifetime. A patient, overnight charging is best.

In short, treat your EV's battery (and all your rechargeables) - almost - like a baby.

Fuel efficiency update, 2012 Golf TDI

Went to fill up the tank today. It had gone without seeing the pump nozzle for one month and one day. So far, the fuel economy in this 2012 VW Golf TDI has been:
38 mpg around town (25 and 40 mph limits)
45 mpg highway (mostly 65-70 mph)

Beats the EPA spec of 30 / 41 mpg (cty/hwy).

Still, it's on the gas-guzzler side of the average car sold in Europe in May 2012. There is a whole lot of room for improvement - that can be quickly and cheaply implemented. A lot of those European sippers are cheaper to buy, simply because they have smaller engines than the over-powered vroom-vroom ones they've sent over to the US so far. Let's ask for those sippers!

 

Today, I brought to school:
3 growing children
3 bulging backpacks
2 lunch bags
1 cello
1 viola
1 clarinet
1 walker (CelloPlayer's friend had broken a leg)
1 52" bow (for Michaelmas celebration; no arrows)

It wasn't even uncomfortably full. Is why I love this car.

Arsenic in Rice

Once you've got the taste of speaking out your mind, it seems hard to stop. My reaction to the recent reports on arsenic in rice is off-topic for this blog, so I've posted it at BlogHer:
"What's Arsenic Doing in My Rice, and What Can I Do About It?"

I Made a Town Meeting Gasp

I'm not the kind that plays for attention. In the background is where I feel comfortable; my husband and children say I even wear mouse-coloured clothes. My mouth is not fast, or loud. But yesterday I stood up at a town meeting and made the room gasp.

The meeting was about how to get sustainable transportation in our town. There were maybe 80 people. There were presentations about how much traffic was coming from where, there was talk of edge-of-town parking lots, public transit, and bicycle routes. And of the necessity to have broad participation among the residents. I agree with all that, especially the last bit.

Photo Jim Henderson via Wikimedia

And I learned a new word: "sharrows". These are bicycle symbols with double arrowheads, painted onto the asphalt of streets to indicate that someone official thinks that yes, bicycles really are allowed there, and please share the road with them. Sharrows are pretty. And some bikers, and some drivers, have told me that they do make a difference.

I cringed when I first saw the sharrows on my town's streets. They were seemingly placed at random; there were no lane markings, like in the photo taken in Manhattan. They looked pretty forlorn. Besides, I just don't think drivers should be encouraged to roll over bicycles - not even in effigy.

I've tried biking the sharrows. They didn't make me feel safer. Within minutes I was back on the sidewalk.

So at the town meeting I gathered my courage and made myself stand up, introduce myself, and say, "Let me offer you a vision: I see myself and my family riding our bikes all over this town -- without this." And I held up my bike helmet.

A gasp went through the room.

Through the ringing in my ears - remember, the attention makes me nervous - I heard someone say, in disbelief, "No helmet?"

Suppressing a sweat-inducing feeling that I've been recognised as a freak, a weirdo and a bad mom who would let her children bike without their helmets, I took a deep breath, and said, "No helmet. The reason I wear my helmet is that it's not safe out there on a bike. If we made it safe: if we had real bike paths, physically separated from the cars and from the pedestrians, we wouldn't actually need the helmet."

I blabbered some more about the need for clear rules of the road that everybody knows, and about Europeans and their children not wearing helmets on their bikes, and then I was politely cut off - for lack of time, you see.

I didn't have time to explain that without helmets, you would get a lot more moms, and our children, out on bikes, and generally ladies and gentlemen who are prettier than me and who don't see themselves putting on a helmet. The only thing worse than helmet hair is hat hair: I get that.

Certainly I didn't say how I felt about the sharrows; after all, a few town residents had worked extremely hard to get even that concession.

The truth is, I think relying on the sharrows to keep bikers safe is like doing birth control by meditating before sex. Sure, it makes you mindful. But with cars it's like with sperm: if you really want to keep them out, you need a physical barrier. In the case of cars, the barrier can be as cheap as a row of concrete logs laid end-to-end on the street, 5 or 6 feet out from the sidewalk. (You would no longer need the parking spaces).

But it's okay that I didn't get to say all that: I had made an impression at that meeting, and I went home happy. I don't expect bike paths to appear in my town next week. Not even next year. But I've planted a seed, and the ground seems to be reasonably fertile. I followed up with an Email full of bike-path ideas for the committee.

 

What I learned from my two minutes of public speaking:

Even though I'm just a mom, nothing official in my town, it was necessary for my voice to be heard. If I didn't pipe up, how would anyone know that I support bike paths in town?

It would have been more effective if I had brought some bike-riding friends willing to say the same thing. Our group voice counts for a lot more than the sum of the individual voices.

It's okay to be ambitious with your visions. In reality, there will be compromises, anyway. The important thing, for me, is that we get bike paths. If helmets are still required, I will be happy to ride those paths with my helmet on.

 

World Car-Free Day

I have very fond memories of the 1973 oil crisis.
There are many reasons to abhor the oil embargo that led to shortages of gasoline and other modern necessities, and indirectly to the economic woes of the rest of the decade: stagflation, rising national debts, and all the rest of it.

I was oblivious to all that grown-up stuff, but I was old enough to know that something momentous had happened, and that it was worth remembering.

At the time, we were living in the Netherlands, which was one of the few European countries targeted by the oil embargo. My fond memories of the time revolve around the car-free Sundays that the government had instituted in an effort to conserve gasoline. There was a nation-wide ban on driving, with the exception of the police, the fire departments, and medical personel on emergencies.

Car-free Sunday, 1973. Via NRCnext.nl

For the entire winter of 1973 and the following spring, every Sunday the streets turned into a party ground. Suddenly, it was okay to play soccer and badminton, and jump rope in the very middle of the street. After a lifelong brainwashing that the only safe place for children was the foot path or the bike path, occupying the middle of the street gave an indescribable thrill of illicit pleasure, made even more intense by the limited time that such heretical behaviour was okay. On Monday it was business as usual.

But on those Sundays, my friends and I were out biking blissfully in all the places where we normally weren't allowed to go. Some of us ventured out on the newly built highway at the edge of the neighbourhood. In-line skates had just been invented (or anyway, had just become available in the consumer market) and my dad, usually tight-fisted, actually bought me a pair. I spent entire afternoons deliriously sweeping over the highway asphalt that was so much smoother than our brick-paved street.

This Saturday is World Car-Free Day, which is on 22 September every year.

Ahead of this, several dozen cities in Europe have been celebrating Mobility Week, which means getting around on your own power. Last Sunday was car-free in a number of leading cities. Just google images on "car-free brussels" and feel the party atmosphere. It helped that they had a sunny Sunday.

Car-full vs. car-free on the same street in Brussels;
via European Cyclists' Federation

Personally, I can't observe Car-Free Day on its appointed date; I have a scheduled pickup to do that I can't move to another day. But why should that stop me? Since my town is quite oblivious to World Car-Free Day, it sort of doesn't matter when I do it for myself: so I am calling today my personal Car-Free Day.

I can do this because we are part of a three-family school commute share, so while on some days my car is filled to capacity, this year I'm not responsible for driving on Mondays and Fridays. If I play my cards right, I could in principle have at least two car-free days every week. Now there's an enticing idea: I think I'll start playing my cards that way now.

Any way you can fit a car-free day in your weekly schedule?

 

How does QE3 create jobs?

I really don't get it.

Somebody please explain to me how the new round of quantitative easing is going to create jobs like it's meant to. It looks just like the previous two rounds of quantitative easing, in which the Federal Reserve prints money to buy mortgage-backed securities. Yes, those things that caused a bubble the bursting of which led to the crisis that we are still dealing with now, after four years.

More than $2 trillion went into the first round of quantitative easing, followed by $800 billion in the second round, dubbed QE2. Now, in its sequel, QE3, the idea is to pump $40 billion a month into those mortgages until unemployment goes down. Huh? Maybe it should rather be called QE∞, since this could go on ad infinitum.

What is supposed to happen is that interest rates on mortgages go down, making it easier to get and keep a mortgage, driving house prices up, buoying the stock market, making people feel richer so that they spend more money on stuff that somebody has to be hired to make so unemployment goes down.

Whew. Sounds like a Rube Goldberg contraption to me.

What I don't get - but I'm just a geek - is why you cant just go straight to job creation with all that money you've printed. I mean, there's plenty to do around here. If you decided to do something about the nation's crumbling infrastructure, you could give jobs to people who build things: a lot of jobs. Those people would have money to buy stuff, including homes, and that would have a knock-on effect creating more jobs. Not that I subscribe to economic growth ad infinitum - but I do believe in employment for everyone.

The nice things about getting stuff (re)built is that at the end you would have something to show for all that money you printed.

How about better roads? That's "better", not "more" roads. Smarter roads that ease congestion, with public transit either built in, or planned in so it's easy to put in later. Bicycle paths and walkways: the kind of stuff that will pay for itself through better health, and lowered dependence on fossil fuels.

How about a network of fast trains? Everybody else in the ripe world (and some in the developing world) seems to have them already, or are expanding on them. How come the birthplace of the long-distance railroad has, in 2012, not a single track that can accomodate a bullet train? Imagine doing New York to Chicago, or Houston to St. Louis, in 6 hours without the hassle of airport check-in and without the horrendous carbon footprint. Imagine San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than 3 hours. That one is coming, so they say, but an injection of funds would speed its construction.

How about updating the energy grid so we're ready for the late-21st century? Even without the projected load of a legion of electric vehicles, our power lines are tottering on the edge, and even a whisper of a storm can leave thousands of homes without electricity. Never mind the constant brown-outs. We turn off our computers at the approach of a storm; the brownouts can do a number on them. I clean out the fridge, even for a week's trip: I learned the messy way that you can't trust that it will stay on all that time.

These are just some transport-related items. Then there are really important things like our drinking water infrastructure. Don't get me started on healthcare. $40 billion a month is a clobber of money, just 30% less than the defense budget. The National Science Foundation has to make do with $7 billion a year.

Oh yeah: Congress. Almost forgotten about them. But Congress, the people who could tackle and authorise all these projects and make history doing it, is broken. A lot of people are saying that the Fed is using QE to act where Congress can't, or won't.

All this quantitative easing sounds to me very much like preparing for a marathon run, on the Appalachian Trail, by stocking up on syringes filled with those performance enhancing drugs, because the coach who is supposed to help train to strengthen muscles and lungs, has gone missing.

But I'm just a geek.

For more befuddlement, below is a video about QE1 and QE2, "Quantitative Easing Explained", by Omid Malekan. There is also a sequel, made in February 2012, "Quantitative Easing Revisited". See if you can watch them without laughing. In a grim sort of way.

 

 

Review: 2012 Nissan Cube

Nissan's Cube is a mini-MPV that wins no points for its aerodynamic design: Like the name suggests, it is both stubby and boxy. Its drag coefficient C_d=0.35 puts it squarely in the SUV category (compare with C_d=0.24 for the sleek Tesla Model S). But it is exactly that shape, so defiantly different, that distinguishes it from the rest of the pack. You can spot a Cube from a mile away.

The tall boxy shape makes it great for stowing things you need to move around. A cello fits easily across its width, behind the back row of seats. American parents report being unable to fit three child seats on the back row, because American child seats are very wide. On the other hand, you can fit an unfolded child stroller in the back. And (without children in the car) the back seats can be folded down to make a large cargo space; access is easy because the thresholdless rear opening.

About the rear opening: apart from the asymmetry (another distinctive feature), it's enough to make vertically challenged people like me sigh with contentment: If it opened upward like a hatchback, I would have to jump to get at the open door every time I need to close it. Good exercise, but I bet it gets old really fast. As it is, the rear opens like a refrigerator door (one wide refrigerator): a toddler could push it closed.

Right-hand drive

The rear door is thoughtfully hinged on the left side, with the handle on the right side close to the curb. So if you park on the right side of the street you can open the rear door from the curb side.

This is thoughtful, because it is not how the Cube was born: the engineers who designed it made it for Japanese drivers, who drive on the left side of the road.

Left-hand drive

Sure enough, if you look for the Cube on Nissan's Japanese website, you will find that Japanese Cubes are the mirror image of the ones you find here in the U.S.: steering wheel on the right, and rear door handle on the left. And the rear window wraps on the left. It's the kind of attention to detail that makes a model fly on any continent.

It is perhaps the Japanese love of water gardens that inspired the relief on the ceiling, which resembles the water surface when a hit by a single drop of water. I would find it disconcerting to have a feature like that, but inverted and hanging over my head.

Instead I would much prefer the glorious sunroof, edges curved to follow the wave pattern of the dashboard (the sunroof is not available in the U.S. because of cage construction rules). The sunroof is big and lets in plenty of light and warmth. Of course, the warmth can quickly turn to uncomfortable heat in Japan's sticky summers. As with most sunroofs, you can reach up between the front sun visors and pull back a cover that blocks both heat and light.

   

 

If you want the light but not the heat, there is an option, intensely Japanese, of pulling a shoji screen over the sunroof, which is stowed in the ceiling space just behind the sunroof. I doubt that the screen in actually make of rice paper, but if this feature were available in the U.S. I would jump at it!

It is becoming increasingly popular in Japan, where the elderly make up a large part of the population, to equip a car with a swivel chair on the passenger side, for increased mobility for people who would find it difficult to climb in and out of a car otherwise. (Click on the picture below to the page demonstrating how the chair swivels out and down to street level). Certainly the cargo space behind the back row of seats is large enough to hold a folded wheelchair. In addition, there is an optional wheelchair ramp that allows for a wheelchair with passenger to enter the car via the rear door.

For the younger generations, the Cube comes optionally jam-packed with such conceits as USB connection, iPod interface, satellite radio and other distracting technologies.

Of course, the U.S. version comes only with a 1.8L engine that I estimate will do 29 mpg on average for manual transmission, while the Japanese version gets a 1.5L engine that gets 38-40 mpg (my estimate) even though in Japan the Cube only comes with automatic transmission (as far as I can decipher the specs).

 

Nissan Cube US and Japan, different engines

	U.S.	Japan
Type	Cube 1.8	Cube 15S
Year	2012	2012
Emissions rating	T2B5 LEV2-LEV
MSRP	$ 14,890	¥ 1,449,000 ($ 18,500)
CelloMom Rating
Fuel Economy:
City/Hwy quoted	25 / 30 mpg
Avg. quoted		18.0 km/L (JC08) (42 mpg)
Avg. actual	29 mpg est.	38-40 mpg est.
Engine	1.8L DOCH 4-cyl. 16 vlv.	1.5L DOCH
Power	122 HP 5200rpm 127 lb-ft 4800rpm	108 HP 6000rpm 109 lb-ft 4400rpm
Transmission	6-spd manual 2WD	Auto CVT
Fuel	Regular Unleaded
Length, mm(in)	156.7 in	3890 mm
Width, mm(in)	66.7 in	1695 mm
Height, mm(in)	65.0 in	1650 mm
Weight, kg(lbs)	2789 lbs	1170 kg
Trunk volume, liters(cuft)	11.4 / 58.1 cuft
Turning radius, m(ft)	30.2 ft (dia)	4.6 m (radius)
Top speed, kph(mph)

The hockey stick and the Honda Odyssey

Remember the "Hockey Stick" controversy? The term referred to a graph of average global temperature over the past 1000 years, and shows that the temperature has been rising steeply since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The controversy was about the origin of the uptick. The consensus is now that global warming is related to the rising CO2 content of the atmosphere. But even if you disagree with that, what is clear is that the data falls on a curve shaped like a hockey stick.

Call CelloMom a nerd (I can't deny it), but every time I see a 2012 Honday Odyssey go by I can only think of the hockey stick temperature data. I can't get it out of my geeky head. The overall shape of the side windows follows that curve. Only on the Odyssey it's defiantly curved down.

Despite the re-design for this year, the Odyssey retains its epic proportions, and in the US still only comes with that silly 3.5L V6 engine that gets an average of 21 mpg. Ulysses would never have made it back to Ithaca at that rate.

At least the Japanese version of the Odyssey (with a straight window profile) gets up to 29 mpg. And comes with an optional swivel chair on the passenger side.