Electric cars a step nearer mainstream?

[Doctor Drivel]

Maxie, you said all of that so well. What does eejit mean?

[R.C. Payne]

I was mostly in the central area, but all those trams had to be going somewhere, and there were seriously large numbers of them. I'm sure out in the suburbs there are diesel buses, presumably acting as feeders to the trams and big trains, but none of those routes penetrated the centre.

Robin

[Roland Perry]

In message , at 11:13:20 on Mon, 2 Jun 2008, R.C. Payne remarked:

The Geneva tram and trolleybus lines are only a couple of miles long, and there's plenty of filling-in needed.

[Espen Koht]

This is nothing new. Regenerative braking has been used in electric cars since at least the 1980s.

[Jon Green]

Say it out loud!

Jon

[zulu]

That

[dennis]

????

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, but the amortization costs of laying the cables are pretty small over the next few years.

let's say it takes a grand per charge station. Cabling wise.

And another grand for metering/charging equiupment. 2k per space total. I think these are realistic.

at 10% ROI thats £200 a year per parking space.

Let's say occupancy rate is 30% average, and each car takes 15Kwh average per diem. So thats 5KWh per day average per space. About 50p.

I am being pessimistic. So instead of charging what - 50p to charge your car up, its going to add say another £3 to your daily bill. Who cares? it costs at least £30 to stay in a hotel overnight.

At three quid a day to park the cars, the thing is feasible. Ive paid more than that for an hour in a Cambridge car park WITHOUT electricity.

[The Natural Philosopher]

What planet are you on? No diesel is better than 32% efficient top whack and they produce several bhp just idling.

Show me ONE example..in THIS world.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you have to ask, it means you.

[Dave Liquorice]

My TD5? Sat idling for 20 mins waiting for SWMBO'd one cold winters day, heater didn't get any warmer than it was when I parked up after a 3 mile drive. ie it stayed just off cold. A petrol would have had it's electric fan cutting in a deperate attempt to stop it over heating within 5 mins.

The TD5 doesn't have a fixed fan it has a viscous one so I guess it gets a little cooling even cold and at idle. Temperature gauage didn't climb to normal either, that takes nearer 5 miles driving to achieve.

[dennis]

It needs repairing.

[zulu]

[dennis]

Well are you going to say something useful or just sigh about the place.

[Adrian]

The Natural Philosopher gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

You don't believe me, fine.

[Dave Liquorice]

At the time of me sat in it getting cold it didn't need any repairs, now is another matter.

[Dan Sheppard]

[elsewhere "what is snipping"]

The idea is that it can make a post self-contained: you read the bit of a post which someone is replying to, and then their comment.

For example, almost all of the stuff in your post was irrelevant to this post, so I snipped it, apart from the thing I was replying to. Someone can come across this post and make sense of it (hopefully).

Imagine how difficult it would be for someone reading this post on its own to understand if I'd top posted. The first thing they'd read would be "The idea is that it can make a post self-contained". What idea? Then they'd have to wade through some argument about snipping, and then reach a bizarre self-referential paragraph, this one, which may mean that this post is in response to something about top-posting, or this may just be a parenthetical observation followed by a long series of questions indicating some kind of doubt about authorial intent. Without the context, how are they to know? Once that it's been resolved by the sheer size and complexity of this paragraph that it's probably not paranthetical, it still remains to be determined "Why am I writing about top-posting"? Is it just something I do from time to time? Or am I responding to some point someone raised about it? Or perhaps it's some kind of lame "post-modern" gag? Perhaps I'm just insane?

Why aren't they reading the thread in order? Well, threads are non-linear so you always have to retreat some distance up your stack, and sometimes you have to do things which aren't reading posts.

Only when they reached the end would they realise the context, by which time they'd realise that they didn't care. But it's too late by then, they'd have waded throught all this rubbish when they finally saw:

Dan.

Roberts wrote:

[elsewhere "what is snipping"]

[Tim Ward]

Except that when I have to scroll down to see anything new I usually don't bother, hence

(1) if you top post I might read what you write (and might, as discussed, be confused by it, or might not if I've been following the thread) (2) if you bottom post having snipped properly I might read what you write and understand it

but the worst possible outcome is

(3) if you bottom post and leave more than about ten lines quoted before your new material there's little chance I will read what you say *at* *all*.

[Mary Fisher]

Your loss.

Mary

[Tim Ward]

I'm not claiming everybody behaves like me, but I *do* claim that there's nothing special about me, so it won't just be my readership that's lost. The whole point of writing something is, usually, that you hope people are going to read it ...