Sure, you can get a fuel-efficient hybrid car, but it’ll cost tens of thousands of dollars. That’s too much for the Top Gear crew, who’ve set out to build a 70MPG car for only $7,000.
They’re doing this by buying a 28-year-old Volkswagen Rabbit, driving it up to CWS Tuning in Saskatchewan, replacing the engine with a “modern, computer-controlled, turbocharged VW TDI engine” and then driving it down to UCLA where aerodynamics professor John McNulty will help, as they say “make the car more slippery.”
And for reference, a 2009 Toyota Prius achieves 48MPG and costs $22,720, while a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid achieves 40MPG and costs $24,320. This thing will get 70MPG for $7,000.
It’s a downright awesome project, one that they’ll be covering step by step online via video and images. And they’re looking to get the internet to name it for them, so look for the Ballsmobile to hitting the road in the near future. We can’t wait.
EDIT: as of 3/1/2009, my free license for esXpress expired, and unfortunately - although the GUI interface still lists an available option as “FREE” as far as licensing goes - esXpress will not work in free mode after your trial license expires. They really need to update their GUI to reflect this and not just blame this on “There was an old document on the web site that had incorrect information, that has now been corrected.” Disappointing to say the least. With that said…
I run a decent-sized, fairly simple ESX environment as I’ve mentioned before - so simple, in fact, that the powers that be feel I’m fine admin’ing at all alone.
Something I’d been struggling with for a while was an easy, straightforward way to back up all the VMs that we have in place - and I had originally sought to rely on Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro. However, I’ve been using that product for a few weeks in evaluation and have come away disappointed - when trying to run multiple backups with the product installed on my VirtualCenter server, I ran into too many (seemingly) .NET-related errors to be reliable. Instead, I set up a second Windows machine dedicated to VM backups - a more expensive option, even considering Vizioncore’s relatively low price point.
I’ve got an Xbox 360, mostly to become a millionaire in Forza Motorsport 2. Well, a little way’s back, the add-on hard drive failed with an E67 error indicating a bad external hard drive. So, there the Xbox sat, unused. What’s the point when you can’t save that Porsche 911 GT3 you just won?
And so I managed to stumble across this article on PCWorld, and in a certain moment of serindipity happened across a Western Digital Scorpio hard drive. Well, I tell you: once I downloaded HDDHackr and booted my machine to DOS off a USB stick, I was all set - 107gig usable hard drive space.
Now to earn all those Porsches, BMWs, Mercs, and Lotuses back…
Announced today: Picasa is finally available for the Mac. Not that iPhoto wasn’t sort of slick, and made my first introduction to owning a Mac a really fun learning experience… but it’s just that Picasa is world’s better than iPhoto (or any other more expensive option like Lightroom).
Fully owning the fact that I’m all sorts of choked-up geek about this. One of the main reasons I wanted a laptop was the ability to take my photos with my everywhere - home to see my family, on trpis to upload stuff while on the road, etc. And I’ve always found iPhoto a little counfounding and a little too behind-the-scenes. Not any more with Picasa!
With gas at the $4/gallon mark and oil flirting with $140/barrel, fuel economy seems to be on everyone’s mind - and pretty much completely taking over the motivations of any auto manufacturer’s marketing department. You see MPG ratings prominently displayed in TV and magazine ads, where even a Dodge 2500 is trying to claim 20mpg to keep those heavy suckers moving on the lots. Well-intentioned, yet kind of stupid politicians are now stepping into the fray with lifestyle legislation (only a matter of time, eh Boulder?). So it is with great amusement that this comes in from our friends at Top Gear:
A test aired Sunday on BBC’s Top Gear television program, however, casts doubt upon the notion that a hybrid would be the most fuel efficient in every circumstance.
“This is a BMW M3,” the show’s host Jeremy Clarkson said in introducing the car that would compete with a Prius. “It is not designed to be as economical as possible; it is designed to be fast.”
Clarkson chose the most extreme examples to make the point — a sedan equipped with a V-8 engine producing 414 horsepower against the Toyota Prius with its 76 horsepower hybrid motor. The EPA rates the BMW at 14 miles per gallon in the city, and 20 on the highway which compares unfavorably to the 48 and 45 figures for the Prius. In this test, the M3 matched the speed of the Prius as the hybrid ran flat-out over ten laps of the 1.8 mile Top Gear Test Track in Surrey, England. Measurements taken after the run show that the Prius returned just 14.3 miles to the US gallon, while the BMW had 12 percent better fuel economy at 16.1 miles per gallon.
Not to get all little-pinky-turned-up-in-the-air and all, but I’d also like to point out that I’ve been watching my fuel consumption on the Wee as well. I’m consistently in the 55mpg range, and that’s at full-throttle, idling, city and highway, and so on… Anna and I took off for Estes Park last weekend, and at a mid-day fill-up I was showing 59mpg.
via Anna, who’s loving her 35+ mpg Goob hauler. Suck it, hybrids.
To quote Gizmodo today:
Well, enter
With gas at the $4/gallon mark and oil flirting with $140/barrel, fuel economy seems to be on everyone’s mind - and pretty much completely taking over the motivations of any auto manufacturer’s marketing department. You see MPG ratings prominently displayed in TV and magazine ads, where even a Dodge 2500 is trying to claim 20mpg to keep those heavy suckers moving on the lots. Well-intentioned, yet kind of stupid politicians are now stepping into the fray with lifestyle legislation (only a matter of time, eh Boulder?). So it is with great amusement that this comes in