Dann Todd's 'Dain Bramage'^**

100 MPG Diesel Hummer???

Just when you would think that I had settled into a rhythm of dead cats and quilts, I offer a second in a special series of two posts about the potential for increased fuel efficiency for American drivers. The emphasis being on drivers as opposed to car manufacturers.

Johnathan Goodwin has a bit of a reputation in the world of aftermarket auto modification. Specifically, his specialty is in high mileage, high power, drive systems. Johnathan was in the middle of modifying an H3 Hummer when Fast Company's Clive Thompson visited his shop. Johnathan had just received a 1980's vintage turbine engine that was originally designed for the US military to burn almost anything. The result???

"Conservatively," Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient."

He laughs. "Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!"

The fuel that will be used to get that 60 MPG? Used oil/grease from restaurant fry vats.

His next project is to convert a 1960 Lincoln Continental to biodiesel for Neil Young using a combination biodiesel/electric hybrid. He figures that the new power plant will deliver about 100 MPG.

Why hasn't Detroit picked up on Mr. Goodwin and his unremarkable modifications? Internal myopia rules Detroit automakers.

Two years ago, Goodwin got a rare chance to show off his tricks to some of the car industry's most prominent engineers. He tells me the story: He was driving a converted H2 to the SEMA show, the nation's biggest annual specialty automotive confab, and stopped en route at a Denver hotel. When he woke up in the morning, there were 20 people standing around his Hummer. Did I run over somebody? he wondered. As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer's manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin's H2 looked modified. "Does it have a diesel engine in it?"

"Yeah," he said.

"No way," they replied.

He opened the hood, "and they're just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out," he says. They asked to hear it run, sending a stab of fear through Goodwin. He'd filled it up with grease from a Chinese restaurant the day before and was worried that the cold morning might have solidified the fuel. But it started up on the first try and ran so quietly that at first they didn't believe it was really on. "When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil," Goodwin says, "you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating power of the oil, it's just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they're like, 'Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'"

One engineer turned and said, "GM said this wouldn't work."

"Well," Goodwin replied, "here it is."

It turns out that Mr. Goodwin's retrofitting work has influenced GM to increase the number of diesel engines going into its Hummer vehicles.

Why do I call Mr. Goodwin's creations "unremarkable"? Because they are based on deploying existing technologies that have been around for years to decades. The constant refrain being sung in Detroit is that they can't produce cars with these types of power plants economically enough and that there isn't a national fuel distribution scheme for all of these alternative fuels.

Objection number one is overcome by observing that Detroit car manufacturers rarely produce an alternative power plant in the millions of copies. Usually it is just tens of thousands. And at those low volumes, those vehicles aren't really cost competitive. Ratchet things up by a couple scales of magnitude and all of a sudden volume discounts bring the finished cost much closer in line with "traditional" gasoline engines.

So begin by mass producing millions of diesel/biodiesel compatible engines. Distribution for diesel already exists and can help bridge the gap while biodiesel manufacturing and distribution systems are created.

And branch out from there. The electronic age has taught us that every technological possibility will be explored. If you can create one piece of the puzzle, then someone else will handle the next one. Working cooperatively is the best way to experience success.

Sitting back and relying on what has worked in the past is the best way to experience long term failure. Particularly when anyone with half a brain can tell you that what worked in the past isn't going to work for much longer.

by Dann 

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They Promised Us Flying Cars In The Future

And it seems that we are getting closer and closer to having them.

Check out the Aptera. If you have a high speed connection, then watch the videos as well.

This car has been designed to make the maximum benefit of aerodynamics as well as conservation of energy with features such as brakes that return power to the batteries while simultaneously stopping the car. The electric version has a range of 120 miles. The next version will have a small gasoline engine that will get up to 300 mpg.

That's Miles Per Gallon, folks!!

Now why can't something half as innovative come out of Detroit? Because Detroit is philosophically, and technologically inbred. If it isn't based on technology that Henry Ford [the original] could understand, then it isn't going to get a chance from the Big Three.

by Dann 

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The West and The Rest

Mark Steyn is a Canadian author who has written a book titled "America Alone". The premise of his book is that differing birthrates and an assertive Muslim population could potentially displace the western values with which we are most familiar.

One of those supposedly "prized" western values is tolerance for other points of view. Yet Mr. Steyn finds himself accused before Canada's Human Rights Commission. While I'm certainly no expert on the HRC, I do think this entire episode raises some interesting questions as well as validates some of the assertions made in Mr. Steyn's book.

Mr. Steyn's position?

Here's my bottom line: I don't accept that free-born Canadian citizens need the permission of the Canadian state to read my columns.

.......

This is a political prosecution and it should be fought politically. The "plaintiffs" certainly understand that, ever since the day they went in to see Ken Whyte and demanded money from Maclean's. I want the constitutionality of this process overturned, so that Canadians are free to reach the same judgments about my writing as Americans and Britons and Australians and it stands or falls in the marketplace of ideas. The notion that a Norwegian imam can make a statement in Norway but if a Canadian magazine quotes that statement in Canada it's a "hate crime" should be deeply shaming to all Canadians.

How troubling are the assertions made in his book? Apparently not so bad as to prevent Muslims from wanting to read it.

This morning I spent 20 minutes mulling over a couple of offers for overseas rights to America Alone from the Islamic world. It seems that Muslim publishers from Turkey to Indonesia are more robust than Osgoode Hall law students. What a sad comment on the decayed Dominion.

I find it troubling....to put it mildly....when western values are being abused to undermine western values. This instance of censorship in the service of "tolerance" is a disservice, at the least.

by Dann 

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