So oil-shitting bacteria isn't green enough for you? Well, apparently Tesla Motors is having some big press event today and they have made two big announcements. The first is that they are planning on having an electrically powered 5-passenger sports sedan for sale in the future for just $60,000. That sounds expensive but compared to their $100,000+ two seat roadster it's quite a deal...of course there is no projected availability date. But an estimated 225 mile range is pretty damn impressive and may be worth waiting for.
The second announcement is that they will have a sub-$30,000 model S available inside of just four years. There's no details about size or range but you can bet that it will be a smallish city car.
Maybe these guys can help save Chrysler by contracting them to produce these forthcoming designs.
Monday, June 30, 2008
New Bond
The trailer for the forthcoming, 22nd installment of the James Bond franchise was briefly released to the Internets. Jalopnik was kind enough to snag and link a copy before it was pulled. Personally, I think Quantum Of Solace is an odd title, based on the trailer it should have been titled Rouge Agent.
Welcome to the future
This story has been making the rounds for the past week but I couldn't find a decent ACTUAL story about it until today. Apparently a startup is Silicon Valley is using a genetically modified bacteria to produce a near clone of good 'ole fashioned oil. That's right, you mix the bacteria with a biomass of some kind, the bacteria digests and then essentially "shits" oil.
Scenario number one, if it works as proposed then it's awesome. We can all have a little mini bacteria refinery in our garages; dump your grass clippings in every week and out comes sweet, sweet gasoline.
Scenario number two (the Resident Evil scenario if you will), it doesn't work and the genetically modified bacteria turns out to be completely insaitable. The bacteria consumes the entire planet's biomass and converts the entire Earth into a giant ball of hydrocarbon goodness.
Either way it could mean the end of our dependence on oil. If the process is reliable, scalable and not apocalyptic in some way.
Scenario number one, if it works as proposed then it's awesome. We can all have a little mini bacteria refinery in our garages; dump your grass clippings in every week and out comes sweet, sweet gasoline.
Scenario number two (the Resident Evil scenario if you will), it doesn't work and the genetically modified bacteria turns out to be completely insaitable. The bacteria consumes the entire planet's biomass and converts the entire Earth into a giant ball of hydrocarbon goodness.
Either way it could mean the end of our dependence on oil. If the process is reliable, scalable and not apocalyptic in some way.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Eat your young
The American auto industry is on the verge of collapse. Things were bad when our current gas crisis started but now after months of $4 gas, the product baskets full of enormous SUVs and trucks are sinking the formerly "Big Three" like a giant anchor.
Chances are that Chrysler is not going to survive as a company for much longer. Think about that for a minute....what's going to happen if every Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealership fold up shop? General Motors is hovering near a stock meltdown and Ford can't unload all of its unprofitable parts fast enough. The clock is ticking....
For a long time industry experts have cried that the Detroit automakers needed to dump some of their unprofitable brands and streamline their operations. Check out this chart of brands that SHOULD be killed off in order to bring some kind of sanity to their product lineups. The American car companies never did figure out that they were just spinning their wheels and wasting money trying to market and sell the same car under two or three different brand names. For example GM is stealing sales away from the Saturn Aura by selling the same car as the Chevrolet Malibu all the while wasting millions trying to market each as having unique brand character. What bullshit, they are the same damn car! The only one on that list that is sad is Saab. I never particularly liked Saab but they did make unique cars with a very distinct character...until GM bought them and homogenized the uniqueness out of their lineup. Why buy a Saab when it's really just a GM Vectra/Malibu/Aura in a fancy Swedish hat?
I grew up in a factory town, worse yet a Chrysler factory town. It scares the hell out of me to think what a ghost town it will become if Chrysler really does go down the tubes.
Chances are that Chrysler is not going to survive as a company for much longer. Think about that for a minute....what's going to happen if every Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealership fold up shop? General Motors is hovering near a stock meltdown and Ford can't unload all of its unprofitable parts fast enough. The clock is ticking....
For a long time industry experts have cried that the Detroit automakers needed to dump some of their unprofitable brands and streamline their operations. Check out this chart of brands that SHOULD be killed off in order to bring some kind of sanity to their product lineups. The American car companies never did figure out that they were just spinning their wheels and wasting money trying to market and sell the same car under two or three different brand names. For example GM is stealing sales away from the Saturn Aura by selling the same car as the Chevrolet Malibu all the while wasting millions trying to market each as having unique brand character. What bullshit, they are the same damn car! The only one on that list that is sad is Saab. I never particularly liked Saab but they did make unique cars with a very distinct character...until GM bought them and homogenized the uniqueness out of their lineup. Why buy a Saab when it's really just a GM Vectra/Malibu/Aura in a fancy Swedish hat?
I grew up in a factory town, worse yet a Chrysler factory town. It scares the hell out of me to think what a ghost town it will become if Chrysler really does go down the tubes.
He's baaaaaack
Donnie has returned because we all still suck at Photoshop. Apparently Donnie has some bad baby batter.
Great recap
Check it out Lost fans, the top 30 WTF?! moments of the first four seasons. Major spoiler warning to those of you that haven't watched Lost.
Crack heads
According to this story from the LA Times, 75% of people surveyed believe that President Bush is responsible for our sagging economy. That means that 25% of you are still living in some delusional wonderland. Let's see how do you wreck an entire economy in just 8 years? Here's a few ways.
- Ignore months of intelligence that terrorists are planning attacks that will throw your financial markets into chaos and kill hundreds of people integral to our global economy.
- Turn your country into a Police State making it much more difficult for international business to be conducted. Thanks Patriot Act.
- Invade other countries against the will of the majority of the international community... that will foster good will and drum up business.
- By doing number 3 you really piss of the people that provide us with the most necessary thing to our economy, oil. That's turned out to be a great idea.
- In order to accomplish number 3 you need to find some cash from somewhere. It used to be you'd increase taxes to get that money but that was not an option for Bush since he was too busy cutting taxes to distract everyone from number 3. So you borrow the money from other governments, as much as $1.5 trillion dollars. That's why the Dollar is in the shitter, because we've diluted our currency by that much in just eight years.
- Turn number 3 into a three ring circus of inept decisions.
Awesome
Trent Reznor and his compatriots in NIN are really pioneering digital distribution of music. They've decided that they don't need no stinkin' record company in order to get their music into the hands of their fans, HOORAY!
This post on NIN's web site shows how they have generated a KML file (that's a Google Earth Layer BTW) that allows you to see the location and quantities of downloads of their latest album, The Slip. Now think about how important that information must be to a band, it would allow them to know where the greatest concentration of fans are and plan their live shows accordingly. just think that's cool.
This post on NIN's web site shows how they have generated a KML file (that's a Google Earth Layer BTW) that allows you to see the location and quantities of downloads of their latest album, The Slip. Now think about how important that information must be to a band, it would allow them to know where the greatest concentration of fans are and plan their live shows accordingly. just think that's cool.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
