An Excellent Electric Car Review Channel

When I started this blog about eleven years ago, there were a smattering of cheap electric scooters available, and the only electric cars sold were Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, effectively fancified golf carts built for driving inside gated communities. How much the world has changed since then! A new carmaker called Tesla Motors introduced a little convertible based on a Lotus sportscar followed by a sedan and several other models, and while the company has still not become profitable, it has a cult following that could ensure it's survival. On the other hand, Tesla's opening broadside met a response at the lower priced end of the car model spectrum from Nissan-Renault and General Motors. There are more than a dozen new manufacturers of electric cars now, some legacy manufacturers, some startups, and some old names revived by investors from China for the major part. If you are interested / considering buying an electric car, the selection is big enough to bewilder all but the most diehard electric-mobility enthusiast. Fortunately, several entrepreneurs have come forward with dedicated electric vehicle reviews for the public, and in my opinion, Driving Electric is easily the best of the currently available efforts. The lady who reviews cars for this channel has a practical approach that will appeal to the vast majority of buyers: enough technical details to hold your interest while ignoring the silly "my favorite brand is better than..." arguments on some other channels, combined with a fantastic analysis of what it would be like to live with each model that she reviews. There is a practical approach minus the bulls**t that you get on some other channels, that is especially appreciable. Do check it out, and let the hard working people who put a lot of effort into this channel, what you think.

Greenpeace's Youtube Page

While I am not personally convinced about Greenpeace (or, for that matter about any NGO) they do have a decent Youtube page with some documentaries: http://www.youtube.com/greenpeace Their stand against fossil fuels is encouraging but the reason why they oppose its use are very different from those that I have. In the end, I guess, their views boil down to their extreme left wing views on politics and economics. Mine are more conservative. But, hey, if people like me are to spread a world-view about showing fossil fuels the fist, the easiest way to do this would be to ride in the wake of the waves that a huge outfit like Greenpeace creates with every one of its campaigns.

Good luck to them with their work. And do enjoy their videos when you find time.

Windmill Video

I visited http://www.gadling.com/ by accident and found this video of an old Dutch windmill working as i did when it was first made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WFr5WzinFA Not quite renewable energy and yet it is about hanressing the wind to perform a basic chore. Call me a Luddite if you want, but I find this fascinating and I do think that these would be vastly more picturesque than the powermills that we increasingly have these days. One of my favorite memories frm when I was a boy was going to a mill with my mother to watch flour getting ground. I would help her carry a sack of wheat and though the noise was deafening and the flour that came out too hot to touch, it was always an interesting experience. Thinking back, I cannot but wonder how much more fascinating it would have been if we had a windmill back then in Madras as Chennai was then known. The city is on the coast, after all, and receives very good winds. Well, sadly, if wishes were horses and all that . . .

Electric Car Video Reviews

Turns out there's a lucky devil in the UK who owns a Reva G-Wiz (not a car that I'd want to own) but who also tests and videotapes other makes and posts them on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/danny177 If there's a luckier man, I don't know who it is.

As for what I want, give me a Think in silver metallic paint, please!

Used Vegetable Oil in Diesel Engines

In the time I lived at the Gowri Chitra Gardens, right next door to the Vadapalani Bus Terminus I came to despise the filthy smoke put out by the State Transport Corporation buses right through the day. I would wait for it to be night and for the bus service to end so that the noise and the smoke would stop. Well, here is something that could be used to reduce pollution on our buses and also reduce the cost of bus travel, provided the government does it right: use recycled vegetable oil to drive the buses. Cheap public transport in these days of sky high fuel costs would make more people stop using their cars and bikes and reduce pollution even further, leave alone make the State Transport Corporations more profitable and the air smelling cleaner. I kid you not - try to smell a vehicle being run on recycled vegetable oil. It smells like your grandmother frying vadais.

Now, my dilemma is, how do we get the chowderheads who rule the various South Asian countries to watch these videos and get their brains running enough to collect and use used cooking oil to run buses? Oh well, this is a beginning . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEX1YFXYTdI&NR=1 This is a Mythbusters video where the Mythbusters experiment with filtered vegetable oil in a diesel car

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFbsaNeZps&feature=related This is the first part of a BBC Top Gear video on using used vegetable oil, but here it is processed before being used

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mNGOqrZwYc&feature=related One week after adding the solvent, the BBC's motor mouth Jeremy Clarkson tests an old Volvo with the used vegetable oil. Sadly, the BBC's usual incompetence shows on Youtube where they have not bothered to upload the whole video. if you thought India's Doordarshan were a bunch of jokers, the BBC is a thousand times worse! My regards, though, to whoever posted this as it somewhat completes the episode that the BBC chowderheads begin on Youtube before sitting back to warm their collective cushions with their arses like they do.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=pL-M2IzYGuU This is a video put up by a Canadian who makes biodiesel from used vegetable oil at home. Those who are technically inclined could try and set something like this up. That said, there are several kits available for the non technical types from companies in the USA and Brazil though there is no reason why they should not be assembled by a company in India that wants to offer these. They look simple enough even to a completely non-technical person like me.

http://www.4refuel.com/ This company is Canada's largest manufacturer of biodiesel for ccommercial sale and the Chairman was interviewed on Shal TV, a Canadian channel at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NGptWo6elAE Some very interesting insights here though some of the extreme cold that the Canadians experience would not be a problem in South Asia. This is a lecture on the safety aspects of biodiesel etc at a seminar in Oregon: http://youtube.com/watch?v=E1mkk_kDmwE

There is a caveat, though. Some companies in the West are using cooking oil to make biodiesel without using it to fry anything first. This is criminal. On the other hand, there are technologies for using certain non food plants like hemp (ganja for us Indians) or certain types of algae (the filthy green stuff in our sewage carrying rivers) to make biodiesel.

We have some of the world's best engineers in our IITs and other engineering colleges. And Indians have a way of making their voices heard wit their votes. Our neighbors in South Asia also do much the same that we do. Any suggestions, now, on how to drum this and other sounds into the ears of our selectively common-sense-deaf policymakers?