Category Archives: Cars

Ban Driving w/ Cell Phones or Ban Automatic Transmissions

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Several weeks ago it became big news that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration released a report that came to the conclusion that all cell phone use should be banned while driving. Currently, many states (including Georgia and New York)  have  laws banning texting while driving – and there is no national rule that ensures that all states are similar. The news stations in Georgia reenforced the idea through the same anecdote from the family that pushed the law here – after their son died while texting and driving. Here’s the main article.

 

Rather than choosing the banning of cell phones, government could choose to increase driver attentiveness and safety by making laws that ban automatic transmissions. Here are a few arguments for that legislation, but this is mostly backed by some preliminary studies I’ve seen and heard about attentiveness improving in ADHD adolescent males. Some other points I would like to make, manual transmission legislation could immediately:

  • Immediately increases the skills and training required for driving
    (Can make training more expensive, increasing the respect driving gets)
  • (Anecdotal) Makes drivers decide between talking on a cell phone and shifting
    (though this only matters in traffic)
  • Increases fuel mileage
    (the average manual transmission gets better mileage than the same car equipped with an automatic)
    (speed and gearing thinking can use more read ahead and gear braking)
  • Decreases other distracted activities
    (Drivers are less likely to eat or try to reach back to children while driving)
That said, this is a red herring, because  I’m fairly confident that all of America is not willing to no longer be able to purchase automatic transmissions, including being required to learn a new skill – or suffer the possibility of not driving. The key thing is that states already have laws for distracted driving, failure to maintain a lane, using the left lane for other than passing purposes, and many more issues that should already enforce being distracted by cell phones.
As an additional note, I use my phone for both GPS and music in my car. This means that I could have a glowing screen lighting up my cabin while I’m really just trying to change songs.
Finally, in a non correlation / causation argument, driving fatalities actually decreased after 30 years of increases when the recession and iphone booms came.

Car Tire Pressure

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A co-worker asked me the other day what pressure he should fill his new tires on his car to. He had been confused by what he had heard, read as the maximum pressure on his tire sidewall, and what was in there now.

The suggested pressure in on your drivers side door. The tire pressure is actually based on your car, not which tires you have. The typical weight bearing load for consumer vehicles is somewhere around 32psi. In the meantime, your tire will say maximum pressure around 44psi.

The 32psi is cold.

The 44psi is ever.

But, there are some exceptions. When autocrossing or tracking, tire rigidity is more important than contact per se, and so to prevent tire rollover (particularly on weaker non carbon fiber sidewall tires) I will meet or exceed the maximum pressure in warm air. Also, a few psi in any direction won’t kill you. If you are going for high mileage on the highway and willing to sacrifice some traction on your wide wheels – then a few extra psi (~35, especially in the rear, won’t hurt you much.) And if you get stuck while offroading, you may try lowering your tire pressure down 5psi at a time until you can get out until about 15psi. Check to ensure that your overinflation isn’t causing the tire to crown – and your under inflation isn’t marking up the sidewall of your tires.

You can spend more on nitrogen air – but why bother? Nitrogen is a larger molecule than oxygen so less of it leaks out of your tires. It also contains less water vapor resulting in less expansion as temperatures change. But, if you are checking early and checking often (and I like to do a visual inspection whenever I get gas and before trips) than air will be fine (and more accessible.) For autocrossing, I used to use a 30gallon air tank – but then I learned that I can use a bicycle standing pump and it’s just about as quick and easy (with less weight to carry around).

[I take no liability in changes to your vehicle from this advice]

My First ZipCar Experience

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Zip Car

On Friday, I needed a car, so I used my recently acquired zip car membership. I had actually chosen a luxurious BMW 328 for my trip on Friday afternoon, but then…

My Car Was Gone

I was kind of afraid that this would happen if I used this service, and they have a pretty stern late policy ($50 in cost) and I had places to be and things to do! Instead I got a different car, parked across the street, a Ford Escape. [They also comped me a little extra time for my delay]

New Cars Are Weird

They’re so plastic, and cheap plastic. Thats barely broken in. Every time you try to adjust the radio you’re afraid that the button is so brittle and ceramic coated that it’s going to break. Also, I’m not a big fan of an automatic transmission, being able to actually control a car and feel a car is something I need. Yeah, I know, zip car isn’t for that.

No Android Support

I know, I’m counter hipster, but if you’re not going to support my phone with an app, at least let me access your web site (Though, I could get to it on my phone when I originally looked it up) so I had to call the number, OLD SCHOOL WAY, by actually calling.

Overall A Good Experience (4/5)

I extended my reservation quickly while I was enjoying a dinner – with a simple phone call that took all of 30 seconds. It got me where I needed to go, and really trouble free (and I had no worries about what Libya’s done to gas prices.) I think that I’m going to try my next trips in one of these. (When I can’t carpool and save the environment of course?)

Nissan leaf driving event

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Nissan Leaf Battery Platform

This morning, I got to be one of the first in Atlanta to test drive the all electric Nissan Leaf and it seems like a great car for the average Atlanta driver (even to forsyth county.)

480 Volt Charging

One new thing that I hadn’t heard about is 480v charging systems at major transportation / rest areas (applicable to me because I can’t drive to visit my brother in birmingham without 150 miles.)

Free Charge?

One concept is that vendors might give me kwh in turn for shopping at their store… but I shop at their store now and they charge me to park there…

Interior

My number one complaint about the leaf ( and Toyota Prius) is how much they try to reinvent the controls. The shifter looks like a can of coke and is not as obvious. I’m also not a big fan of one touch start.

The Q&A session included a great talk about sound dampening and reducing as much noise as possible. Without engine noise you notice a lot of things, aka wiper motors, wind from the mirrors.

That being said it was pretty comfortable. Not sport car bolstered seat, super leg support comfortable, but pretty comfortable.

The radio and navigation unit looked and felt pretty cheap. I’d much prefer rubberized plastic than hard shiny plastic.  It basically seemed hard to read and hard to use.

Why It Would Work For Me

As a waterski coach, it is awesome that half of a charge is to Cartersville, because that means I can get back and forth to the lake.

It would also be great for weekends, getting to the Highlands, visiting friends in Dundwoody or visiting some of my family up in Roswell.

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The Inside

Why does it not work for me?

So, while it would work for me 95% of the time really easily to have a 100 mile range; my < 100 miles trips are pretty low in volume too (aka, I drive my car about once a week, sometimes 2 weeks) and I want something extra in my car if I own it – like it being a good track car.

The ultimate in Green Hipster is still a big lifestyle commitment (living within walk / bike range of public transit and having work, city points in that range.)

Effectively, Zip Car should still be the green decision for last mile transportation.

And the advantage that my car has (that I can go to the beach one weekend or to visit my brother)[trips where I consider renting]  would be lost on the leaf.

Performance

They wanted to tout the torque, so yes, I floored it and squealed the tires some,  I also went heavy on the brakes and tried going lock to lock. The steering is about what your typical commuter car is, and the throttle is effectively the same. I really don’t like front wheel drive so it didn’t really turn right for me.

Also, like other cars, you almost have to activate the regenerative braking more than just letting it happen.

The other thing that annoys me about automatic tranmission cars that the leaf definitely did, is move without any gas.

The test drive

I felt kind of rushed to get in the car and get it going. While the co-driver did note to put a seatbelt on, by the time they explained the shifter to me it was time to go… and we ended up going on the road, so I needed to have adjusted the mirrors. Perhaps the worst part was the close spacing making it hard for me to actually test the brakes or accelerate really hard.

Cohosting Atlanta BarCamp 4

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This Friday will be the 4th annual Atlanta BarCamp , hosted at the Atdc and hosted by myself and Sam @samsm.

I challenge anybody reading my blog to come with some new ideas to teach me more, and most of all show up. We have almost 60 registrations so far and expect many more Friday night.

Challenge one : setting a date was difficult, the things to avoid were home gt football games and big Atlanta events like taste of Atlanta.

2. Sponsorship seemed a little difficult to gather this year, and while the Atdc can help ponsor the location, air conditioning and other fees apply. Luckily, I\’m a perfect business case for.Microsoft as I started a company with their Azure incubation week after hearing about it from the sponsors last year. Then we got in contact with Core Commerce which has products some attendees might use for  payment processing. We\’re still looking for more sponsorship though to pay for more food and drink.

3. Letting go. If we don\’t have a final sponsor, I\’ve got to realize that this is an un conference with creative idea people. They won\’t kill me if something doesn\’t quite go right.

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I\’m going to attend bar camp too though. Which means I need to prepare some talks.

1. I really want to talk about my experience auto racing with the sports car club of America and how it provides a good way for everybody to learn how to handle during loss of traction. How could we institute it as privatized required education?

2. Cloud. Anybody with a web app has some issues with scalabilty and the ideal cloud structure is to use only what you need.

3. Believing ideas are worth $1 to $15 and your time to try. How to start that simple idea or business. Not saying i\’ll make you any money, but at least the idea is out there.

I also plan on taking my sleeping bag so that I can hang out with all of the attendees Friday night.

Fuel Efficiency – Constant Throttle / Load versus Cruise Control

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So, in case any of you were wondering what was happening with my Twitter posts regarding driving with Cruise Control (constant speed) versus Constant Throttle (variable speed), I thought that I would add some detail.
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I\’m occasionally a hyper-miler, it entertains me on the road, and when I\’m road tripping with family or friends has an added sense of accomplishment and bragging rights. One time I remember most was in driving to Oshkosh, Wisconsin when my dad and I competed to get the best mileage. I beat my dad by a solid mile per gallon, and he beat the cruise control by a mile per gallon (in all cases over extended highway driving, Atlanta to Wisconsin.) To add to my credentials, I drive with a air flow computer in my car that tells me my current throttle %, airflow percentage, and more.
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One of the people I was responding to on my twitter post was irritated because the other had just driven a 6 hour + drive, and apparently not been maintaining a constant speed. I thought it might be worth the funny point to point out that driving variable speed can potentially be more efficient.
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To effectively drive more efficiently with variable speed you should do the following.

  • Only drive within a power range that you can stay in your top gear. If your car is struggling without downshifting, then you are going to slow to get all of the advantage from variable speed.
  • Have a maximum position that you are willing to put the throttle. In my car, I like to have this max set at 60%.
  • Make sure that you maintain a highway speed
  • Predict the open lane so that you aren\’t braking (ie throwing gas away.) Particularly, try to be nice, and move to the right before up hills and figure out how to move back left for the downhill.
  • Accelerate a lot on downhills, just maintain as much speed as you can on the uphill.

I imagine that the people in question were not driving with a \”constant throttle\” system and were instead just forgetting how fast they were going and slowing back down, or doing the opposite of what this system is supposed to do and accelerating to pass in an uphill.

This method will accelerate you on downhills (to probably faster than you want to go) and put you in a crawl going on an uphill, which is a decent way to remember that going with gravity is easier than going against it.

My father taught me to drive like there was an egg between my foot and the pedal, meaning that I\’m never changing throttle too much or too quickly.

Best of luck driving.

Amtrak Review

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During my Recent visit to the Central West Coast, I had the pleasure to ride Amtrak on one of the most beautiful trips that I could have possibly taken from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo. It was great experience and I recommend that you look into finding a cheap trip near you. First off, my ticket was only $38, which at an expected car cost of $0.50 per mile including maintenance is much cheaper for a 200+ mile journey like the one I took. I met some fun people on train, had a delicious lunch, and got to sit in an all window car for 3 hours.

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The Problems

My train ride was not perfect or fitting for many scenarios. First of all, scheduling was a pain, http://amtrak.com needs to get with google to add the train to google maps. I had to manually figure out which station to station would be the cheapest and quickest on their website and also found out on my ride that there was a quicker alternative without needing to go through San Francisco and Oakland and instead going south on Cal Train from my lodging at Stanford.  The time involved, a three hour trip by car effectively took 5 hours on the Amtrak; trains should be able to go faster than cars (is 80mph really that hard to engineer for?) and not slow down like we did many times – get the schedule right.  There was also some drama on my Train as apparently two guys were cursing a lot and when a man that looked like me asked the conductor to get them to treat the environment with respect I was warned to watch my back by an older woman… I wish I would have told the guys to quiet down, but the whole situation should not occur on the chill train.

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I would highly suggest that everybody get more into the train and transportation systems, because it can be a fun and enjoyable journey. I experienced networking opportunities over a soothing ride in a lunch car with two Entrepreneurs and a student studying abroad. One thing that could help this happen is American Maglev trains that solve some problems – check out this new venture http://academicvc.com/2009/03/american-maglev/

I ride Marta around Atlanta a lot because it goes North and South along most of my travels pretty well, but Cal Train and Amtrak were fun new experiences.

I would like to see more trains going more places, with more people on them (hopefully some of this American Stimulus will help) because if people really start trying to enjoy their time they will love watching the scenario go by across from them instead of 10 miles up. Train technologies and conducting companies need to streamline their services though, offer faster service to more people at lower prices to more places. The Mag lev and other new lighter technologies are a positive.

On the other hand, current train systems get around 450mpg at cruising speed based on their momentum conserving ideals. What if the trains used batteries (instead of the dead lead weight that many cars have) to make their hybrid systems actually work a lot more efficiently.

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Saving on Every Day Things – Car Edition

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So as I noted yesterday in my post on Gold, I breezed through Dave Ramsey\’s book. I\’m also pretty familiar with his other financial advice due to members of my family also being very financially acclimated. Dave and Clark Howard both have a group of every day expenditures that they like to call the stupid tax.

Cars

I drive a fancy 20 year old Mazda RX-7, it\’s stylish and I paid for it in full in high school, and I come to the somewhat painful realization on road trips that maybe 1 in 10 cars is close to the age or older than mine. I think that the truth that reflects on societies is that my car is noticeably one of the oldest daily driven cars at most colleges and high schools, where it is typically safe to assume that the driver did not pay for the car outright and probably does not pay for the insurance.

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In his book, Ramsey has done the research that suggests that the average person with a car loan pays $376 a month, every month of their lives. I don\’t know about you, but that is absolutely shocking what people will do for luxury.

In addition to this loan cost, consider your costs of insurance, especially if it\’s an almost dead car worth hardly its value in steel, you will save a ton in not having (your fault) collision insurance. For teens, that can double the insurance premium.

Furthermore, when you finance your brand new car, it loses 60% of its value in the first 4 years as a depreciating asset that is likely to suffer damage and wear.

Dave Ramsey goes on to suggest that you should look at cars that are 2-4 years old and that the majority of millionaires own these older cars as their \”new\” cars. That warranty tends to not be worth it either. As an example, I was looking at cars this December and ran into a premium edition Infiniti G-35 with 50k miles for only $15k (the new ones were right around $30k.) Bringing me to a small and optional point Learn to Drive a stick… you might enjoy it and you will save about $2k on many cars.

The 14-20 year loans that some financing arms offer is the most ridiculous part though! I can\’t think of anybody who buys a new car and plans on driving it for 10 years… and you would still owe most of the loan amount at the point anyway. So when you sell your car 5 years later without GAP insurance you would still be paying for your own car. (By the way, at the Atlanta Boat Show this year there were $200/month terms for $35k boats over 20 years — which is equally as appalling – especially at the 7% interest they wanted to charge)

Market Wise we all know that GM, Chrysler, and Ford (U.S. companies) are having dreadful sales and I think that a lot of it has to do with the car industry overselling their products. The SUV has changed America, but people don\’t need or want to buy a new Suburban, Escalade every two years. And then thing about work trucks, like the F150, most companies keep these trucks for just over four years. But what this means is that there is a limit. GM Sold More cars than they had every sold before in 2007 barely beating Toyota. But there are limits to the  driving need, and unless GM can get that marginal cost down and stop depending on selling infinite  cars in the future then it will never survive in the long run.

I added this to the Environmental category as well because, well, getting more use out of the same 4000lb piece of metal is environmental. My car may not get 35mpg, but it gets slightly above 20 (very comparable to the RX-8), but by not buying another car, I\’m reducing the parts and minerals being used in a new one. I\’m also saving junk yard space.  Reemember – Reduce comes before recycle, so I\’m reducing and encouraging you to do the same.

Finally, I\’m going to make your kids hate me. Don\’t buy them a brand new car. Don\’t give them a car that is worth much or amazingly appealing. I used my dad\’s 1991 pickup form 2002-2005 that was won at auction from a company for a reduced price. It got me around just fine. It was pretty safe, reasonable looking, and I had my first off-roading experiences among with other in it. So, get that junker like they suggest in Transformers and let your kids figure out what kind of car is for them.  And remind them not to complain about something that they\’re getting for free (or on discount.)