Archive for August 9th, 2008

More on the Electric Car

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

After an interesting comment on my previous post on Electric Cars topic, “Who Killed the Electric Car” suddenly I am seeing stuff about this topic all over the place.

Here’s a great article from the current Atlantic Monthly about GM’s new shot at electric car fame and fortune (hopefully)

“Still, he hesitated. GM had called him because of his deep experience with battery-driven electric cars. In the 1990s, he had worked on GM’s EV1, an all-electric technological masterpiece that had done so poorly commercially that GM wound up crushing the cars amid a hail of public condemnation. Farah had been fiercely committed to the EV1, and he was not about to relive the disappointment.“Hell, no,” he said. “I’ve been on programs like this before. They’re not real.” (from “Electro Shock Therapy, Atlantic Monthly“)

Does cast another light on the whole EV-1 story. Now I want a Volt!

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Finally, a simple cell phone!

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

My Treo 600 recently died a hard death. I had to learn a new cell phone, a relatively low end one, and it was a serious undertaking.

Someone I know recently did a 90 minute drive in 3.5 hours because their car’s GPS inadvertently was set in the ‘avoid highways’ settings and they were in unfamiliar territory, without a map, and so had no choice but to follow the long way.

I’ve seen this idea suggested elsewhere, but how a cell phone for people who don’t read manuals? Why can’t a cell phone be as easy to operate as a regular telephone? (Yes, the new home cordless sets with built in answering machines are almost as complex as cell phones!)

It seems someone has finally done it! Thank you KDDI, Kyocera and Toshiba.

Originally posted on Sep 19, 2005. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.

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