Nice story.

I suppose Sarah Fleming is just a young cadet reporter with no knowledge of cars. The word is spelt 'Volkswagen', not 'Volkswagon'. They've been on sale in Australia since before her parents were born.

Noel seems to be a cluey guy with electronics, and yes choosing a Beetle for its simplicity is a great idea. But NOT for its aerodynamics. His quoted statment "...they are still the best compared to the new ones that get made now" is not only wrong, but absurd.

The original Beetle was 'aerodynamic' by 1930s-50s standards, with a drag coefficient of 0.48 compared with, say, a typical truck at 0.6, a Hummer at 0.57 or Citroen 2CV at 0.51. The original Mini is also 0.48.

BUT - modern cars are far better. The New Beetle is 0.38; the VW Tiguan SUV is 0.37. The Mk2 VW Jetta is 0.36. The Mk3 Golf is 0.32; the Mk4 Golf is 0.31. The Mk5 Passat is 0.27. Technology always moves on and modern cars will benefit in all ways - safety, economy, performance and aerodynamics over their predecessors. The Beetle was good in its day but is crap by today's standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_drag_coefficient 

Until we get a majority of base-load power from clean nuclear fuel (like France), electric cars are not 'clean' as they just move the 'pollution' from the car to the power station. Not to mention problems with the energy required to manufacture them, their recharging times and faciliities to do so, and their lack of range.

Phill, I normally love your detailed posts....but "clean nuclear fuel'....what the hell are you thinking. Clean as far as what? Ask what they think in Japan, or wasn't that close enough to get you worried??? Maybe Lucas Heights had a meltdown you'd be concerned?

We're probably going a bit off topic here. Nuclear IS clean, and done properly much safer than conventional power.

I know the word 'nuclear' sounds scary, but here's a bit of perspective. Death toll from the Japan earthquake and tsunami - 15,457. Deaths from the Fukushima reactor - 0. It was protected by a sea wall but the tsunami was 15 metres high - what other infrastructure can expect to survive that? Yet it did, without Chernobyl-style catastrophic failure of the containment vessel thanks to its superior design. The problem was never that the reactor would 'explode', but that the coolant water would leak and become contaminated due to structural failure - which it did. The INES rates the accident a '7'; the JAEA initially a '5', later a '6'. Power was restored within 10 days and there are no leaks now. Work on installing filters and new water pumps and cooling systems continues. The plant will be decomissioned due to its structural damage. The Japanese will probably build new reactors to replace it.

Deaths from the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 was also 0. That station is still operating and has recently had its licence extended to 2034. The death toll from Chernobyl has been variously claimed from 4,000 to 200,000 or more (!) but the official UNSCEAR report confirms the death toll as 64 to 2008. This is not to minimise the seriousness of that accident, but there has been a lot of unreasonable fear. Compare - over 12,000 people have been killed in coal mines. http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/182484/International-Mi...

How many people have been killed in 'green' hydroelectric power accidents? The 2009 Sayano–Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station accident killed 75 people - more than Chernobyl, let alone Fukushima, so why no headlines about that? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sayano-Shushenskaya_hydro_accident 

I am all in favour of alternative energy sources (if they are financially viable) but nuclear is not the ooga booga that people make it out to be. I live at Padstow in Sydney, less than 10 km from ANSTO at Lucas Heights. I've done the tour several times. It's a research reactor, NOT a power station, with a core smaller than a bar fridge. Well worth a visit. The original HIFAR was built in the 1950s by Australian specialists with Australian technology and materials. Because our nuclear industry has stagnated, when it was time to replace HIFAR we had to import everyone and everything from overseas - OPAL 2007 was designed and built by an Argentine company! That's something WE should be doing. If we ever get a tsunami 15 m high at Lucas Heights, 140m above sea level, that little reactor will be the least of our worries.

A few electric cars are great. But here in Australia, without nuclear power for the forseeable future, how can we provide the power to charge them if they ever start selling 10,000 - 100,000 - 500,000 + of them? Especially if this stupid carbon dioxide tax ever comes in.

My 2c anyway :-)

The thing I have a concern about is the waste, how are we going to store that safely and where?

graphic pebble reactors a pretty good with waste, you can hold the spent fuel in your hands thats how clean and safe.

the DC of the old beetle is 0.41 as from all the sources I have read.

Problem here is DC is only related to shape relevant to the volume of the object.

So its stupid comparing a beetle in terms of aero to a new car as most new cars actually have more over all drag compared to the beetle because of their sheer size.

Simple a beach ball has same DC as a squash ball about 0.5 from memory, but the beach ball is guaranteed to expend 10 fold the energy to drag compared to the small squash ball.

So yeah an old beetle with DC of 0.41 compared to the majority (now SUVs), pretty much the same DC as the beetle anyway would win hands down. most cars now are not below 0.35 anyway and most certainly look to have gotten much worse than ever before (excluding the 80s )

This is something mythbusters need to try out. Old small un aero car VS big modern aero car.

no nukes yeah way tooooo heavy
peace out man

It is still a cool car, that is why I posted it.

It shits me when they list these inefficient P.O.S as Zero Emissions. Apparently if you produce your shit at the other end of a power cord it equals Zero. F%#ked and false. My2c

yeah our current coal power stations are only 27% efficient at turning coal to electricity. then think about the losses of the power lines, power transformers, switching yard wiring of your house, then the charger of the car, then all the electrical and mechanical loses in the bug itself.

most internal combustion engine already exceed this 27% at the flywheel not the 27% at the power station.

false economy lol.

Not saying electric cars are bad, they are freaking awesome with shit loads of power and massive torque available at 0rpm, plus larger electric motors are typically around 95-98 % efficient from electricity to kinetic energy.

Our problem is power source and storage which makes it a false economy.

yes db, cool car and effort. I will do this one day too

solar farms, simple.

We have the space and sun to do it

43 billion on broadband when i just typed this up on a 5 year ole pre pay nokia....what a joke. should be spent on solar power for our future

I hope im not hear to have to explain to my kids that we knew about it, yet did nothing before it was too late

we need broadband as its very important for the future of this country. I can tell you first hand the amount of trouble and money went so I could have decent internet.

Anyway solar is well in development here as we are the leading country in solar technologies,but................but
our government is slow in pushing the implementation of these technologies.

60km range, 6 hours to charge. It therefore averages less than 10km/hour. I'll hold out for a little while yet.

The difference between coal mine disasters is that once the mine caves in, it has caved in. Thats the end of it. Would you eat an apple from a Chernobyl orchard? Its not the amount of people killed in the explosion but the amount of people with radioactive poisoning, birth defects and so on that happen after that which would worry me. I know that it was supposed to be a pretty crap design and nothing on that scale should happen again, but the Japanese thing could have been heaps worse. If the pumps arent working to pump the sea water in, or the pipes from the pump are broken then you have nothing. Hence the panic that was going on over there. Add to that the depleted uranium is used to make weapons that the yanks seem to enjoy blasting into civillian buildings which is starting to show up in increased birth defects and cancers in iraq. We may eventually find its the only answer but its not going to be in a city where I am confident to live in.

Easiest way out, (tongue in cheek on the easy) Use coal for the base load and "free" energy for the rest. Every house in Australia gets built with a solar panel roof, you cant buy an air conditioner without a solar panels capable of powering it, you cant air condition something below..22? degrees. A shop cant have aircon if it is going to have the front wide open all day. You cant buy fan heaters, heaters should have a thermostat on them so people cant overheat their room. You cant build any more mega office blocks without having half of that building designated residential to reduce commuting. Suburbs can only be built with streets predominantly east west roads, no more houses facing the sun. Motion detectors on all lights. You cant wash your clothes or flush your toilet with treated water. Nor water the grass, garden or wash the car. What about showers that can only supply hot water 10 minutes at a time, that would fix my wife/daughter up! Pools are bad mkay. Ban small bar fridges that are notoriously inefficient. Set a maximum TV size for the home? Cars under 1200cc are exempt from all registration costs as are 250cc bikes. Or perhaps more correctly a low low CO2 etc per km factor. Governments should provide more incentive to business to decentralise. NSW govt did a reasonably good job of this a while back. I think fair trade went to bathurst, state super came to wollongong, something went to albury maybe. Needs to be expanded to get private businesses out of the city too. Most importantly, zero population growth! Stop overloading the place with people! Free contraception and sterilisation for all. Err mandatory in some places perhaps where boofhead footballers and paris hilton wannabees tend to breed. And there lies my policy speech for my run at PM.

You have my vote Mr. Amazeer. Thats as long as the buggy gets the free rego that is.

A number of things there would be a hard financial slog (initially), but by hell, it sure is a good starting point, or somewhere to head for.

You have my vote too.

Quote:

Originally posted by donn You have my vote Mr. Amazeer. Thats as long as the buggy gets the free rego that is.

VOTE 1 Chris F

Solar? Where does the power come from when the sun's gone, hope the wind picks up? So we want power stations even less efficient as they're shut down during the day and fired up again at night.... Better still find out how we generate power when demand exceeds supply, that's a nice eye opener.

If you look out the window at 4am you see nothing but street lights. At 7am people are getting out of bed switching on lights and kettles. By 9 they are at work firing up computers, making a second cuppa, turning on compressors welders, harvey norman fires up 100 tv's in each shop etc etc. Are you saying that coal fired power stations arent doing the ramp up cool down cycle every day already? We dont use as much power at night which is why you have an off peak rate. Solar power during the day can only help flatten out the demand on our existing power stations.

Another thing we can do is slap people around the head over "Earth Hour". Every year thousands of people travel to the city to watch as the security guy turns the unused lights out, then goes to turn them all back on for no reason an hour later. What is the point of that? If the light doesnt need to be on, turn the friggin thing off. Even if you're the world's leading climate change skeptic, you turn it off to save you money. Duh. Earth Hour is like missing one cigarette and expecting to live longer.

I couldn't agree more with you Chris

Coal fired power stations are very efficient if they can maintain a steady output. The cyclic demand is what the power suppliers have been trying to flatten for ever. As you said, solar will reduce that demand due to the peak demand being during daylight. I did my apprenticship with the state's power generation mob of the time (80's), and then the peak demand was 7-9am and 6-8pm. I believe it has changed somewhat, but not sure when it is these day's.

As for nueclear being clean.......how bloody short sighted are some people??????

Lot of talk without any proof in this thread.

We would need a Chernobyl sized accident every three weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as coal and oil already is. In America alone, 50,000-100,000 people die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. It is also horrible on the environments on a micro and macro scale with uncounted billions of tons of carbon dioxide sucked out of the ground, burned in power plants, and exhausted into the atmosphere.
That being said, Nuclear power plants aren't that great either (partly because of funding and development being halted by media fueled paranoia, and partly because of it's natural disadvantages). We should strive for something better than what we currently have, something advanced and progressive, not sinking money into flawed technologies. Fusion power is one potential solution, still some years off though.

References:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_Air_Pollution_Linked_to_De...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-03-05-pollution.htm 
http://www.iter.org/ 

your an ass thank for the good feedback.

I am not bringing up any of my kids in those world. They would be a miserable bunch if they ever came into existence excluding the fact I would be their father

I did physically lose my rights to breed due to a medical condition, I just got my fertility back 2 moths? ago and all these years thinking shit! I can't have kids then all the sudden returning back to normal and better than before made me realise....

hell no I not have any brats, f**k that!

Quote:

Originally posted by vlad01 your an ass thank for the good feedback. I am not bringing up any of my kids in those world. They would be a miserable bunch if they ever came into existence excluding the fact I would be their father I did physically lose my rights to breed due to a medical condition, I just got my fertility back 2 moths? ago and all these years thinking shit! I can't have kids then all the sudden returning back to normal and better than before made me realise.... hell no I not have any brats, f**k that!

lol moths sorry *months* I mean.

no I moth balled that idea long time ago.