and some more eestor news

[TallDave]

Actually, the original question was are larger vehicles safer than smaller vehicles.

No, this is where the debate started:

Also remember that higher vehicle mass = better collision safety.

Larger vehicles are better in collisions.

For instance headone collisions are the most dangerous but very rare.

Yes, because they involve the most delta-v. All collisions are affected by mass ratio, though.

The delta-v in an SUV when it hits a civic is still enough to hurt the occupants unless they are properly secured.

But you're much more likely to be injured in the Civic, because the delta-v is much higher.

And unless the Abrams runs OVER the Civic than the occupants of the civic will get out of their totaled car and say what the h*** was that tank doing on the highway.

Unless they fly through the windshield -- something the guys in the tank don't have to worry about, because they're experiencing very little delta-v.

This is my point. I am not saying that in an accident Big cars aren't better. What I AM saying is that a larger vehicle isn't necessarily safer.

Right, just in collisions. People may place too much emphasis on that aspect of safety, but it is a factor.

[MSimon]

There are clearly costs associated with larger vehicles borne by those with smaller vehicles, or no vehicles at all. Cost of collision risk, road maintenance, increased road design and building costs....

The debate shouldn't be whether or not there is a cost differential, but how the Tax and registration costs should be structured to reflect the differential. I don't believe fuel taxes even begins to cover it.

To see the problem drop fuel prices to $.25... (Gedanken, of course): There'd be secretaries driving vehicles the size of locomotives in from the suburbs, that they may be kept 'safe' from the vehicles the size of the Abrams tanks. My Honda Fit is already fodder for what's out there.... :(

What you have to work out is the differentials between schemes.

[Skipjack]

To underline my original point:

http://www.gizmag.com/all-electric-mini ... how/10229/

So if you want to have a mini that makes just 150 Miles, you have to give up the already very small backseats... That does not sound like a very efficient way to store energy to me. The reduced system weight does not seem to help as much with the range either.
So my point is still. We need (!!!!!) a much (!) more efficient system for storing electricity than what is currenty available, or a small and lightweight system to create electricity directly in the car in order for this to have any merrit. Once there is more electric vehicles demand for electricity will go up and therefore also the prices for KW/h. Right now the only thing that speaks for electric vehicles is the low price/mile.
We need polywells or superefficient and cheap solarcells (that anyone and their grandmother can put on their roofs for free power) in order to guarantee cheap electricity once demand goes up. If electricty gets more expensive, or gas gets cheaper again, then electric cars will be even less appealing than they currently are.

[tombo]

The car weight is like the classic game theory problem "prisoners dilemma".
Your car weight makes the other person less safe.
Their car weight makes you less safe.
How much do you bet on trust?
How much do you spend on self defense?
IIRC the only workable solution is to play over and over with the same people.
Then ante some trust and see if they reciprocate.
If they do raise the trust level.
If they defect go to tit for tat mode, with an occasional trust ante thrown in to see if they are ready to play it differently.


Gedanken Experiment as a counter example:
I imagine a small very stout wedge shaped car that would flip an SUV in a collision. Give the suspension enough travel to put the frame on the ground and you could drive away after a brief shower of sparks.
Of course the passenger restraint system needs to be excellent too, but that needs to happen in any case.

[MSimon]

You assume extra weight has no cost.

Consider:

1. Fuel Prices
2. Maneuverability
3. Parking Spaces
4. Vehicle taxes
5. Acquisition costs

You also assume people are incapable of making tradeoffs. i.e. some may want to take the extra risk on a commute and save fuel $$. OTOH when out with the family an armored vehicle is preferred. Or a man has a handicapped wife and wants her to have a heavier vehicle for her safety (true story).

[Nanos]

All this talk of vehicle weight and I'm reminded that our vehicle is limited to 60kg, I hope we can put together enough of a rollcage to come close to what Volvo manage.

(I'm also reminded that an ex-girlfriends bad driving eventually killed her pulling out in front of a really big truck, where as the replacement girlfriend I went for one with a Volvo )


How well would a car whose body panels are filled with up like a parcel with polystyrene fare in an accident ? (I was thinking cork myself.)

[Aero]

Seems like more very good test results. Also, production delivery has slipped again to early 2009, due to limited funding.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21171/page1/
There are several new articles now on the web, one in the NYTimes, but my opinion is that the above are the main points made.
Here is a more positive article.
http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2008/10/29/the ... aybe-2009/

[tombo]

You assume extra weight has no cost.

I make no such assumption. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Sometimes I don't put in every connection or qualification in order to keep my posts from running on even longer than they already do.
Some people consider the extra cost to be a kind of insurance payment.

If you've seen a Volvo or Mercedes after even a slow accident they are really messed up because the whole nose section is soft to reduce g-forces on the passenger compartment.
Yet, another insurance premium.

Styrofoam filled fenders and other dead spaces. Yes good idea.
The car manufacturers probably think they are "too expensive" so they won't even give the market (us) a chance to try them.
I would have more trust the market's ability to allocate resources properly if they had put in seat belts and airbags and anti-lock brakes without being forced to by legislation.

I'd like to see models with pre-inflated airbags in those spaces.
Also I'd like to see heavy duty fast inflating airbags packed into the bumpers.
Have it extend say 1 meter and be triggered by a proximity sensor.
By limiting it to operating only above say 15 mph it would protect pedestrians and avoid exacerbating parking lot dings and make tight parking places still possible.
It can be fast because it is not hitting people only metal.
It can stay inflated for secondary impacts because it does not blind the driver.
You can get a lot of deceleration in 1 meter especially if the occupants are belted down.
If they are not, well that's what Darwin's law is for.
Didn't one of the Mars landers re-entering with airbags come in a little hot and bounce a kilometer high?

[MSimon]

I would have more trust the market's ability to allocate resources properly if they had put in seat belts and airbags and anti-lock brakes without being forced to by legislation.

Trouble is: in America safety was not a very desired feature. People were not willing to pay for it and auto companies felt it was a negative for sales: seat belts implied the car was unsafe.

And as usual the legislators went overboard: airbags are not really cost effective if you consider the number they kill vs the number they save and the cost. Plus air-bags are very dangerous for children. And those outside the 99% population norms: too short or too tall.

My son was in an accident where the airbag deployed and it gave him a severe concussion and brain swelling. His disability re: airbags - too tall.

You get about 95% of the safety effect of the airbag from seat belts alone. And guess what: airbags don't work well unless you are wearing your seat belt. Seat belts cost about $10 per passenger protected. Airbags $1,000 per. Do the math.

And re airbags for your vehicle: cost $2,000 for two passengers. There goes your low cost design. Pre-inflated airbags are a great idea otherwise. Provided you could see through them.

[scareduck]

I got a comment on my blog yesterday on the topic of EEStor that was sufficiently interesting that I reproduce it here in whole. The comments by "Anonymous" he refers to are the standard-issue complaints about EEStor's physics forgetting that barium titanate capacitors store energy as ½cV rather than ½cV^2:

Anonymous may know his high school physics and a bit about integration, but his understanding of the size effect on nano crystals is completely lacking. Understandable if he’s not in the field of nano tech research.

I site [sic] “Size Effect for Barium Titanate Nano-particles” by Tomoya Ohno, Daisuke Suzuki and Hisao Suzuki of Shizuoka University, Faculty of Engineering and Takashi Ida of Nagoya Institute of Technology, Ceramic Research Laboratory, a peer reviewed paper in which they observed a roughly exponential increase in the dielectric constant of Barium Titinate particles when the size was reduced below 100 nm diameter. As reference, at ~30 nm the dielectric constant was ~2500 and rising with decreasing size (see page 199 of the paper).

As for the claim that permittivity reduces with electric field strength, this is true for bulk material where no attempt has been made to control purity and defects of a surface coating which is on the scale of 20 nm. It’s not necessarily true on the nano scale.

The arguments that Anonymous makes are analogous to saying that just because you can’t make a modern efficient transistor by sticking two electrodes and a ground to a 1 cm thick chunk of un-purified un-doped silicon, the transistor as we know it today is impossible….

I find it plausible that a thin enough film of a pure ferroelectric like Barium Titinate prepared on a surface perfect enough could produce some interesting results. I’m not suggesting that EEstor have achieved this, but the science IS plausible despite the engineering being cutting edge to say the least.

As for Richard Wier [sic], he has 25 years experience with HDD data storage. Considering what has happened with that technology in the last 5 years I would think he has exactly the skills necessary to do what I describe above.

Secrecy makes perfect sense as does limiting the results available until you have at least a working prototype. Media attention is not wanted during an R&D to pre-production phase, it’s just a distraction (and a potential security risk). If the prototype delivers on even half the claims within 1 year EEstor will still have plenty of interest and will not need to solicit investment. The net effect of what they have said is that it has generated a lot of dis-belief. Considering that the number one way to challenge a patent is to claim it only describes existing best practices and knowledge in the field, what better way to defend against such claims than to elicit the sort of comments some experts have made.

I don’t know if EEstor can do what they say, but since there is only money changing hands between businesses with knowledge in the industry a scam seems unlikely to me. If you wanted to scam someone why would you aim for Klein Perkins, Lockheed Martin and Zenn? Wouldn’t you go after some easier targets?

[Aero]

I have been following EEStor for some time now. There is a lot of skepticism. Frankly, I wonder about some of it, but I guess most people don't have a lot of time or opportunity to keep current in the various advances. Neither do I. But I do know that materials do behave differently at the nano-scale, and I do know that Nanotechnology it here today. And I do know that in printing, the ink is the key, at all levels, but even more so on the nano-scale.

There have been a lot of trade-off studies between screen printing and ink jet printing, ink jet usually wins for precision and screen printing for volume. We know that EEStor has independent confirmation that their Barium Titanate particles are uniformly fine. I expect they have reason to believe that it is fine enough because their 'fineness' is not pushing the state of the art.

The state of the art is approaching the ability to print living organs, printed a layer at a time. Here is a recent paper reporting an advance in that area. It addresses the common ink jet printer problem of "splatter" of the ink, not so much the ink itself.
http://plasma.mem.drexel.edu/publicatio ... rinter.pdf
If the technology is sufficiently advanced, and it is, to approach the printing of living tissue, then I have no doubt that it can print a capacitor.

[Mike Holmes]

And we know that net energy fusion is absolutely workable, too.

There's a lot of difference between theory and practice. Sure, their theory is probably sound in general terms. Wether or not they can put the theory into practice - when nobody else who has attempted same could do so - is less certain.

I think a "I'll believe it when I see it" attitude here is just fine. They've decided to keep tight-lipped about their methods, which may mean they've got something revolutionary... or it may mean that their process is "We'll figure the next part out when we get there." Very hard to say at this point.

I think we'll get ultracapacitors of this sort eventually. I just don't know that Eestor will be the ones to do it, and even less certainly whether or not they can do it on anything like a tight timeline. I'm pulling for them - it would mean efficient electric cars much sooner. But, well, I'll believe it when I see it.

Mike

[TallDave]

As long as they don't start talking about fractional electron states...

[scareduck]

And we know that net energy fusion is absolutely workable, too.

There's a lot of difference between theory and practice. Sure, their theory is probably sound in general terms. Wether or not they can put the theory into practice - when nobody else who has attempted same could do so - is less certain.

I was more concerned that the permittivity of barium titanate wasn't some glaring oversight that Kleiner-Perkins missed. It sounds like they have reason to proceed the way they did, but that's far from saying it will work.

[Mike Holmes]

Yes, there may be more hope involved here than percentages. But, then, without folks willing to make such gambles in trying out new things in science, we'd have very little advancement. If and when they do fail, we'll probably have learned some interesting things.

If they don't fail, then wow.

Is it a horse to back? Well, the risk-return apparently seems high enough to some. I'm glad that some are there to back the gamble, because of the inevitable benefits involved, either way. Do they know something we don't know? Or have they made mistakes? How can one know until they go public?

My modest resources of time are being put forward to back Polywell... another iffy gamble.

Mike