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All the bells and whistles.
Kids love to send the electric windows down at any time of the day. “Helicopter wobbing” – as we call it – is the loud vibrations in the air waves from windows that have been sent down while travelling at highway speeds. There’s nothing more irritating! Well, almost. A high-pitched scream from the aftermath of a squabble in the back seat features right up the list of most unwanted noises on a long car trip. Hey, I love our kids. And I enjoy the electric windows – especially the one-touch switches that go all the way up after one flick of the switch. The anti-pinch function with electric windows is also something I love, having had my finger squeezed in electric windows without this safety feature – the experience lets you know what that medieval torture device known as the thumbscrew felt like. Electronic luxuries, even the luxuries that are not linked to electronics, can be a car owner’s delight – delights that will make the car trip a pleasure, delights that set the standard, and delights that you can show off to all your mates. What are the bells and whistles that you could never do without?
The days of the horse and carriage are over – at least for now. Though I reckon you still could combine high-tech carriages with solar power and horses easily enough, and market them as being the most fuel-efficient, least harmful to the environment vehicles in the world. But even the horse and carriage of the nineteenth century had the finest luxury materials of the day. The leather on some of the premium carriages was so beautifully crafted that it has a charm and warmth completely missing from most of today’s high-end car interior upholsteries – though Jaguars of the 1980s and 1990s could match them. That was what made the Jaguar of this era so charming. The warmth of the interior welcomed you with soft sumptuous leather seats. You could forgive the Jag’s appalling reliability, and revel in the car’s awesome luxury. Leather seats rate highly on my list of luxury features you just can’t do without.
Premium sounds get the big tick on my list, as well. There’s nothing like cruising the motorway with crystal clear sounds. A good audio system is a must in my cars. And steering-wheel mounted audio controls are up there: though I can live without them, I’d prefer to have them.
You just gotta have air-con, too! Especially in Australia, where the heat of the summer sun can blister paint or fry an egg. Most flagship models for Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, BMW, HSV and Lexus have zoned climate control, where one occupant on one side of the back seat can have a different temperature and climate to the occupant sitting on the other side of the back seat. Not bad, eh? This is the sort of luxury item I like – though for some, what’s wrong with the manual wind-down windows?
Heated seats, televisions, seat massagers and GPS are gadgets that are starting to get over the top – don’t you reckon? These are the sort of ‘Bells and Whistles’ that only the snobs have, right? And what about parking sensors… this luxury feature just proves how badly you handle a vehicle in a shopping mall car park. I mean, surely, what sort of real man is going to brag about his parking sensors! Though I do have a weakness for heated seats…
One of the high-tech ‘way cool’ features that my dream car wouldn’t be without is the system that can change a flat tyre on the move. Forget the silly-sounding talking GPS unit or the automatic light- up sun visors for touching up lipgloss (do it at home, girls – much easier). Wouldn’t you rather be with a car that can change its own tyre, have the latest high-tech airbag for your knees and keep your morning coffee hot in the temperature-sensing driver’s cup holder?
The Truth About Biofuels and Human Waste
If you fell for our April Fool’s post with the phoney press release about a Swedish company using urine as a biofuels, you can be forgiven for falling for it. The truth is actually not that far away.
There has been much (genuine!) excitement in the motoring world about biodiesel produced from algae, as this reduces dependency on limited supplies of fossil fuel and looks to a renewable resource. Some microorganisms produce oils within them that are suitable for use as a feedstock for producing biodiesel. These algae, which include the very common Chlorella, are able to use otherwise non-productive land and rather dubious water, which solves the biggest problem with other sources of biofuels: the crops grown for biofuels, such as corn or jatropha, often compete for good soil and water with food crops, which could cause problems for world food supplies. Algae, however, can be grown in open ponds, which can be built on otherwise useless land and can use wastewater or seawater.
And the wastewater in question can be sewage, which really does include human urine. Urine contains urea, which is commonly used as a fertiliser (for example, the old remedy for lemon trees that aren’t doing well is “a gentleman standing in front of it”), and the algae thrive on this, plus the other stuff in sewage. In New Zealand, one company has successfully harvested the algae from a town’s sewage ponds and refined it to produce biodiesel. The result is known as Green Crude™. This process has two major benefits: firstly, it provides a renewable source of biofuels; secondly, it speeds up the process of cleaning up wastewater, solving another problem.
Sweden, the home of our fictitious Løøflirpa (spell it backwards…), is a country that has a strong interest in biofuels – you only have to look at the biodiesel Volvo and Saab models to realise that. A very high proportion of their petrol stations provide biofuel or an ethanol blend, and they have Europe’s largest E85 alternative fuel fleet, thanks to some government incentives. Like our neighbours across the ditch, biofuels are being developed using sewage.
And what about here in Australia? We have our ethanol producers, mostly using by-products of Queensland’s sugar industry. Legislation has limited ethanol blends to E10 (10% ethanol to 90% unleaded petrol) but this is changing – and the Saab 9-3 Ecotec runs on it just fine. And yes, projects to grow and harvest biodiesel are underway – find out more about it here.
P.S.
In case you missed it:
Poisson de Avril – French for April Fool (literally “April Fish”)
Tonto: Spanish for “stupid”
Necio: Spanish for fool
Majkat: Danish equivalent of April Fool (literally “May Cat”)
Dihydrous oxide: H2O
Biofuel Breakthrough – the 1411-P
The Swedish research company Løøflirpa announced a startling new breakthrough in biofuels: a car engine that runs on urine. “It’s unbelievable,” said Løøflirpa spokesperson Avril d’Poisson. “This could change the way we fill up our cars forever.”
The breakthrough was made by researcher Tonto Necio. “It was just serendipity. One of my laboratory assistants, Majkat Jokaar, had been working a long shift and was obviously getting rather desperate, so he made use of a handy glass beaker, as he was in the middle of controlling a chemical reaction that couldn’t be left unattended for more than a few seconds. Later, we were testing different types of biofuels in our new engine design and didn’t realise what was in that particular beaker. The engine ran reasonably well with the contents of that beaker – better than some of the other alternative biofuels we had tried – and we were astonished when Majkat confessed what was in the beaker.”
Researchers at Løøflirpa stated that the new engine is able to make use of the reaction between dihydrous oxide, nitrogen and organic compounds within urine, which is passed through a thermolytic chamber within the engine to release a non-toxic gas that provides the necessary compression for combustion within the piston chambers. The natural gas is very clean-burning and produces very little exhaust, apart from trace amounts of CO2, methane and water. “I think we’ve found the ultimate biofuel,” said Avril d’Poisson.
Further trials by the Løøflirpa research team are underway to fine-tune the small four-cylinder engine, known as the 1411-P. State-of-the-art electronic injection and filtration componentry have aided smoother running. “The performance of the engine seems to depend on what has been eaten within three hours prior to filling the engine,” said Tonto Necio. “Our researchers are experimenting with various foodstuffs to find the optimum biofuel blend – so far, a combination of high fructose and complex carbohydrates seems to work well.” Dr Necio concluded by stating that research is still ongoing and that more volunteer participants are needed to continue the refining process.
For further details and for information on how to contribute to the 1411-P project, visit www.looflirpa.com.
Only in America – the Driverless Car.
Writers and filmmakers have always dreamed about cars that drive themselves – take Herbie, for example. Now scientists are getting in on the act and GM has come up with a “driverless car” – a car that really drives itself in much the same way that a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) flies without a pilot.
Yes, you did read that right. GM have made a car that doesn’t need a driver. What’s more, the head of the driverless car project at General Motors, Raj Rajkumar, sounds pretty confident that this vehicle will be on our roads by 2015. So far, GM have managed to create a prototype, based on a Chevrolet Tahoe, that has been photographed whizzing around a test track. And they’ve taken it beyond the test track, apparently. This highly modified Chevy (it’s got a whole heap of gadgetry stuck on the roof) has been driven (or, more correctly, has driven itself) along public roads in California and managed to cross the Golden Gate Bridge without any untoward incidents.
The motivation behind this self-driving car is, apparently, safety. The idea is that a machine doesn’t get distracted by cellphones or kids in the back, suffer from Lead Foot Syndrome or misjudge a curve, and therefore drives within the speed limit and drives safely.
However, my personal opinion is that URVs (unmanned road vehicles – I made that term up) won’t be as popular as electric cars. Those of us who like to drive will hate these vehicles as things that spoil our fun – a self-driving car sounds about as bland and as boring as a food concentrate that delivers all the nutrients of an old-fashioned Sunday dinner straight into the stomach without the pleasures of taste and texture. And others of us who can take or leave driving are likely to be sceptical about leaving our safety completely in the hands of electronics. Electronics are wonderful when the work but I, for one, would not like to be a passenger in a driverless car that suddenly decided to go haywire at 100 km/h. And we’ve all got stories about when GPS navigation decided to send us along some peculiar route. What’s more, can these driverless cars detect and react to roos on the road, as often seen in the Outback? But then, on the other hand, we’ve all flown in planes with an autopilot function, so you could say that this is the motoring world catching up with aviation, which has had autopilot and UAVs for years. GM says that the car has got a manual over-ride, similar to the autopilot function in planes, so that is reassuring.
The brains behind the driverless car seem to be raving about how you can check your email, use your phone, read the paper and catch up with some paperwork while the car drives itself (it will alert you when it wants you to take over, apparently). Speaking for myself, I’d say that a vehicle that lets you do all this while you commute has already been invented: it’s called a bus.
What are your thoughts? Would you want a self-driving car or do you prefer to be well and truly behind the wheel?
Level 2, 9 Help Street