Apparently it IS a big deal driving an EV coast to coast

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People have driven gasoline powered cars great distances for quite a long time. As far back as the 1920′s travelers have packed up their cars, hit the road looking for adventure.

historic-route-66-caravan 1927

Route 66 caravan 1927

Long distance auto traveling really took off in the late 1920′s. With growing demand of the motoring public roadways began expanding. During this rapid expansion the famous Route 66 was designated in 1926.

Fast-forward 87 years, and thanks to several eco-warriors, we are reliving the adventures of the turn of the last century with electric vehicles. The EV, which, truth be told, is nearly as old as the internal combustion engine but lost out to the more practical gasoline engines during the evolution of the automobile.

The EV our intrepid eco-warriors are driving in their coast-to-coast trip is a Tesla Model S (base price of $59,900 before options and federal tax credits) coast to coast. As hyped by treehugger.com:

While range may cause anxiety to some, for others it’s merely a temporary limit, with forward planning and steely resolve allowing some electric vehicle drivers to continue long after others have given up.

One recent electric car is more suitable than most, for such trips. Tesla Motors’ [NSDQ:TSLA] electric sedan, the Model S, has an EPA-rated range of 265 miles in 85 kWh form. What better way to test this than by a coast-to-coast trip through the U.S?

Driving from Portland to New York is a long distance for any vehicle, but for the Electric Road Trip S, getting there via Arizona, Louisiana, Virginia and other interim states is certainly taking the long way around.

Yep, long way around for sure:

Electric Road Trips in an Tesla S

Conveniently, this route avoids all the cold, nasty January weather through the Rockies and Great Pains.

Average temperature January

You know that cold weather can be a real inconvenience  Especially since this type of weather requires running the heater and fan to keep the windshield clear and the vehicle’s occupants comfortable.

Mashing the accelerator on freeway ramps and keeping up with traffic at 75 miles per hour? No butterflies for you. Come winter, running the heater will hurt an electric car’s range, as will cold’s tendency to degrade battery performance. In very cold weather, the chemical reactions that generate electricity slow down. Cars’ heaters run down the battery, too.

Another thing about their trip is it is taking a really long time. As illustrated on their web site, the planned route they are traveling is roughly 4,388 miles. According to Google Maps, this trip should take about 67 hours of drive time. Driving 12 hours a day, the trip should take roughly 5 1/2 days. Our intrepid eco-warriors have only traveled from Portland, OR to Kingman AZ in 5 days. They are still a long way from NYC.

The short-range of the vehicle coupled with a long charging time (it still takes a half hour to charge the vehicle to 50% capacity at Tesla’s Supercharger stations) is stretching the travel time to absurd lengths. However, on the bright side you can enjoy Chinese take-out while waiting for your car to charge.

Of course, to the average eco-warrior, a short range and lengthy charge time is much more preferable than getting 300 miles per tank in an average gasoline powered car (even while running the heater or AC) and taking a whole five min’s to fill up.

Scary Chart: Long Term Economic Trends

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The Pig Picture published the following charts illustrating a few long term economic trends.

net-job-change

Click for larger version

The Big Picture observes:

• The FIRE economy — Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sectors — led the growth of jobs over that 2 decade period. Most of these FIRE sectors continue to soften.
• Health Care continues to capture a lot of GDP, and that is reflected in job growth
• Low paying jobs in Leisure & Hospitality is a significant grower
• Manufacturing has been the most negative, shrinking ~5% over the past 20 years. This is the sector that could experience a revival
• Government sector has seen very little growth

Three points to add.

First, our Labor Participation Rate has dropped to pre-1985 levels. And, as illustrated by the above chart, it took 15 years (1985 through 2000) of very strong economic growth to reach the 67% participation rate of 2000. Unfortunately, as illustrated by last November’s election, there is sizable number of people in our population who don’t understand what creates economic growth. Therefore, we are (at least) four years away from even starting to implement pro growth economic policies.

Second, our ‘big picture’ author states Government sector has seen very little growth. While it is interesting to look at the macro picture, knowing the left and Obama’s love for government workers, it would be instructive to look at a more narrow time frame to capture more recent trends. Also, aren’t most teachers paid by tax payers? I’m sure there has been growth in private education, but not enough to be ranked the fourth largest net job creation sector over the last 20 years. (In 2010, Detroit’s single largest employer, was Detroit Public Schools.)

With the implementation of ObamaCare, the “death by regulation” of the healthcare sector is beginning and long term growth is in jeopardy.

With or without the above observations, our long term economic outlook is bad.

Payroll Tax Increase: Do it for the pork barrel spending

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When you look at your paycheck in two weeks and it looks a little lighter than your accustomed to seeing (2% lighter) remember, you are providing a much needed infusion of taxes to our beloved government so they can spread the wealth to important pork barrel spending projects. Vital projects such as tax breaks for green energy…

The tax credit, which has been a major driver for wind development across the U.S. over the past two decades, is worth 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour of energy produced by new wind installations for their first 10 years of operation.

A White House news release confirmed that the production tax credit extension is included in the Senate package that the House also passed. According to industry insiders, it would allow any project that begins construction in 2013 to claim the credit, even if it goes online in 2014. The tax credit that expired on Monday could only be claimed for projects that went online in 2012.

“Just simply, 30 percent of the value of a project is derived from the tax credit,” said Florian Zerhusen, CEO of WKN USA, a San Diego-based wind developer who flipped the switch on two new 3-megawatt turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass on Dec. 21, just days before the credit expired on Monday.

“That’s what makes it so important, or you’re making too low a return,” he said.

Yep, we are still subsidising those goofy windmills that can’t even produce enough electricity to pay for themselves. Congress couldn’t find ANY pet project to cut that will allow us to keep more, or at least the same amount of money that we earn.

Nice going Obama voters…

Singapore: 1.8% Quarterly Growth, 1.9% Unemployment Rate & No Government Stimulus

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singapore-skyline

Shocker…

Singapore’s economy expanded more than economists estimated last quarter, averting a recession even after the central bank refrained from monetary stimulus as it sought to contain elevated inflation.

Proof that an economy can grow without government spending. Of course this will come as a surprise to any off the shelf lib. All the keep saying is that an economy can’t grow without government spending.

Also, in case you are wondering, Singapore also has one of the lowest tax rates in the world as well.

Employment increased last year even amid a smaller annual expansion, with the jobless rate at a six-quarter low of 1.9 percent in the three months ended September.

The country’s tax rates are among the world’s lowest, luring investment from companies such as Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest maker of commercial aircraft and ship engines, which opened a S$700 million ($572 million) manufacturing and assembly plant in February.

Of course, all we get here in the US is tax hikes, endless government spending and a stagnant economy.

How Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity

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CATO recently published a study explaining why inexpensive hydrocarbon based energy is actually good for the environment:

Then mankind began to develop technologies to augment or displace living nature’s uncertain bounty. Gradually food supplies and nutrition improved and population, living standards, and human well-being advanced haltingly. The Industrial Revolution accelerated these trends. Mankind broke its Malthusian bonds. Growth became the norm. Population exploded, along with living standards and well-being.

Technologies dependent on cheap fossil fuels enabled these improving trends. Nothing can be made, transported, or used without energy, and fossil fuels provide 80 percent of mankind’s energy and 60 percent of its food and clothing. Thus, absent fossil fuels, global cropland would have to increase by 150 percent to meet current food demand, but conversion of habitat to cropland is already the greatest threat to biodiversity. By lowering humanity’s reliance on living nature, fossil fuels not only saved humanity from nature’s whims, but nature from humanity’s demands.

I’ve been saying this for a long time:

The truth is, if these guys truly cared about the environment, they would be working to protect our economy.  Because only wealthy nations can afford to care about the environment. Poor countries can’t.

Poor people and countries can’t afford to worry about the environment.

trashpickers

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?

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The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?’

George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

If you ever wondered why college is so expensive, consider that the University of Maryland wasted $15,000 on their propaganda campaign.

What would you do with $15,000? Invest it? Buy a car? Maybe fund a scholarship for a needy student? The University of Maryland chose none of those things. Instead, UMD officials spent 15k to fight “non-inclusive language” on campus, according to a report by higher-ed watchdog group, Campus Reform.

The University of Maryland (UMD) allocated $15,000 in 2012 to combat the use of language deemed by administrators to be “insensitive.”

The “words have power” campaign’s goal is to deploy posters, buttons and other promotional materials to help foster an environment on campus that is not offensive to illegal aliens, homosexuals, or other minority groups.

“Non-inclusive language can offend or make spaces uncomfortable for people who are excluded by that language,” one of the campaign posters reads.

The University also made a series of videos to go along with the posters.

YouTube Preview Image

1984 is becoming closer with every passing day.

Raise Taxes and the Productive Flee

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Lib’s @ the NYT thinks raising taxes shows good sense (11/8/2012)…

Of all the state election results across the nation, few can top the shocking good sense of California voters in approving temporary tax increases to raise $6 billion a year to shore up the state’s tattered public schools and university system. That’s right: There were voters in these hard times agreeing to be taxed despite the “no new taxes” mantra of simplistic conservative politicians.

And productive people flee the state (11/23/2012)…

One of the best indicators of a state’s economic health, according to John Merline, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, is the “U-Haul Index” (first publicized by economist Mark Perry) to see what people are paying to move into, or out of, the state. Renting a 20-foot truck one way from San Francisco to San Antonio, Texas, for example, costs $1,693. Going in the other direction, however, costs only $983 for the same truck.

As Perry explains:

The American people and businesses are voting with their feet and their one-way truck rentals to escape California and its forced unionism, high taxes, and high unemployment rate for a better life in low-tax, business-friendly, right-to-work states like Texas.

They have lots of reasons to leave. According to the Tax Foundation, “Tax Freedom Day” arrives earlier in Texas than it does in California, due to its zero individual and corporate income tax and a lower sales tax. Put together, Texas’ state and local tax burden is less than eight percent of income, well below the national average of nearly 10 percent, while California’s is almost 12 percent.

This enormous disparity puts California the 48th out of the 50 states in the foundation’s overall business tax climate index, while Texas ranks ninth.

And the cycle repeats. Greece raises taxes…

Greece plans to tax businesses and middle incomes more in an effort to raise revenues from a tax reform bill it has long-promised its international lenders, a senior finance ministry official said on Thursday.

The European Union and International Monetary Fund have demanded the cash-strapped country reform a tax administration widely seen as corrupt and ineffective before they disburse about 9 billion euros (7.3 billion pounds) in aid early next year.

But Greece has so far failed to make real progress and disagreements over who should be taxed and by how much has created a rift in Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s coalition government, a mix of leftists and conservatives.

The finance ministry plans to raise the corporate tax rate on profits to 26 percent from 20 percent, said the official, who declined to be named. In dividends, the rate would fall to 10 percent from 25 percent currently.

The ministry’s proposals include reducing tax brackets to three from eight and imposing a 40 percent top rate on incomes above 40,000 euros. Currently, the 40 percent tax rate applies to those earning over 60,000 annually and those earning over 100,000 euros are taxed at 45 percent.

And the productive people flee the country…

German daycare centers are suffering a woeful shortage of teachers. A recruitment agency is hiring Greek kindergarten teachers who are desperate to escape the debt crisis. With as many as 14,000 positions unfilled in Germany, these workers are being welcomed with open arms.

Athanossios Tsokos and his brother run the Axia recruitment agency, which has offices in Munich and Athens and is about to open one in Thessaloniki. He used to find jobs in Germany mainly for doctors and engineers. These days, though, his focus is on teachers for kindergartens, as preschools are called here.

When are people going to get it?

Junior Brown: Surf Medley (Live)

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Another great surf tune…

YouTube Preview Image

The majority of the riff played by Junior is The Ventures classic Walk Don’t Run.

An interesting factoid about this song is, according to legend, without surf music and Walk Don’t Run there would be no Van Halen.

The Van Halens arrived in Southern California in late 1962 almost in perfect sync with the explosion of surf music from the very place the art form emanated. Less than a year later, “Wipe Out” went to #2 on the record charts, and was obviously highly revered by both Edward and Alex. Ed himself was so intent on learning “Wipe Out” that it drove him to ask his parents Jan and Eugenia for a drum set. This set forth in motion what is likely the most famous lore in Van Halen history: The Great Instrument Switch.

………….

The very first song Edward learned to play on electric guitar was “Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures. The song is one of the most distinct surf-music chord progressions of all time. However, Ed had only mastered the three-finger 5th chord at the time. In a 1998 Japanese television interview, Edward said, “[The] very first thing I learned—I played it for hours—and I didn’t have an amp—so I would put my guitar on the table—so it would be louder. So it would resonate on the table. So, the first thing I learned was . . . [Ed demonstrated the descending bar-chord sequence, E-D-C-B, for “Walk Don’t Run”] I would just play those four chords for hours. I never learned [demonstrated the very distinctive single-note riff part of the song]. I never learned that! Just—[plays E-D-C-B repeatedly again and laughs].”

……………

Later he became a fan of Southern California surf rock, particularly guitar instrumentals like ‘Pipeline’ by the Chantays, and ‘Wipe Out’ by the Surfaris. ‘Walk Don’t Run’, the Venture’s surf instrumental in 1963, was the first song he learned on guitar. The progressive opening chords of the guitar got under his skin so much that he would spend days on end – before he knew how to do anything else – playing the descending chord run. The influence of surf guitar and it’s continuous, often dramatic sounding lead lines on Eddie’s playing is not usually remarked upon, but is evident in a number of Van Halen songs that don’t conform to the blues derived structures of much rock guitar playing. The clearest example of this is perhaps ‘Loss of Control’ (1980) which – instrumentally, at least – might be the soundtrack to surfers breaking on the waves and crashing amid the spindrift. Other songs that, instrumentally, would fit within the surf rock genre include ‘Romeo Delight’ (1980) sinners Swing!’ (1981) and Top Jimmy (1983).

Van Halen and surf music…