Linda Fox wrote:

Husband reading over my shoulder says it was a regular thing in
certain parts of Canada when he was there in the 70s, that every
parking space at work had a socket. An anti-freze thing rather than a
keep-you-warm-while-you-drive thing.

Some cars also used to have small diesel space heaters along the lines of
http://www.eberspacher.com/airheatin...ion=airheating for the
interior. AIR, it used electrically-pre-heated diesel to ensure a start
in all weather conditions and was mounted in the boot. Or, as they called
it, trunk. g

--
-blj-

Roger wrote:
The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Its also horribly expensive to actually DRIVE to the south of
France..lowest carbon way is probably by air..

Almost certainly by train. Air is however far cheaper - largely because
the airlines do not have to pay for laying track...

Andy
Surprisingly not. More friction and weight on a train than a plane.

Where did you get that from?

Planes are usually ranked no better than cars and the mean greenies
would have us believe that trains are 50% better than cars.

Apologies: it seems you are right overall.

However the answer you get seems to vary widely depending on where you
get it.

On Sat, 31 May 2008 20:13:49 -0500, Jules wrote:

Yep, very common around here. Most hotels have outlets in the parking
lot to plug the block heater into, too (power's cheap enough that they
just provide it as a free service, I suppose)

A block heater isn't going to take a lot of power, a couple of hundred
watts at most. Some what less than trying to charge a 50kWH battery in a
few hours...

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sat, 31 May 2008 20:13:49 -0500, Jules wrote:

Yep, very common around here. Most hotels have outlets in the parking
lot to plug the block heater into, too (power's cheap enough that they
just provide it as a free service, I suppose)

A block heater isn't going to take a lot of power, a couple of hundred
watts at most. Some what less than trying to charge a 50kWH battery in a
few hours...

Indeed, but the cost of laying cables isn't about how big the cable is
mostly*.


* undersea power cables excepted, where it is.

"Andy Champ" wrote in message
...

Roberts wrote:

Please don't top post.

Electric cars will not cut emissions. When batteries are being charged
they give off an explosive vapour. This also contains particles of the
battery which is very harmful. The green people should look at the
complete scene not just a little part which seems to suit them. Try
visiting a place where they have a fleet of electric vehicles and visit
the battery charging shop. If we do go over to electric vehicles a lot of
people will get killed or injured because people don't hear them coming.
I know that from working at Gatwick where they had a large fleet although
that was years ago. Do not forget all the factories that will be needed
to make these motive power batteries and then all the extra power
stations and how will they be powered?
Also people pushing for hydrogen power should be made to watch the film
of the Hindenburg disaster.


Modern batteries are sealed systems, its the "conventional" lead-acid
batteries that generate hydrogen when charging.

The rest of your points are valid.

Andy

Motive power batteries such as used in electric powered fork-lifts are not
sealed. The normal batteries on a i/c engined car are usually sealed
although on some the makers label is stuck over the battery covering up the
access to the cells. When this label is removed it is possible to top up the
battery.
Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?

Alan

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to start
with the first post and progress through from there.

--
Rod

Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
www.thyromind.info www.thyroiduk.org www.altsupportthyroid.org

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:28 +0100, Rod wrote:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to start
with the first post and progress through from there.

Also, see http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html


A: Because it makes a thread confusing to read.
Q: Why is top posting bad?

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?

It makes the baby Jesus cry.

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:35:17 +0100, PCPaul wrote:

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:28 +0100, Rod wrote:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to start
with the first post and progress through from there.

Also, see http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html


A: Because it makes a thread confusing to read.
Q: Why is top posting bad?



But that's not a thread, that's a single post.

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:44:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Yep, very common around here. Most hotels have outlets in the parking
lot to plug the block heater into, too (power's cheap enough that they
just provide it as a free service, I suppose)

A block heater isn't going to take a lot of power, a couple of hundred
watts at most. Some what less than trying to charge a 50kWH battery in
a few hours...

Indeed, but the cost of laying cables isn't about how big the cable is
mostly*.

True enough, but I was commenting on the provision of free block heater
power. 50 cars at 100W is only 5kW not a great load for a hotel. But if
you have 50 cars with 50kWh batteries on a 10hr charge thats 5kW/car (at
least) and load of 250kW that power ain't going to be provided for "free".

--
Cheers
Dave.

In message op.ub2unisqpmo3dt@lucy, Duncan Wood
writes
On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:35:17 +0100, PCPaul wrote:

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:28 +0100, Rod wrote:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to start
with the first post and progress through from there.

Also, see http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html


A: Because it makes a thread confusing to read.
Q: Why is top posting bad?



But that's not a thread, that's a single post.
then multiply it by 10 - most people adopting the usenet convention of
proportional posting, with one eejit top posting so that the natural
flow of the thread is interrupted

do you really want to be that eejit?

--
geoff

On 2008-06-01 16:54:21 +0100, (Steve Firth) said:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?

It makes the baby Jesus cry.

... and causes the death of small fluffy bunnies.

The Natural Philosopher gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying:

Most days here, I dont actually see ANYONE apart from my wife and the
postman.

And that's only if there is a parcel to be signed for.

Sounds awful.

Linda Fox gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying:

What, heaters whilst running? (electric engine block heaters are very
common here - plug into the mains a while before you need to use the
car, as otherwise there's just no way it's going to start in mid-winter.
I've not heard of someone using an electric heater to warm the passenger
cabin whilst moving, though)

I'd heard of Saabs which were plugged in overnight to stop them freezing
up.

Standard practice in Scandinavia, and easy to retro-fit to any car.

Husband reading over my shoulder says it was a regular thing in certain
parts of Canada when he was there in the 70s, that every parking space
at work had a socket. An anti-freze thing rather than a
keep-you-warm-while-you-drive thing.

There's a slight difference in current draw...

"Brian L Johnson" gurgled happily, sounding
much like they were saying:

Some cars also used to have small diesel space heaters along the lines
of http://www.eberspacher.com/airheatin...ion=airheating for the
interior.

Many modern diesels do - they're too heat efficient for the normal water-
to-air heater matrix to work very well.

Rupert Moss-Eccardt gurgled happily,
sounding much like they were saying:

and air-cooled VWs certainly used electric heating.

No, they didn't. Heat exchangers on the exhaust manifolds, with the
vaguely-warm air ducted down the inside of the sills.

On Sun, 1 Jun 2008 18:28:18 +0100, Andy Hall wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?

It makes the baby Jesus cry.

... and causes the death of small fluffy bunnies.

This time slot is needed. Run The Secret Show.

--
Cheers
Dave.

Adrian wrote:

"Brian L Johnson" gurgled happily, sounding
much like they were saying:

Some cars also used to have small diesel space heaters along the lines
of http://www.eberspacher.com/airheatin...ion=airheating for the
interior.

Many modern diesels do - they're too heat efficient for the normal water-
to-air heater matrix to work very well.

The diesel-powered heaters were purely to rapidly heat the interior to an
'acceptable' level for the occupants.

And, having seen the speed with which one of them melted nealy an inch of
ice off our Impala one morning, I can testify to their efectiveness!

--
-blj-

Roberts wrote:

Motive power batteries such as used in electric powered fork-lifts are not
sealed. The normal batteries on a i/c engined car are usually sealed
although on some the makers label is stuck over the battery covering up the
access to the cells. When this label is removed it is possible to top up the
battery.

The Li-Ion (etc) batteries under consideration for hybrid cars are sealed.

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?

Someone else already did.

Andy

In article ,
PCPaul wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:28 +0100, Rod wrote:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to
start with the first post and progress through from there.

Also, see http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html


A: Because it makes a thread confusing to read.
Q: Why is top posting bad?

Top posting also discourages popple from reading the whole email. This can
cause huge problems when engaged in a technical discussion with a
customer, where many points have been raised.

It also discourages people from snipping previous posts.
http://www.Torrens.org.uk/SitePhil/Netiquette.html Netiquette
Try also googling for "top post"

One should also change the subject line when the thread drifts!

--
Richard Torrens -
The email address used here is time limited and must not be added to any mailing list: A charge will be invoiced for handling any unsolicited mailing list emails received.

"Richard Torrens" wrote in message
...
In article ,
PCPaul wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:28 +0100, Rod wrote:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to
start with the first post and progress through from there.

Also, see http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html


A: Because it makes a thread confusing to read.
Q: Why is top posting bad?

Top posting also discourages popple from reading the whole email. This can
cause huge problems when engaged in a technical discussion with a
customer, where many points have been raised.

Where no company with sense would use the email body to show the actual
changes to a technical document anyway.

This is what the change control and markup tools in word (and similar) are
for.
You change the specification, make sure the changes are marked and then
submit the document.

Why do you think M$ word is popular as an interchange medium rather than say
RTF or even OO?

Email is a hopeless tool for any sort of technical discussion and should be
used for what it is designed.. a delivery system for messages written in a
more useful format.


It also discourages people from snipping previous posts.
http://www.Torrens.org.uk/SitePhil/Netiquette.html Netiquette
Try also googling for "top post"

snipping what's that?

Richard Torrens wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On a proper electrc car, the brake pedal is what starts the regenerative
braking, only when you go past a certain level do the final friction
brakes cut in..
Regen braking can also recover a significant amount of the KE used in
town driving - stop-start cycle.

Makes sense, certainly. Smaller controllers don't work like that, but
could be so designed (anyone interested in working on such?).

Electric trains/trams/buses (of the non-battery variety) have been doing
all of these things for years. It is not difficult, it is not new, it's
just not currently applied to private motor cars.

Robin

Naich wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2008, Roland Perry wrote:

Motorail was always hugely loss-making, yet expensive. A rare
lose/lose situation! It just doesn't scale very well.

Excellent to use though. I remember Motorail from our family holidays
about 30 years ago. We'd drive to London, park the Maxi in it's train
carriage, go to bed in the sleeper car and wake up the next morning in
Scotland. I can't think of a better way of doing it.

The trouble is you can't get that many cars on one train. A four
carriage train up to London can seat something like 275 people. If you
alow for 2 passengers per car, that's 144 cars you have to carry as well
as your four passenger carriages. If you go for something like a 12 car
double deck transporter, you've got 4 passenger carriages plus 12 car
transporters.

Robin

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Roger wrote:
The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:


Rail travel is not conspicuously greener* than car travel in the first
place so adding the dead weight of a car to the equation would kill any
potential saving.

*Rail travel is on a par per passenger with an average car with two
aboard.


That depends on how your railway is powerd: if it electric and not
from fossil fuel, its 100% greener..

That't a very big if.

its actually not an 'if' its a 'when'.

Fuel prices wont get lower, so other ways to generate will become cost
effective. Period. In fact they already are. Even *windmills* at current
prices are nearing break even, with fuel..

Just got back from Switzerland. All of their electricity is either
hydro or nuclear. All of their railways are electric. Of the people I
was meeting with, the proportion who actually owned a car was very small
(perhaps one in four). I was walking round Zurich, and after an hour or
so, it occured to me: I had not seen a single diesel bus. Fist fulls of
electric trams, a smaller number of electric trolleybuses, but not a
single IC engined bus.

Robin

"Brian L Johnson" wrote in message
newsp.ub2843fu0v1caa@thedell...
Adrian wrote:

"Brian L Johnson" gurgled happily, sounding
much like they were saying:

Some cars also used to have small diesel space heaters along the lines
of http://www.eberspacher.com/airheatin...ion=airheating for the
interior.

Many modern diesels do - they're too heat efficient for the normal water-
to-air heater matrix to work very well.

The diesel-powered heaters were purely to rapidly heat the interior to an
'acceptable' level for the occupants.

And, having seen the speed with which one of them melted nealy an inch of
ice off our Impala one morning, I can testify to their efectiveness!


Those heaters are for when a vehicle's engine is off. Used in buses and the
likes. To heat the sleeping cabs of large trucks too.

In message , at 10:29:46 on Mon, 2
Jun 2008, R.C. Payne remarked:
I was walking round Zurich, and after an hour or so, it occured to me:
I had not seen a single diesel bus. Fist fulls of electric trams, a
smaller number of electric trolleybuses, but not a single IC engined bus.

Maybe you were very near the centre? In Geneva they have trams and
trolleybuses, but not a very large number of routes for them. All the
remaining stuff has to be filled in by conventionally powered buses.
--
Roland Perry

"geoff" wrote in message
...
In message op.ub2unisqpmo3dt@lucy, Duncan Wood
writes
On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:35:17 +0100, PCPaul wrote:

On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:49:28 +0100, Rod wrote:

Roberts wrote:

Can someone explain to me about why not to top post?


You live longer if you don't. :-)

Convention - with good logical basis. If the thread were printed out,
what order would you do this in? Most people would expct page 1 to
start
with the first post and progress through from there.

Also, see http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html


A: Because it makes a thread confusing to read.
Q: Why is top posting bad?



But that's not a thread, that's a single post.
then multiply it by 10 - most people adopting the usenet convention of
proportional posting, with one eejit top posting so that the natural flow
of the thread is interrupted

do you really want to be that eejit?

Maxie, you said all of that so well. What does eejit mean?

Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 10:29:46 on Mon, 2
Jun 2008, R.C. Payne remarked:
I was walking round Zurich, and after an hour or so, it occured to me:
I had not seen a single diesel bus. Fist fulls of electric trams, a
smaller number of electric trolleybuses, but not a single IC engined bus.

Maybe you were very near the centre? In Geneva they have trams and
trolleybuses, but not a very large number of routes for them. All the
remaining stuff has to be filled in by conventionally powered buses.

I was mostly in the central area, but all those trams had to be going
somewhere, and there were seriously large numbers of them. I'm sure out
in the suburbs there are diesel buses, presumably acting as feeders to
the trams and big trains, but none of those routes penetrated the centre.

Robin

In message , at 11:13:20 on Mon, 2
Jun 2008, R.C. Payne remarked:
I was walking round Zurich, and after an hour or so, it occured to
me: I had not seen a single diesel bus. Fist fulls of electric
trams, a smaller number of electric trolleybuses, but not a single
IC engined bus.
Maybe you were very near the centre? In Geneva they have trams and
trolleybuses, but not a very large number of routes for them. All the
remaining stuff has to be filled in by conventionally powered buses.

I was mostly in the central area, but all those trams had to be going
somewhere, and there were seriously large numbers of them. I'm sure
out in the suburbs there are diesel buses, presumably acting as feeders
to the trams and big trains, but none of those routes penetrated the
centre.

The Geneva tram and trolleybus lines are only a couple of miles long,
and there's plenty of filling-in needed.
--
Roland Perry

In article ,
"R.C. Payne" wrote:

Richard Torrens wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On a proper electrc car, the brake pedal is what starts the regenerative
braking, only when you go past a certain level do the final friction
brakes cut in..
Regen braking can also recover a significant amount of the KE used in
town driving - stop-start cycle.

Makes sense, certainly. Smaller controllers don't work like that, but
could be so designed (anyone interested in working on such?).

Electric trains/trams/buses (of the non-battery variety) have been doing
all of these things for years. It is not difficult, it is not new, it's
just not currently applied to private motor cars.

This is nothing new. Regenerative braking has been used in electric cars
since at least the 1980s.

Doctor Drivel wrote:
Maxie, you said all of that so well. What does eejit mean?

Say it out loud!

Jon
--
SPAM BLOCK IN USE! To reply in email, replace 'deadspam'
with 'green-lines'.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


snip

snipping what's that?


That
sigh


--
¦zulu¦

"zulu" wrote in message
...

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


snip

snipping what's that?


That
sigh

????

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Sun, 01 Jun 2008 11:44:48 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Yep, very common around here. Most hotels have outlets in the parking
lot to plug the block heater into, too (power's cheap enough that they
just provide it as a free service, I suppose)
A block heater isn't going to take a lot of power, a couple of hundred
watts at most. Some what less than trying to charge a 50kWH battery in
a few hours...
Indeed, but the cost of laying cables isn't about how big the cable is
mostly*.

True enough, but I was commenting on the provision of free block heater
power. 50 cars at 100W is only 5kW not a great load for a hotel. But if
you have 50 cars with 50kWh batteries on a 10hr charge thats 5kW/car (at
least) and load of 250kW that power ain't going to be provided for "free".


No, but the amortization costs of laying the cables are pretty small
over the next few years.

let's say it takes a grand per charge station. Cabling wise.

And another grand for metering/charging equiupment. 2k per space total.
I think these are realistic.

at 10% ROI thats £200 a year per parking space.

Let's say occupancy rate is 30% average, and each car takes 15Kwh
average per diem. So thats 5KWh per day average per space. About 50p.

I am being pessimistic. So instead of charging what - 50p to charge your
car up, its going to add say another £3 to your daily bill. Who cares?
it costs at least £30 to stay in a hotel overnight.

At three quid a day to park the cars, the thing is feasible. Ive paid
more than that for an hour in a Cambridge car park WITHOUT electricity.

Adrian wrote:
"Brian L Johnson" gurgled happily, sounding
much like they were saying:

Some cars also used to have small diesel space heaters along the lines
of http://www.eberspacher.com/airheatin...ion=airheating for the
interior.

Many modern diesels do - they're too heat efficient for the normal water-
to-air heater matrix to work very well.

What planet are you on? No diesel is better than 32% efficient top whack
and they produce several bhp just idling.


Show me ONE example..in THIS world.

Doctor Drivel wrote:

do you really want to be that eejit?

Maxie, you said all of that so well. What does eejit mean?
If you have to ask, it means you.

On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:10:41 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Show me ONE example..in THIS world.

My TD5? Sat idling for 20 mins waiting for SWMBO'd one cold winters day,
heater didn't get any warmer than it was when I parked up after a 3 mile
drive. ie it stayed just off cold. A petrol would have had it's electric
fan cutting in a deperate attempt to stop it over heating within 5 mins.

The TD5 doesn't have a fixed fan it has a viscous one so I guess it gets a
little cooling even cold and at idle. Temperature gauage didn't climb to
normal either, that takes nearer 5 miles driving to achieve.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.net...
On Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:10:41 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Show me ONE example..in THIS world.

My TD5? Sat idling for 20 mins waiting for SWMBO'd one cold winters day,
heater didn't get any warmer than it was when I parked up after a 3 mile
drive. ie it stayed just off cold. A petrol would have had it's electric
fan cutting in a deperate attempt to stop it over heating within 5 mins.

The TD5 doesn't have a fixed fan it has a viscous one so I guess it gets a
little cooling even cold and at idle. Temperature gauage didn't climb to
normal either, that takes nearer 5 miles driving to achieve.

It needs repairing.

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"zulu" wrote in message
...

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


snip

snipping what's that?


That
sigh

????


bigger sigh

--
¦zulu¦

"zulu" wrote in message
...

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"zulu" wrote in message
...

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


snip

snipping what's that?


That
sigh

????


bigger sigh

--
¦zulu¦



Well are you going to say something useful or just sigh about the place.