[PLUG-TALK] Driving in Cities: How Ants Commute

Keith Lofstrom keithl at gate.kl-ic.com
Wed Jan 21 15:08:08 UTC 2015


On Tue, 20 Jan 2015, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
...
>better.  Broadly applied, this technology would eliminate the need 
>for high self-powered onramp acceleration, huge high horsepower 
>engines, and all the weight and pollution that entails.
...

On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 04:26:33PM -0800, Paul Heinlein wrote:
> Without assailing the technical logic here, I have to cry "foul" on 
> the social-psychological thinking.
> 
> People who realize that they rarely, if ever, need tons of horsepower 
> -- and that that they're doing everyone a favor by right-sizing to a 
> smaller more engine -- have probably done so.
...

People do pay attention to miles per gallon - or kilometers per liter.

The cars in most of the world have half (or less) of the horsepower
used in the United States.  Automotive-savvy friends from Europe
point out that they have urban freeways with much longer onramps,
facilitated by the Great Urban Uncrowding, 1939-1945.  Consequently,
they buy cars with much smaller engines than the same size/model of
car in the US.

Portland/Beaverton, with the West Hills as a barrier, might be less
amenable to small engines.  I usually have to drop to a lower gear
and higher RPM to get my "underpowered" Subaru miniwagon over that
at traffic speed.  But then, I usually surmount the West Hills in
a bus, and use the Suby mostly to haul stuff.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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