Friday, October 21, 2011

Occupy Wall Street



Today I saw that the US EPA has given Fisker its rating for mileage. The rating is lower than what Fisker had claimed. The $96,000 Fisker Karma has an all-electric range of 32 miles and a fuel economy of 20 mpg when it gasoline engine kicks in to extend the paltry electric range of 32 miles. ” A Karma driven 40 miles daily, the company said, would use just 9 gallons of gasoline a month if the car began each day with a fully charged battery. “Overall, we are very pleased with the results of the EPA’s tests,” Fisker said. OK let’s give the company Backed by Al Gore the benefit of the doubt that one would only use 9 gallons of gasoline a month to travel 1,200 miles a month. The plug will need 24 kilowatt hours each day of AC power to charge the 22 kilowatt hour battery pack. This equals 720 kilowatt hours a month of purchased electricity from the grid. Each kilowatt hour of power in the USA has an average associated carbon dioxide emissions of 1.25 pounds so the heavy plug in will have associated emissions of carbon dioxide of 900 pounds per month for the electric power. The 9 gallons of gasoline will emit 171 pounds of carbon dioxide, therefore the total carbon dioxide emissions for driving this car 1,200 miles is 1,071 pounds. The gasoline engine in the Fisker is supplied by GM and is similar to the engine in a Buick Regal.

Buick also announced a new car the E-Assist Buick Regal that uses a very small lithium ion battery (0.5 kilowatt hour) and a larger than standard alternator/motor for electric assist (11 kilowatt) This micro hybrid Buick cost $2,000 more than the standard Buick and will cost about $29,000. The E-Assist gets 26 mpg in the city and 37 mpg on the highway for an average 31.5 mpg. To drive 1,200 miles, this car would need 38.09 gallons of gasoline a month and will emit 723.8 pounds of CO2 per month which is substantially less than the Fisker. Not only would a motorist get a greener car that cost $67,000 less, the motorist would drive a Buick that in China is known as the Emperor’s Car. Had our friend Al Gore not been dumb and had he really deserved a Nobel Prize he would have helped Buick not Fisker. One can equip 44 Buick E-Assists Regals with the batteries used in 1 Fisker. Having 44 cars get improved mileage rather than one behemoth heavy piece of junk that gets poor mileage serves the country far better. The standard Buick Regal without E-Assist averages 24 mpg for combined city and highway driving. This means the standard Regal would need 50 gallons of gasoline per month to travel 1,200 miles. Each E-Assist saves 11.91 gallons of gasoline a month. 44 E-Assists will save 524 gallons a month. Thus if the 22 kilowatt hours of lithium ion batteries were spread into 44 cars rather than one piece of junk promoted by Al Gore the world will be far better off.

Of course Al Gore does not give a hoot about the average Joe who might buy a Buick. He is much more concerned with his Lear Jet crowd who want to drive a Fisker and pay $96,000 for a car with a GM engine that weighs in at 4,100 pounds. Of course Fisker received $529 million from the department of energy to build the “peoples’ car”. We have Occupy Wall Street going on and the people are demanding that fat cats share the wealth. The people should look at the fattest cat of all, Mr. Al Gore, and demand that he share the lithium. We need this for our collective mental health as well as our material wealth. Unfortunately many of the nincompoops who joined the occupation of a park in New York City believe the convenient untruths that Mr. Gore lectures us all on how to green the economy.

Al Gore also claims to support Occupy Wall Street. In a blog post, Gore wrote that he has been following news of the protests for several weeks "with both interest and admiration."
"From the economy to the climate crisis our leaders have pursued solutions that are not solving our problems, instead they propose policies that accomplish little," Gore wrote. "With democracy in crisis a true grassroots movement pointing out the flaws in our system is the first step in the right direction. Count me among those supporting and cheering on the Occupy Wall Street movement."

The Nobel Prize committee should have the power to take back a wrongly given prize and the people should take back our government and replace it with someone who can see that the Fisker is folly and is the poster child of ostentatious waste. Also since Al agrees that Obama’s policies accomplish little why not return the $529 million given to Fisker by the department of entropy?

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Such 'foresight.' Correct me if I am wrong, but this Fisker 'fitted' ICE 'buggie' won't even meet the future, proposed CAFE 54.6 mpg standards for 2025. Shameful. http://www.autoobserver.com/2011/09/2025-cafe-rules-plan-release-delayed.html

    Gotta 'love' how the green fashionista movement persists in undermining the science. *Sigh*

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  3. Kim The EPA morons let the car claim an "equivalent" mpg when on electric power. This equivalent is based on electric power being generated at 100% efficiency. No such power generation plant exists yet the morons at the EPA put this on the sticker when the car is old to a person. The Fisker is so heavy it needs about 0.6 kilowatt hours of stored electricity to travel a mile. I think the thing weighs much more than the 4,100 pounds that has been reported. I estimate the mass of the car to be 4,700 pounds. The Volt weighs 3,781 pounds

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  4. Car and Driver just reported the mass of the pile of junk to be 5,300 pounds

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