My wife is looking to buy a car. She is 30 years old. She likes iTunes and reads her news online instead of a newspaper. She is concerned about global warming, and about the war on terror. We’re about to have kids, which brings those concerns to the forefront. So, when we started looking around for a car, we remembered all those cool next-generation automobiles we’ve been bombarded with at auto shows and the news. And we were surprised to find that we could hardly find any. This was caused by a combination of them not having actually made it to production despite the hype, and that the dealers practically pretend that they don’t exist, even when they are sitting on the lot.

This leads to a lot of confusion for people who are actually looking to buy a car based on some of the new technology in the pipeline. Auto manufacturers talk a lot about the research and development and upcoming technologies, but it’s difficult to determine what you can actually purchase today.

Also, press releases and science articles tend to focus on how the technologies work and the impact that will have on emissions, the environment, global warming, and the butterfly population in Paraguay. Instead, even the most idealistic drivers are more concerned with how their lives will be affected with automotive technologies different from what they’re used to. The social commentary this implies is left to the reader.

Hybrid Electric (HEV)

Available: Since 1999

“Hybrids” have been available for a few years already from a number of manufacturers. In the United States, Honda made the hybrid debut with the Insight in 1999. They were joined a few years later by the Honda Civic and Toyota Prius. Today, there is a growing number of Hybrids available or shortly available from most major car manufactures.

A Hybrid is a car that has both an electric and a gas motor. The electric one assists the gas when the gas motor would otherwise be inefficient (like at low speeds). Most hybrids are simply an alternate version of a non-hybrid car, with the notable exception being the Toyota Prius. Hybrids are generally quieter than their non-hybrid counterparts. Japanese Hybrids tend to focus on getting better fuel efficiency, while American hybrids tend to focus on getting more powerful engines at the same fuel efficiency. This follows the general trend of American manufacturers to focus on trucks and SUVs, while Japanese manufacturers focus more on cars.

The biggest advantage, for both the driver and the auto manufacturer, is that Hybrid Electrics are a drop-in replacement for a conventional automobile. You drive it, you go to the gas station, you park it in your garage. The driver doesn’t need to do anything differently that they normally would with another car, and the manufacturer doesn’t have to take a risk of drivers accepting any abnormal requirements.

The trade off for this lower risk is that Hybrids are a compromise of technology and capability, tipped well against technology. There is a limit to how much electricity the hybrid can generate just from braking and excess energy from the gas motor, and this limits the efficiency of the electric motor. For this reason, hybrids can improve fuel efficiency by up to 40%, but you won’t see more than that. Also, in general, Gas-Electric hybrids tend to be either underpowered, or else give up their fuel-savings in favor of additional power to the engine.

Plug-In Hybrid Electric (PHEV)

Available: 2008, if we’re lucky

Plug-In Hybrids are an evolutionary step beyond Hybrids. The general idea is that instead of using the gas motor in the car to generate electricity (which is inefficient), instead plug it in to your power outlet overnight. Other than that basic idea, Plug-In Hybrids are very similar to regular Gas-Electric Hybrids. In fact, you could treat it the same exact way as you treat a regular Gas-Electric Hybrid. While you wouldn’t get the additional advantage of home-charging, there would be no other ill effects.

Why would you want to plug in your Hybrid? Power plants can generate electricity much more efficiently than your car engine. So, where it might take a few gallons of gas to fully charge your Hybrid’s battery (since you must drive around to get it charging), it would only cost you a few cents in electricity to charge it from your wall socket.

This tends to favor people who drive close to home. Toyota claims that their Plug-In Prius, which may debut in 2009, will be able to drive around seven miles on electricity alone. That means that your neighborhood chores will require zero gasoline, and while your commutes to work will still eat up the same miles-per-gallon as a regular Prius, those miles only start to count after you’ve driven seven.

If you are anxious to get a Plug-In Hybrid, there are people who have built their own conversion kits for both the Prius and the Civic. These will void your factory warranty, but may be the ticket if you don’t want to wait until the 2009 model year.

Electric and Series Hybrid Electric

Available: 2008 for super cars, at least 2010 for mortals?

Tesla Motors shocked the automotive industry in 2006 by announcing an all-electric sports car which could outrun a Ferrari. The Tesla Roadster has a range of nearly 250 miles before it needs to be recharged, by plugging it into an electrical outlet. At a cost of around $100,000, these aren’t for the average driver, but Tesla plans on using the technology created for the Roadster on a line of family sedans called Whitestar, which they plan on introducing as a competitor for BMW’s and Mercedes possibly as soon as the 2010 model year. If things go well, they are also planning a more affordably-priced sedan after 2012.

Ignoring the EV-1 which GM released and then recalled in the early 90′s, Chevrolet plans on releasing the much anticipated Volt. This muscle-car-esq electric vehicle drives as far as 40 miles on a single overnight charge. While this may not sound like a lot, the Volt also has an on-board gas generator, which means that you can fill up at the pump, and drive it almost like a regular car. This is known as a Series hybrid – The gasoline engine doesn’t drive the wheels like a conventional car. Instead, its only purpose is to recharge the battery while the car is on the road. This is an advantage over the Tesla Roadster, as it means that you can take the Volt on a road trip without having to worry about plugging in. GM has a bad track history with technology, and most consumers are wary about their true intentions. For example, many have alleged that the GM fuel cell program was really just a PR stunt to push off having to upgrade it’s auto technology base by pretending to be proactive. Time will tell, and while GM claims that it won’t be ready until 2012, hopeful rumors hint at 2010.

Other automakers are pursuing Series Hybrids as well. Some other potentials on the horizon besides the Volt are the Saturn Vue and Volvo ReCharge.

Fuel Cells

Available: Don’t hold your breath

Fuel cells are touted to be the next-generation car technology. Fuel cells are a replacement for batteries. Instead of charging your car with electricity, you fill it’s fuel-cell with a fuel (usually hydrogen), and the fuel-cell uses that to create electricity, without the need for a conventional motor or power generator.

A fuel cell does not describe a type of propulsion – just a power source. For example, a Hybrid Electric Vehicle might use a fuel cell instead of batteries, or a full electric vehicle might as well. While fuel cells promise to boost the efficiency of such vehicles, they are not required. That’s a good thing, because no one really knows how to make them yet.

Practically every auto maker has announced intentions of producing a fuel-cell based car. There are several prototypes, usually costing several million dollars and with significant performance problems. The technology simply isn’t there yet, and it doesn’t look like its going to be ready any time soon. Manufacturers like to use fuel-cell technology as an example of what they are developing for the future. Unfortunately (especially in the case of GM), this is really just an excuse for why they have no interesting technologies in the present.

Hydrogen

Available: Never

For a while, hydrogen-powered cars was the talk of the town. Yet, years later, there isn’t a single mass-produced hydrogen automobile. Why not?

While gasoline and even electrical outlets are commonplace throughout the United States, you would be hard-pressed to find liquid hydrogen at your local filling station. Even worse, it can be dangerous stuff. Hydrogen is explosive at room temperature, and either super-low temperatures or super-high pressure us required to keep it contained in a gas-tank. Given how much easier it is for people to switch to an electric car versus a hydrogen one, don’t expect hydrogen cars to make it to mass production any time soon. In fact, no car manufacturer has any such plans, although some government agency vehicles and public buses do run on hydrogen, and BMW has a number of prototypes which they have processionally showed off since 2001.

Which do I get?

Unfortunately, the lesson learned here is that there isn’t too much choice in the marketplace yet. If you can wait 6 months, you may be able to get a Plug-In Hybrid from Toyota. Then again, maybe not. Toyota hasn’t promised anything. If you have $100,000 to burn, you can get a super car-class Tesla Roadster that you can’t take overnight away from a power socket.

However, if you are in the market for a car today, the only technology readily available is a regular Hybrid. The good news is that they are gaining popularity, and many manufacturers are making them. My wife will be looking at models from Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and Lexus. If anyone makes an announcement that they will have a Plug-In Hybrid available in the 2009 model year before we make our purchase though, we’ll definitely hold off until that comes out.

And we’ll trade up whenever the Chevy Volt becomes available. Right before we book tickets on Virgin Galactic to the Budget Suites hotel on the moon.

]]> http://www.2robots.com/2007/11/27/where-is-my-car-20/feed/ 4 http://www.2robots.com/2006/12/08/mac-mini-core-duo-6-month-review/ http://www.2robots.com/2006/12/08/mac-mini-core-duo-6-month-review/#comments Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:07:33 +0000 Daniel Eisner http://www.2robots.com/2006/12/08/mac-mini-core-duo-6-month-review/ I’ve been running the Mac Mini for more than 6 months now. Its time to check in for a 6-month review of all the quirks and perks.

This is the Intel Core Duo 1.6Ghz Mac mini. This is the latest Mac Mini available as of today. The product line can be a little confusing — be careful about which reviews you read, as earlier Mac Mini’s were based on the PowerPC chip, and later on single-core Intel chips. The current line is significantly faster than those earlier models.

Some other improvements from earlier versions are that it now has 4 hi-speed usb 2.0 ports, in addition to a Firewire 400 port for connecting additional devices. Since you can’t really upgrade this computer, you’ll use these ports to connect any addon devices. While there are plenty of ports, I am a little disappointed that the Mini does not yet include a Firewire 800 port, or an external SATA II port. Since the first thing people will add is an external disk, the faster interfaces would have been a nice addition. Still, for the Mini’s target audience, the supplied firewire and USB ports are completely sufficient.

While I would consider myself a “power user,” I’m using 3 external hard drives, a wireless keyboard and mouse, and an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid to watch HD TV. I use the external drives mostly for DVR video storage and music. I have a single 500GB drive (on Firewire), and 2 250 GB drives on USB set up as a RAID Stripe using OS X’s built-in software RAID. I was a little bit skeptical about using software RAID over USB, but it works flawlessly. Moving the drives to different USB sockets doesn’t affect the RAID. Another interesting drive tidbit is that the Firewire port is much faster than USB for disks. If you have a choice, use that.

So, what has it been like using a Mac? One thing I found surprising coming from the PC world is that most of those apple ads are actually true – most things “just work.” Its something that you can hear, but not really appreciate until you try it. For example, menus and configuration choices for almost all programs are a lot simpler than they are on the PC. It isn’t that they are less capable, its just that things don’t need to be tweaked as much as they do in most PC applications. It’s definitely been a pleasure to use, and I’m looking forward to when I have to replace my next laptop – it’ll probably
be with a Mac.

While this was the main reason I bought it, I was happy to find that the Mac Mini makes a perfect Home-Theater PC. One reason is that it can attach to a lot of different outputs. With a small adapter, it can use VGA, DVI, svideo, or RCA, although it only supports one output at a time. No matter which inputs you have free on your TV, you’ll be able to connect your Mac Mini to it.

Another great aspect of the Mac Mini is that it’s extremely small. That’s probably why they call it “Mini” . For example, it’s only marginally bigger than my external hard drives. It’s even smaller (although slightly taller) than just about any laptop, and easily fits into a component shelf in your TV stand. It can also be mounted behind your TV, and there are companies which sell brackets to do so. The Mini is also virtually silent, an important aspect of a device going into your entertainment cabinet. If you put your ear to it, you can just barely hear the fan. I’ve never been able to hear it from the couch, even with the TV off.

The final touch for the home theater PC case is the software: Apple Front Row. This application is driven by a remote which comes with your Mini. The remote is attractive, in classic Apple fashion, and quite useful. Using Front Row, you can browse everything in your iTunes collection right from your couch – including Music and Videos. If you have an Ipod, this’ll be very familiar to you, as they’re almost identical.

The Mini has lots of other software too. You can download a free office suite called “Neo Office,” which is a version of Open Office adapted to run on the Mac. If you haven’t tried Open Office or Neo Office yet, you absolutely should. It is basically a free clone of Microsoft Office. It provides almost the same exact functionality as Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint but is completely free.

For web browsing, there is Apple’s native browser called Safari, or of course, you can download Firefox. The Mini also comes with Apple’s creative suite called iLife, which has applications for making movies, DVD’s, cartoons, and music recordings. iLife is what I use, for example, to make my video reviews.

About the only thing that the Mini doesn’t do so well is play the latest PC games. First of all, most games will only run on Microsoft Windows anyway. However, one of the ways they got the Mini to be so small is by skimping on the graphics hardware. It’s plenty fast for HD video editing, but it’s terrible at any kind of 3d game.

Overall, I’ve found the Mac Mini to be an exciting introduction to Apple’s computer products. If you’re still not convinced you might be glad to know that you can install either Windows or Linux on the Mini. After using it for a few days, however, you’ll probably find that you have no reason to.

Overall, the EyeTV Hybrid is a decent product. For most people, it will probably work great — especially if you are covered in their programing guide (more on that later). Since there are so few TV options available for the Mac compared to the PC, it is especially heartening that the EyeTV Hybrid works so well in most scenarios. Having said that, this review is for the information you won’t be able to find on the manufacturer’s page, or any other reviews out there.

First off, the EyeTV Hybrid suffers from the same drawbacks as other PC-based DVR devices — that they won’t work with digital tv or cable boxes. This is mostly because of a monopoly by the cable tv companies. They want you to use their boxes, not your computer (you can learn more at Ars Technica).

The EyeTV Hybrid has some additional caveats:

• It can only play HD content off of an HD Antenna, not off your cable line
• It can only play either HD or regular cable at one time

The major networks transmit in HD in many areas — NBC, ABC, CBS. In my area, I also get things like PBS and some local stations. This can be pretty good — especially since each network typically has 2-4 HD stations. However, it doesn’t compare to basic analog cable, which may have 20 – 50 channels. Because I want to watch in HD when I can, I find that I typically end up switching to the HD antenna to watch Lost (ABC), but then have to switch back to cable to watch Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi. Both great shows, btw). This is very annoying because each switch means unscrewing the cable jack and plugging in a different one. I suspect it is also putting wear on my EyeTV Hybrid, which will cause it to break sooner.

Another problem with the EyeTV Hybrid has to do with the channel guide. Elgato licensed its guide from TitanTV. TitanTV licenses their guide from an undisclosed 4th party. The problem is that not all cable companies are listed in the guide. For example, my cable company is called “Econotek,” which specializes in apartment complexes in the NYC area. Because Econotek isn’t as big as Time Warner or Cablevision, they are not listed in the guide. While TitanTV claims to be responsive about this sort of thing, they have ignored my requests to add my cable company to their listings.

This wouldn’t be the end of the world if Elgato allowed the user to customize their channel lineup. Unfortunately, they don’t. What this means is that if your cable company isn’t listed in TitanTV, you can’t use any of the DVR functionality, as EyeTV won’t know what shows are on which channel at what time.

I have also found that the EyeTV Hybrid itself is just a little buggy. I tend to leave EyeTV running all the time. When I don’t want to watch it, I just turn off my TV, but EyeTV is still running. I’ve noticed that after you leave it running for a few days, it will tend to crash. Sometimes, restarting the software will fix it, but other times, I have to reboot my whole mac to get it working again. This might have to do with the fact that the Hybrid gets very hot when it runs for a while.

One final note for those of you with Mac Mini’s: I have the Intel Core Duo 1.6 Mhz one, and I’ve found that I can’t really record tv and watch a recorded show at the same time — it runs too slow. Ironically, you can do this with HD shows, since HD is already encoded. Only SD tv has this issue. However, the liveTV and standard DVR pause,ff,rw, etc work fine.

Overall, while the EyeTV Hybrid does have its quirks, I believe that these can mostly be corrected by a software update. Simply adding the ability to edit your channel lineup would be a hige difference, and many people (myself included) use this product to its fullest who can’t today. In the past, Elgato has released software updates which allow their products to read HD signal (QAM) off of regular cable lines, so that an HD antenna was not required.

If those two issues were resolved, I would be able to recommend the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid as the must-have TV product for your Mac.

This time around, I can’t add them up to equal a new Nissan Z. This time.

BTW, if you are looking for some good free computer games, check out Liberated Games.