07 October 2008
06 October 2008
Another Frightening Show About the Economy
A MUST - Listen to This American Life podcast (Full Episode) and get a better understanding of the background of the mess we are entering into.
Learn more about CDS - Credit Default Swaps - a tool for financial speculation, specifically barred from regulation in the US Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.
Read also this Time article from March of this year - Credit Default Swaps: The Next Crisis?
05 October 2008
Bill Maher Takes On Palin's Debate Performance
The good news is that Sarah Palin can complete a sentence...the bad news is that the rest of us have to listen to it, according to Bill Maher in his opening monologue on Friday night.
04 October 2008
03 October 2008
Tesla Motors
Tesla v2.0, er, v1.5 Hits the Road
Tesla Motors has released the much-awaited upgrade to the gearbox in the all-electric Roadster, and in typical Silicon Valley fashion calls it Powertrain 1.5 -- even though it's a different transmission and so ought to be called v2.0.
Nomenclature aside, the slick one-speed Borg-Warner transmission joins a stouter power inverter and revised engine in a package said to deliver 30 percent more torque and 10 percent more range. That lets the Roadster make good on its promised zero to 60 time of 4.0 seconds while squeezing 244 miles from the battery. "The new setup is superior in almost every way," says J.B. Straubel, Tesla's chief technology officer.
Tesla says it's already putting Powertrain 2.0, er, 1.5, in Roadsters that have made the trip from the factory in Hethel, England to San Carlos, California, for final assembly. So what's different about Powertrain 1.5, and what happens to the 27 people driving Roadsters with Powertrain 1.0?
The new one-speed transmission weighs 17 pounds less and creates less drag on the motor, increasing efficiency and bumping the car's range. A revised power inverter puts out 850 amps, up from 650, and the motor had redesigned terminals to reduce resistance. It's beefier, too, and torque rises from 211 foot-pounds to 280.
Tesla started developing Powertrain 1.5 after realizing the two-speed transmission it planned to use "had many durability, efficiency and cost challenges," Straubel wrote on the Tesla blog. Eager to start building cars, Tesla slapped an interim one-speed transmission in the Roadster when it fired up the assembly line at the Lotus plant in Hethel, and although early reviews of those cars were positive, the stop-gap tranny significantly cut into its performance. Early adopters got a car that did zero to 60 in 5.7 seconds -- about as fast as the Toyota Tundra pickup. Powertrain 1.5 cuts that to the promised 4.0 seconds, putting the Roadster on par with the Porsche 911 GT3.
The Recent Financial Upheavals
This is the world we live in - this article explains the complicated issues in an understandable and horrifying way.
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