We Live In A Technological Age.....

[Rabbers]

Attitudes on this Forum are changing rapidly.....

Last August, which is not so long ago, I was good-naturedly taken to task on this Forum

for asking the simple question of whether anybody knew of an arithmetical formula that

enables you to figure out how far you need to drive downhill in order to recover the increase

in fuel consumption you get from driving uphill, the difference being so big as as to have

surprised me (as it does still). Before someone provided a link to a scientific paper so

incomprehensible to any non-physicist as to illustrate my own naiveté in believing my query

to have been a simple one, various other replies included the suggestion that the Forum -

and presumably myself - needed to lighten up and that my query was too advanced for

their schoolboy-level maths.

All of this came back to me this week as I waded through several detailed, lengthy and

infectiously enthusiastic posts about EVs with various levels of price and performance.

However, try as I might, I have so far merely come to understand that petrolheads are

quickly evolving into electroheads or maybe even hydroheads and that I seriously need

to scramble to catch up before I and my poor 300h are left stranded way behind the

current technological curve. :eerrrmm:

[steveledzep]

Technology curve ? I'm not even on it.....have an IS250 !! Love my car though : )

With regard to your original point, I drive along the M4 in South Wales a lot and monitor the mpg shifting upwards and downwards depending what gradient I'm on ? Don't wish to get mathematical about it, but find it interesting too.

[Rabbers]

Steve:

Interesting that you should mention South Wales. Some years back I had occasion to drive from, I think, Brecon -

or maybe it was Abergavenny - to Swansea on the Head of the Valleys Road. I remember innumerable stretches

of ups and downs of approximately equal length that would have made it perfect for monitoring the relative

fluctuations in consumption. You should maybe give this road a try if you haven't already!

[ganzoom]

LoL, as much I've totally fallen for EV power, I still find the IS300H to be an amazingly comfortable/relaxing way to get from A to B. The Lexus is still far more luxurious inside than the Leaf, and I suspect interms of finish/materials it'll still a class even above the Tesla. And I certainly don't have any problems with keeping our IS300H for another 5 years + :)

However I love the 'Silicon Valley' approach to buissness. My day job is working in the NHS, and generally speaking changes in the NHS takes decades to deliver....Whilst the rest of the world has moved on to cloud based computing/instant feedback of data to customer....in the NHS I still tell my patients, to go and have a blood test (requested by a piece of paper), and than to book an appointment (again by paper) for 2 weeks time, when I'll be able to tell them the result (some times, still by looking through pieces of paper).....BUT in the last 3 months I've been working out how to change things, with a few companies based in Silicon Valley, and I can tell you these guys are living 10 years in the future, whilst been in the present. Even though they are small companies, they all have grand ambitions, and pride themselves on been 'disruptive'...Many of my colleagues don't understand their approach, but I personally love it....If you have a good idea, why not aim big (regardless of how small you are), develop it quickly, and get it out there.

Tesla is doing exactly that in the car industry. This is a company that has only been around for just over a decade, and only with their second attempt at building a car, they have made something which by all accounts the motoring journalists world wide cannot lavish enough praise for it....Despite the fact this is a company that currently delivered 35,000 cars world wide last year, compare to Ford who sold nearly 120,000 Fiestas in the UK alone!!

But anyone who would dismiss Tesla as nothing more than a passing fad, should have a look at Elon Musk (Tesla CEO) other company, Space X. As the name suggest its a Space/Rocket ship company. Founded one year before Tesla, Space X is the only commercial company to have a contract with NASA to resupply with Internal Space Station.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/

Space X is also the first company to develop and test a self landing rocket, which means you can potentially drastically reduce costs, by not having to build a new booster rocket for every launch....Something that even NASA themselves have never really tried to do!!

And Guess which company is partnering up with NASA and Boeing to develop the next generation of Space shuttles in preparation for a manned landing on Mars.Yes Space X, a company that is younger than the Toyota Prius.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-boeing-spacex-outline-objectives-to-station-flights/

So if the man (Elon Musk) can accomplish so much in such a short amount of time and 100% believes in Battery EVs, who Im I to argue.and after spending some time living with a Battery powered EV, I have no doubts this is the future.But like anything else in life, competition is always good for the consumer, so the emergence of hydrogen fuel cars can only be a good thing.

I for one feel privileged to be alive at a time when there is so much technological progress (which isn't been driven by a world war for once), and to be in a financial situation where I can access a lot of the these technologies :)..I'm looking forwards to spending my 60'th birthday on board a space-craft/space-station watching the sun rise over the earth

The really scary thing though, is a self aware AI is now looking more like a when it happen rather than if itll happen. Google have already developed an self learning AI that can learn to out-play humans in many video games, and are producing an experiential amount of literature on the topic.Now a future where self aware AIs exist (we might even be aware when this happens), and can control/access your car / house / data is slight un-nerving, even for a self confessed technology geek like my self !!

[url=]http://research.google.com/pubs/ArtificialIntelligenceandMachineLearning.html]

[rayaans]

LOL I have to tell my patients to take piriton for hayfever. At this rate the NHS is going bust in 10 years or less and the government will just keep pumping money into it to try and save it. £5 an appointment and all these problems are gone. With 26k GP's giving out approx 1 million appointments in the UK per day, thats £5 MILLION revenue EACH DAY and no wasted appointments! Im actually sick of DNA's all the time! It doesnt help that pay hasnt gone up and we're doing more work for less, Im doing about 30 patients in 3 hours! Ive actually cut 20 hours a week as its just stupid giving away 45% of your earnings. Id rather spend more time with my family.

Anyways, back to technology - It does seem to be moving quite quickly. We now have full EV's, conventional hybrids, plug in hybrids and soon, a hydrogen alternative. Hopefully there is some investment in the infrastructure to support the new tech as it wont grow otherwise but as mentioned, its good to have competition as it'll drive the price down!

[ganzoom]

LOL I have to tell my patients to take piriton for hayfever. At this rate the NHS is going bust in 10 years or less and the government will just keep pumping money into it to try and save it. £5 an appointment and all these problems are gone. With 26k GP's giving out approx 1 million appointments in the UK per day, thats £5 MILLION revenue EACH DAY and no wasted appointments! Im actually sick of DNA's all the time! It doesnt help that pay hasnt gone up and we're doing more work for less, Im doing about 30 patients in 3 hours! Ive actually cut 20 hours a week as its just stupid giving away 45% of your earnings. Id rather spend more time with my family.

Sadly the problems facing the NHS is something I don't think even a genius like Elon Musk can solve....I have the pleasure of enjoying it for another 32 years, at least .... Last winter was truly horrendous, by far the worst in the last 10 years I've been in A&E/Acute medicine, we were literally on the verge of shutting the doors completely, we were managing Level 3 patients in theatre recovery constantly, the A&E corridor was turned into a ward, ambulances queues around the block, even had the ITU consultant pretty much beg me not to refer any more cases because every Level 3 bed/space in a radius of 100 miles was occupied. Scary stuff But there's a life long worth amount of debate to be had about the NHS.

[rayaans]

LOL I have to tell my patients to take piriton for hayfever. At this rate the NHS is going bust in 10 years or less and the government will just keep pumping money into it to try and save it. £5 an appointment and all these problems are gone. With 26k GP's giving out approx 1 million appointments in the UK per day, thats £5 MILLION revenue EACH DAY and no wasted appointments! Im actually sick of DNA's all the time! It doesnt help that pay hasnt gone up and we're doing more work for less, Im doing about 30 patients in 3 hours! Ive actually cut 20 hours a week as its just stupid giving away 45% of your earnings. Id rather spend more time with my family.

Sadly the problems facing the NHS is something I don't think even a genius like Elon Musk can solve....I have the pleasure of enjoying it for another 32 years, at least .... Last winter was truly horrendous, by far the worst in the last 10 years I've been in A&E/Acute medicine, we were literally on the verge of shutting the doors completely, we were managing Level 3 patients in theatre recovery constantly, the A&E corridor was turned into a ward, ambulances queues around the block, even had the ITU consultant pretty much beg me not to refer any more cases because every Level 3 bed/space in a radius of 100 miles was occupied. Scary stuff But there's a life long worth amount of debate to be had about the NHS.

Very true but I think the days of totally free NHS is coming to an end. Its just not feasible and throwing money into the system isnt going to help.

Hmm back to technological innovations, has anyone heard of the water injection that BMW used on its M4 safety car? lol

[ganzoom]

Hmm back to technological innovations, has anyone heard of the water injection that BMW used on its M4 safety car? lol

It's nothing new, people have been installing aftermarket methanol injection kits into 135/335i since around 2008. Essentially allows you to run higher boost with the same octane fuel, using just water helps to cool the whole system. Properly setup on the 335i methanol injection gave a decent gain in bhp - about 50. But the downside was the need to haves constant supply of water/methanol going into the intake system.

I suspect BMW wanted to introduce method injection but most 'main stream' customers would probably find it un-nerving to be topping up another flammable liquid (aside from petrol) into the car.

http://www.ecstuning.com/BMW-E90-335i-N54_3.0L/ES517900/

I thought about going down this route in my old 335i, but decided upgraded turbos would be better/more reliable....The inherent problem with pushing for bhp increases above 500 is heat management, it's not a ICE specific issue. The Tesla S when pushed will go into 'component protection' mode quite quickly, hence no one has managed to get one around the 'ring...yet :)

[Rabbers]

Gang & Rayaan:

I know it's election time in the UK, but couldn't you pick some other forum to air your thoughts about the

NHS!!!??? :megaangry: :luck: