Monday, November 26, 2007

Salad

Salad is a light meal — or, as part of a bigger meal, much more of an taster — consisting of varied vegetables (usually including at least one leaf vegetable) or fruit, frequently with a dressing or sauce, occasionally nuts and sometimes with the addition of meat, fish or cheese. It is usually seen as a healthy dish, even though not always low in calories, salt, sugar, or fat because of the dressing that is often added. The word "salad" comes from the French salade of the identical meaning, which in twist is from the Latin salata, "salty", from sal, "salt".

Monday, November 19, 2007

Traffic Claming

Traffic calming is a set of strategies used by urban planners and traffic engineers which aims to slow down traffic and get better safety for pedestrians and bicyclists, although some of these features can also be hazardous to cyclists. It is now comparatively common in Europe, especially Northern Europe; less so in North America.Traffic calming has conventionally been justified on the grounds of pedestrian safety and reduction of noise and local air pollution which are side effects of the traffic. However, it has become more and more apparent that streets have many social and recreational functions which are severely impaired by fast car traffic. For much of the twentieth century, streets were designed by engineers who were charged only with ensuring traffic flow and not with development other functions of streets. The rationale for traffic reassuring is now broadening to include designing for these functions.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Present Battery Electric Vehicles

At the present time, disagreement reign over battery electric vehicles. Campaigners, (et al) for BEV's are reproving three major US automobile manufacturers of deliberately sabotaging BEV efforts through more than a few methods, for instance, failing to market, failing to produce appropriate vehicles, by failing to satisfy demand and using lease-only programs with prohibitions against end of lease purchase.

In their defense, the three major manufacturers they have responded that they only create what the public want and the recent trend is that the public doesn't want battery electric vehicles.Although we have the technology to manufacture and provide BEVs, one of the largest downfalls for the prolific production of BEVs is the extortionate cost of replacement batteries. In some cases the cost of stand-in batteries can be more than the price of the whole vehicle, especially when buying used battery electric vehicles.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Electric vehicles in 1959

In 1959 the Henney Kilowatt was introduced and was the world's initial modern transistor-regulated electric car and the predecessor to the more recent battery electric vehicles such as General Motors EV1. Only 47 Henney Kilowatts were created, 24 being sold as 1959 models and 8 as 1960 models. It is not clear what happened to the other 15 built but it could be probable that they were sold as 1961 or 1962 models. None of the 8 1960 models were sold in the direction of the public because of the high manufacturing costs, but were sold to the electric cooperatives who funded the project.

It is estimated that there are connecting four and eight Henney Kilowatt battery electric vehicles still in existence with at least two of the survivors still driven at times.

Battery electric vehicles had issues with high battery costs, with restricted travel distances, with charging time and the lifespan of the battery, although advancements in battery technology has addressed a lot of those problems.