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One of the students here at school sent me these videos – with all the brouhaha over hybrids, I\’m even more intrigued by this:
Of course, I can\’t help but see that the car seems underpowered for an American market – top speed of 110 Km/H? Yes, that\’s 70 MPH (plenty fast and still safe) but I know it\’ll raise eyebrows among consumers.
The bigger question, for me, is the safety issue. First, with an aluminum body and frame I worry if I\’m T-boned by somebody driving a Ford Expedition (18+ feet long, 5800+ lbs) – will I survive? Second, in an accident like that, what happens to the compressed air tanks? I see they\’re made of carbon fiber which means no shrapnel, but…
For more information: www.theaircar.com
In contrast to the Expedition, the Air Car (Minicat model) weighs in at 1,212 pounds and is just over 8\’6\” long. So three of them would be just a bit longer than an Expedition, and still not weight as much.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: cool, environment, transportation, video
My friend Jamie recently posted this to his biking blog, and I thought it deserved to be passed on:
Walk Score.com – How walkable is your house?
Essentially, you give it your address and it will search Google’s database for nearby amenities like groceries, schools, hardware stores, movie theathers, etc. It scores how close everything is, and assigns your address a 1-100 score indicating how walking-friendly it appears.
Now, it doesn’t take into account things like the presence of sidewalks, the size of the street, speed limits, etc – but it does seem to give a decent thumbnail-sketch indication of how good your neighborhood is.
My house scored 42 of 100, which on their scale is “not walkable”, or:
Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving is a must.
The closest:
0.30 miles Park
0.35 Grocery store
0.44 Restaurant
0.49 Dry cleaner
0.50 Bar
0.50 Drug store
0.53 School
0.76 Coffee shop
0.77 Bookstore
0.89 Library
1.18 Hardware store
1.60 Movie theater
2.22 Day care
I looked up some of my previous apartments, and my parents’ house – my apartments fared much better (duh – I was blocks from High Street), while my parents’ house was very poor (again, duh – they live in a cul-de-sac suburb)
Thoughts…?
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: environment, exercise, health, house, transportation, walking
