Christian Renaud's Blog

Virtual Worlds

Mitch Wagner at Information Week turned me on to this video today via Twitter.  Thanks Mitch!



World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Good Karma or Bad Karma?

My current 'object of desire' is the absolutely gorgeous Fisker Karma.  Built by Fisker Coachbuild, and powered by a powerplant from Quantum Technologies, the Karma is an eco-geek's dream machine.  It is a plug-in-hybrid, which operates exclusively off of it's batteries, with a gasoline engine to power the electric plant in the event that the driven range exceeds 50 miles between charges.  If your commute is less than 25 miles in each direction, the gasoline engine never kicks on, and you end up with an effective 100MPG.  When you have returned home (or if you have an AC outlet at work), you plug it in and charge the batteries and you are ready to roll after work or the next morning.

The clever folks at Fisker Auto also have the option of a solar array on the roof of the car to keep the cabin (and batteries) cool during idle periods, thereby boosting the batteries' efficiency.  Rumor has it that there is also a garage-roof-solar-panel option with the car as well, to allow it to charge using solar while parked.  Of course, if you drive home from work in the evening, that doesnt give you much time to harness the sun to charge the battery unless you have some sort of fuel-cell that stored it up all day.

In my case, with two young children, it is the perfect pairing of exotic sportscar (it goes 0-60MPH in 5.8 seconds) and family sedan.  Granted, the estimated retail price is somewhere north of $80,000, so it is unlikely that my smarter-and-better-half will green-light the pre-order in these harsh macro-economic times.

Never one to be deterred, I set about trying to justify the value to myself (in preparation for the harder sell to my wife), and was surprised to discover some nasty facts about electric power in the United States that caused me to think twice about a plug-in hybrid. 

I'm going to lay out some data that I uncovered, and hope that some astute readers can point out the holes in my concerns, or new data, so I can justify this after-all: