Long story short…no worse than before!

As before we’re still using walking, buses and taxi as our main source of movement. We use the bus every working day and have about 2-4 up-the-hill taxi trips a week which is mainly dependent on weather. In the winter it’s bound to be more.

About once a month we’re using Cityhop to get around. One thing about that that I’m noticing is that this is either on a weekend or after hours during the week (utilising the 6PM-8AM $30 special). But I do see that we’re using Citihop not quite as intended. We’re usually booking it for more than a few hours i.e. using it more like a day-rental. For that it seems to be a bit expensive. Maybe there’s better solutions out there… I’d definitely like to see a service where the car does not need to be brought back to the originating place after use. Mercedes is doing that successfully with Smart cars in a few towns in Germany.  The point of origin issue is certainly the most annoying with Cityhop or any other rental car shop.

As for missing a car…I drive to Petone a lot less now (although it has a good bus connection). But that also saves a bit on food expenses . From a money/saving perspectiveit looks like we’re starting to feel the benefits. There’s more of it left at the end of a fortnight. Which is a good thing in this time.

We’ve also got a scooter for those small trips that no other form of transport will do cost effectively. But we have noticed that it’s use is also less than once a week. It might get a bit more in summer but from a use perspective it’s not really necessary. At some point we might contemplate getting rid of it again.

From what we’ve experienced we would now appreciate:

1. More buses on weekend that have the odd service up to midnight
2. Buses that travel between suburbs not only to the city center
3. Cycle lanes
4. More Cityhop cars at several stations with returns wherever
5. Wellington bus-tunnel fare for 50ct or $1
6. A tunnel through Mt Vic for pedestrians that has no car fumes
7. Conversion of more Wellington central streets into malls
8. Less cars i.e. stop all planned roading extensions and subsidise public transport as an option

One thing I do probably have to admit is that a car is practicable what you have a child. I do know what I’d like to have when that becomes the case. I’d like to have an all electric vehicle that has two passenger seats and a small boot, can go about 100km/h, have a guaranteed radius of 70-90km per charge and cost no more than $20.000-$25.000 new.  Four seats is fine too but not really necessary at least in the first years (don’t forget I have no kiddie-experience so I might be totally wrong about this!). Oh I think I just described a Smart-4-2. Or this thing… http://tinyurl.com/pvyflb.

Because the diesel engine is used for electricity generation only it can run at it’s optimal efficiency while the electric engines deal with peak power and low power. The buses use about a quarter of the diesel fuel of pure diesel vehicles. The electric engines are built directly into the wheels making them as efficient as possible (no power loss to transmission of power through gears).

The concept also uses smart GPS technology to save diesel. It recognises when it needs power and when not by sensing the congestion on the streets. I still don’t quite understand how it does that but the idea’s great.

I think until pure electric buses come our way (10 years? Batteries are still not really up to whole day use) this is a very good option and I’m sure you’d be able to retrofit later. I can also imagine that these buses need less repair than their pure diesel counterparts because the “complex” diesel engine is not that stressed and electric engines are by far less maintenance intensive. So all in all this would be a good bet.

Let’s have these things on Wellington roads please!

Let’s see when CityHop will have them….

I did some calculations and it turns out I pay about $6000 a year for driving a car (car depreciation, petrol, repairs, WOF, registration, insurance, fines,…). Depending on the car value either depreciation or repairs are higher. So the $6000 are pretty independent on the type of car for cars up to $20,000.

We don’t drive more than 5000kms a year anyway and use the bus and sometimes taxi for most of our work-week commuting. In an average week we use the car 1-2 times only. So we are really don’t need a car at all. What I’d really like though is an electric car but no-one will sell me one and I don’t have the time to build my own. I really don’t want another gas guzzler. For the time being I decided with Rebecca that we’d try and go no-car.

What does no-car mean for us? We’ll take $5000 as the calculation basis. That is the money we can spend on any means of transportation. Not included in those are 1 taxi ride a week and bus fares to and from work as we do that if we have a car or not. After some research we have found that we can do the following:

1. Walk and use the bicycle (free)
2. Ride buses ($2.25 per ride)
3. Use taxis for all trips where buses don’t drive ($15-30 per ride)
4. Use www.cityhop.co.nz. ($75 yearly, $13.50 – $15/hour for a car)
5. Use rented cars for longer trips/holidays. (about $60 a day)
6. Get a scooter (electric/petrol) for everything that doesn’t fit the above ($2000-$3000 for a scooter + $40 petrol & insurance/month)

So… then $5000 gives you 2,222 bus rides, 166-333 taxi rides, 333-370hrs of cityhop cars, 83 days of rental cars (petrol excluded). The scooter (point 6) is excluded here for now. Maybe it also motivates us to walk a little more as this directly saves money on our bottom line (there are no fixed costs to speak of). That’s a LOT of transport and it sounds quite good from a financial perspective. And(!) we can switch back to a car at any point in time without having lost any money to speak of. From an environmental perspective this is probably the lowest CO2 rating you could have in our situation (not including working from home as that is not a viable option for us at the moment).

So we’re going to give it a shot. The budget will be $100/week for all commuting expenses excluding bus rides to and from work but including all taxi rides (i.e. the one taxi ride per week is included here). Let’s see how that turns out for us. I’ll definitely post some updates on how we are going.

Some say the answer is in solar panelling the world or space, having a wind-farm on every hill, taking geothermal energy and having tidal generators for every stretch of coastline suitable. I’m not really opposed to that but even that is probably not enough to feed the energy needs and the future energy needs of India, China and others. I can also fully understand people that don’t want a rotor looming over their back garden.  So again what is the answer?

We all -deep down- know what the answer is. NO! It’s not nuclear reactors! God forbid! The radioactive waste on those has a half life of about 10,000 years. We haven’t even been able to come up with a warning sign that will last that amount of time (remember the pyramids are “only” 4000 years old). I think I’ll take coal any day compared to that. No, the answer is something we’ve all heard before but have chosen to ignore. It’s the stuff mentioned in the title. What I’m talking about is nuclear fusion.

Fusion is the only power source known to mankind that can supply more power than atomic reactors (thereby enough to power all of humanity) with producing a minimum of radioactive output (a minuscule amount compared to your average nuclear plant) or any output apart from energy for that matter. As I said we’ve all heard of it but why hasn’t everyone got one in their back yards? Well…. that’s because we can’t build them yet. We don’t even know if we can. The Europeans have come together to build the biggest Tokamak type reactor ever in France called the ITER (there’s also the Stellerator type fusion reactor like the Wendelstein 7-X being built in Germany which is a different concept and cheaper). It’s the first time there’s an attempt to build a fusion reactor that can produce more electricity than it consumes. i.e. it would be the first reactor that can be seen as a proper power generating station.

But remember that we don’t really know if the scientists and builders can do it. The whole project is currently budgeted for 5 billion US$. They will probably end up paying $6-7 billion. Expensive …not?! We’re building something we don’t even know will work but sinking all this money into it???!!!! Most people don’t even know that it is being built!

Well, I think we’re not spending enough and not enough buy a long shot. If ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) succeeds humanity will probably have solved all energy problems we ever had and could have. Within this century we could switch off almost all of our bad energy sources and wouldn’t even have to build any wind farms or solar whatevers. This would revolutionise the world energy economy. Fusion power is so cheap it would obliterate your energy bill. So why are we spending only $5-7 billion? If this is as good as it gets why aren’t we spending more? America pays $500+ billion a year in oil imports and $230 billion in electrical bills. A nuclear (fission) reactor costs about the same as the fusion reactor. Are you doing the maths?

There’s a lot of negative controversy around the ITER too. Green parties and Greenpeace are complaining that the funding is taking away from funding alternative energies. That fusion reactors will probably not be operative before 2050. Sorry but how shortsighted is that? Alternative energies are needed and good but we all know that they cannot ever produce enough power to feed the world with power. Humanity needs fusion power or something new we haven’t invented yet. We cannot stop researching fusion just to spend more money on the wrong type of power generation and by that I mean anything non fusion. Green parties and environmentally friendly organisations should concentrate on supporting fusion strongly AND pushing for alternative sources in the mean time. By bickering over this all energy sources loose.

Humanity will need more power in the future not less. Even if we start consuming less. We will probably see a day when there are 10-14 billion people living on this planet.  They all want to be warm, mobile and watch TV. They will still want to travel and do things. Fusion with its promise of the ideal power source is really the answer. I discuss electric cars, others are fans of hydrogen (which I believe will be the answer for trucks, buses, heavy machinery, air travel and not for personal travel – that will be battery-electric). Both need a clean energy source to have any positive impact on the world.We will not get that without the fusion reactor.

So my plea is to have a closer look at fusion and support it as much as possible. Maybe NZ should actively allow fusion reactors to be built and give TAX cutbacks for doing so. That might give the power companies something to aim for. But even if not that it would certainly create discussion and publicity for the technology. Who knows maybe the US Navy will go fusion and then they could come and visit us! Go out and do some research like I did and see for yourself. The links above are a good starting point.

Miraz

So far I haven’t driven an EV scooter and I’d be very keen. What I’m worried about are the Wellington hills. They are a challenge for any kind of transportation. They will affect the range of these cycles. The question is by how much.

(picture is the Vectrix VX-1)

I’m still waiting on what New Zealand will be doing. BetterPlace has contacts but nothing has come of it so far. Not much hope here though with a Key lead National Government. We will probably loose out at least for another 3 years. I hope the new government is not as short sighted as I believe them to be. Somehow I’m still a little hopeful that I can replace my gas gulping pile of metal for something clean & green before the end of 2010.

[Update] Michellin has a nice invention here. A complete drive train in a wheel!

I definitely want an electric car. I did the maths and it would be heaps cheaper than our current gas guzzler or any other petrol car. The Tredia below does the equivalent of NZ $250 a month and costs $15 in electricity to charge! How’s that for saving for a rainy day (ok, please don’t do the global warming analogy here!).

(www.kiwiev.com)