In Other News
Following along on the retro kick among car makers, GM has decided to make a new version of the Ford Pinto called the Chevy Volt. Why GM thought people were pining for a small car that burst into flames in an accident is above my pay grade.
I understand the need for coolant, but there must be a serviceable, non-flammable coolant available.
Came across an interesting web site during the search for something else: Chilling Effects
A joint project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics.
If you get a take-down letter over content on your site, you can send that and appropriate links to the site, where the legal terms will be translated into English, so you can figure out what the letter is all about. They don’t give you legal representation, but you can at least figure out if you actually need it after the letter is translated.
Rick Santorum is apparently now considered the front-runner by the GOP establishment, because he is being attacked mercilessly by ‘fellow Republicans’. It is definitely time to declare Reagan’s ‘Eleventh Commandment’ to be null and void.
4 comments
Sanatorium seems (tous in the UK anyway) to have taken on the maniac mantle…. Or perhaps it is just that we never realised that the NHS destroyed the British Empire… Perhaps if Attlee’s Government had not brought in such a shameful institution then the Sun would have never set on the Raj!
The new GM ad campaign, aimed at civic-minded (Civic-minded?) citizens, will be known as “Rock the Volt” …
The “Chilling Effects” site makes me wish for younger eyes.
I’ve been aware of the Chilling Effects site for quite a number of years for reasons of, err, submitting a takedown notice there (note that I am domain administrator of a large number of domains, some of which have the capacity to annoy folks who need annoying 😉 ).
Regarding coolant fires, note that coolant is 50% alcohol. This is true for *all* cars, not just the Chevy Volt — glycol *is* alcohol, thus why it tastes good to cats and dogs (but alas is quite toxic to them, much like methanol). The deal is that glycol has low volatility thus is usually hard to catch on fire. But apparently if you’re causing a spark with 220 volts rather than 12 volts it turns out to be a bit easier to vaporize enough glycol to cause a fire, hrm!
Like all Republicans, Jams, Santorum has some very strange views of the world, most of which are not based on any known reality. It is almost as if they are from another space-time continuum and got here by mistake.
I guess thaat I can’t believe GM never considered the problem, Steve.
See, I’m not large enough to waste a letter on, Badtux. It has only been attempted once, and I replied with links to applicable laws at Thomas and the DoJ websites, and it went away. My current host takes a dim view of such complaints.
It sounds like the coolant is leaking into the power module, as it is cooling the batteries and the power system. Ethyl glycol is the standard coolant, but there has to be something non-flammable that is nearly as good. As you say, the high voltage and amperage of electric vehicles make this a problem.
I became aware of the power involved in a bulletin to public safety official about the Prius. There were special cautions issued for extracting victims because of the location of some of the power cables. Cutting the roof off an early Prius during one of the first accidents involving the car, got very exciting when the metal saw went through the power cable – it was the equivalent of a lightning strike for the fireman who did it.