[OT] Engine braking

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 8/1/13 12:05 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
> If we've learned anything at the shop it's that people can't be bothered
> with the facts. They seriously don't care if you have studies backing up
> the environmental damage, they believe they are green and will take
> those beliefs to their graves. Ideology is funny that way. :-)

You betcha. Related, you destroyed the myth that engine braking is any 
bad, but I bet money nobody changed opinions.

About green driving, Prius, and Tesla - it's all about what industry you 
want to sustain. Everything that stands behind the Hummer as a road car 
is an abomination, pure and simple. Of course I'd agree plenty of Prius 
drivers are as snooty as it gets in a different way. Yet the reality 
remains that the Hummer is an evolutionary dead end, and hybrids are a 
stepping stone to a better future.

My current car is a nice and economic Honda Fit. It is the very last 
internal combustion engine I'll ever own - I hope my next car will be a 
Tesla (regardless of what anyone thinks about it being a status symbol). 
Buying a dinosaur juice-based engine at this point is as much fail as 
buying a carriage with horses in 1915. I predict that internal 
combustion engines will be seen in less than a hundred years as weird 
inefficient contraptions, like we think of steam engines today.

Also, there is a beauty about electrical engines - their theoretical 
efficiency is 100%, they are simple, principled, entropy-neutral, and 
work on conservative laws. (Batteries are more unwieldy though.)


Andrei