This is pretty much exactly what's in every Prius. Little electric motor driving the sun wheel, IIRC in my 2nd gen Prius it's a 9kW motor doing up to 10000rpm in both directions. Transitions from forward to backward speed seemlessly.

Very cool tech, but hardly new.

It ain't really necessary unless you go to seriously deep temperature. If your usage profile includes -12 C (conversion for those of us having no clue about Fahrenheits), proper oil with the right viscosity will be 'there' within half a minute, tops. From then on, light load is way better to heat up the engine than letting it idle for an eternity. It's quite some air pollution, too.

Now, if you're going -30 or so on a semi-regular basis, I'd suggest a block heater or a propper fuel based heating system. Those will actually prewarm the engine.

It seems a silly idea to fire somebody just after having invested $(whatever_this_snafu_is_supposed_to_have_cost) into his education.

That'll actually be a nice challenge, I'll need to try that one of these days.

I'm in Luxembourg, so 2 countries is about 5 minutes, 3 about half hour, 4 about an hour. 5 about 3 hours, but then it's getting somwhat pesky.

Starting in Dover/UK, I can do France, Belgium, NL, Germany, Luxembourg, then down south to Switzerland, Italy, back to France, taking Monaco into Spain. Around 2000 km, that'll be 20 hours of driving.

Better way: starting in NL, doing B, then down to Lux, dashing over to Germany, Switzerland, taking Lichtenstein, Austria, then down to Italy, over to France and Monaco. 1500 km.

Good plan, I'll try that next summer :)

Jorg, as said, answer not for us, but for yourself. We don't need any justification.

In your writeup, you got the call when getting out of office in Lux City. Filling in blanks, I assume you got on bus to Howald (Konz?), picked up the car, went to your parents and then drove over to hospital.

I expect my reaction to have been to take a taxi and get to hospital. Irrelevant of the fact that ER is not open to outsiders, or that the dealer expects the car to be picked up that evening, or whatever else.

No wrong or right here, yours is just different than mine would have been.

Sorry, my comment got lost the first time. Fickly network.

One question, which you may want to clarify (for yourself more than for us). Why are you on slashdot and facebook, instead of being in hospital with your wife? May tell you some about that relationship...