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Comment Re:As a Quebecer... (Score 5, Insightful) 247

"With our hydro electric resources, we should be pioneering electric cars."

Montreal citizen here...

We did. In mid-90s Hydro-Quebec developped an electric wheel hub. Tech derived from that research (TM4 engine, 96% efficiency) is now being tested by the Societe de Transport de Montreal for buses. I've seen one of those buses, and besides being ugly as hell they do the job and are *completely* silent (besides being too low for sidewalks and curbs while turning :).

Will they be reliable during the cold-as-hell north-pole winter? I dunno, but as a geek I can appreciate an all-electric bus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

What I'm still wondering is why they don't use hybrids. A city bus would be the *perfect* application for an hybrid vehicle. All that stop-and-go would help keep the battery running, and the Diesel engine would recharge the battery if it gets too low. Combined with the fact that Bio-Buses run on biodiesel made from (mostly) trash, that would seem like the logical application.

Comment Re:What about range on this smaller car? (Score 1) 247

True.

But as of now, the problem with electric-only is recharge time. I can fuel my car in 5 minutes (and give it 600KM range). Let me put at least 300KM in 10 minutes in an electric only, and they will take off. Yes I know about Supercharging stations, but until I can do the same at most gas stations, electrics will stay a niche application. Add solar panels to the car, the possibility of hooking up a range extender (generator), the possibilities are there.

Gasoline's energy density is pretty much why it's about the only practical way to fuel a car in minutes. (I'm only in my early 40s, and I sadly don't think I'll live to see mainstream electric-only vehicles)

There's a limit to how many amps you can dump in a battery without severely shortening its capacity to hold a charge (not withstanding the heat and other problems related to running hundreds of amps on a connector)

Comment As a retro gamer I can appreciate (Score 1) 133

5 years ago I was given an old HP Vectra workstation (256k Ppro 180 upgraded to a 1MB Ppro 200 with water cooling), removed both Matrox Video cards, slapped in a Soundblaster PRO 2.0, an Ensoniq Soundscape Elite, a Voodoo Rush, and after upgrading the machine to 192MB RAM, installed Win 98SE. DooM sounds amazing, Tie Fighter never sounded better. OS/2 Warp 3.0, DOS 6.22, win 3.11 and 98SE.

For the really big games (Xwing Alliance/UT/Quake2), P3/800 , dual Voodoo2 in SLI, SB Live!. 513MB and 98SE with a Rage 128 Pro card. Those machines sit along my C64 and my PS/2 286 (and my 512k MAC)

I have an old VLB 486 with an overclocked amd 5x86 running at 160 (32MB RAM), that one I'v got to give FreeDOS a try :)

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