How the Chevy Volt doesn't save you money

Everyone discusses the MPG of cars and for good enough reason. If you're interested in reducing our dependence on foreign oil then you want to reduce the number of gallons you use. However the MPG metric breaks down when you try to compare normal gasoline cars with electric vehicles (like the forthcoming Chevy Volt). A much more relevant metric is Miles per Dollar rather than Miles per Gallon.

So lets work out the Miles per Dollar for a standard car and also for the Chevy Volt. First we have to make some assumptions about gasoline cars. Lets say gas costs $1.95 a gallon. Lets also assume that your average sedan gets about 27 miles per gallon.

Now we have to make some assumptions about the cost of electricity and figure out how much the Volt uses. According to wikipedia, the Volt uses only electricity for its first 40 miles. To run those first 40 miles, it uses up 8kWH of electricity. Depending on where you live, electricity in the US costs as little as 6 cents/kWH in places like Washington and Idaho and up to 17 cents/kWH in New York and California. After the first 40 miles, the Volt operates like a normal car running at 50MPG.

I'll omit the math, but we get the following result:
Normal Sedan MP$: 13.8 miles per dollar
Chevy Volt first 40 miles MP$ (cheap electricty): 83 miles per dollar
Chevy Volt first 40 miles MP$ (expensive electricty): 29 miles per dollar
Chevy Volt after 40 miles MP$: 26 miles per dollar

So depending on where you live and how much you drive, the Volt will be anywhere from 100% to 500% cheaper to run compared to an average Sedan.

That sounds a whole lot cheaper, right! Wrong! To see why, we have to take the calculation a step further.

Suppose you drive 50 miles round trip to work every day and you live in a state with average gas prices, like Texas. In your sedan the daily commute should cost you about $3.61. But in a Volt it will only cost $1.19. Thats a savings of $2.42 every day. Now say you're a workaholic and you make trips like this 7 days a week for 52 weeks a year. Thats a yearly mileage of 18,200 miles, which is pretty high for most people. Driving a Volt you'll get a savings of $881.28 per year! But lets assume that GM engineers are even better than we expect and instead of saving $881.28 a year, we actually save $1000 a year.

Still with me? Good.

Now here comes the big question: much more do you think the Volt costs compared to a similar gasoline car? Lets compare it to a Chevy Malibu which gets about 27MPG and costs about $22,000. The final sticker price on the Volt is not set yet, but everyone says GM wants to get it down to around $32,000 (thats including all of the tax breaks). But lets give GM some credit (even though they're already getting enough from our government!) and assume that in a couple of years they will be able to bring it down further to $28,000.

So a Volt will certainly cost at least $6,000 more than a Malibu. Suppose that instead of putting that six grand into your car, you have the option of putting it into savings earning 5% interest. Therefore, in order for the Chevy Volt to win out over the Malibu, you will have to drive the Volt for ten years!

Thats right. If you want to make back your initial investment in a Volt, you have to drive the car for ten years!

Unfortunatly, GM says that the Volt battery is only expected to last ten years.

There are plenty of reasons to buy a Volt, but saving money isn't one of them.

Wireless Protocol for a Toothbrush

The most interesting gift I received this holiday season was a toothbrush. You've probably seen advanced toothbrushes before but this one really takes the cake. I'm talking about OralB's Triumph "smart" toothbrush. Like most advanced toothbrushes, the Triumph has a powerful mechanical head and also a timer that vibrates when you brush for long enough. However, the Triumph goes further by adding a wireless communication link with a base station. The base station displays your elapsed brushing time, the current brushing mode, a low battery warning, and tells you if you're brushing too hard. There are a few modifiable options and if someone else sticks on their own toothbrush head, it loads up their saved options. I can't go into all the features here... the manual is ten pages long. This may be toothbrush technology overkill... but who cares, its really cool!

The the real kicker here is the wireless technology. I wonder what wireless protocol OralB uses. The communication is fairly simple and the data rate is minuscule so I would bet that it is just an in-house protocol. But if it uses a WiFi connection, it would be fun to be able to log into your toothbrush's embedded web server and upload toothbrush mods. You could create your own brushing modes and customize their vibration pattern. By modulating the vibration pattern you could even make the toothbrush emit simple tones. Using a more complex pattern you could make your brush play songs while you brush.

Of course any wireless protocol does raise security concerns. A hacker could break into the toothbrush, and modify it to give you a sub-par brushing experience. A hostile country could attack our toothbrushing infrastructure to increase our national rate of cavities or gingivitus. OralB should know that any time you open up your device to the airwaves you have to protect it from malicious users.

...And I'm only half-joking about all of this.

New SugarSync Features in the Pipeline?

One of my favorite software tools of all time, SugarSync, seems to be ready to shake things up again. I already wrote about this company and their killer backup and sync software. They have since released their iPhone and blackberry client but just recently released a new windows mobile client. They have also announced upcoming Symbian and (long awaited) Linux support too.

But now things are getting really interesting. Now it seems that they are getting ready to sync up with social networks. I haven't seen anything from SugarSync yet, but I can presume that once your data is synced with SugarSync, the new features will allow you to easily (or maybe even automatically) send your data to facebook, myspace, youtube, and the like. Thus, all of your "stuff" can be streamed out all over the internet even though its only uploaded once. It seems that they're pitching this for media publishers who upload their crap to a dozen different websites every time they make a small change. But it would be nice for consumers too.

Additionally, on their second, somewhat hidden website, they have a modified logo with the image of a TV being synced. It seems that Sugarsync has plans to invade the living room. I'm not sure how this would work, but I would bet its either an XBox Live application, or something similar to the NetFlix appliance. Its a great idea. You could go to your friends house, turn on his XBox and listen to all the music thats sitting on your home computer... even if your computer is turned off.

Its clear that SugarSync wants to be on anything with a display to broaden its user-base to the max. I'm all for it. The software is easy to use, works great, and I can't wait to see what they have got next. SugarSync is the begining of true cloud computing.

Has Obama infected the tech-world?

It seemed like just a couple of months ago, the only thing the tech-world was interested in was adding new facebook gadgets and finding another way to make an old application "social" (See flock, wesabe, mint, and probably hundreds more). But in the last few months I've seen some change in the blogosphere and I'm wondering if its here to stay. Some big players (see Lessig) are starting to pay attention to the "stuff that matters." Even Obama's site change.gov, with its web 2.0 and social feel, bridges the do-goodery world with the tech one.

I can't tell if this is the beginning of a trend or just a handful of people caught up with Obamaitis. I hope its the former, but for it to have any impact and produce anything impressive, it has got to keep its pace up for at least six months.

I'm gonna start looking out for this more now.

Copyright Violations as bad as Child Pornography?

I found this legal factoid in a washington post article a bit surprising.... "Web hosting providers are generally not liable for illegal activity carried out on their networks, except in cases involving copyright violations and child pornography." Hmmm... why are copyright violations being held to the same standard as child pornography? I was about to get myself into a big huff believing that recording and movie industry lobbyists snuck this in without anyone realizing.

But then I did a bit of research and realized that the quote is actually innacurate. Web hosting providers can get themselves into legal trouble for a variety of reasons other than copyright violations and child pornography including: trademark violations, inciting or abating terrorism, and defamation (with limits). Additionally, ISPs are almost never liable unless they are aware of the activity on their network. So if the ISP is ignorant of the activity, then they're probably safe.

Future of the Web?

When the internet was first invented in the 70s it was used to connect military personal and emergency workers in a time of crisis. It was purely utilitarian: used to convey facts and events from one point to another.

However as time went on, and researches in academia recognized the internet's utility, they started using it to share research between colleagues. Initially it was largely used to send data from one point to another but later became a place where ideas could be shared.

In the mid to late 80s the internet evolved further. No longer was it limited to well funded researchers in big universities. Any technologically apt person with a couple hundred dollars could get on the internet and talk to users across the world. This is where the social web really began: the old BBSs' and newsgroups of the early internet. Instead of communicating purely in ideas, jokes and stories were being told. People became "friends" online. This concept continued throughout the 90s. AOL helped bring chartrooms to the masses and all of a sudden millions of people were meeting online.

However for years the internet was really limited to the computer literate. Many didn't understand why or how to use computers. The internet was mostly a domain for nerds and businesses who knew how to gain an edge. It took another ten years, a whole generation, for everyone to catch on. In the late nineties we saw the beginning of the information revolution. Even if many did not know how to use the internet, nearly everyone realized its utility.

Now ten years later so much is happening its harder to pin down exactly where we are or where we're going. Nearly all of the major websites today have some social component to them. Most grandparents know how to get on the internet to read and write email. Anyone living on one side of the world can get immediate and personal access to others living on the other side.

The notion of the internet cloud has emerged. Instead of a clear-cut way to send information from one point to another, we have something as complex and nuanced as our own society. We submit information which can be read, commented, tagged, or even altered by anyone, but mostly by our own friends and connections. Instead of interacting with anonymous people across the world we have now started interacting with our own friends over the inernet.

I have a couple of predictions. As more and more people start jumping on the web and interact socially on it, we'll start to see the technology content and "nerd" sites lose market share to more common interests sites. A big milestone will be when Huffington Post beats TechCrunch as the #1 blog on the internet. Keep updated here.

However the web will go much further than blogs and social networks. All sorts of new technology is bringing locality onto the web. Instead of connecting people across the world, I think we'll start seeing the web connect people next door. Craigslist is a good example but I think we'll start seeing much more sophisticated. You can already peer into other people's houses with amazing detail. Its only a matter of time before all of your neighbors are indexed, tagged, and shared.

I'm not quite sure what the implications for the new local internet will be. Obviously there are privacy issues. There are plenty of avenues for spammers and stalkers alike to take advantage of the technology. But I think there is much good that come out of it too. It will connect and organize local communities. It will bring these communities closer together and make them feel more like home.

Honestly I'm pretty excited about whats coming out on the internet. The dot-com bubble didn't burst, it just deflated for a couple years. But now its back, albeit a bit less obnoxious and we're going to see loads of new changes.

The Backup Problem Is Solved

Like just about everyone else I hate doing backups. My main computer is a laptop so I use external hard-drives to backup everything. Jesus are external hard-drives finicky! I've gone through three broken drives in two years. It sucks up my time and my money.

Well no more. I've found SugarSync.

SugarSync is honestly one of the coolest Web-2.0 technologies I've seen yet. It solves the backup problem with as few headaches as possible. There is no need to buy extra drives, DVD-RWs, or backup appliances. Everything is stored on the internet.

One downside is that SugarSync is kinda pricy. It charges a yearly subscription fee which costs about the same price as buying a hard drive every year. However I bet the price will come down and besides, there are loads of extra perks.

Because everything is stored on the internet you can access your documents from anywhere. It also uses Amazon's redundant backup system so there is zero chance you'll lose any data. It can also sync data from multiple computers/laptops/phones. It runs quietly in the background and and uses less system resources than winamp. But best of all, its brain-dead easy while being extremely powerful.

I'm normally a skeptic when it comes to new technology, however take my word for it... this is good, real good. Buy the product, or if you can, some stock in the company.