everyday

The New York Times is reporting that Toyota is planning to stop production of it’s Tundra truck and Sequoia SUV for three months this year to adjust for decreasing demand (Toyota Scales Back Production of Big Vehicles). They have also decided to re-purpose a new plant in Mississippi to manufacture their hybrid Prius instead of trucks.

I think this is a fantastic move for Toyota who, in my opinion, misjudged the market when the revised their truck lineup to make the Tundra and Tacoma trucks larger. This is especially true of the Tacoma, I owned a 2004 Toyota Tacoma and absolutely loved that truck. I thought it was sized perfectly. The new Tacoma is larger, but doesn’t really add any more utility. It seems as though Toyota made the truck larger for the sake of making it larger. I would have preferred that they focused on making the existing truck better, not just bigger.

It is really hot in Southern California. The “record breaking heat” kind of hot.

Photos can be found on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/celerity/sets/72157605209737298/

via: Inhabit

There is a really interesting article on Inhabit about Frasers Broadway. It is a highly sustainable development planned to be built in the middle of Sydney. Hopefully other major cities will follow suite, especially in the south-western US where urban sprawl has obliterated the natural environment.

1. The upcoming US Presidential election is weighing heavily on my mind. I haven’t written much about it because I have yet to finalize my thoughts on the candidates.
2. The impending economic recession is worrisome
3. Is ethanol, or perhaps cellulosic ethanol, the way to go to secure energy independence? Does it even matter?

There is an interesting article on Inhabit about a new train from General Electric that is utilizing hybrid technology to decrease fuel consumption and emissions. Trains have had hybrid drives for ages. They all use a diesel engine powering a generator that sends electricity, via large batteries, to the electrical drive motors. The difference with the new technology is that they are using regenerative braking to significantly boost the charge in trains batteries.

via: Inhabit

MIT has created a site with a mock-up of a super compact car for use in a city. This is a really interesting concept! As you can see from the picture, the car is super compact when stacked and not too small when flattened out. A quote from MIT’s site

By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility.

This would certainly address a key problem associated with the use of mass transit.

via: Wired

An interesting article at Wired Magazine (online) talks about using Cellulosic Ethanol to mitigate our dependence on foreign oil. This is definitely worth a read. The primary road block to using this alternative fuel is cost. The simple solution - raise the cost of foreign oil! I have talked about cost being the motivating factor behind most all that we do, and this is simply one more case where that proves to be true. Unfortunately, it is political suicide to even hint at a whisper of mentioning anything related to increasing the cost of foreign oil through increased taxes. That being said, I doubt we will see cellulosic ethanol based fuel on the horizon for quite some time.

via: Live Science

An article at Live Science talks about a rare species of fish, known as the desert pupfish that has been found in some man-made ponds far removed from any known natural habitat for the fish. The ponds are filled with water from nearby rivers which begs the question, “is this endangered species thriving in these rivers?”.

via: Digg

Google has created a page where you can see the results of the ginormous solar panel project. Kudos to Google for making such a huge effort!

Google Solar Panel Project