Who Killed the Electric Car?

Posted on August 19, 2006 by Ed Holloway

I just got back from seeing the movie Who Killed the Electric Car – the title says it all.

It was a great movie centered around the GM EV1 (Electric Vehicle) and other (great) electric vehicles that have been pulled from the market by their manufacturers. The makers recalled all the cars at the end of their leases (you could not buy one), even though many of the owners were prepared to purchase the cars at lease end.

Most of the auto makers that had EVs destroyed the cars once they were confiscated. At one point in the movie there is a protest scene surrounding 78 GM EV1s headed to the crusher – GM actually refused a $1.4 Million offer to purchase the cars – go figure!

Why would auto makers even bother making EVs and then removing them from the market, you may ask? Simple, California passed a law requiring a certain percentage (graduating from 2 to 10%) of vehicles sold to be zero emission. Once the law was repelled, they stopped making the vehicles.

The movie is filled with some great information, and is really quite eye opening. I will admit, it is a completely one sided view of what happened to the EVs – GM has a rebuttal here , but one thing is for certain – we need to lower our dependence on foreign oil – Period!

Please go see this movie, you’ll be glad you did. Check out the movie website for theatres in your area – this seems to be a small distribution film and is playing at a lot of the indy theaters.

Hopefully with movies like this and new EVs coming to market from independent manufacturers, the awareness, acceptance and demand for EVs will increase. I suspect the $3.00+ / gallon gas prices won’t hurt either.

Check out the Tesla Roadster one great example – a 250 Mile range EV, that costs about .01 (yes, that is a penny -not a typo) a mile to operate AND will out perform just about any car on the road with a 0-60 time of 4 seconds. Yep, the car is pricey – around $80-100k, but the company believes it can get an affordable car out for the masses in a few years. Check out their blog for some good info on why they chose to start with such a high end car, and where they are headed.

Ok, I’m off to see if I can find the SouthPark ‘Smug’ episode on my Tivo 🙂

Must Have Tools for Power Users

Posted on August 19, 2006 by Ed Holloway

Scott Hanselman has updated his excellent list of tools for developers and power users.

This is a must read list form anyone involved in software development or that spends their day on a PC. You will save many hours and plenty of computer frustrations by using some of the tools from this list.

After reading the list and his comments, I think Scott suffers from the same problem I have – always being asked by family and friends to fix/upgrade/clean their PC.

I’ve thought about buying the “No, I will not fix your computer” shirt from ThinkGeek on more than one occasion! 🙂

Ink Blog – Feature Requests?

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Ed Holloway

If there are any features you were hoping for in the ink blog plugin – now is a good time to let me know. I’ve got most of the big items on my list done, and will be starting on some others soon.

Please comment here and let me know what you would like to see.

Writing or Riding – OR When is the next update of Ink Blog going to be ready Ed!?!

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Ed Holloway

Well first, let me thank everyone for all the positive feedback I’ve received on the Ink Blog plugin – I’m really glad to hear everyone is enjoying it.

Now that I’ve teased you with what is in the works for the next drop, many of you have been asking when it will be ready.

That’s a tough one, first there is the whole day job thing , we have a new product line coming out in October and things have been a little hectic. Not only is it a new product, but it is in a different space than where we currently play ( Enterprise Tablet PC software). New websites, marketing material, yada yada yada, oh yea, docs, and the code! 🙂 I’m not releasing any specific on the new software quite yet, but it will be for the Tablet PC, and at a lower price point /target than our current offerings. More soon.

Next is a superbike motorcycle race I have been looking forward to. I’m not a big race fan, but the venue is close to home, and sounds like a great excuse to ride the Ducati on a fun day trip.

So I guess the the ultimate answer depends on Saturday’s weather. If it’s nice out, I’m off to the races, if not, I’ll be writing code for the plugin.

Either way, I’ll have something out soon! Thanks again for the great feedback!

Nothing to see here, move along

Posted on August 18, 2006 by Ed Holloway

Just some housekeeping to get Technorati to index my blog.

Technorati Profile Technorati Profile

Getting Scobilized

Posted on August 17, 2006 by Ed Holloway

There always seems to be debates on getting links from A-List bloggers, and how hard it is for the average blogger to get traffic.

I must have fallen under a lucky star, since Scoble linked to me yesterday – only 3 days after my new blog went ‘live’!

So I guess the secret is just writing a Tablet PC plugin for whatever software (MS Live Writer, in this case) Robert has just started using. The (semi) groveling email probably helped too :-). Either way, thanks for the link Robert – and when are we going to see an Ink blog post from you?

Exclusive Microsoft Zune Details

Posted on August 17, 2006 by Ed Holloway

Gizmodo has some exclusive information and a photo on the upcoming Microsoft Zune Media Player. One interesting tid-bit is that the scroll wheel is not really a wheel, but just 4 buttons – wonder how usable that will be?