Category: commuting

Aptera vs. Automobile

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Finally, I found a car about which to be excited—in a positive way. (Yes, huge pickup trucks coming into my bike lane excite me also.)

Note: Too busy to read this post? I understand. In that case, you can click on the link below to save $30 on your Aptera reservation!
https://lz953.isrefer.com/go/preorder/a124831

The Aptera is not in production but the prototypes assure me that it will look similar to this:

Aptera — not sure the oceanside parking spot comes with it.

Trust me, it’s not the space-age look that excites me…the look is largely the result of the wind-tunnel design that allows the vehicle to get incredible mileage. The Aptera is solar powered, so if you park it in the sun one day (easily done in Colorado), the battery receives 40-miles worth of power. That’s nearly free driving if the car’s already paid for (or if you steal one). The battery you charge can provide 1,000 miles before it needs a new full charge (preferably with a charging station unless you want to leave the car in the sun for 25 days). The gasoline equivalence of the Aptera’s efficiency is approximately 350 miles per gallon.

How do you buy one? There’s a waitlist. I’m in that queue: #78,145, expected delivery, 2025 (prob. Dec. 31 at 11:59). The reservation requires a $100 refundable deposit. I’m tempted to reserve a second one for reasons I cannot find. The car will cost me ~$33,000 according to the current estimation. I selected the 400-mile battery because I don’t want to drive 401 miles or more in one spell. Also, I ordered a custom color so that I could get a brightly colored car to help the huge pickup trucks see me.

I’ll end this post with a list of advantages and a couple of optional videos:

The Aptera is classified as a motorcycle/autocycle and therefore requires…

  • a motorcycle license tag (cheaper)
  • motorcycle insurance (cheaper)

But doesn’t require…

  • a motorcycle driver’s license

Furthermore…

  • It seats only two people but the lengthy aerodynamic tail provides comfortable sleeping space, better than most automobiles (I feel like a salesman at this point)
  • It has an electric motor on each wheel which has advantages that I don’t understand
  • The plan is to put a QR code on almost every part of the vehicle so that you can scan and order a replacement part, installing it yourself or taking it to a local garage
  • It uses the Tesla charging hardware (which has now been adopted as the US standard)
  • It has a 5-star crash rating
  • It has all that smart-car stuff that will drive me crazy since I buy only manual transmission cars until now… but if you knock on the door or the trunk it politely opens automatically, etc.
  • It has a very convincing CEO as the following 49 minute video will show. Although my son thinks all CEOs are convincing, he never worked for some of the ones I have, but this one is:

Here’s a fluffier video (21 minutes with a test drive at minute 12):

Bonus Post: How My Friends in Cambodia Get Propelled

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Emission: There are 6 years, 47 weeks, and 5 days until the Climate Clock reaches zero (approximate).[1]

Why Cambodia?

My friends, Chris and Adrienne, taught their kids to give hope to an often-hopeless world. As a result, their daughter, Jenna, helps run a school in Cambodia. The school is called Asian Hope. Meanwhile, the school in Bournemouth, England where Chris (and sometimes Adrienne) taught English as a second language—that school shut down as a result of covid–19. As a happy result, Chris and Adrienne are in Cambodia, where, I think, the dad now works for the daughter.

My friends have always been environmentally conscious, at least to my knowledge. When in England, Adrienne would dry their clothes outside on a clothesline that needed frequent moving to keep it in the sun. Now they are biking and moving around in small vehicles in Asia.

Adrienne on bicycle
Adrienne on their preferred mode of propulsion: recently acquired bicycle, with buffalo in the background!
Adrienne getting into Onion
Adrienne getting into the Onion, an electrik tuk-tuk. What’s a tuk-tuk? According to the Internet: “Tuk-tuks, two-wheeled carriages pulled by motorbikes that can fit anywhere from two people to entire families, are a ubiquitous sight throughout Cambodia. While the official name is remorque, or ‘trailer’ in French, they are colloquially known as tuk-tuks, paying homage to their Thai counterparts.”
Chris, ramped up for Onion ride.
Chris is ramped up for his first ride in an Onion! Chris is pretty tall, so he might have maxed out the leg-room in the vehicle.
Family on motorcycle
Here’s a family of three on a motorcycle. I venture that sometimes more than three load onto a motorcycle.
Adrienne on bike; Jenna on scooter
After swimming, the mother likes to jump on a bike, while the daughter-in-law loads up the scooter! (Turns out the Robinson son and his wife also emigrated to Cambodia, a very happening place!)

No Bollard Today

Instead of the usual bollard, we have a video of Chris and Adrienne riding in an Onion (~3 minutes).

Holy Bollards!

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

I know, Holy Bollards sounds a bit blasphemous and a bit vulgar, but it’s neither.

bollard | ˈbɒlɑːd, ˈbɒləd |
noun
1 British a short post used to prevent traffic from entering an area.
2 a short, thick post on the deck of a ship or a quayside, to which a ship's rope may be secured.

To those of us who travel on bike or foot near cars and trucks, a bollard can become a holy thing. So, yes, “up with bollards”! This might become my new mission statement.

The rest of this post consists of a few Twitter tweets concerning bollards—all interesting to me, and many humorous if you are not the person driving the car.

Originally, this post had many more tweets, but they take too long to load. The leftover tweets will be included, one at a time, at the end of future posts—something to look forward to!

Among various uses, bollards are used to regulate traffic in some countries. Wonderfully effective, except for impatient or inattentive drivers:

Here Come the Bollards!

Opening Streets for People and Closing them for Cars

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

Awful as it is, the pandemic handed a few favors over to mother nature.

For months, cars were mostly parked. One could cross streets before setting up an appointment with a local priest for last rites.

One could see blue sky in big cities, such as Delhi—and one could hear birds singing where before one heard only vehicles:

Dehli Blue Skies
Blue skies in Dehli (NPR, “With Coronavirus Lockdown, India’s Cities See Clear Blue Skies As Air Pollution Drops,” April 10, 2020)

Much of that return-to-nature is passing, alas.

One change, however, that is likely to persist (likely to succeed), are the streets that have been closed to cars in order to gain space for outdoor dining for cafes and restaurants. Welcome, Low Traffic Neighborhoods (LTNs).

Close to my home is the town of Louisville, Colorado:

Main St. Louisville CO
Main St., Louisville, CO (Colorado Hometown Weekly, April 13, 2021)

According to the article on Louisville, Main Street will be open to (un-endangered) pedestrians and outdoor tables “April 26 through Nov. 1” (similar to the summer of 2020). Let’s take what we can get.

Not so close to my home, opening streets in Scotland is going well:

And, a bit south, in England…

Not only streets with eateries, but streets with schools are being blocked off, often to dozens of SUVs that drive less than a mile to get the kids to and from school. Many kids bike on their own, but they can also relax in a trailer (and let the parents do the work):

It’s no surprise that bikes take care of the school transportation in the Netherlands:

Nor should it be (but it is to me) a surprise about Finland:

And, of course, it’s not only people who need un-endangered transit on streets—this street being again in Nederland:

Incidents #2 (Including the New Commuter Frustration)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

The New Commuter Frustration

In the previous Incidents #1, I led with a biking fatality. This time I’ll mend my ways and start out on a happier note, wrapping up with a pedestrian fatality. I’m sorry, but as a serious pedestrian (a luxury, I know, although I used to run 8 miles to work…so I’m not fully unqualified to speak)…ahem, as a serious pedestrian, I have a privileged point of view on how the tire and engine noise, size, and sheer mass of cars is disproportionate to the tiny beings they transport, insulating the beings from the true external effects of the vehicles. Ok, said that.

During the first covid–19 surge last Spring, birds could be heard in cities, nature began to clap her hands, and self-propelled people breathed a sigh of relief. With this current surge, not so, at all. And, yes, the economy needs lots of people to commute to work and shop.

Happily, a new but different problem has arisen that belies a psychological demand, not an economic one. In a recent article in The Washington Post, we discover that,

Even when Shayne Swift works from home, the high school principal ends her day behind the wheel of her forest-green Jeep Liberty, chatting by phone with family and friends.
But Swift isn’t driving. Usually, she said, she sits parked in her driveway in Northwest Washington — the closest she often gets to something she has dearly missed during the pandemic: her commute.[1]

In the case of Shayne Swift, the psychological need for cars would be on my side. After all, cars are great as mini-houses that are probably safer than a huge home during a lightening storm. In addition, a few good speakers and a good stereo can sound better than much more expensive equipment in a big home.

The rest of the article details how some kind of distance (more temporal than spatial) is genuinely helpful to insulate people from feeling like captives either at home or at work. Walking from one’s bedroom to one’s study and back, along with the need to nurture children, just does not provide a break.

If sitting in one’s driveway is too conspicuous (to the family members), drive halfway around the block or to the neighborhood park. Want to use your cell phone in your car? This is the perfect way. Talk or text away. The American love affair with cars can be consummated safely, inexpensively, and with a small carbon footprint.

Another Obituary Item, Sorry to Report

The web site of the Denver television station KDVR reports that on January 19th, 2021, Chris Baker, 36, was crossing Federal near 70th when he was fatally hit by a car that promptly drove away. Fortunately for the wheels of justice, several people reported the driver’s identity to the police and he was later arrested.[2] The article continues, “The crash was the third hit-and-run on Federal Boulevard since the new year, and the second to turn deadly.”

The article goes on to quote Jill Locantore, who is with Denver Streets Partnership:

We know that this street is dangerous by design, and these deaths are going to continue to happen until we make changes to the street. . . . Every single traffic fatality, it’s not just a number, it’s a person, who had friends and family members who mourn that loss, and it just breaks my heart, because I know we can prevent that hurt from happening in our community.

The good news is that Denver Streets Partnership is a coalition looking out for the self-propelled. May they be blessed in their work.

Chris Baker
36-year old, Chris Baker

 

____Footnotes____

[1] Katherine Shaver, The Washington Post, PUBLISHED: Dec. 31, 2020: Months of pandemic teleworking have left some missing their commutes

[2] Victim identified in deadly Westminster hit-and-run

Covitality – Signs of Life on Earth Day

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

When Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, announces his marriage to Hamlet’s mother, he (an incestuous, murderous villain) has the political wherewithal to admit the timing of the wedding wasn’t ideal, since it came “With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage.” So much more must I lament the fact that the mission statement for this web log is being realized around the world. People are driving less so all may live more.

It would be absurd to talk about the silver lining of the present pandemic (or, as it is redundantly called, the “global pandemic”). The cost is too high and, really, the effects will probably be short lived. Two days ago, a barrel of crude oil was worth negative $35 or so; today you must pay upward of $20 or so for the same barrel. This pandemic too will pass.

In the mean time, however, it is worth pointing out that here on earth (on Earth Day, also) the virus has given us a picture of what the world could look like if people chose to drive less instead being forced by legal mandate to drive less.
Continue reading “Covitality – Signs of Life on Earth Day”

David Byrne (Talking Heads) and His Bicycle

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

He owns a very nice bike helmet, he says, and even wears it if he needs to ride in gnarly traffic. However, with dedicated bike lanes, such as along the West Side of New York City, he lets his (now) gray hair blow in the wind. He doesn’t want to unnecessarily risk “helmet hair.”[1]

David Byrne on bike, nice helmet in basket (from NY Times interview on Youtube )

Continue reading “David Byrne (Talking Heads) and His Bicycle”

The Legal Bias Against Pedestrians and Bikes (Part 2 of 2)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

When I discuss the American (and increasingly global) dependency on automobiles, some people with a politically conservative bend respond by saying that the problem is a result of personal irresponsibility, no more.[1]

I was raised to think this way, to think individualistically. So I get it.

However, over time, I realize that done exclusively, this thinking allows conniving and greedy organizations (or their leaders) to move invisibly through the world, exploiting freedom by limiting the range of choices that occur to individuals. As a result of such organizations, even if one’s moral fabric permitted him or her to resist pernicious trends, the very idea of resisting may never enter one’s mind. The gains of corporate and political greed are usually won upstream, with whispers in back rooms, such as, What they don’t know won’t hurt us, and, I don’t care who they vote for as long as I choose the candidates.

Continue reading “The Legal Bias Against Pedestrians and Bikes (Part 2 of 2)”

The Legal Bias Against Pedestrians and Bikes (Part 1 of 2)

Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.

This is the first of two posts that highlight points made by Gregory H. Shill, University of Iowa College of Law, in his paper, “Should Law Subsidize Driving?”.[1]

Shill’s eminently readable, 76-page paper has already been summarized nicely in the article, “How Driving is Encouraged and Subsidized — By Law,” by Angie Schmitt (March 6, 2019).[2]
Continue reading “The Legal Bias Against Pedestrians and Bikes (Part 1 of 2)”