I’ve been reading up on the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, and other electric cars. It seems the EPA is trying to figure out how to rate such cars for their efficiency. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the desire of automakers wishing to impress consumers with big numbers that relate to current labels, they’re leaning towards relating the efficiency of electric vehicles in miles per gallon or combined ratings that try to reduce the efficiencies or range of multiple methods of energy storage into single numbers that are difficult to entangle into real information.

This next paragraph is going to sound like a grade-school mathematics word problem, but bear with me. The Chevy Volt has an electric motor and a battery. When the battery is depleted, a gas generator kicks in to power the electric motor and extend the range. Chevy says their battery will power 40-miles of driving. So a person who drives less than 40-miles a day might only use gas on rare occasions. So for that person, a displayed rating of 40-miles-per-charge would be the most useful rating. For a person who regularly takes a 400 mile drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, 90% of their drive would be powered by the generator. For them, the number they’d need to see would be how may miles-per-gallon they’d get. The EPA’s current label design would fail to communicate anything of use to either the people in these examples.

Instead, they’re doing some kind of weird combined rating that relates to kilowatt-hours used per 100 miles of travel. This awards the Chevy Volt a rating of 236 mpg. Sounds impressive, but that’s not a number that relates to one’s experience of using the car. I typically drive less than 100 miles a week. If I were in the market for an electric vehicle, I’d use zero gallons of gas most weeks. ∞ mpg?

Here’s the EPA draft label, for the BMW Mini-E. That car can travel 156 miles on a single charge. It’d be much more useful if that range were just printed on the label, rather than “33kW-hr/100 miles (equivalent to 102 MPG)”.

EPA, if you’re listening, please label electric cars as follows. Show the distance the car can go on a single battery charge. If the vehicle switches to another fuel when the battery is depleted, then separately show the distance it can go on that fuel along with the size of that fuel tank. Nice and simple. 2 big numbers (distance ranges), one small number (size of secondary fuel tank). The car manufacturers wouldn’t be able to tout awesomely high miles-per-gallon ratings, but it’d be a more honest and intelligible way to rate methods of propulsion that use fuel not measured by the gallon.

Well, I didn’t feel like signing any autographs yesterday anyhow. (photo taken at Poquito Mas in Burbank, CA)

I don’t remember who asked me whether there were any baseball scorekeeping apps for the iPhone, but a quick search shows that there are several, including a highly-rated one called “iScore Baseball Scorekeeper”.¹

Were I a journalist, I’d note the existence of this and other such apps and would try to spot some pattern that said something about the pace of technological progress, society, our selves. Something about holding fast to old traditions while updating them to take advantage of the devices on which we increasingly depend in this day and age. I can almost hear the report, the calm NPR-commentator-voice, talking with old folk in the stands at Wrigley Field, the sound of peanut vendors hawking their wares carefully mixed into the background to provide a sense of place to underscore the sounds of pencils scratching away, recording the last play.

Since this is a blog, I can and prefer to take the path of cynicism, of snark, and instead I’ll say the following: “Can apps for dedicated trainspotters be far behind?”²³

1. If you’re curious about Baseball Scorekeeping, this Wikipedia article may be of use. [↩]
2. If you’re curious about Trainspotting, there’s a Wikipedia article for that. [↩]
3. OK, I admit that in the past I’ve thought that it might be enjoyable to learn how to mark up a baseball scorecard, but that was just the OCD talking. [↩]

The winds of change. They feel like the Santa Anas.

Note to friends and family: I am officially back in Los Angeles. Working in Burbank for the moment. Hope to see y’all soon.

Montcalm road, Lowell, Michigan

My server’s been offline the better part of the last month due to the fact that I’ve been out of town and some errant process filled up my swap partition¹. So I’ll be backtracking in subsequent posts and filling in some details of my Michigan sojourn that I haven’t yet had the ability to post.

But here’s a bit of news from the present, surrounded by photos from my last drive into the countryside²: I’ve been in Michigan for a couple of months working on a film, and today I’ll be heading back to LA to continue working on the film for another month. My plan then entails relaxing for a couple of days with nothing to do, then a freak out and mad scramble to find another gig. I’ll be back in Los Angeles come Monday 10/26/2009. Let the wild rumpus begin³.

I will miss some things about this town. I’ll save them for a later post, which would have been an earlier post but for the problem noted in paragraph 1 of this post. Ah well, life goes on. It’s nice to be back online, and will be nice to be back home.

Oh hey, a cat. Who doesn’t love cats?

1. Yeah, one would think that swapping partitions was a “Free Love” era tradition, but it continues in all modern operating systems. There are even key exchanges. [↩]
2. Photos shot on 10/18/2009, click any of them to see them writ large. [↩]
3. ”Begin” is an anagram for “being”. Think about it. Stop thinking about it. [↩]

Lunch at the Backwater Café in Lowell, MI

Lest I seem too dour about the food I’ve encountered during my stay here in Michigan, I’d like to point out that there have been some highlights.

Lowell township does have one reasonably fancy joint, “The Flat River Grill”, which serves tasty and colorful food, wine, &c.

The more commonplace local cuisine, can be good enough to make its characteristic beige color seem like a benefit. I enjoyed the hot turkey sandwich that can be seen at the top of this post. The Backwater Café also bakes their own bread. Fresh bread is never a bad thing, right?

Fresh bread at the Backwater Café

I would like to do less eating-out and more cooking at home, but given the hours we work on location that can be difficult. Luckily, this coming Monday, I won’t have to cook or eat at all.

A closeup, in case you’re too lazy to click on the previous photo and then wait for the large version to load, or in case you still couldn’t read the text once it loaded. Now that you’ve read this far, it’s of paramount importance that you know what was printed on the bottom of the plate by a factory worker in a faraway land. Otherwise all that time you spent reading this post? Wasted.

The photo was taken (and stitched) within a few feet of this location:

View Larger Map

1. Stitched from a few photos on iPhone with the very fun ‘AutoStitch’ app. [↩]

I’d have titled this “L’shana Tova Y’all”, but it appears that actor Levar Burton beat me to the punch.

After a few weeks of living in a hotel room in Grand Rapids, I’ve packed up my things and moved into a shared apartment with the film editor here in Lowell, MI, just a couple of blocks from the editing room. It’s nice to no longer have to drive 25 miles to and from work every day. Tonight I used that extra time to prepare my own dinner rather than eat out. Hooray for homey food that isn’t beige.