Fly your flag

Happy Independence Day to our American neighbours.
And might I suggest we pool our resources to buy Anthony the back end of that car?

Happy Independence Day to our great American neighbours to the south. As a Canadian, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather live next to. 🙂

Nice to see some comic relief. Paint the tires blue on the car, add a couple of stars, call it the Patriot or some other catchy name (that one has been used, I think) and sell a million of them. I might even buy one if it can get me to town and back to the country on a single charge.
Thanks, Anthony, mods, and all.
Flags are up at the end of the lane.

Happy Independence Day to Anthony and all our American friends from one of your many readers and admirers here in the UK.

Saw 8 of your “birds” flyby me today. The Thunderbirds on their way south after performing at Waddington Airshow over the weekend and what a performance it was!

Do you take that thing to a bike shop to get new tires? My vehicular contribution to saving the planet is that my V8 can downgrade to a V4 when not in heavy use. Strangely..they dont give you the option to manually set it which makes no sense.

Happy Fourth of July everyone. I know some of you aren’t Americans, but happy Independence Day anyway. It is my belief that America has been a huge positive force for good in the world, not perfect but clearly a net good.
Anthony don’t you feel squashed in that car? If not aren’t you afraid you will be squashed in that car?

Happy Independence Day, all!
Nothing personal, Anthony, but that one ugly car. How many people does it hold – 1/2? ;-p

Anthony, what kind of mileage does that car get? (as in kwh/mile)
REPLY: Costs about 5 cents per mile – A

Anthony will like this one
http://m.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/outrage-over-cull-of-farting-camels-20110704-1gzdm.html
REPLY: Covered it two weeks ago
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/11/craziest-carbon-credit-scheme-yet-shooting-camels-in-australia/

RobertvdL says:
July 4, 2011 at 2:39 pm
=====
Was that snark?
If so, please expound upon your statement, it leaves me wanting.

Oh my , my name was garbled by chrome’s autofill 😉

All these insults about teensie cars! I have a real SMART, owned for about 8 years. Use it to run about Melbourne (Australia) and fill up about once every 3 months – surely ‘greener’ than an electric car!!! I am surprised that people favouring electric cars forget about the lifecycle: production of electricity and batteries, battery disposal etc.
Gret website Anthony…….

pokerguy says: July 4, 2011 at 1:53 pm
I’m all for patriotism. In proper doses, it’s healthy. But I feel less and less proud of our once great country. I’m not so sure what we stand for anymore, except perhaps the almighty buck. Between the republicans absurd and transparent stand on refusing to raise taxes on those who can truly afford it, and the democrats laughable attachment to global warming and green jobs, I’m about ready to move to Canada.
*******************************
(Sigh)
OK, so what percentage of total Federal income tax SHOULD each of the following groups pay? What-in your estimation- is a FAIR percentage? YOU give me a number for each and I will tell you what the number is as of 2008 (last year for which the IRS published the data).
You imply that the rich should pay more, well how much SHOULD they pay?
Top 1%: Should pay ________% of all Federal Income Tax
Top 5%:
Top 10%
Top 25%:
Top 50%:
You tell me-a percentage that YOU would deem FAIR!
(And, yes, it is their money. They earned it. And, unless this is a slave country, you have absolutely no right to say what happens to their money. IT IS NOT YOURS!)
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Better than Canada I would suggest Cuba. With Canada becoming more conservative than the US, I believe that you would be happier in Castro’s Socialist Workers Paridise. Bon Voyage!

Yep. You kids have done pretty well for your selves since you flew the nest. The ancestors are proud of you.
Still…who knows how it might have worked out? ¦;0{)} http://story.jamaicantimes.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/8fdef8065235cb7f/id/46443071/

RobertvdL says:
July 4, 2011 at 4:16 pm
u.k.(us) says:
July 4, 2011 at 3:24 pm
@ u.k.(us) I’m from the Netherlands and I don’t understand the expression ‘was that snark’ . Could you please explain what it means,so I can give you the right answer on your question.
Robert
===============
I read your comment as a slight on Anthony’s choice of vehicle.
Correct me if I’m mistaken.
I’m from Chicago, and do the best I can.

P.S.
The 160, 230, 300 numbers are conservative according to insider testing buzz. In normal driving patterns using the alpha testers, they’re getting about 10-15% more than that.

Happy 4th of July.
Use to have a SMART it was awesome for getting around in the city. Parking was great but finding the car back in-between all the SUV’s was a challenge at times.
Lost items like USB drives can be found back in minutes and scraping ice from the windshield was easy without a hud getting in the way.
Good presentation at ICCC watched it on the live stream.

Happy 4th from Perth, Western Australia. The nearest large (>20,000 population) town is 200km from here – whats the range on that cute little car and how do you reckon it would go overtaking a triple road train?

It looks like a Johnny Cab.
Happy birthday Americans, good work for 232 or so years,

A bit late on this… Yesterday, Tyler Ferrar became the first American to win a stage in the Tour de France on the 4th of July.
Flemish television tried to probe the intentions of American riders before the race, and their feelings afterwards… http://www.sporza.be/permalink/1.1058925
(You will have to work your way through some Dutch – Ferrar is excellent in Dutch – before your will hear English, but it gives a nice picture of the atmosphere…)

Anthony, Please get a safe car!!! That thing is a death trap. As they say you never see it coming.

Land of the free and home of the….well people who drive cars that small =P
Kidding aside, I hope everyone had a great Independence day and I’m glad we live in a country where, for the time being, car choices are still a matter of personal preference and not legislative decree. I don’t see the appeal of the “roller-skate” car, but if it suits Anthony’s lifestyle and tastes that’s his business.
Personally this is much more my speed:
http://h3prices.com/h3/colors/green.700.jpg

My flag waves. USAF 1970 – 1976
JULY 2, 1776: Congress declared independence from Great Britain. This declaration took place when Congress adopted the Richard Henry Lee Resolution that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states….and that all political connection between them and The State of Great Britain is, and of right ought to be, totally dissolved.”
July 4, 1776
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

To those Europeans who don’t understand allegiance to a flag…
I believe you’re in the process of discovering that formation of a lasting union involves a lot more than establishing a common currency. Common language, values, and culture are also necessary. Our flag respresents all those things. Unfortunately we are also in the process of discovering what’s necessary for the union to endure as an increasing number of poor thinkers too distant in time and space from the founding fathers and their hard won ideals to appreciate these things. It’s becoming everybody should do their own thing and ignore the glues which actually bind a union. Very sad.

Oh I’m sorry. It’s a little more iffy than that. My watts to horsepower calculation was wrong. That’s what I get for doing it in my head. Anthony is effectively claiming that his vehicle can sustain 60mph on 20 horsepower. That’s a bit on the low side of believable for that vehicle. 30HP was credible but 20 is stretching it. I don’t think he’s basing that on tier 3 electric rates in California. Tier two maybe.

So Mr H.
Range choices on the superb Model S currently 160, 230, 300 mi. and energy densities may be increased soon by up to 10X. = 3,000 range between charges in the full sized family saloon (charged up by the DPF gen set at your local perhaps?)
Sounds good.

ummm.. of course my kids would be asking where they could play in a yard that size (we have 540 acres) and I dont quite know about fitting two adults and 7 kids into that small a car. I don’t think it would handle a load of weekly groceries for our family and definately wouldn’t be able to haul the hay or any cows around. But then again, I am truly happy that most people in the world prefer the city, it gives me more room and privacy. To each their own… and of course up here in the north, we are waiting for global warming to give us a longer growing season and more frost-free days, we got a frost on July 3rd this year. Unfortunately, I know we won’t get what we want. Cheers!

Looks like a Smart car which is Mercedes Benz ie German, so not very patriotic Anthony!
Electric cars are NOT carbon neutral. Their batteries are very polluting when replaced, very costly and need fossil fuels to charge them. The charging cycle is yet another stage in an efficiency sapping set of stages to put power on the road.