A Test Drive: Nissan Leaf

Busy Saturday last weekend. The Lovely JoAnn and I went over to Tampa to check out the all new, all-electric Nissan Leaf car. We got to the International Plaza (mall), and found that Nissan had carved out a chunk of the mall’s north parking lot for their little one-car car show. But they did bring more than one car.

We got signed in and then our little group of eight or so were routed through several temporary glass buildings as our guide told us all about the brand new Leaf and Nissan’s long history of electric cars. (Who knew?) They had photos of all of their previous prototypes, going back for decades. JoAnn and I both decided we liked their first one best - it looked like a funky milk truck. Very cool. They had a Leaf chassis on display, showing all of the batteries that were on board the Leaf. There were many, many batteries.

After that, we got to walk around a functional Leaf. It was pretty much a typical small car from Japan. Which is to say: everything looked good, everything fit, and it had that new car smell. Love that new car smell! Our guide told us that because the Leaf is so quiet, it has a loudspeaker out in front of the left front wheel that puts out noise when the car is going under 18 mph so it doesn’t sneak up on people. The motor itself had some fake engine casings around it so it looks more like a typical transverse four-cylinder engine that you are used to seeing in cars like this. I thought that was funny, but I understood their logic. Then we got to drive it. Well, I got to drive it. JoAnn rode in the back and a brave Nissan rep rode shotgun. Hello, pedal - meet metal.

I had heard that electric cars have plenty of low end torque and will surprise you. Yep, roger that. Maybe it’s the lack of any revving motor roar, or maybe it’s the one continuous whoosh of the direct drive, but let me tell you: You step on the go pedal (I can’t really call it a gas pedal, now can I?), and buddy-boy, this car goes right now. No stumble, no hesitation off idle, nothing but go. It also handles like a go cart. You have my word on that.

Nissan says the Leaf will go about 100 miles on a full charge, and will do 90 miles an hour. How long it takes to recharge depends on available charging voltage. Standard 110v house current will charge it, but you need to give it time. Like overnight. Add a 220v charging station to your house and you cut the charging time in half. I suspect most folks will go for that option.

We were told Nissan estimated the average annual cost of charging the Leaf at $560 per year. Of course that depends on the price of electricity where you live, but they had the facts and figures to show that it would be cheaper to charge the Leaf at home than buy the amount of gasoline it would need instead. And yeah, we do spend more that $560 a year for gasoline.

Now here’s where it got all funny: As we walked into their fenced-off area in the parking lot, we saw a brand new Trek Belleville bicycle sitting there, on display in their area. To me, the Belleville is one of the best thought out bikes in the world. If I were to design my own bike from the ground up, I’d be hard pressed to do better than that one. It’s a very cool bike named after a very cool bicycle movie (The Triplets of Belleville). But why was it there?

As it turns out, if you take the tour and drive the Leaf, which I did, you could make a 30-second video about the Leaf, and if your video gets the most votes of all the videos made at that test drive location (Tampa), you win the bike! Wow! So here’s the deal: Vote for me just as though I need another bike. I think if you get the most votes of all the videos in the US, you get a car or something, but hey, I just want the bike!

Here’s the video. (Don't click on the picture of me, but do click on the link below it)

https://www.drivenissanleaf.com/Win/Vote.aspx?b=9RC7AAWZF6FM

If nothing else, this will give you a chance to see what I look like and sound like. Which is to say, nothing at all like Richard Castle. Vote for Uncle Chippie!

Peak Oil Faithful

Some time ago, someone commenting on one of my blogs here made the observation that believing in the theory of peak oil was, to many of the believers, rather like a religion. I thought it was an interesting thing to say, and it stuck with me. It sticks still. But is it a valid observation?

I am probably the last person on earth to try to define what is, or is not, a religion. Or maybe I’m the perfect person, as I am situated so far from the action. How do you even go about defining religion? It has beliefs, certainly, and these beliefs must be taken on faith. They are, by definition, unprovable. And my spell check is telling me that “unprovable” is not a real word, so I’m taking that on faith as well.

A religion must have a back story – a history of existence. There must be something to be said about it. Now here’s the kick in the pants: You can have a religion without a god. Buddhism and Taoism, both fine, great and honorable religions of Very Long Standing, do not seem to address the idea of, let’s say, the whole shebang being slapped up by an old guy in a robe with a long white beard who looks a lot like Robert Crumb’s Mister Natural. (And who, by the way, recently put out a stunning illustrated Book of Genesis – I kid you not.) Ah, but we are drifting far afield. (And there goes that cursed spell check again. So now “afield” is not a word? Geesh.) (Oh, and “Geesh, too.) Focus, man, focus! Is peak oil a religion?

Well, let’s see: It has its core belief that oil production peaks, and then declines. Sort of like death after life. OK, check that one off the list. How about a back story? Got it covered: Marion King Hubbert came up with the theory over fifty years ago, and it has played out in field after field, so we have both back story and miracles all lined up. And we got us a jen-you-wine prophet in Hubbert his bad self. He’s even dead, as most good prophets tend to be.

And you have to take it on faith. You have to believe that Hubbert was right, and you have to have faith that yes, some day, oil will peak and then decline, never to rise again. Sorry, Lazarus. Not this time. While many detractors point to the receding horizon of the actual claimed event of peak oil as proof that it is a false religion, we are still working in a very short time frame as religions go. Months and years, instead of centuries. You gotta learn to have a little patience. All things come to those who wait. Or go away, if you are a peak oiler.

Now here’s the funny thing: If peak oil is a religion, if you’re going to call it that, then you also have to call the Cornucopians, who don’t believe we will see a peak to oil production, a religion as well. (They even have a sort of religiousy name.) The Cornos (just to give my spell check another spit-spewing spasms), take it on faith that big oil and technology will save us all, whether you are believer or not. (At least they aren’t picky about who they save.) They proudly point to the oil industry’s history of always being able to find more oil, and always being able to deliver the goods. So far. Okay, you can’t argue track record. You can’t buck history. But history ain’t the future, Spanky.

The guy that originally brought up this whole “peak oil as a religion” thing did so to make the point that peak oilers were a rather intolerant lot, and not prone to hear the other guys’ side of the story. They don’t care much for dissension in their ranks, but then again, that can be said of just about any group of humans on earth, religious or not. No one likes to have to argue their beliefs. We each believe what we believe, and my beliefs are not yours. Yours are not mine. And that’s ok. It all comes down to Russell’s Teapot versus The Flying Spaghetti Monster: Just because you can’t prove me wrong doesn’t mean I’m right. Just because I can’t prove myself to be right doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Only time will judge both sides of the case and offer a ruling. Eventually. Maybe.

When it comes right down to it, both sides of this coin are taking it on faith. Both have to believe what they think is right. But no matter what they do believe, in the end, only one of them goes home a winner.

I think I’ll stick with Lao Tzu.

WikiLeaks Exposes Peak Oil Reality

Oh, geez, Lousie: Here we go. WikiLeaks just pulled the rug out from under the Saudis by publishing the contents of some cables about their oil production — and the fragility thereof. The potential lack thereof. Where have I heard this before? Let me think . . . Oh, yeah, just about everywhere. For years. The only difference is, this comes from the Kingdom itself. This is not good. This is bad, even. Very, very bad.

Look, it’s one thing for a guy like me to sit on the other side of the world and speculate on what might be happening, oil-wise, in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula. I’m speculating. That’s a nice word for guessing. I’m making it all up. But as it turns out, I was guessing right. So were a lot of other people, as it turns out. Everyone but the Saudis, it seems. For years (for decades), the Saudis have stood there and smiled and said there were no problems. Everything is fine. Don’t worry. Be happy. And for all of those years, we bought the act. We wanted to buy the act. We had to buy the act.

Back in 2001, I wrote Ghawar is Dying, a short essay for The New Colonist web site, outlining how the beginning of the end might, well, begin. I caught some flak from oil types for it. They wanted to know how I gained access to the restricted oil fields in the middle of the Saudi desert. They were not happy, and I don’t think they believed me when I said I’d never been there. I made the whole thing up, but as it turns out, I think I might have been right. And that was ten years ago.

In 2004 I wrote Sixty Days Next Year, also for my good friends over at The New Colonist. The fictitious events in “60 Days” have yet to come true, but the headlines of the past few weeks out of Egypt show that all things are possible in a great big hurry, and those 60 days could start tomorrow. Please, just remember: I was never there and it’s not my fault. Seriously. It was supposed to be fiction.

If the cables exposed by WikiLeaks portend events yet to come, as in coming soon, we are all in for a wild, wild ride. If the Saudis can’t smooth this one over, we are staring the great peak oil monster right in the face; and buddy, whatever you do, don’t blink. If the Saudis admit they are facing peak oil production, we may see the price of oil rise like a bottle rocket. I remember the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. The loss of just 5% of the world’s oil supply caused the price of oil to quadruple. Quadruple. With oil bouncing around $90 when I checked it the other day, are you ready for $360 oil? No. No you aren’t. No one is.

Best case scenario: The Saudis do what the Saudis do better than anyone else on earth: They smooth it over. They schmooze. They smile and talk their way out of it. And in all honest, I do sincerely hope they can. Worst case scenario: Gasoline in the United States goes to over $10 a gallon in very short order, and is rationed like you wouldn’t believe. I remember the gas lines in ’73. I drove a VW back then, so it was no big deal. This time around, it will be different. It won’t be a four-month political event. It will be permanent.

My advice to you: If you don’t have a good, practical bicycle, go buy one, and soon. If you do have a bicycle, go buy baskets for it, fenders, a good lock and some lights. And buy a bicycle helmet, rain cape and cycling gloves while you’re at it. You are going to want all of that, and very soon. I hope I’m wrong. I hope the Saudis can schmooze their way out of this one, as they have in the past. But if they can’t?

Welcome to our brave new world. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Power of Three

I was talking to Carl Etnier the other day on his radio program in Vermont (from the warmth and comfort of my home in Florida), and Carl mentioned my other books, and how they all seemed to tie together with a central theme. And you know, he’s right.

Now, you know Peak of the Devil is all about oil and the coming problems we face with decreased supplies and increased costs. Throughout that book, I point out that we will have to do what we do with less - or simply do less. We will have to get by with less energy and less travel and, well, less stuff. It will be an era of involuntary conservation, unless you get ahead of the curve and conserve before you have to. Like we do. Now. But did you know that Peak of the Devil is my third book?

About a year before Peak of the Devil came out, Wearing Smaller Shoes was released. In reality, “Shoes” was the instruction manual for “Devil”. Yes, you’re going to have to get by with less, and this is how you’re going to do it. As a matter of fact, this is how JoAnn and I do it today. This is the daily planner for the days ahead, and like it or not, your life will look a lot like this - if you’re lucky. We wrapped it all up in how we were saving money by going green, but in the long run, we will all go green because we have to, and the savings is just a bonus.

Six months before Wearing Smaller Shoes was released, The Practical Cyclist, my first book, was released. This is the one we called “The Happy Bunny Book of Bicycling”. I never mentioned peak oil in that book. Or Lance Armstrong, for that matter. The whole point of that first book was to get people thinking about how much fun it would be to go ride their bicycle again. I didn’t want to scare anyone with peak oil or intimidate anyone with Lance. I wanted people to understand that yes, they could go ride their bicycle and have fun doing it, no matter how far they went (and they didn’t have to go far). This was the book to get people back on their bikes, and get them to ride safely.

As I sit here looking at those three books right now, I see that maybe they should be read in reverse order. That is, read Peak of the Devil first to find out what you’re up against, read Wearing Smaller Shoes second to find out what you need to do about it and then read The Practical Cyclist to make it all fun. I’m not sure anyone has actually done that - read all three books in that order - but who knows? It might catch on as a trend. Who am I kidding? I’d be happy if you read all three books in ANY order!

So what do you think the fourth book should be?