Tagged With "#100"

A great piece! Amazing to me how some of the best products of their day were not built commercially . Even when they were, sometimes they were not successful. Cars like the GE-100 are great examples of that. A true find and thanks for teaching us more!

Love it! Exactly the type of finding that makes a trip memorable. Something proponents of electric cars seem to forget or choose to ignore -- where does the electricity come from? Currently mostly from coal and oil fired plants, so the practical side of having them for most doesn't currently make that much sense (might as well burn the oil product in the car engine, right). But I am hopeful that was energy technology improves, as it surely will, we'll develop better ways of charging these...

The argument, and I'm not informed enough to judge it, is that the amount of fossil fuel needed to generate electricity for a plug-in is far less than that required to run a gasoline engine. The same sort of argument that points out that a gallon of fuel moves far more freight on a diesel train than a diesel truck. On the other hand, that's about plug-in cars. For hybrids, it's a different story because the batteries charge while the car is running on gas. So less gas is used than using gas...

As I understand it, with hybrids the batteries charge when the car brakes are applied (transferring the energy of moving to the battery), so they're especially well adapted to city driving in places with lots of stop signs and traffic lights. Less useful for driving on open road because you don't brake often. So living in Brooklyn, I think the hybrid would be a reasonable choice for you. I don't think battery technology is anywhere near "ripe" yet, but as with the Mercury and Gemini...

Much further to go, of course, but even in a highway driving situation (and a city/highway mix), hybrids are generally cheaper to run than their gas-only counterparts. That's Camry vs Camry hybrid, for example, not Corolla vs Prius.

A little further research confirms what I thought: at least in the Toyota and Ford hybrids, the gasoline engine powers a generator/charger while in use. That's in addition to the power captured from braking.

I have some friends with a Prius, and their greatest fuel efficiency comes when driving in the city, not on the highway. Paradoxical, but it shows how good the braking is at building up a charge. Good to know there is a backup generator. While the hybrids save on fuel, they also cost thousands of dollars more than their non hybrid counterparts. For an average consumer, it takes many years to recapture that extra cost for the hybrid on fuel savings, if they ever will. And there's the issue of...

    Don't be too quick to draw a conclusion...you might be right, you might not. This one may go fast, but I'm not so sure it will.   In any case, as it says below, join in and nudge it along—but if you're absolutely totally sure...

Long forgotten except in Schenectady's science museum, the little GE electric car that could, long before Prius and Tesla. Here's its story.

Having seen 2 of these myself I now discover that there are "hundreds...worldwide". I'm not sure how we can know which this is. We can only hope for more clues.

You certainly get around Paul. Plenty of clues in the photo !

Hmm...might this be located in a harbour somewhere? Oops, let me use American spelling in this instance...'harbor'

I wonder if this is something you saw at one of the souvenir stands in Manhattan,? Brooklyn? Or perhaps in Europe?

The "what" is quite obvious. It's the "where" that's the mystery, given how many identical ones, differing only in scale, exist. No clues as to size...yet.

I'm thinking it's not North America....

I think you are right Dr. F. Many of the ones in the US stay true to the original in that they have no gold writing and only one date. It seems as though some of the larger cities over seas have the ones with gold writing and two dates. Not sure which one this is from though.

I used to live close to one with gold writing, hmmm wonder if it's that one. Not in the US.

Well, clearly everyone has figured out which one it isn't. That's a start! For today's hint, I'll add that when it was placed in its location, it was carefully lined up to be facing its more famous counterpart.

Party time, and Samantha takes us to the Denver hotel whose big New Year's Eve event keeps drawing her back.