304. TAKEOKA MILIEU
I saw one of these units cruising silently down the street today:
It's called the Takeoka Milieu, and it's definitely the smallest car I've ever seen in my life. The roof barely came up to my chest. "Fuel" cost -> US$0.045 per 10km (and that's with high Japanese electricity costs of US$.18/kwh). Very cool, and a sign of the times.
-- by JD
posted by JD @ 2:27 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
But what does such a car say about ME, as both a unique individual and a consumer?
I'm concerned about what other people will think. Can I get it in camoflauge, possibly with a chasis modification?
Nothing major. I just need to see eye-to-eye with people driving big rigs on the freeway.
I can really see why all the doomers come from the here. I think the doomer position (particularly of people like Kunstler) is really just Americanocentrism: taking what is essentially an urban planning problem in America and extending it to the whole world.
Great point, that. It's the pretense that misery should naturally love company; because we've fucked ourselves into a corner with foolish decisions and a waste-centric society based in consumption and comfort. Since Americans stand to have the most to lose in a real POD-style meltdown, we're essentially exporting our misery to the rest of the world. Raising the grim spectre of communism with China, railing on Russia for its exporting practices, and waddling around in a desperate, flabby attempt to secure an unrealistic future for our own wellbeing.
The brand of schadenfreud that the Savinars and Kunstlers are milking is just the optimistic, "Revenge of the Nerds" slant of the same problem. Their wet dream is a world in which the American mainstream/jock complex implodes and eats itself alive, leaving them intact as the masters of a brave new frontier.
And they want everyone else to believe it, too. It's kinda cute, really. Ignoring the fact that the intellectual elite has always depended on the working class to filthy its hands, build its homes and churn its butter while they sat around debating philosophy and slavishly dry-humping various religions for guidance.
But yeah, we do have a lot of Priuses on the road these days. Wishful thinking, but maybe we're not bound to become the United States of the Amish after all. Har-har.
nick,
Yes, it's an EV. You charge it by plugging straight into a 100V outlet. The specs in English are here.
But what does such a car say about ME, as both a unique individual and a consumer?
mel., yah that is kind of an issue. When that Milieu pulled up next to me at the corner, I have to admit I was kind of snickering as I marveled at it. I probably could have kicked it over if I felt like it. But it was so cool... when the intersection opened up, it pulled out and really moved! Quite a nimble little unit.
There's a lot of electric vehicles buzzing around Osaka. I'll get some photos when I get a new digital camera (my old one broke). They've got segway type motorized skateboards which are quite popular, and a lot of electric bikes.
I probably could have kicked it over if I felt like it.
LOL! Hey, added side benefit: more courteous driving, as now road rage incidents can involve another driver physically pushing your car into a ditch.
Good stuff, JD. I'd dig seeing those pictures. Our local community's also chock-full of all kinds of crazy little go-karts and electric vehicles, as the University here boasts one of the most successful alternative-powere engineering programs in the country.
Probably nowhere near the innovation that's happening over there, but still good for the soul.
Heh!
The real POD dieoff theory: everyone stupid kills each other, and we hide in a barn until it's safe to come out and assume leadership positions.
Notsomuch "dieoff" as "their dieoff". What could possibly go wrong?
A range of plausible climatological, social, political and economic processes could completely ruin - not just stall - currently proposed approaches.
That contradicts the point of any further arguments, frankly. The only truth in relation to PO, global warming and the nuke track: we have no fucking clue what's going to happen in two weeks, let alone thirty years down the aisle.
So. We can laugh at the Pac-mobile all you want, but it exists. Someone's driving it, saving energy in the process. It doesn't exist in theoretical terms, an inaccessible market share, or spacer fantasy. It's a hell of a lot more legitimate in the solutions column than whining about where the bullet might come from or building a shit-bunker in the shadow of Mount Baker.
Someone made a conscious choice to change on a personal level, and did so. You multiply that simple principle ten-million times, and there IS no energy crisis. The supply-demand paradigm changes, the mitigation timeline extends by decades, and we're free to find a new source of potential self-annihilation.
I'm no optimist, but I'll take a thimbleful of reality to a gallon of speculative bullshit any day of the week. :)
Hardly. 'Smokescreening' would imply that there was some sort of source debate here, when my point was clearly already made.
It's a real solution--not the BEST one, not the most PRODUCTIVE one, not the most PRACTICAL one, not the one I would personally support or choose--employed in the here and now. Not 2050. Not 2015. Not 2023 1/2. Right now.
None of us have the slightest freaking clue what 2050's going to look like. Frankly, I don't put stake in us making it that far as a species; pick your poison. So I'll make my conscious choices now, live as clean as I can and applaud anybody who makes an effort to do the same rather than point and laugh at schmucks using scooters and Pac-mobiles to save gas and promote alternatives.
I like the retro styling of this vehicle -- like a bubble car from the 1960s. Much better looking than the weird Indian electric car I've seen a few of in London. It would be practical for someone who lived in London and worked in the central zone.
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