I was reading about the Chevy Volt today. (How sad is it that wikipedia has far more and better information than Chevy’s website, which doesn’t even tell me what the Volt is or how it’s supposed to work). I have a few thoughts:

1. Very, very cool. Alcohol can keep it’s claim to be the cause of life’s problems, but technology is the answer.
2. I’m not about to run out and spend 30k-40k on a car, but it’s still cool.
3. Batteries have a memory effect, wherein if they are consistently discharged to a certain level and then recharged, they suffer. Since most people drive the same amount each day (commute to work), this is a real risk. Have they found a way to avoid it?
4. The battery won’t start with the temperature below freezing (32 F, 0 C, 273 K). I’m thinking this won’t be a huge seller in Wisconsin.
5. Electric car may sound very very cool (see point 1), but where does that electricity come from? Don’t you pay for the power to get from the wall? Doesn’t coal have to be burned to generate it? When calculating your total cost of ownership, don’t forget the cost of a daily recharge. A study commissioned by the state of California showed that a $3.73 gallon of gas and plugging in the Volt are equivalent. (oh-oh).
6. I’m not really sure plugin hybrids are the ultimate solution – they just move the problem around a little. Given that, I don’t think I want to spend the effort necessary to completely revamp our roads, utilities, homes, offices, etc. to support charging stations. This is the first solution, not necessarily the best or ultimate one, and we’re not going to want to make this kind of investment twice
7. Lastly, the car’s software is designed to be updated. One part of me can’t wait till someone hacks the firmware and comes out with a skin that makes your Volt look like the starship enterprise. (On that day even I will be tempted to go spend 30k for a car). The security professional in me thinks that this is the worst idea I’ve ever heard.

I just came from the fastest megillah reading I’ve ever attended (and I’ve heard some fast ones). The baal koreh read incredibly fast. For those of you who used to live in Philly, think Shelly Stohl only without a pause between words, and with the chabad pronunciations whih don’t require enunciation of words. For those of you in Washington, Shelly Stohl made Andrew Jacobavics look slower than a mailman in a coma. Chabad also does not drown out the name of Haman unless his full name (Haman ben Hammedatha ha-Agagi), which doesn’t happen a whole lot. I didn’t look at my watch at the start, but we were done by 8:18, and I don’t think we started much before 8.