Archive for January, 2010

Oy Toyota! Where were the quality control people?

January 22nd, 2010

Recalling cars has to be one of industry’s toughest decisions

The bland notice reads: “Toyota Motor Corp. launched a major new recall Thursday, saying a mechanical problem could cause the gas pedals to stick and cause unwanted acceleration in 2.3 million of its vehicles, including recent models of its popular Camry and Corolla sedans.”

Which models?

Models covered by the latest recall include the 2009 and 2010 RAV4; the 2009 and 2010 Corolla; the 2009 and 2010 Matrix; the 2005 to 2010 Avalon; the 2007 to 2010 Camry; the 2010 Highlander; the 2007 to 2010 Tundra and the 2008 to 2010 Sequoia.

The calculation

The top brass at Toyota must have dripped blood when they saw the estimates of the costs involved. If the ‘fix’ takes a half-hour in the workshop, and the ‘fixers’ earn an average of $20 an hour, the entire operation will cost 23 million dollars, a sum that will make even Toyota shudder from top to bottom. And that doesn’t include all the spurious claims that will come from owners who don’t like their Toyotas.

The admission

The recall marks an acknowledgment that potential safety problems on Toyota vehicles run deeper than the automaker at first announced and broadens a recall that already ranks as its largest yet. The moves have threatened Toyota’s reputation for market-leading quality and safety at a time when the automaker’s US sales are under pressure. Toyota had previously maintained that there was no evidence of a mechanical fault linked to reports of bursts of unintended acceleration that prompted the recall of about 4.2-million vehicles last year. Toyota previously maintained there were no mechanical problems.

The ongoing search for better, smoother, faster

Car manufacturers, perhaps more than any others, are constantly on the search for improvements and upgrades to their vehicles. Competition between manufacturers is fierce and a thicker floor-mat or a wider mirror could be the deciding factor in a sale. The original recall was apparently the result of accelerator pedals which jammed as a result of improperly installed floor mats. Now there’s another problem.

The latest recall

Toyota said the new action was triggered by reports from motorists who complained that their accelerator pedals remained depressed after they took their foot off the gas.

“The condition is rare,” Toyota said in a statement, “but can occur when the pedal mechanism becomes worn and, in certain conditions, the accelerator pedal may become harder to depress, slower to return or, in the worst case, stuck in a partially depressed position. Toyota is working quickly to prepare a correction.”

A solution

Toyota has not yet determined how it will fix the sticking-pedal problem, and in the interim it is asking drivers who experience the issue to stop the car with “firm and steady application of the brakes” and to notify a Toyota dealer immediately.

And if it doesn’t work?

The Times has reported that at least 19 people had been killed in U.S. accidents involving runaway Toyota and Lexus vehicles.

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Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore”

January 21st, 2010

How not to make money and remain poor
A mysterious visitor who each year leaves roses and cognac on Edgar Allan Poe’s tomb in Baltimore, Maryland, failed to show up Tuesday for the first time in 61 years. “He didn’t appear this morning,” said Jeffrey Savoye, secretary of the 380-member Poe society. Each year since 1949, the 100th anniversary of Poe’s birth, this mysterious individual has left a bottle of cognac and a few roses at the foot of Poe’s tomb, usually at night, in tribute to the legendary poet. “Occasionally he came early, like 11:00-11:30 the evening before. But normally it’s between midnight and 5:00 am.”

The Poe Society waited
Around 50 people waited in vain from Tuesday night to watch the “Poe Toaster,” as the visitor has been dubbed. Many travelled from across the United States for the 201st anniversary of Poe’s birth. “As far as we know, they have not missed a year until now,” Savoye said of the Poe Toaster. The original yearly visitor apparently died in 1998, but left the pilgrimage up to his two sons. “We were left a note some years ago saying that the original toaster had died. We interpreted the message that the torch will be passed. We assumed that two sons of this person have been carrying it on,” he said.

A poet’s life
Imagine trying to eke out a living by writing poetry. Knocking out a living by writing anything is no breeze but it is possible, especially with the World Wide Web at one’s fingertips. But poetry? Who pays for poetry? Poe wrote many stories and I have a 700 page book of them but by all accounts, Poe, who died at the tragically young age of 40, had no money and made little. Yet the man was a genius with a pen in his hand and 160 years after his death his works are pulling in millions of dollars by way of books and movies. He saw nothing of that and remained poor.

A mysterious figure
Poe was the father of the mystery story and he himself was a mysterious figure.
For over 150 years, legions of scholars, literary people, journalists and Poe devotees have tried to capture Edgar Allan Poe’s complex personality and enshrine it in paper and ink. They have chased every conceivable source to fill in the details of his life. Every person who met Poe and was still alive after 1875 was coerced to recall any scrap of fact or insight, no matter how trivial or vague. After these people had passed on, their children and even grandchildren were asked to repeat anything they had heard about Poe.

An eternal mystery
Poe would have enjoyed the mystery he created out of himself. His letters, notes, photographs and newspaper cuttings have all been collected, catalogued and interpreted, but Poe has fooled us all and remains to this day an elusive quarry. He left behind many mementoes – but no money.

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Lunch with Arnold

January 20th, 2010

As intriguing and as baffling as ever

I have always had a problem with Arnold. His speech is not the clearest and he uses words that are not in my vocabulary; but he is quite the most fascinating man I have ever met. A real-life successful and proven inventor. Arnold J. Goldman has quite a track record. He was the VP of Engineering and co-Founder of Lexitron, the first word processing company in the US, listed on NASDAQ in 1974. He went on to establish Luz International and served as its CEO. Luz designed, constructed, financed, and operated the world’s 9 largest Solar Electric Generating Systems which, at the time, generated 90 percent of the world’s solar electricity. These power stations are in the Mojave Desert in California and 20 years after they were built are still supplying electricity as they were designed to do.

Currently

Today Arnold is the Chairman and Founder of BrightSource Energy who are about to build the world’s largest solar power generating plant in California. The technology is simple and the energy is clean, both vital factors. Large flat mirrors reflect the sun onto a high tower which holds tanks of water; the water boils and the resulting steam is used to drive a turbine which produces electricity. That’s it in a nutshell. In fact it’s more complicated. The focus of the mirrors on the target has to be precise and many other factors have to be correct. But it is eminently do-able, and if anyone can make it work, it’s Arnold.

Money

The money involved in these projects is staggering. Generally the cost of development of electricity generation is enormous but such projects are usually funded by governments. In the case of Arnold’s projects, he had to put the financing in place. It’s not his money, but he has to organize it, no easy task when it runs into billions. The coming project, called the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, is a 440 megawatt solar power facility which consisting of 3 separate solar thermal power plants. The project is due to start in 2010.  The Ivanpah plant will produce enough clean energy to power 150,000 homes and displace more than 450,000 tons of Carbon Dioxide annually, which is the equivalent of taking more than 75,000 cars off the roads.

The storage problem

The storage of solar generated energy is an ongoing issue. Man had discovered how to  make energy from the sun and as long as the sun shines there is no problem creating energy. But after the sun has set or on cloudy days you cannot generate solar energy. So you generate it during sunshine hours, but where do you store it for use that night?

The money making challenge

If you have an inventive mind and you want to make money, great globs of it, as in billions, dream up an energy storage system. There are thousands of solar energy producers all over the world waiting for you.

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