Don’t all Rush out to Buy your All Electric Nissan Leaf / Plug-in Hybrid

Are we green in San Francisco? Yes! …….. but only in name.

Google Gavin Newsom and Electric Cars and you get headlines such as “Recharge America with Electric Cars” and “Mayor Newsom Launches Installation of New CityWide Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure”. How about " San Francisco is committed to making the Bay Area the center for the EV market, creating new jobs, reducing our reliance on foreign oil, and boosting our green economy"

Sounds great. Doesn't it? Surely we must be really well equipped now to drive around in Electric Cars?

Having read headlines such as these, I made my way to the San Francisco Auto Show to look at the latest and greatest that the motor industry had to offer. I have had my eye on the Nissan Leaf as a commuter car for a while and had the opportunity to test drive it this week. The car is great, but for reasons which I wont bore you with (I live in a condo) I wont be able to isntall a charge port at my house – which many who are considering electric cars would probably end up doing.

Of course, it shouldn’t be a problem charging an all electric car in San Francisco now, should it? Given all those headlines, I mean, there must be 100s of charging stations dotted all around the city?

UM.

So how do you actually find out where the charging stations are for Electric Cars? Well you go to PG&E’s Website and look! I found the section Electric Vehicles. The page links off to “a list of all publicly accessible electric-vehicle charging stations in California”.

A quick search (Electric Small Inductive / Electric Large Inductive) reveals a grand total of 15 charging locations in the city of San Francisco (see below).

So for those of you who are not able to install a charging port in your own garage (perhaps because you don’t have one), or who are relying on there being charging stations all around the city of San Francisco to augment your car’s charge – you had better talk to your politicians since they don’t seem to be doing much of their own accord in the way of installing charging locations for you ………

Translated: despite all of the hype - there are very few charging stations in San Francisco for your plug-in Electric / Hybrid car.

Appendix

List of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in San Francisco (Courtesy ofhttp://www.cleancarmaps.com/)

Site Name	Address	Operational Status	Fuel Type Available
St. Mary's Square Garage	433 Kearny Street San Francisco, CA 94108	Currently Operational	INS CND
Portsmouth Square Garage	733 Kearny Street San Francisco, CA 94108	Currently Operational	INS CND
Sutter Stockton Garage	444 Sutter Street San Francisco, CA 94108	Partially Operational	INS CND
Golden Gateway Garage	250 Clay Ave San Francisco, CA 94111	Currently Operational	INS CND
5th and Mission Garage	5th and Mission San Francisco, CA 94103	Partially Operational	INS CND
Moscone Center Garage	255 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94103	Currently Operational	INS CND
Costco - San Francisco	450 10th Street San Francisco, CA 94103	Currently Operational	INS CND
Performing Arts Garage	360 Grove Street San Francisco, CA 94102	Currently Operational	INS CND
San Francisco Civic Center ( Level 2 )	355 McAllister St San Francisco, CA 94102	Currently Operational	INS CND
San Francisco Civic Center (Level 1)	355 McAllister Street San Francisco, CA 94102	Currently Operational	INS CND
Ellis O'Farrell Garage	123 O'Farrell St. San Francisco, CA 94102	Currently Operational	INS
Japan Center Garage	1660 Geary Street San Francisco, CA 94115	Currently Operational	INS CND
Lombard Street Garage	2055 Lombard Street San Francisco, CA 94123	Currently Operational	INS CND
San Francisco General Hospital	2500 24th Street San Francisco, CA 94110	Currently Operational	INS CND
UC San Francisco Medical Center	500 Parnassus Avenue San Francisco, CA 94122	Not Operational	INS CND

Sanctions on Iran may be targeted, but at whom? And what about those planes?

Not a day goes by without us hearing about some form of new sanctions being imposed on Islamic Republic of Iran by the EU, the UN and the United States. Full details on the US sanctions on Iran can be found on the US Treasury website. These sanctions are designed to be “targeted” at individuals or organizations that support or are in any way related to Iran’s nuclear program or which support terrorist activity. Sounds like a reasonable approach.

The sanctions against Civil Air Travel however, can be best described as primitive and at worst as barbaric and inhumane.

What's been going on?

Chapter 1: We wont sell Iran any planes or parts to keep its airliners flying

So what is the exact nature and impact of the sanctions that have been imposed by the US on Iran as it relates to Civil Aviation?

According to Wikepdia, as long as 2005 “A 2005 report, presented at the 36th session of theInternational Civil Aviation Organization, reported that the U.S. sanctions had endangered the safety of civil aviation in Iran because it prevented Iran from acquiring parts and support essential for aviation safety. It also stated that the sanctions were contrary to article 44 of theChicago convention (to which the US is a member). The ICAO report said aviation safety affects human lives and human rights, stands above political differences, and that the assembly should bring international public pressure on the United States to lift the sanctions against Iran.^[16]There is also more recent news of further sanctions against Civil Aviation by some in the US (Brad Sherman) – as referenced in this blog .

The human cost of these sanctions is not difficult to calculate. The numerous air disasters that have plagued Iranian aviation within the last ten years are one testament to this: Caspian flightfrom Armenia in 2009 which killed 168 people, Aria Air crash of 2009 which resulted in 16 fatalities, the 2004 Kish Airlines crash which killed 43, and the list, unfortunately, goes on.

Even if accidents don’t cause deaths, there are also many accidents that all but prove that Iranian Civil Aviation is in dire straits. Within the last 12 months, the following are some of the incidents that have befallen ordinary air travelers:

• On 26 August 2010, An Iran Air passenger plane (A300-600) en route from Tehran to Stockholm made technical landing at Istanbul's International Ataturk Airport due to an engine trouble.
• On 15 January 2010, Iran Air Fokker 100 EP-IDA, operating Flight 223 was substantially damaged when the nose gear collapsed after landing at Isfahan International Airport. There were no casualties in this incident.^[26]
• On 18 November 2009, Fokker 100 EP-CFO suffered an undercarriage malfunction on take-off from Isfahan International Airport. The aircraft was on a flight to Mehrabad Airport, Tehranwhen the undercarriage failed to retract. The aircraft landed at Isfahan but was substantially damaged when the left main gear collapsed. There were no casualties in this event.^[25]

There could be any number of reasons for this awful safety record which could include old planes, poor maintenance and inappropriate pilot skills (especially with the Russian acquired planes). The Iranian Civil Aviation Authority has been quite clear about the main cause of this, even commissioning a report which all but concludes that US sanctions are the main cause of the deteriorating state of Iran’s civil airline fleets and the resulting accidents and loss of life.

From what we read in the press, Iran has tried on more than one occasion to procure aircraft from Airbus – the European manufacturer. However, it seems that these deals have never materialized and the powers that be have been forced to pick up used planes and parts from disparate sources in the secondary markets. While I may be OK to put an aftermarket brake disks disk on my car, I am not sure I would have any level of confidence of flying in an aircraft that had after market engine parts in it!

So the planes have continued to fly, somehow, and people’s lives, ordinary peoples’ lives, have been put at risk. As the New York times says “Iran Air has had trouble properly maintaining its aging Boeing jets, which were purchased in the 1970s, because of a 30-year-old United States ban on buying spare parts.”

We are told not to blame the US – but why not blame us? Or put another way, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s the US’s refusal to provide spare parts for civilian airliners, our refusal to allow new US-made planes to be sold to Iran, and the our refusal to allow Airbus to provide planes to Iran that is causing the endangerment of ordinary civilians who fly.

Chapter 2 – Iran cannot fly planes to Europe anymore because Europe considers the planes as unsafe

On 6 July 2010, matters took another turn: it was announced that the European Commission would ban all of Iran Air's Airbus A320, Boeing 727 and Boeing 747 fleet from the EU over safety concerns.^[10][11] This move will come as a major blow to Iran Air, limiting flights to Europe with their own aircraft, I imagine. This is the New York times article on this.

So given that Iran Air’s fleet largely consists of these now banned aircraft, Iran Air has been left to operate Airbus A300s and A310s on the European routes in order to continue to provide service. Which seems to have continued to take place. Of course this begs the question that if Europe considers the fleet to be unsafe, why does it allow any planes to fly into European air space at all?

Chapter 3 – We won’t provide any fuel to Iran’s civilian planes anymore

To compound this farcical state, within the last few months, a new turn of events promises to add insult to injury. This morning, the BBC reported the alarming news that some providers at Heathrow airport in the UK have been refusing to refuel Iran Air planes. Reading between the lines although the UK government is not putting such a restriction in place, the providers of aviation fuel are refusing to refuel Iranian planes. One can only assume that the rational reason why they would do so is because they have succumbed to some external pressure. So as far as one can tell, and looking at Iran Air’s website seems to confirm, planes are still travelling to the UK but with “unscheduled” refueling in Vienna or Hamburg.

Chapter 4 – What next?

Of course, no one can tell what will happen next. As we all know Iranian Civilian Airliners cannot fly to the US and haven’t done so in more than two decades. However, are we to witness the winding down of flights to Europe and elsewhere now as well? If this is the desired outcome, why don’t the European governments simply ban the planes from flying to their airports and put an end to this?

Even if we end up banning flights to and from Europe, what is to become to the millions of people that travel on airliners within Iran? Are we prepared, are we content, to see them put into needless danger? ……. And all this to punish their Government?

As the bloggers on Peace Action West say: Perhaps, if we intend to further alienate the Iranian people, lend credibility to the anti-western rhetoric of hardliners and extinguish any possibility for constructive engagement we should continue on current path. If not, we better come up with something that is more humane than the current plan.

We had better, since our current approach is not humane or very human for that matter......

Innovate or Die

It was a feeling of "dejva vu" all over again as I read through an article on Nokia's loss of market share and market capitalization in the Economist. The article does a decent job of articulating the problems.

But how did they get there?

Of course as someone who used to live in Europe, I am quite familiar with Nokia phones. However, when I moved to the US at start of the decade, I was frustrated at the lack of decent European phones in the US market - most of the Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones were the entry level ones. The contrast between the phones on sales in the US market (low end Nokias, Sony Ericsson, HTCs, Samsungs and the PDAs - RIM, Palm / Handspring, Samsung) and those in Europe was noticeable.

Nokia was happy riding the wave of commodity phone sales in the emerging markets and keeping tabs on their European base. They made no effort in bringing their high end devices to the USA, instead relying on other markets to drive their growth.

And then cometh the iPhone. As if the iPhone - which not only took over the US and progressively ate into Nokia's market share in Europe - wasn't bad enough, Google's Android phone and RIM have piled on the pressure (GigaOm has an interesting read on the topic - Apple and Rim sucking profits from SmartPhone industry).

One thing is clear to me as a user of such devices. Having grown up with Nokia phones and then having no access to any decent ones in the US has basically resulted in me (and I am sure many more) discounting them outright. Would I consider a Nokia phone today? Probably not.

Innovation is of course important. But this story also shows that access to innovation is equally critical. If I cannot get it, you cannot sell it! Nokia didn't give wide enough access to their innovation- however much of it there was - in the US.

Good luck to them! Hopefully they can re-invigorate their market.

Hardback Books Waste 1 million trees a Year

I was lucky enough to be given a hardback copy of the book "How to Measure Anything" by Doug Hubbard. The basic idea of this book is that it's possible to measure almost anything. One of the examples the author uses is that of a 3rd century BC scientist - Eratosthenes - that measured the circumference of the Earth to 3% accuracy without anything but a few smart observations and calculations.

Some of the barriers that people use apparently to avoid measuring things include:

• utility - why bother
• economic - it'd be too expensive to measure
• ethical - it would be immoral to measure

This morning, I took the spirit of the book and applied it to a question: what is the additional impact of hardback books (as compared to soft back books) on the environment? or put another way, how many more trees does it take to make hardback books? (one of the other things the book mentions is that you really have to know what you want to measure)

My estimate - about 1 million more trees

How did I get to this estimate? 15 minute lunch break and the following back of an envelope calculation.

How many books sold per year globally?

Total number of books sold globally - 3.1B (2005 figures)

Average weight of a book 340 grams, with the additional weight of a hardback book being about 140 grams.

How much paper?

Assume hardback constitute less than 10% of all books sold (sampling my shelf)

So this indicates that the number of hardback books sold is about 300M (a year of course)

The Additional weight (at 140 grams per book) is 42,000 tons (metric)

How much paper does that translate to?

This one is a hard one. But I found one source on the Web. 1 ton of paper (uncoated) needs about 24 trees

Total number of trees required = 42,000 * 24 = 1 Million trees

The really interesting question of course is the comparison between E-books (consider the carbon footprint of making the device, storage on the network, wireless network usage, etc) and that of printed books.

Anyone seen any quantitative comparisons of this?

The ' “False cloud” is false ' is true!

I have heard Cloud service providers often say that “unless it runs in their data center it isn’t Cloud”. While this view is certainly a possible viewpoint, is it necessarily valid? It certainly does not echo the experience of some of the customers that we have worked with who have built their own private cloud infrastructure across financial services, telco and government verticals. Some of these customers brought the promise of Cloud computing – ready access to resources through self-service, ability to add resources as demands increase and to get charged for usage – into their own data centers years before the term “Cloud Computing” was ever coined! Credit Suisse, for example, with their Java Application Platform, have delivered some outstanding results: double digit percentage reductions in project costs and operational costs. Even if you choose to ignore these real results, some customers correctly observe that for data security or privacy reasons, they would not consider using an external provider. What would you think if your bank told you that their banking system ran “in the Cloud”?

Hence, it was with interest that I read a blog post Jonathan Eunice titled “The ‘false cloud’ is false”. In his blog post, Jonathan talks about the fact that Cloud should be identified by the benefits that it offers. Clearly if you go by the NIST national definition of Cloud computing there is no mention of where the services actually are provided out of. Instead the definition focuses on the characteristics of cloud services. Jonathan makes a valid point in saying “if cloud computing is going to mean something practical, important, and central to enterprise IT over the next few years, cloud must be broad enough to include privately-owned and operated infrastructure”. In his summary, he says “in the end, if cloud purists want to insist that only external clouds qualify, that's their right. But as cloud rapidly mainstreams, enterprises will demand that their concerns and approaches be taken seriously. For enterprises, cloud defined by its benefits is the true cloud.”

Which is really the point: Cloud should be measured by the benefits that it aims to, and ends up, delivering and not how these benefits are delivered. The “how “ is of interest to the providers who provide the services – whether internal or external.

Probably of most consideration is this: that internal IT now has a competitor and must show its value to business. As one of my colleague says “ Cloud is to internal IT what E-commerce was to bricks and mortar retailers” – ie. a wake up call.