Green | The ParkerPress

A Tesla. Yes, a Tesla

April 26, 2010 9:33 pm

The Tesla sitting pretty

After Jeff let me take his Ferrari 360 Spider out for a spin a while back, I was talking with Charlie. Charlie has a friend with a lot of nice cars. One of which is a Tesla. All electric. Yes, doing their part for the environment.

Charlie really wanted to see the Ferrari and I really wanted to see the Tesla. So did Jeff. So last Saturday, Charlie brought the Tesla by Jeff’s house.

Our friend Jim was in town that weekend, so we all got to play with both the Tesla and the Ferrari.

Taking the Tesla to pick up my rental car

Right off the bat, I got to drive it down to pick up my rental car, sitting in front of “the Tib” from the night before (the Tib is a local Karaoke bar, but that is an entirely different story for an entirely different audience). My first impressions: The Tesla is fast. Very, very fast. And quick! Like neck snapping quick. I’m pretty sure it could take the Ferrari from a dead start up to maybe a quarter mile. But with the Tesla’s top speed of 125, the Ferrari would smoke it after that.

The rest of the story and more pictures are below

Show me more… »

Tags: Car,Electric Car,Ferrari,Ferrari 360 Spider,Going Green,Green,Santa Barbara,Tesla
Categories: Geek Toys, Green, Photo Albums
No Comments »

More “green home” work (well, rework really)

January 25, 2010 9:49 pm

The latest update in the “Greening” effort was to replace my old X10 Thermostat (TXB-16) with a new Venstar T1800 7 day programmable thermostat, and then hook up an INSTEON adapter to it that will let a product called Indigo on my home control computer run it.

By itself, the new thermostat is considerably more powerful than the TXB-16 was, and with Indigo I can do much more. And in a rare example of me actually planning “forward”, it will support the dual-zone, multi-stage furnace/AC I want to put it next year to replace the again, cheap, and highly inefficient York furnace they put in the house when it was built.

The installation wasn’t too hard but I found out that the house builder had not really connected all the control wires in the furnace/AC control ( but at least they didn’t clip the wires they didn’t use). They just left ‘em hanging inside the furnace. A little crawling around in the dust and all that razor sharp sheet metal connecting all the wiring, and voila! All told, the whole upgrade took about an hour, including programming.

And, my favorite part ? The Solar System doesn’t interfere with the new INSTEON communication method (on both electrical wires and RF boosted)… Finally, I have control of my house temperature back under computer control. It only took me 11 months to do it…