Musings on a Score
Oct. 8th, 2005 12:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorI got a free electric lawn mower the other day! Well, it's older and needs a bit of work, but once that's settled, it should run just fine. Looking at the specific work it needed to run again, though, got me thinking about how freaking scared manufacturers are about large battery-electric devices.
Mechanically, the mower is in perfect shape. The motor is sound, the blade and deck solid, and the battery pack, though it will soon need replacement, should last another year or two with my light-duty lawn. What broke on this machine was the intricate lock-out mechanism that prevents people from being able to start the motor without first removing the charger plug.
The charger is a wall wart, an oversized box with power prongs mounted on one side and the supply dangling from a thin wire. Reading the spec plate on the wart, the voltage supplied by the thin cord is only 26v ac -- not enough to harm an operator should the cord be compromised by blade or other stupidity. This also means the mower cannot charge quickly. Not enough charge to do the whole yard? Tough titties. Get two, because no manufacturer with decent legal representation is going to produce a rechargable device with cutting blades with anything other than IV drip of current to fill the batteries.
Still, the mechanical disconnection scheme to protect against even that small current being violently unleashed is both impressive in its Rube Goldberg complexity and dismaying in the shoddy manufacture of the actual mechanism. In other words, it's a piece of shit. Once it went, it rendered the whole mower useless without an expensive trip to the shop to repair a cheap part.
Once I diagnosed the break, I was reminded of other weird hoops and hurdles introduced in other areas of rechargable technology.
You see, when we dump gas into a tank to fill a gas mower, we take an assumed risk. Everyone by now knows that gasoline is flamable, that if you spill it, you create a hazardous situation. Also, when we plug our small electrical appliances into the wall sockets, we take a similar assumed risk. Both the gas in the tank and the wall plug in the socket are common enough -- and have been on the market long enough -- to be considered known risks to manufacturers. If you light yourself afire while filling a gas can and smoking a cigarette, or shock yourself reaching into the toaster with a fork to retrieve a broken bagel, you are doing something known to most of the people in our society to be Stupid, and therefore assume the liability for doing so.
Not so with an object unfamiliar to most. Let's take the mower for our first example.
Let's say I am not who I am, a tinkerer with all things battery powered, and that I am instead some Average American Numbnuts who knows very little about batteries and charging and such crap. Let's say I start my mower while it is still connected to its charger. Now let's say the charger cord wraps around the mower blade and shocks the operator.
Who is to blame?
Unfortunately, there is no precedent whatsoever for a case even this silly. Joe Numbnuts or his survivors can hire a good attorney who can easily argue that the fact the mower could start while in proximity to a live electrical cord means the manufacturer was liable for the accident because they should have anticipated such Numbnuttery -- even though one can easily buy a corded mower and do the same thing. Why? Corded mowers, like corded electric turkey knives and hedge trimmers -- have been on the market long enough to be familiar -- that brand of potential stupidity has been grandfathered into our system of determining liability.
Scoff all you want, but a situation just this absurd threatened to end the manufacture and sale of all motorcycles in the United States. Some kid, with no training on how to ride the thing, hopped on a friend's Yamaha dirt bike and plowed it straight into a tree. He was paralyzed. Even though the bike had a clutch (mechanical disconnect between the engine and drive system), a key (the removal of which would have killed the engine) and a Big Red Switch on the right throttle assembly which also would have killed the engine in an emergency, a jury found Yamaha liable for building a dangerous machine.
This was in 1978, if memory serves correctly. I believe it was later overturned on appeal, but the fear of Stupid Shit Happening was forever etched in the retinas of all the executives in forward-looking companies.
The mower represents but a mild example. What about charging situations requiring large amounts of power delivered through a non-permanent connection? Such as, say, an electric car?
(NB: The current breed of hybrid drive cars, like the Prius, the Insight and Hybrid Civic, and the Hybrid Escape are not, despite the ad blitz, electric cars. They are gasoline fueled cars that use electric assist. A rule of thumb: If you can't plug it in, it ain't electric.)
GM introduced one of the first major (ie. not retrofitted from gas) electric vehicles, the Saturn Impact, which was later renamed the GM EV1. They also started installing chargers for the car all over southern Califonia in hopes of dominating the market. These chargers did indeed dominate, since no other electric car could use them. They were inductive chargers, meaning there was no direct metal-to-metal contact between the charger and the car. A long, smooth paddle was inserted into the charging port of the car and, depending upon how depleted the pack was at the time, electrons did a roundabout magnetic dance into the batteries.
The lawyers at GM were undoubtedly brainstorming doomsday scenarios for all aspects of the car, just to engineer a solution to a problem before the lawsuit.
Problem: What if someone charges outside in the rain? Solution: The Inductive Charger paddles, which can operate "safely" in wet conditions. (Inductive charging has its own problems, including the relatively inefficient transfer of power, which tends make the chargers run hot. A few of the first generation of cars caught fire while charging, forcing a recall.)
Problem: What if someone trips a breaker with the portable charger? Solution: Limit the portable charger current to 10 amps, an anemic trickle that barely brings the batteries from dead to topped off in something like 10 hours. (There goes the idea of a decent road trip. Also, these "portable" chargers filled what little of the trunk space was available, and had to be hoisted out of the trunk -- they weren't lightweight -- and placed directly in front of the car to use. They were described as "emergency" chargers and using them was discouraged.)
Problem: What if someone drives off with a charger plugged into the car? Solution: An ignition interlock to prevent the drive activating if something is in the charger port. (This little solution caused many a problems when, just like with my new/old mower, the interlock failed and people got a bit stranded and pissed off.)
Also, did I mention that if you were lucky enough to lease one of these beasts -- you had to pass a questionaire and an income test just to get on the waiting list for the lease -- you also had to have the main charger installed professionally? That was a separate cost of about $3,000, and was non-refundable. The lease set you back another $450/month. In fact, when the fires caused the recall, lessees were provided with a Geo Metro for the lease they paid. There were no spare EV1s, and GM had no plans to make more!
Then -- even with the waiting list less than half-filled at the time they ended the program -- they claimed there was no market for not just that car, but electrics in general. On the electric front, GM introduced a great car and killed it with overcaution and cheapness, lest it actually be driven and GM actually have to produce more. It wouldn't be the first time they royally fucked up, but still, it is disappointing.
Sigh.
So I'll bypass the cheap plastic mower interlock and remove entirely the kinked cable that is supposed to engage it. If I shock myself to death on 24V DC, it'll be my own damned fault -- but that mower will mow again!
Mechanically, the mower is in perfect shape. The motor is sound, the blade and deck solid, and the battery pack, though it will soon need replacement, should last another year or two with my light-duty lawn. What broke on this machine was the intricate lock-out mechanism that prevents people from being able to start the motor without first removing the charger plug.
The charger is a wall wart, an oversized box with power prongs mounted on one side and the supply dangling from a thin wire. Reading the spec plate on the wart, the voltage supplied by the thin cord is only 26v ac -- not enough to harm an operator should the cord be compromised by blade or other stupidity. This also means the mower cannot charge quickly. Not enough charge to do the whole yard? Tough titties. Get two, because no manufacturer with decent legal representation is going to produce a rechargable device with cutting blades with anything other than IV drip of current to fill the batteries.
Still, the mechanical disconnection scheme to protect against even that small current being violently unleashed is both impressive in its Rube Goldberg complexity and dismaying in the shoddy manufacture of the actual mechanism. In other words, it's a piece of shit. Once it went, it rendered the whole mower useless without an expensive trip to the shop to repair a cheap part.
Once I diagnosed the break, I was reminded of other weird hoops and hurdles introduced in other areas of rechargable technology.
You see, when we dump gas into a tank to fill a gas mower, we take an assumed risk. Everyone by now knows that gasoline is flamable, that if you spill it, you create a hazardous situation. Also, when we plug our small electrical appliances into the wall sockets, we take a similar assumed risk. Both the gas in the tank and the wall plug in the socket are common enough -- and have been on the market long enough -- to be considered known risks to manufacturers. If you light yourself afire while filling a gas can and smoking a cigarette, or shock yourself reaching into the toaster with a fork to retrieve a broken bagel, you are doing something known to most of the people in our society to be Stupid, and therefore assume the liability for doing so.
Not so with an object unfamiliar to most. Let's take the mower for our first example.
Let's say I am not who I am, a tinkerer with all things battery powered, and that I am instead some Average American Numbnuts who knows very little about batteries and charging and such crap. Let's say I start my mower while it is still connected to its charger. Now let's say the charger cord wraps around the mower blade and shocks the operator.
Who is to blame?
Unfortunately, there is no precedent whatsoever for a case even this silly. Joe Numbnuts or his survivors can hire a good attorney who can easily argue that the fact the mower could start while in proximity to a live electrical cord means the manufacturer was liable for the accident because they should have anticipated such Numbnuttery -- even though one can easily buy a corded mower and do the same thing. Why? Corded mowers, like corded electric turkey knives and hedge trimmers -- have been on the market long enough to be familiar -- that brand of potential stupidity has been grandfathered into our system of determining liability.
Scoff all you want, but a situation just this absurd threatened to end the manufacture and sale of all motorcycles in the United States. Some kid, with no training on how to ride the thing, hopped on a friend's Yamaha dirt bike and plowed it straight into a tree. He was paralyzed. Even though the bike had a clutch (mechanical disconnect between the engine and drive system), a key (the removal of which would have killed the engine) and a Big Red Switch on the right throttle assembly which also would have killed the engine in an emergency, a jury found Yamaha liable for building a dangerous machine.
This was in 1978, if memory serves correctly. I believe it was later overturned on appeal, but the fear of Stupid Shit Happening was forever etched in the retinas of all the executives in forward-looking companies.
The mower represents but a mild example. What about charging situations requiring large amounts of power delivered through a non-permanent connection? Such as, say, an electric car?
(NB: The current breed of hybrid drive cars, like the Prius, the Insight and Hybrid Civic, and the Hybrid Escape are not, despite the ad blitz, electric cars. They are gasoline fueled cars that use electric assist. A rule of thumb: If you can't plug it in, it ain't electric.)
GM introduced one of the first major (ie. not retrofitted from gas) electric vehicles, the Saturn Impact, which was later renamed the GM EV1. They also started installing chargers for the car all over southern Califonia in hopes of dominating the market. These chargers did indeed dominate, since no other electric car could use them. They were inductive chargers, meaning there was no direct metal-to-metal contact between the charger and the car. A long, smooth paddle was inserted into the charging port of the car and, depending upon how depleted the pack was at the time, electrons did a roundabout magnetic dance into the batteries.
The lawyers at GM were undoubtedly brainstorming doomsday scenarios for all aspects of the car, just to engineer a solution to a problem before the lawsuit.
Problem: What if someone charges outside in the rain? Solution: The Inductive Charger paddles, which can operate "safely" in wet conditions. (Inductive charging has its own problems, including the relatively inefficient transfer of power, which tends make the chargers run hot. A few of the first generation of cars caught fire while charging, forcing a recall.)
Problem: What if someone trips a breaker with the portable charger? Solution: Limit the portable charger current to 10 amps, an anemic trickle that barely brings the batteries from dead to topped off in something like 10 hours. (There goes the idea of a decent road trip. Also, these "portable" chargers filled what little of the trunk space was available, and had to be hoisted out of the trunk -- they weren't lightweight -- and placed directly in front of the car to use. They were described as "emergency" chargers and using them was discouraged.)
Problem: What if someone drives off with a charger plugged into the car? Solution: An ignition interlock to prevent the drive activating if something is in the charger port. (This little solution caused many a problems when, just like with my new/old mower, the interlock failed and people got a bit stranded and pissed off.)
Also, did I mention that if you were lucky enough to lease one of these beasts -- you had to pass a questionaire and an income test just to get on the waiting list for the lease -- you also had to have the main charger installed professionally? That was a separate cost of about $3,000, and was non-refundable. The lease set you back another $450/month. In fact, when the fires caused the recall, lessees were provided with a Geo Metro for the lease they paid. There were no spare EV1s, and GM had no plans to make more!
Then -- even with the waiting list less than half-filled at the time they ended the program -- they claimed there was no market for not just that car, but electrics in general. On the electric front, GM introduced a great car and killed it with overcaution and cheapness, lest it actually be driven and GM actually have to produce more. It wouldn't be the first time they royally fucked up, but still, it is disappointing.
Sigh.
So I'll bypass the cheap plastic mower interlock and remove entirely the kinked cable that is supposed to engage it. If I shock myself to death on 24V DC, it'll be my own damned fault -- but that mower will mow again!