It doesn't hurt that the UK gallon is larger, or that the EU fuel-economy test returns consistently higher numbers than the current US/EPA tests. Bring the same car to the US, and giev it the EPA tests, and it won't get 70mpg anymore.

Adjusting for the difference in gallons alone drops the number by 17%.

70mpg (UK) = 58mpg (US), and this ignores the test differences.

Similarly, the tests are different. Take the 2010 Toyota Prius, which is essentially identical in all the markets it is sold in. In the US, it is rated at 50mpg. In the UK, it is rated at 72.4mpg. The difference between ratings, owing to both the different gallon and the differences in testing, is more than 30%. This is the *same car*. This is why we don't see 70mpg cars in the US. They wouldn't *be* 70mpg cars here.

It's probably not just stopping in Long Beach. It will likely go up the coast and make a few more stops to drop off cars-- it's easier than dumping them all off and then shipping them overland to Oregon.

@kjb434

Some CFLs are dimmable. To identify them, look for the word "dimmable" on the box.

Man, it makes me feel old when I have to point out that there's almost nothing "new" about this besides the brand name. Growing up, there was a kid in the neighborhood with a scooter that worked like this, and it would have been built in the 1950s or 1960s, judging by the styling.

I'm with the first commenter-- which is it? Energy or power? And if we're talking about power, is it output or input? 20x the energy capacity would be an earth-shaking breakthrough. 20x the usable power input would be worthwhile, and would enable a much greater recapture of energy when braking and very high-speed charging. 20x the power output would be mildly interesting, but mostly useless unless you think we need twenty times the horsepower in hybrid car electric motors.

This stuff goes in cycles, and Intel may have something here. GPUs have been big, parallel, highly specialized processors for a while. CPUs are suddenly getting very parallel with lots of extra cores that frequently are underused, and GPUs are suddenly becoming so general-purpose and can run plain old code. (See the GPU port of Seti@Home for a quick example.)

If GPUs start to lose the specialization that makes it worthwhile to dedicate a separate chip to graphics, and CPUs continue to gain extra cores that aren't doing anything... it only makes sense to start doing the graphics work on the CPU again.

Specialized hardware only stays specialized until either the CPU can do it with trivial effort, or it becomes a CPU on its own.

Yeah, yeah-- but there's no reply button for replies. And the system apparently eats HTML tags, too, or your quote would have been in italics.

Nobody's claiming solar will replace everything. Not taking advantage of it as it becomes cost effective, though, will be silly. I don't understand why people are so enamored with the "all or nothing" idea for power sources. The future of power generation (just like the present and the past) will lie in an enormous variety of sources.

@Brent:

The desert and rooftops are a nice idea, but there's still not enough space to power the US on that. You'd have to cover something roughly the size of Texas.

I think your math is off, but that's not important. Does it matter if solar can be a full replacement for all other power sources? Instead, look at it as a way to get useful work out of otherwise unproductive roof coverings that just happens to coincide well with peak daytime demand for electricity.

They can't? I thought the answers to "where" for solar was pretty obvious:

1. The desert
2. Unshaded rooftops

Yeah, my ancient Treo 600 (and later the 650) both had copy/paste. Not having it is a royal pain-- I guess you don't realize how much you use something until you don't have it.