29 November, 2010

A victory for common sense – Day 12

Odo 385

Well today I got a response from the company representative on the Electric Vehicle Taskforce. He's spoken to Property and they're firm. I'm not going to plug in. They gave the fourth new reason. There's no Policy. Can't do anything unless there's a Policy to cover it.

So I wrote to the CEO and filled her in on what's happening.

An hour later a Range Rover pulls up in the parking lot and my Boss's Boss's Boss's Boss comes into the call centre, he's coming straight for me. This either means I'm sacked or I've won.

I've won.

Just plug it in for god sake. He's been speaking to the CEO and she's given her go ahead. He wants to know what the barriers I've encountered are so that they can be smoothed over for the next person. He's such a cool guy. I offer him a ride but he doesn't have a licence.

I can barely believe that this could happen in Dilbert world.


Anyway, I worked out the reason for the poor range yesterday. I mentioned the strong head wind. Well I was riding at bicycle speeds, around 35 km/h. The headwind was at or more than 35 km/h. So I was seeing 70 km/h. Double the speed through the air, four times the drag force. The distance I rode was the same, but the force was four times higher. Energy is force times distance. So the energy drawn from the pack was four times higher. I did about 30 km into that headwind. It would have been the same as doing 120 km in still air.

3 comments:

  1. I had a similar, although unsuccessful, experience. See: http://brammofan.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/no-juice-for-you-g-man/
    Enjoy your "free" charging, Jason. Lucky duck.

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  2. Well in the end I had to take it to the top for a ruling. I suppose for you that means Obama. It really is silly. The power point next to where I park is used by a vending machine. So company power is used by another company to keep their product cold so they can sell it to our employees for profit. And thanks for being one of my readers. I'm really enjoying writing for you both.

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  3. I had a similar issue with Aust post for charging my Vectrix.

    A quick talk with the facility manager got me my permission.

    Now I can charge at any facility I work in, now comes the fight to be able to charge *and* claim travel allowance :D

    ReplyDelete