A Samsung-built ship “specialized” to carry luxury European cars to America is reportedly a smoldering wreck in the Atlantic, after catching on fire 90 nautical miles (170 km) southwest of the island Faial.
Thousands of Porsches, Audis, and Lamborghinis were marooned on an unmanned burning cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean Thursday. […] The ship was still burning and billowing out clouds of white smoke as a Portugal navy ship inspected whether it was in danger of sinking, officials said.
Luke Vandezande, a spokesperson for Porsche, said the company estimates around 1,100 of its vehicles were among those on board Felicity Ace at the time of the fire.
My first guess would still be that a Lamborghini started the blaze. Here’s just a thought. Someone was in a Lambo revving the engine with nowhere to go. This is a common thing for people who like to play loud noises but don’t understand when the car doesn’t move to let heat dissipate (including excessive waste, such as flaming exhaust), then at some point flames engulf the body.
In an ironic twist for their manufacturer (regulations cheating Volkswagen) one easily could argue that diesel vehicles (even Porsche) shipped to Americans would have been far less likely to cause such an environmental disaster.
3 F83 AUDI E-TRON
24 GEA AUDI E-TRON SPORTBACK
1 GEA AUDI E-TRON SPORTBACK
5 GEN AUDI E-TRON
30 F4B AUDI Q4 E-TRON
29 F4B AUDI Q4 E-TRON
1 F83 AUDI E-TRON
Also of note on the boat is a 2016 FORD MUSTANG VIN: 1FA6P8CF6G5283818 consigned to 313 AMBER JILL COVE KILLEEN, TX 76549. I don’t see anyone writing about that, let alone a 2018 HARLEY DAVIDSON FAT BOB VIN: 1HD1YLK12JC022519 consigned to 820 GARZA JONES LANE LAREDO, TX 78045.
Someone clearly has the right idea here, it’s just being reported very awkwardly (e.g. nothing brings up a history of colonial violence and religious intolerance like butchering pigs).
When numerous local insecurities and large-scale anxieties threatened the empire, hunting pursuits involving the wily Indian pig, it was said, made soldiers out of boys; the attendant spectacles of masculinity aimed to exert symbolic dominance over the restive Indian masses.
It’s no coincidence that the legendary anti-war novel “Lord of the Flies” has a tragic hero named Piggy.
Anyway, back to the article, among all the noise it’s trying to bring up important topics like this one:
…they are reliant on a long supply chain that stretches from the South Pacific or northern Europe all the way back to the U.S.
Supply chains are indeed wasteful and full of vulnerabilities, not to mention crazy loopholes (e.g. Canadian Navy escapes environmental safety regulations while refueling Americans).
I particularly liked the following bits.
The first thing Marines need in those future distributed environments is learning to need less, said then-Lt. Gen. Eric Smith… “That’s insane, why would I move food?” Smith has since been promoted to general and now serves as the Corps’ assistant commandant. […] Eventually Tsukano [commander of Marine Corps Detachment Fort Lee, Virginia] sees the Corps bringing back field mess kits for certain style of deployments, replacing the disposable paper cups, plates and plastic utensils Marines use to eat most of their meals while on deployment. In addition to reducing the logistical burden that comes with transporting millions of disposable products to the front line, the metal plates, bowls and utensils would reduce the trash those units produce, making it easier for them to hide from the enemy.
Need less! Sounds like something out of WWII training manuals, or some 1970s hippie concert.
And then there’s this.
“All the cammie paint, the cammie netting, all the operating at night, that is all for naught if your logistics is loud and screaming in on these large trucks,” [Maj. Patrick Fitzgibbons, with Warfighter Instructor Battalion] added. The foraging techniques, if done right, will improve the Marines’ relationship with the locals around their base, turning the Marines’ housing into a local economy boon rather than a burden, he added.
“Hello I ditched my loud and screaming loud trucks and I’m here to create a local economy boon. Who wants to give me cheap gas or be shot to death?”
To be fair, putting pressure on local populations to cough up their food for a foreign military doesn’t have the optimal sound to it. Is it really an economy boon when the Americans arrive in large numbers pointing guns and saying they’re very hungry because food no longer is being moved to them? Wars have literally started (1859 Pig War) due to American hostility negotiating the price of one pig.
Very interesting reading, and far too late unfortunately for all those soldiers whose lives were destroyed by decades of toxic logistics such as “burn pits” and abject failures to integrate with local communities.
Eighty years ago, wartime necessitated the introduction of the Royal Enfield WD/RE ‘Flying Flea’ and the Welbike, which were parachuted into occupied Europe, providing a means for airborne and assault troops to transmit messages. […] “Motorcycles have been in military use ever since they were invented. So, what we’re doing is nothing new – what’s new is the electrification side of it and the opportunities that presents…they can be used in a way where a petrol engine would just give your position away.”
Electric bikes have many obvious advantages, already getting a lot of attention from special forces in America: given low sound and heat profiles they are much safer, faster, lighter and easier to maneuver than liquid fuel bikes, not to mention an easier and safer supply chain.
Without a Motorcycle in Kandahar, ‘You Are Like a Prisoner’. A foreshadowing of how the Afghan war would be won and lost by distributed / localization networks, hit & run tactics, and terrain advantages.
In terms of the US Army, consider how they rode mountain-bike field tests way back in 1896, as I’ve written here before, so the Ogden Bolton electric bike from 1895 might be a better “nothing new” reference than a smelly, greasy 1939 Royal Enfield.
Source: ElectricBike
Speaking of references, in 1991 there was even a book published that detailed a century of bikes used in war. It’s kind of amazing to think how many better references there may be versus that WWII Enfield.
Swiss book that gets far less attention than it should
In WWI soldiers allegedly even were pulling heavy gear into battle using bicycles as if some kind of direct replacement for horse power. You’d think electricity would be on their mind.
Source: Leeds Bikes
Journalists in 1914 indeed mention that a bike has a major advantage because it can be dropped flat to the ground and completely hidden from enemy fire, which seems an odd point to make today yet it was an innovation in military thinking at the time.
Being completely hidden, of course, is again why the electric motor signature has been so compelling for 100 years versus oil burners.
And from there, the 1938 McDonald seems even more relevant, especially because by this time Japan was using bicycles in major offensive campaigns (1937 invasion of China).
Source: ElectricBike
Given the superiority of electric, it’s a wonder anyone bothered with gasoline bikes at all.
It seems all too easy to find evidence of electric bikes in military projects throughout history that are far more relevant to today’s British paratrooper than an Enfield of WWII. Here’s a good one:
In 1997, [US Government was] seeking a way to move military troops and equipment without the heat or noise signatures of a combustion engine and due to Montague’s experience in the field, they won the grant to develop the Tactical Electric No Signature (TENS) Mountain Bike. Montague worked closely with Currie Technologies on their earliest electric systems to equip these military models with the best electric motor technology of the time. Currie is still making electric drive systems used on many e-bikes today.
US military Tactical Electric No Signature (TENS) Mountain Bike. Source: Montague bikes
Someone in the US military surely thought TENS would be an hilarious acronym for an 18-speed electric bicycle.
So what really is new? The oil industry seems to be losing its death grip. In retrospect, bikes never should have been anything but electric this whole time.
I mean I know it’s fashionable to say electric bikes have short range, have trouble keeping a charge in extreme weather… but let’s be honest about such nonsense.
You can’t pull gasoline out of thin air or water like you can electricity. Even diesel has potential to be created from local sources that gasoline clearly does not. I’ve always found electricity available in even the most remote locations, places oil was nowhere to be found.
In fact, WWII motorcyclists reminisce about their leaky and wasteful fuel cans, which could never serve modern operations.
“We had flimsy cans of petrol, so you cut them in half, pierced it with a lot of holes, three-quarter fill it with earth, pour petrol and put a match on it and it would burn for a long while. That’s how we used to brew up [tea] while we’re on the road!”
With an electric bike he would have just heated water using a simple pad or pole plugged into the battery, having none of the signature/footprint issues of a setting that petrol can on fire.
It has several important historical characteristics that make it look like something very modern even today.
Designed for the switch to a peacetime economy
Designed by 200 Tachikawa Aircraft employees
Extreme shortage of gasoline
Top speed of 35 km/h (22 mph) and a cruising range of 65 km (40 miles) on a single charge
Passenger car and truck models
Battery compartment in the cabin floor, with two “bomb bay” doors on either side
Battery cases on rollers so used batteries could be quickly exchanged with fresh ones
I bring it up again as people lately have been saying they wish they had a quick way to replace their electric car batteries instead of using a gasoline-pump like attachment for slow (complicated and dangerous) charging.
That is what Tama offered in its “bomb bay” like doors and energy swap cases:
Tama power swap used cases of batteries on rollers
Well I guess that means look at 1947 for the answers from war-time aircraft engineers who understood the significance of rapid replacement, refuel turnaround and similar efficiencies.
Of course it wouldn’t happen today for cars without someone over-hyping automation. The Japanese in fact tried outsourcing battery swap to a 2009 Silicon Valley startup, but it arguably died due to massive fraud (*cough* Tesla *cough*) polluting the market.
The Japanese Ministry of Environment has invited Better Place to build a battery exchange station in Japan and engage with the country’s carmakers.
The Chinese notably refer to the brilliant 1940s Japanese model of drive-through EV battery-swapping as being “killed by Tesla years ago”.
That makes it even more tempting to get excited by a Taiwanese company GoGoro as they have slick marketing calling their products “reimagined”.
It’s basically the most distributed and modern take yet on what came so long before the ill-conceived centralized (and often fraudulent — Tesla chargers were dirty diesel engines) “plug-in” market that’s slow, dangerous and bad for batteries.
Source: GoGoro
We’re essentially going back to the beginning, which is good for modern electric vehicles. What would a Tama look like today? Here’s the latest Nissan concept.
Nissan “Hang Out” concept EV, which could be mistaken for having 1947-era battery swap doors.
The most exciting thing about Japanese innovation in stop-and-swap transit models is that any home anywhere could be a supplier. It’s much more attractive and sensible to have someone grab a power pack to go than to hook up to any charger.
If I really think outside the box, literally, then the Nissan car full of batteries can be the swappable battery for a house (like Russian nesting doll batteries). Roll your battery tray into the car and power your car off plugin. Then roll the battery car into the garage and power your house off grid.
Fun fact, since 2013 the Nissan LEAF was engineered to send power (Bidirectional EV as specified in UL 9741), like a giant house battery on wheels.
And even that model goes back centuries.
Imagine hanging a small sign outside your home that says “power cell available”, like the hanging red lamp of the Japanese Izakaya.
…many opted to simply make rice at home and purchase side dishes from outside vendors called niuriya (“simmered foods shops.”). Around the year 1750, “seated sake shops” and “simmered foods shops” combined into a new business model, the “simmered foods seated sake shop” (niuri izakaya). The cumbersome term would soon be shortened to “izakaya.”
That’s a hint at the universal services and interoperability/pluggable sharing markets that have led everyone for centuries towards putting trust in any modern transport (car), storage (hotel), or processing (restaurant).
Interesting to historians may be how battery replacement goes back even further to an ancient system of caravanserais spaced 20 miles apart on Persian highways, where a tired horse or camel could be quickly refueled or exchanged with a fresh one.
…Middle East, Central Asia, and North Africa would have been much more difficult if not for the caravanserais… centers for the exchange of goods and culture…
Thinking of transit engineering problems as new just because some minor aspect of it is new, prevents us from seeing the millennia of knowledge right in front of our eyes. And on that note, information security concepts all are basically derived from transit technology safety practices (transport, store, process).
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
