Audi’s has won the Le Mans race nine times according to Eurotuner Magazine. The victory this year was especially important for them. They not only managed to take the top three places, but they proved yet again that a reliable engine with high efficiency is actually faster than a powerful one.

The development achievements of this year’s Audi R15 TDI bode extremely well for their consumer models:

In 2010 the demands on diesel engines were particularly high due to the restrictions imposed by the regulations. “Squeezing more output from the engines without sacrificing reliability posed a great challenge, which our team mastered in an outstanding manner,” said Ullrich after the race. “We did not use the full potential of the V10 TDI engine this year in order to be on the safe side. That’s why it was clear to us even before the race that we wouldn’t have the fastest car – but a very reliable and efficient one. The development objective of the R15 plus was 20 percent higher efficiency. We managed to achieve this. We’ve been working very hard for this over the past few months. This makes this success even more rewarding.”

20% more efficient? Congrats Audi! Reliable and efficient wins the race. More importantly it translates well to the average driver — still happy and more productive (fewer stops) while causing less damage to the environment.

Perhaps it should be noted that Audi had reliability issues last year that cost them the race, losing to Peugeot’s diesel supercar.

Peugeot out-Audied Audi

The R15 was new last year and Audi decided to save money by performing fewer tests before competition. This cost them the race. Peugeot capitalized, which setup Audi this year to relaunch the R15 with significantly more tests and a better understanding of risk from overheating.

Alas, it is hard to watch all of this and wonder when US car manufacturers will see the beauty of diesel efficiency in a performance vehicle. Dodge and Cadillac are the obvious candidates. Imagine a CTS diesel wagon…again.

Controversy is erupting over whether to investigate Halliburton’s work for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Here is my attempt at a remix of the topic.

A report, quoted in the Atlantic, says cementing failure is the most common cause for spills:

According to the Wall Street Journal, “a 2007 study by three U.S. Minerals Management Service officials found that cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period. That was the single largest factor, ahead of equipment failure and pipe failure.”

That is not a good sign for Halliburton, who does a huge amount of cementing work for oil rigs and had just finished cementing the day before the blast on the Gulf rig. The Atlantic takes a report from the New York Times to point out Halliburton has had major cementing failures in the past, including a ten week oil spill in Australia last year.

…while 199 barrels of cement should have been used to achieve the “top of cement” standard practice on the Montara well, only 133 barrels were used. Even more mistakes appear to have occurred when that cement casing was tested. Extra cement was pumped into the well in a test designed to check if the casing was full. When the liquid flowed back as expected, it was thought to be pure cement. It has now emerged that the fluid was contaminated with seawater. That mistake significantly weakened the strength of the casing as a barrier.

Ok, so cementing failures are common, and Halliburton is a major cementing company. It makes statistical sense that they have a good chance of failure. Since they already have been found responsible for recent and catastrophic failures it makes even more statistical sense to investigate them. The probability of blame for the Gulf incident increases further as experts have testified that this particular failure was probably caused by a “poor cement job”. Add to this mix that Halliburton management has been accused of a pattern of fraud due to audits in Iraq and Afghanistan that turned up billions in questioned and unsupported costs.

Just when you think there is more than ample cause for concern and investigation it turns out even a Halliburton powerpoint presentation has warned that cementing risks include…a blow out:

Challenges

” Shallow water flow may occur during or after cement job
” Under water blow out has happened
” Gas flow may occur after a cement job in deepwater environments that contain major hydrate zones.
” Destabilization of hydrates after the cement job is confirmed by downhole cameras.
” The gas flow could slow down in hours to days if the de- stabilization is not severe.
” However, the consequences could be more severe in worse cases.

This makes it basically indisputable that an investigation into Halliburton is required. It reminds me of another catastrophe related to risk management — the Space Shuttle Challenger O-ring disaster.

Questions need to be asked of Halliburton whether engineers knew the risks, whether the risks were communicated well to management, and whether management failed to understand or make the right decisions.

Tufte’s close analysis demonstrates that the engineers had the information they needed–that O-ring failure rates rose as temperature declined–but didn’t display it clearly. Seven astronauts’ lives could have been saved with a simple graph of previous O-ring damage level against temperature (Allison, 2).

The necessity of perspicuous representation is seen most clearly in such cases as the Challenger, Tufte argues. The engineers at Morton Thiokol failed to display the data clearly, he claims, and so the astronauts died.

Nonetheless there is a group that stands against any investigation of Halliburton. It seems to be represented by the telegenic daughter of the former CEO of Halliburton (and former US Vice President) Dick Cheney.

I find it difficult to fathom, given the above details on cementing risks and the difficult questions related to risk management, how and why the Cheney family would want to fight against the investigation of Halliburton.

When Liz Cheney appeared on ABC’s “This Week” she took the odd position that criticism of Halliburton is just a “Left talking point” and the investigation of Halliburton is a blame shift.

“It is truly amazing, I actually heard that George Bush was responsible for the breakup of Tipper and Al Gore’s marriage, too. It’s incredible, the extent to which people are now trying to shift blame. … The left — you guys have for years been demonizing Bush and Cheney, and I’m sure you’ll be demonizing them for years going forward. But we have a catastrophe on the Gulf coast, a catastrophe that happened on this administration’s watch, which this administration is failing to clean up.”

There really is no logic there. When talking about the cause of the spill and accountability for the cause she immediately shifts attention away and tries to talk about the clean up. She gets herself in further trouble by claiming the Halliburton’s fraud charges have “no relationship to the facts”.

Mediamatters.org provides overwhelming evidence that Cheney is factually wrong in her statements. The fraud charges are indisputable.

Instead of giving good reason to exclude Halliburton from blame for the spill, she clearly appears to be the one who tries to shift blame to the White House by using a dishonesty campaign.

Liz Cheney practically lives on cable news. She also lies routinely, accuses the president of helping terrorists, and is so mindless in her attacks on the nation’s elected leadership, she’s something of a national embarrassment. And for Republican recruiters, apparently she’s perfect.

I would like to steer clear of the politics. However, that seems impossible with the Cheney family especially since they appear to be trying to influence public opinion and votes through false statements. Remember when Dick Cheney said the insurgency in Iraq was over in 2005 and he said he believed the US would be greeted as liberators? Liz now seems to be following a similar path of confusion with the facts.

The Bluffton Today gives an amusing take on the this habit of glossy and confused leadership:

BP blamed Transocean because it was their platform, Transocean blamed Halliburton because it’s trendy, and Halliburton blamed everyone else because they’re not even sure how they got into the oil industry. “I thought we were a security company or something,” said one confused Halliburton executive.

The cause is still unknown and Halliburton’s work is suspect (not least of all because it is experimental and very high-risk), which is why they definitely should be included in the investigation. If Halliburton, and Liz Cheney, are so confident they have no blame then they also should have no opposition to the investigation that will help prove cementing was not the cause of this spill. After all, cementing was not a factor in 21 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period…

Sort of…the foundation behind car racing today is petroleum — burning tires, brakes, oil, gasoline, just to name the obvious stuff.

Before I get to the story, however, I first want to mention that racing cars is big among Silicon Valley success stories. Many high-tech firms where I have worked have brought their wasteful and inefficient “race” vehicles on-site for display.

It has always been endless supply of petroleum this, yada yada endless supply of petroleum that (to be fair, with the exception of one prototype Tesla). Engineers also who were race fanatics ran only gasoline in their personal vehicles. One co-worker literally drove his Ferrari to work on a daily basis (when he wasn’t driving his Maybach). He had to arrive early in order to avoid speed bumps in the parking lot — driving through empty spaces. Another guy commuted in a heavily-modified classic Porsche that smelled like a refinery as it defied the very concept of winning a race — efficiency.

I thought it unusual to find such a motivated, intelligent and innovative group of people who did not factor into success the opportunity of less waste. The whole history of racing is about reduction of waste (from aerodynamics to rear-view mirrors). It felt like they were still banking on the politics and economics from the early 1970s (pre fuel crisis) where US/UK race culture worried little about fuel supplies. Why don’t we measure a car’s efficiency full stop? Why does fuel, let alone petroleum as a whole, get an exception?

I never will forget the day a race vehicle was on display to promote the 2005 San Jose Grand Prix. I asked the man in the Grand Prix shirt how quickly tires and brake pads are consumed in a race and what the impact was to the course.

It seemed like a sensible thing for me to ask at the time, since I was studying energy efficiency as it relates to security (e.g. winning). I was not trying to be unusual or overly curious in my question. After days and days of meetings related to energy consumption (some datacenters use more energy than small cities) and the risks to IT, similar issues in vehicle engineering just came into focus easily.

This was compounded (pun not intended) by the fact that the Grand Prix cars ran on a temporary street circuit and I wondered about the amounts of brake dust and tire rubber, not to mention exhaust and oil, left in heavily used pedestrian areas. Was it more or less than a regular day of traffic? I didn’t know and I was curious if anyone had ever measured or studied impact. That is why I asked.

Around the same time I had just managed to convince Yahoo! to convert its employee transportation fleet to a BioDiesel blend. I also convinced them to let me convert their cafeteria waste oil into BioDiesel to run my own vehicle (I went a year without paying for fuel). Conversion of the employee transportation fleet at Yahoo! to BioDiesel was a success…although for the record it was *not* my idea to call buses the Green Machine. Perhaps you can see where I was going with this…

The reply: “No one has ever asked that. I’ll get back to you.”

I never heard back, naturally (pun not intended), and I have yet to see any reference to green engineering for the Grand Prix.

Now, back to the real story, I read that the IndyCar announces new engine strategy for 2012

The engines will also be more efficient, with the series looking at new technologies for energy recovery, hybrids, fuel conservation and other developing green initiatives.

That is fantastic news. Nothing drives innovation like competition. The shift to a box rule means even diesel could soon be accepted on the Indy circuit. This means NASCAR or even F1 will follow suit eventually, probably three to five years after.

The new platform calls for the ethanol-fueled engines to be up to six cylinders, allow turbocharging and produce between 550 and 700 horsepower, depending on the type of course the series is racing.

Current engines are eight cylinders, produce about 650 horsepower and are made by Honda exclusively.

IndyCar ran on CH3OH or Methanol until 2007. NASCAR as usual follows the IndyCar example and is announcing a switch to Ethanol.

However, I have to say meh (pun not intended) since ethanol is hardly ever a great choice even when you already have what seems to be a surplus of source. It has half the efficiency of gasoline and in reality comes from very limited sources. That means if you get a new Tahoe that runs 12 mpg (I’m being generous here) on gasoline and you switch to Ethanol you will get 6 mpg. In other words it’s only real benefit over unleaded petroleum in America is that it benefits the corn industry. Next fuel please NASCAR.

I also hate to mention this but I wonder if Honda was pairing two of their four cylinder engines to meet the eight cylinder spec…wouldn’t that give them the most benefit in terms of commercial applicability? I guess I never thought of Honda as a V-8 leader but here we are.

Out with the old engines and tired corn-fuel marketing campaign and in with the new stuff like Audi’s amazing Le Mans diesel race car that dominated the series for five straight years or VW’s Paris-Dakar champion Toureg TDI diesel 4×4.

Coolest looking 4×4 ever? I’ll take two.

Peugeot finally wrestled the Le Mans title away from Audi this year by running their own diesel, the sleek new 908 HDI racer.

Yes, that’s a diesel…and you thought Speed Racer was just a cartoon. The only thing that could be better than the proven Audi/VW/Peugeot success with diesel would be an electric-diesel hybrid.

Imagine an IndyCar screaming out of the pits at full-throttle with zero rev/engine noise and then switching to a 700 horsepower diesel that just purrrs at top speed. Major game change. Etha-what?

Everyone knows consumption is a major factor in racing. It makes perfect sense. Less means more. We’re talking about a better average speed from less stops, for example. An electric-diesel hybrid needs so many fewer pit stops than a V-8 guzzling ethanol it would change automobile racing completely. Toyota had it half right with their Le Mans hybrid-electric Supra.

Hybrid-electric? Perhaps we should call it an electric-gasoline hybrid to leave open the option of other fuels.

In conclusion, racing impacts our lives. The technology trickles down to our every day challenges. We all would like to spend less time stopped at the pump and more actually doing fun and productive things. If only more consumers recognized the benefits of better mpg as it relates to their quality of life. Has this caught on from Le Mans? Paris-Dakar? Maybe IndyCar can popularize it — imagine how much time you gain when you stop for gas half-as-often. How much of your life is stuck at the pump?

While we are celebrating the shift in IndyCar rules, perhaps they also could begin to factor in the complete data picture of waste.

How fast should brake pads and tires wear and what should they leave behind? How much particulate matter should be allowed? I know a slower burn is better for competition, but how about things that translate directly to better health — less waste on the streets and in the air. That is really what it means when we start to talk about going green. The new IndyCar box rule for engines is a huge step in the right direction. Let’s hope we see some diesel-hybrids with biodegradable non-toxic rubber tires and pads out there.

The NIST Smart Grid Collaboration Site has many interesting files, including a spreadsheet of all the related privacy concerns, laws, regulations and standards.

The latest meeting notes, for example, highlight that consumers can purchase a device and monitor a power signature without a smart meter or access to the grid.