I, Hybrid

Your first law is precisely what's wrong with the American consumer. S/he demands power and comfort.

By the way, it is noteworthy that the first real robots violated Dr. Asimov's First Law in spades:

"A robot shall do no harm to a human being."

The first real robots were self-guided missiles, designed, built, and used for the sole purpose of killing human beings. The closest thing to a robot before that were automated production machinery that performed repetitive tasks (and put human beings out of work, leading to all the suffering of economic deprivation.)

 

Abiding to the first law has made the Prius a huge success--great fuel economy with similar cost, acceleration, handling, comfort & style. The Hondas don't abide as closely to this law.

 

NiMH batteries are recycleable and expensive, so you dont have to worry about disposal issues. when money is involved, some one will see to it.

 

So what would the "zeroth" law be?

 

Only in computer programming, where elements are numbered by their offset from the beginning of a memory allocation, is the first element called zero. In normal language, there is no "zeroth" element. When there is only one element, it is called the "first," when there are two they are "first" and "second," etc.

 

yes, however, zero was the only number the robots in asimov's stories could use to place a law they discovered themselves ahead of the original 3 laws of robotics... that a robot shall not harm a human unless in not harming him he will bring harm to humanity

(for daniel's benefit, since i guess from his answer he has not read all of asimov's robot books)

 

My understanding (and I think Toyota's press!) is that Nickel-Metal-Hydride batteries are 100% recycleable. That's right: 100%. Every component of an NiMH battery can be recycled or reused in some way. In particular, the nickel is a commodity that can be reclaimed and reused. I'm also under the impression that the chemical components of the battery are not considered environmentally hostile.

By contrast, the older Nickel Cadmium batteries, in addition to having a strong memory-effect issue that guaranteed them a short lifespan, were extremely toxic (because of the Cadmium) and difficult to recycle.

I'm unsure if Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer batteries are similarly 'clean' and easily recycled. Regardless, I believe that Ford and several others who are coming to market soon are aiming for Lithium battery packs (but not crystals...:-D).

 

Thank you, Aarons. I don't believe I've read any of Asimov's robot books, though as a youngster I may have read others of his books. I read some sci fi back in those days.

On the other hand, maybe I'm the first on Prius Chat to have read Mario Vargas Llosa's La guerra del fin del mundo (would have been 3 or 4 years ago). I regard it as one of the great books of all time, highly recommended to anyone who reads Spanish. I cannot speak for the translation (The War of the End of the World).

The Prius violates Tony's 0 law on short trips: It burns more gas, and therefore pollutes more, because of its imperative to warm up fast. It needs a Short-Trip Selector Switch, which would tell it the trip will be too short for the reduced emissions later to compensate for the increased fuel usage during the warm-up. (This could also be achieved with a 25-mile EV range.)

 

As I understand the Prius, as in other areas, pollutes less even on short trips than comparable cars.

Yes, it does burn more fuel than absolutely necessary, thus resulting in more CO2 than the minimum required (but less than other cars even under those conditions), but it actually traps the HCs and other particulates, then burns them off once the Catalytics are heated up.

So, compared to any other car with cold Catalytics, it still pollutes far less.

 

Yes, but my point was that on short trips, it would pollute even less than it does if it did not force the rapid warm-up cycle. Plus, I'd probably get 25% better mileage on my 4-mile commute.

 

I could get through Prelude to Foundation, which I enjoyed, and I read the other Foundation books and didn't take much from them except that if you somehow find a way to predict the future through patterns of humanity, mutants don't figure into it, hehe. :mrgreen:

 

I would suspect that Asimov would extend the Zeroth law to all of humanity and the future of humanity.

 

When I was in 7th grade I read the whole Foundation Trilogy for a book report. The book report was to be written in class. At the end of the class period, I was still writing away furiously, my english teacher made me stop gave an me an A, I presume on general principle. :lol: