I’ve just read a fascinating and powerful book.

Japan in the Passing Lane was written in the early 1970s by Satoshi Kamata, a Japanese freelance journalist. The English translation was published in 1983. Kamata’s preferred title – Automobile Factory of Despair – is perhaps a better description of the book’s contents.

Kamata joined Toyota as a seasonal worker, one employed for a 6 month period. In the book he describes by means of a daily diary what life in a Toyota plant was then like. The job was harrowing, exploitative, mind-numbing, dangerous – and enormously hard work.

The assembly line moves so fast that Kamata, working in a plant making gearboxes, can barely keep up. That might be understandable when he was first introduced to the job, but it also remains the case months later.

He describes the tasks he has to do at his station:

1. I pick up two knock pins (small pieces of steel shaft) with my left hand from a parts box (where identical parts are stored) in front of the assembly line. I insert them into the upper holes on a gear box and then knock them in with the hammer in my right hand.

2. With my right hand, I take an input shaft out of a tin box coming down the assembly line. I insert it into the center hole of the gear box. Holding the input shaft from the other side with my left hand, I drive it in with the hammer. (Sometimes it doesn’t go in easily.)

3. With my left hand, I screw a synchronizing ring to an end into which an input shaft has been driven.

4. I turn the gear box around.

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When we ran the story on modifying the Honda Insight’s TPS signal, I knew that we’d get some attention. That’s in part because to a much greater degree than with the Toyota Prius, Insight owners – especially in the US – are much more likely to modify their cars.

But what I hadn’t counted on was the stupidity that’s so rampant in car discussion groups. Just as occurred when I wrote about upgrading the Insight’s rear springs to improve load carrying and handling (see this blog), all the idiots came out of the woodwork.

Examples? Try these:

Just my opinion but the circuit does not extend lean-burn, it just helps those with a heavy foot maintain a smoother TPS input into the ECU and the Insight will not drop out nearly as quickly.

Well, no kidding – that’s exactly what the article says the modification achieves!

He was driving pretty fast and I get better results with just my foot.

I was doing the same speeds as other traffic, 80, 100, 110 km/h – what do you normally do, dawdle along in the slow lane?

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One of the aspects I like most about hybrid and electric-powered vehicles is regenerative braking.

Regeneration braking (“regen”) occurs when the electric motor is used as a generator, so charging the battery and in turn slowing the vehicle.

Regen is important for energy-efficiency – the energy that would normally be wasted in friction braking is instead utilised. In many driving conditions this can result in a substantial improvement in fuel economy (hybrids) or driving range (battery electric).

However, I like regen most because it is really effective from a driving perspective.

Unlike friction braking, the faster that you are going, the better regen works. The faster-moving vehicle has more potential energy that in turn can be turned into more electric energy. That’s the case with friction braking as well (the potential energy is higher so more heat energy can be generated) but since conventional brakes reduce in effectiveness as they are required to do more work, the feeling is not the same.

Regen braking can feel like the ‘inexorable giant hand’ pulling you back, all with smoothness and a degree of control that is impossible to obtain with friction brakes.

And let’s look at the subject of control for a moment.

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Today it’s been rather hard to concentrate on work.

Instead of the sounds of birds, my home office has been filled with the noise of an excavator working in the front garden. The roar of the diesel; the grinding of its scoop teeth on rocks; the clatter as the driver changes buckets.

After living in this house for about eight years, I am finally having a decent workshop built. The shed is going to be (I hope) 14 metres x 6 metres, a huge area of floor space for my pan-brake, lathe, mill, bandsaw, oxy acetylene – and all the rest of the gear.

That equipment currently resides in the space under my (elevated) house – but that area is not weatherproof and has low ceiling clearance. It’s also not anywhere near 84 square metres in size…

The excavator is smoothing and levelling, creating the pad for the shed. It might be in the front yard but the unusual shape of the block actually tucks it into a space scarcely visible from the road, and on an area of land we seldom – if ever – used. The block is steeply sloped so quite a lot of earthmoving work is needed: today another level was scooped out for a shed rainwater tank, a rock retaining wall was built, and an area was built up and compacted.

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Let’s talk about new car tests.

When I first started writing them, about ten years ago, I said to myself that I was not – simply not – going to write wishy washy, shades-of-grey tests.

If the car has good points, I would emphasise them. If the car had bad points, I would emphasise them. I would not do as so many others do, and that is to use trendy, chatty writing to disguise that in fact little was actually being said about what made a car good or bad.

The results of the approach that I have taken has been threefold.

One: some manufacturers no longer lend us cars to test, something I have covered at length previously.

Two: in discussion groups and in emails I cop a lot of criticism – I’m a dickhead, on the payroll of a company, don’t know what I am talking about, don’t understand the concept of the car, and so on.

Three: I am happy with the work I have done, knowing that I have never kowtowed to vested interests to write a report that pulls punches or says nothing much.

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I loved buying tools and relish for years afterwards their effectiveness. I am not talking tools like spanners and screwdrivers, but things that are much less common.

One example is my tube bender. Small benders for tube and pipe come in two complexions: those that use a hydraulic jack and inside formers, and those that use hand power and inside and outside dies. The hydraulic benders are designed to be used with thick-walled pipe and the latter, hand-operated, designs are for smaller diameter, thin-wall tube.

Primarily to help build my recumbent pedal trike, about 9 months ago I bought one of the hand machines. It has dies for 3/8 – 7/8 inch round tube and ¾ – 1 inch square tube.

And, for a cheap machine, it works very well. When bending high tensile 7/8 inch chrome-moly tube (something it’s not meant to do!), I place an extension on its handle to apply greater leverage. However, for smaller tube sizes, the standard handle is sufficient.

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My wife’s business Speed Pedal sells recumbent trikes, folding bikes and bike trailers. Through her work, she often gets to meet people who collect unusual pedal-powered machines. So there’s the man with something like 100 bikes – everything from historic to current, from tandem to single to well… you name it! And another bloke who rides just weird looking machines. Complete with his long flowing beard, on the road he looks an amazing eccentric.

I always figured that was all a bit bizarre, but I now think I am heading in the same direction.

You see, I’ve recently bought two new bikes. And both of them are pretty strange. However, the difference that I have to a collector is that I am buying them only to use, and if I don’t like the machine, I’ll sell it.

To people reared on the traditional diamond framed bike, the fact that other bike designs even exist is a source of surprise. I have previously covered (both in this blog and AutoSpeed) the design and development of my favourite pedal-powered machine – a full suspension recumbent trike.

However, while I love the machine, it has a major disadvantage – it is large and unwieldy to send to distant places.

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A bit over a year ago I wrote a story that decried the direction new cars were taking.

On important aspects like vision, weight, ride quality and real road handling (the ‘real’ takes into account the width of the car), many new cars are abysmal.

However, in safety, performance and emissions, new cars are undeniably excellent.

But of course the point is that there’s nothing to stop new cars being safe, performing well and having good fuel economy – and having good vision, ride quality and doing it all at a lower weight.

In the list of deficiencies I should also have mentioned load space and flexibility – there’s been little change for decades. In fact, considering the external dimensions, whenever I get into a big four-wheel drive wagon like (say) a Pajero,  I am astonished at how little interior space there actually is.

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Unusually, in this blog I want to refer you all to the AutoSpeed article that was published today. As I have written above, I think it’s probably the most important article that we’ll publish this year.

So what’s it about?

In short, the article is based on a paper written by Dr Andrew Simpson when he was working for the Sustainable Energy Group at the University of Queensland. His paper looks at a huge number of alternative fuels and drivelines, concluding which are the best from both energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions perspectives.

Andrew has given us permission to use major excerpts of the paper, and in fact went through it again to ensure that his conclusions are current. The full paper can be downloaded from the link at the end of the article.

His is a detailed ‘well-to-wheel’ study, where the environmental costs of producing the fuel and the efficiency of the cars using them are evaluated. Even better, they’re all benchmarked against a real car, the Holden Commodore. Even better again, the alternative fuelled cars are modelled to have the same range and performance as the Commodore.

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