From here:

Although sometimes attributed to Mark Twain – because it appears in his posthumously-published Autobiography (1924) – this should more properly be ascribed to Disraeli, as indeed Twain took trouble to do: his exact words being, ‘The remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”.’

And there are no greater ‘damned lies’ than readership or circulation figures for magazines and other publications. To give you an idea, often when a print magazine quotes ‘readership’, they triple or even quadruple their actual sales figures. Why? Because they assume each copy is read by three or four people!

In the same way – or even, come to think of, much worse ways – web sites quote all sorts of figures for their readership.

AutoSpeed’s figures are logged by Google. I can look at our daily figures, weekly figures, annual figures – or even figures for the content, section by section. Further, through internal Web Publications data, I can view readership numbers, article by article. Finally, I can also see the number of reader ratings for each article, and what those ratings are.

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Today’s AutoSpeed article on electric vehicles is, as the box in the article states, based on a seminar given by Dr Andrew Simpson.

Dr Simpson produced the paper that we used as the foundation for the Assessing the Alternatives article we ran about a year ago – it’s amongst the very best of articles you’ll find in deciding which fuels vehicles should be using.

Andrew Simpson has just returned to Australia from four years in the US, where he worked at the US Government National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, and then was a Senior R&D engineer at Tesla Motors.

I found his seminar quite riveting: it changed my views on a host of subjects relating to electric cars.

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Back here I covered how, when I first started to design my Air 150 recumbent trike , I spent a lot of time looking for the lightest possible springs.

I tried rubber springs (in torsion, shear and compression), carbon fibre, elastomers and others.

My initial desire was to use torsion bars, preferably made from spring steel. However, I gave up on doing this for a number of reasons – weight, stress level in the steel (best addressed by using multiple leaves, Volkswagen Beetle style), and the difficulty in fastening the ends of the bar without introducing even higher stresses.

And the Firestone air-springs I chose to use in the final design are still my pick for springs in ultra light-weight vehicles.

But the other day I came across a product that might have changed the situation. It’s a type of skateboard that uses two wheels, mounted in line. The two halves of the board can pivot relative to one another around a longitudinal axis, and the two wheels can rotate, castor style.

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The other day I was reading a very interesting book. ‘Behind the Wheel’ is a social history of motoring (as opposed to a history of cars). It was first published in 1977 and was authored by Maurice Michael and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. Here is one section I found fascinating:

Imagine the modern motorist’s reactions to being placed in the driving seat of, say, an 1898 Benz.

”It’s very comfortable sitting up here and the visibility is splendid, but there isn’t any instrument panel. Where do I find the starter switch?”

”There is no starter switch; the electric starter has not yet been invented.”

”I suppose we start by hand, then. Where’s the starting handle?”

“There’s no starting handle either. You simply turn the engine over by pulling on the rim of the flywheel, and hope for better luck than the famous Mr. Koosen who wrote that he had done so ‘… until darkness overtook me. The only result was a pair of worn-out gloves.’ Oh and do retard the ignition first with that push-pull knob behind your legs. There isn’t any crankcase, and if the engine should back-fire you don’t want to catch your hand in the flywheel. Where is the engine, did you say? It’s underneath your seat.”

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Suspension design is great fun, and very challenging.

I am not talking about ‘design’ as in picking which upgrade kit to buy for your car, but much more fundamental aspects like developing a whole new suspension – anti-dive percentage, camber change, longitudinal and lateral virtual swing arm lengths… stuff like that.

I haven’t done it for a car but I have applied exactly the same concepts to human powered vehicles.

When I designed the double wishbone front end for my first recumbent trike, I struggled with setting the ground rules. Like the:

• Position of front upper wishbone mount
• Position of rear upper wishbone mount
• Position of front lower wishbone mount
• Position of rear lower wishbone mount
• Position of upper ball-joint
• Position of lower ball-joint

With each location defined in three planes, that’s 18 variables. Add to that wheel offset and diameter, and inner and outer steering tie rod positions, and you’re looking at 26 or more accurate dimensions needed before you can even start.

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In my hand right now I am holding a bolt.

More specifically, it’s an Allen-key bolt (sometimes called a ‘cap screw’) that’s 30mm long and 10mm in diameter. It uses a metric thread.

It’s a high tensile bolt, which means – in plain terms – that it’s bloody strong.

I’ve just stepped over to the digital scales – it weighs 28 grams.

Now the reason that the bolt was sitting on my desk is that a moment or two ago I took it out of my pocket. And the reason it was in my pocket is that I’ve just stepped in from my home workshop, after finishing for the evening.

I’ve been building ‘Chalky’, my recumbent, full suspension touring bike that I hope to be one of the best human-powered touring machines in the world. Best for me, anyway.

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Hastened by the current world financial crisis and its effects on (particularly) US car makers, there is growing discussion in this country about the demise of the Ford Falcon model.

What to many people was unthinkable even only a year or two ago is now becoming an ‘it’ll probably happen’ scenario that while not palatable, is at least open for discussion.

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The boom in GPS-based navigation systems must have seen a diminution in sales of book-based street directories. I haven’t seen the figures to support that, but it’s certainly what you’d assume to be taking place.

But the companies that produce street directories (and of course in many cases also supply the software for the nav systems) are fighting back.

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As I have said in the past, AutoSpeed’s internal data generates a daily referrers’ list, where I can see discussion groups and other web pages from which readers are coming.

I read the referrers’ list (and then follow many links) at least a couple of times a day. It tells me, indirectly, which are our most popular articles for that day, and even more importantly, it also shows me how well each article is understood.

Huh – ‘how well it is understood’?

Well, the sad truth is that many AutoSpeed articles are completely misunderstood by readers. But again, that’s useful to me – if my writing hasn’t been clear enough, or the photos of sufficient quality, then I get to see the outcome expressed loud and clear.

But there’s nothing I can do about wilful ignorance.

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