Green Flag

There is an interesting partnership going on under the radar these days. It is a partnership between companies that manufacture solar power parts and companies that manufacture cars. It seems like an unlikely pairing at first glance but it makes perfect sense when you start to delve deeper and learn more about it.

Automakers have experience that can benefit solar power makers. For example, auto makers are highly experienced in constructing metal-based items on a large scale. They’ve learned how to do this while keeping production costs down. The solar industry can benefit from this knowledge to create large-scale solar power solutions that are affordable for consumers.

In turn, the solar industry can supply companies with the energy-efficient parts that they need to please green-minded customers. For example, a company called Cosma is now supplying Toyota parts and Toyota accessories as well as parts for the auto bodies and chassis of many other manufacturers.

What is happening here is that two distinct but potentially related industries are coming together to teach one another what they know. If they are able to successfully learn each other’s tricks then the market should benefit. This means that the consumers will benefit in the end.

If you have ever spent any time shopping for insurance coverage, you know how confusing and time consuming the task can be. In the past, before so many of the auto insurers had any online presence, the task was literally spent on the phone talking for what seemed like hours with the customer service representative about various aspects you may require for insuring your car or truck.

Not that you should mind having to speak live to someone, but time is clearly money. When you can simply click onto an insurance website, enter some information and get quotes on how much it will cost you to get insured, you will most likely save yourself a ton of time.

Certain services also aggregate insurance resources providing you with one stop sites that will give you the prices for several of the top insurance companies. This really comes in handy when you want to compare coverage. For instance, whether to get complete coverage or simply go for liability on your vehicle.

Of course, if you own or are planning to purchase a brand new vehicle, you won’t even be able to ask this question (unless of course you are paying cash for the auto.) Most auto lenders strictly require you to purchase a comprehensive insurance plan in order to reduce the risk of loaning you the purchase money.

One thing I learned when I worked in an aftermarket auto parts store was… well, why you shouldn’t buy aftermarket.

It became pretty obvious to me pretty quickly that what people said about aftermarket parts really was true — they don’t last as long as they should.  I can’t even tell you how many warranty returns we had.  Sure, we offered free warranties, so it didn’t cost the customer anything — except gas to drive to the parts store and the time it took to do the repair.

The time that it takes is the thing — and not knowing whether the part you just put in is going to last a while, or leave you stranded on the side of the road within the next year.  That’s why I now tell people it’s a better idea to just get genuine Mitsubishi parts, or Toyota, or whatever.  Ford parts are the most critical — I can’t tell you how often I saw people replacing electrical parts on their Fords, brake switches and headlight switches and the like.

People often say that working in fast food makes them realize how nasty that food is, and makes them not want to eat it ever again.  Working in an aftermarket auto parts store was like that for me: When it really matters, I now buy genuine OEM parts for my car!

A lot is riding on your car’s ablity to burn its fuel efficiently and completely.  The explosion in the combustion chamber basically propels each piston downward in its turn.  This keeps the engine running by maintaining the rotary motion of the crankshaft, which ensures (via the alternator) that all the other necessary systems (such as electronic fuel injection) continue to have power.

With so much depending on combustion in the engine, it always surprises me when engineers design cars with really poorly designed combustion chambers.  For instance, an old boyfriend of mine had a Nissan truck that had not one but two spark plugs per chamber.  Okay, guys, if you have to put two spark plugs in the combustion chamber in order to ensure all the fuel gets burned,  there is something really wrong with your design!

To a lesser extent, how easily it is to change the spark plugs really ought to be a factor in the engine design.  After all, we’re talking about a part that wears out, and therefore needs to be changed with some regularity.  So why wouldn’t you want to make it easy to get to?

Yet my sister’s old 1986 1/2 Toyota Supra was designed so that you had to remove the entire intake manifold in order to get to the spark plugs, which went down into the top of the engine, instead of in from the side, as most cars are designed.  It was really easy to get Toyota parts for that car, but it was a pain in the patootie to actually do the work.

Examples like these just go to show how important it is for car manufacturers to put some thought into how they design their cars!

We have all heard it floating around the rumor mill. The Go Daddy girl (or would she prefer to be called race car driver?) might go from open wheels and road courses to fenders and left turns only. If you ask Danica Patrick if she is thinking about switching from IRL to NASCAR, she isn’t going to say much though. She’s going to throw it all back into the lap of her agents.

And she is actually being smart by not saying anything. In fact, if you take her words at face value it seems as if she doesn’t care one way or another. She just wants to race! She is letting her agents take car of what and where she will be doing the racing.

And this is probably good because she has to be concerned with branding. Whether you like it or not, Danica Patrick has become a brand. She is no different than some of the biggest names in sports. She is right up there with Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Payton Manning. How many Go Daddy commercials have we seen her in? What’s next? Maybe we’ll see her shilling for Pepsi or Bank of America next! After all, the big money is in the sponsorships, not the racing!