Introductions
Hi! Welcome to our blog. Thanks for dropping by. This post is just a quick one to introduce who we are and what we’re all about.
You can get the quick hits on our About Us Page but this will delve into what we’re all about in a more free-form-style.
Our Mission is to get cars off the road. Full stop. Not necessarily all of the cars, but a lot of them- especially for short little in town trips. I grew up in rural America- you have a truck for getting around on the farm and to do farm stuff (not a $70,000 new one to make you look cool), I get it- we’re not coming for your truck. Cars have a place- unfortunately- they have grown way larger than their place. It’s the 5000 pound H2 that you fire up and run cold for 1.2 miles to go pick up a Mountain Dew from your local bodega, that is the truck I’m coming for.
I’ve got a full post floating around in my head about the absurd mathematics as cars for transit. Maybe I’ll write it soon.
But for now, know that the point of the company (and this blog) is to reduce the egregious use of cars. But why? You may have seen that I happen to love turning wrenches on old cars (see trevorsgarage.com), so why have I turned on cars? Well, two primary reasons- First they’re dangerous- if highway fatalities were a tracked cause of death by the CDC, they would have ranked 13th in 2019 just between septicemia and hypertension [1] [2]. (Seventh if you count additional deaths due to air pollution)[3].
Second, they make biking dangerous. People don’t die on bikes because they were going too fast and wrapped the bike around a telephone pole- they die because they got hit by a car. I like biking- biking will be safer if there are less cars, ergo- I hope to get cars off the road to make biking safer for me.
Of course there are other great reasons too. Cars cause pollution. Heavier cars damage streets. Cars cause inequity and harm disadvantaged populations. I’m not linking these because you can Google any of those statements and get 100 pages about why they are true, in the 21st century that is what I call common knowledge.
I am an AI engineer by trade, and a mechanic by hobby. I think getting cars off the road is a worthwhile endeavor for the reasons listed above and more.
I’m hoping to apply my AI/ML talents into making… well let’s set another heading- sorry this one was kind of short.
It’s on me to keep this blog going. At the time of writing, this is a passion project, but I’m also going into paternity leave (so I may be good at putting out content, or I may go radio-silent for the next ~20 years). My goal is to post at least once a week, but if some car tries to kill me while I’m commuting or running to the grocery store, I may do a bit more.
Some posts will be about highlighting recent technology developments at Electric Elk, some posts will simply be recaps of other relevant blogs / articles I’ve read recently.
So this was some kind of out of order meandering rant- but at least if you come to our blog before we get some other content up then you will know what we’re about and maybe follow us.
Thanks
tg
You can get the quick hits on our About Us Page but this will delve into what we’re all about in a more free-form-style.
Mission
From the About Us page you can read our mission statement, and a brief company history. Let me blow both of those out a bit more first:Our Mission is to get cars off the road. Full stop. Not necessarily all of the cars, but a lot of them- especially for short little in town trips. I grew up in rural America- you have a truck for getting around on the farm and to do farm stuff (not a $70,000 new one to make you look cool), I get it- we’re not coming for your truck. Cars have a place- unfortunately- they have grown way larger than their place. It’s the 5000 pound H2 that you fire up and run cold for 1.2 miles to go pick up a Mountain Dew from your local bodega, that is the truck I’m coming for.
I’ve got a full post floating around in my head about the absurd mathematics as cars for transit. Maybe I’ll write it soon.
But for now, know that the point of the company (and this blog) is to reduce the egregious use of cars. But why? You may have seen that I happen to love turning wrenches on old cars (see trevorsgarage.com), so why have I turned on cars? Well, two primary reasons- First they’re dangerous- if highway fatalities were a tracked cause of death by the CDC, they would have ranked 13th in 2019 just between septicemia and hypertension [1] [2]. (Seventh if you count additional deaths due to air pollution)[3].
Second, they make biking dangerous. People don’t die on bikes because they were going too fast and wrapped the bike around a telephone pole- they die because they got hit by a car. I like biking- biking will be safer if there are less cars, ergo- I hope to get cars off the road to make biking safer for me.
Of course there are other great reasons too. Cars cause pollution. Heavier cars damage streets. Cars cause inequity and harm disadvantaged populations. I’m not linking these because you can Google any of those statements and get 100 pages about why they are true, in the 21st century that is what I call common knowledge.
Our Story
I am an AI engineer by trade, and a mechanic by hobby. I think getting cars off the road is a worthwhile endeavor for the reasons listed above and more.
I’m hoping to apply my AI/ML talents into making… well let’s set another heading- sorry this one was kind of short.
Products/Services
So the most dangerous thing about biking is the cars. Unfortunately, many of the bikes and ebikes are so focused on performance that they forsake many safety features. This blog will be a sort of technical evangelism for work we’re doing to make bikes and ebikes safer, all of which we plan on being open source. Electric Elk is a ‘for-profit’ company, but really just for making enough profit to be sustainable / scale up, the technology is incidental. If we open source it, and someone out businesses us and uses it to make a more successful product, then we have achieved our goal of getting cars off the road so big win all around.About This Blog
It’s on me to keep this blog going. At the time of writing, this is a passion project, but I’m also going into paternity leave (so I may be good at putting out content, or I may go radio-silent for the next ~20 years). My goal is to post at least once a week, but if some car tries to kill me while I’m commuting or running to the grocery store, I may do a bit more.
Some posts will be about highlighting recent technology developments at Electric Elk, some posts will simply be recaps of other relevant blogs / articles I’ve read recently.
So this was some kind of out of order meandering rant- but at least if you come to our blog before we get some other content up then you will know what we’re about and maybe follow us.
Thanks
tg
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