Slashdot Mirror

No, unless it is or can be economically comparable to costs at the time it is commercially available, it's next to useless. You seem to have forgotten inflation, price gouging, increases in demand from consumers etc.

You're suggesting that if it's commercially available in (say) 10 years, and approximately a 1:1 direct replacement for fossil diesel, it has to sell for about $2.80 a gallon (at today's prices from some presumably US site called "Daily Fuel Gauge Report"), even if fossil diesel is selling for $6.00 a gallon. That's illogical.

In the U.S., at least, premium is nowhere near twice the cost of regular. http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/
It's actually pretty similar to the cost of diesel, currently.

(when gasoline hits $5/gal in the US, odds are excellent that we'll all be driving less)

Didn't we say that about $3/gal too?

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2008/3/7/the-repercussions-of-4-gas.html

Just a few years ago, auto-industry futurists thought that $3 gas would be a game-changer, unnerving consumers and forcing dramatic changes in their choice of cars and driving behavior.

That article's also a halfway decent read by the way.

Gas is pretty bad now, but it's been worse and we still consume quite a bit.

Highest Recorded Average Price:
Regular Unl. $4.114 7/17/2008
DSL. $4.845 7/17/2008

Saying we'll consume less when we hit $x/gal is absolute bull-hockey. We'll continue to drive as much as we always have until an alternative becomes cheaper (electric if we get cheaper power ie nuclear? excellent public transportation maybe?) or until we literally *cannot* drive.

I see speculation on the cost of the fuel, but nothing whatsoever on the performance of it. This makes my suspicion meter go into alarm mode...

Though, to be fair, ethanol suffers from the same issue.

Looking at the 2010 Town and Country (a similar vehicle to my own Flex-Fuel van), I see these ratings:

E85 - 17mpg

Gas - 24mpg

Adjusted into dollars-per-hundred-miles, using these prices, that's something like:

E85 - $14.13 ($2.403/g)

Gas - $10.87 ($2.610/g)

So even though the price at the pump is less, I'd be a fool to run E85 in even a new vehicle of this class.

Unless this new fuel is better than E85, I can't see how getting it down to a comparable price at the pump is doing us any favors. Now if it is somehow better than E85, then that would be some good news. Alas, the story is mute on this topic.

Napkin math time:
8 Hr charge @ 200V and 50A? gives 80kwh
looking at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html I see an average of 11.59c per kwh gives $9.722 per charge
100 miles per charge mean a direct charging cost of 9.722 cents per mile

Similarly my 1994 minivan gets 23mpg. @ $2.549 per gallon according to http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/
thats 11.08 cents per mile

now if i drove something smaller that got maybe 28mpg (not an unreasonable number) that would drop to 9.104 cents per mile

Talk to me when I can save some money and drive an electric vehicle.
Obviously none of this includes taxes, infrastructure maintenance or any other costs,. just cost per mile for the charge vs gasoline.

In generic terms, a Flex-Fuel vehicle (a vehicle that accepts any mixture of gasoline and ethanol from 0% ethanol/100% gas, all the way up to 85% ethanol/15% gas) has a mileage depreciation that hovers right around 20-25% from standard gasoline.

So, given a car that gets 30MPG on gasoline with a 12 gallon tank, at today's average price of $2.99 / gallon (according to fuel gauge report), would cost you $35.88 for the tank, which yields a range of 360 miles at a final cost of 9.9 cents per mile. Given the hypothetical $1 per gallon ethanol, it would cost you $12 for the tank, and would yield 270-285 miles for the final cost of 4.1 - 4.5 cents per mile (well under half the cost of current gasoline).

In terms of effeciency, ethanol's biggest problem is that the range is significantly lower with today's ICE. If you take a look at projects like the Chevy Volt, and other GM projects, you'll see that they are trying to add a plug-in charging battery / hybrid system on top of their current FFV fleet, making the range that much better / supplemented by battery technologies. If the Chevy Volt lives up to the hype, it's going to have an approx 500 mile range using ethanol and battery.

If we were close to the top, oil (gas, plastic, etc.) would be alot more expensive. Heres an interesting thought. How come the differance between Unleaded and premium is still $0.20? We're not even close to european costs, and the fact that fuel is still fluctuating up AND down instead of just up.

http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/

A barrel is still cheap. (which tells me that we are approaching the changing point (which is still very bad, we are not at the peak)
Economically we are in a bull market, which usually doesn't happen when oil spikes.

Trust me, I freaked out about peak oil for years. I still have a bug out bag.

Disclaimer:
I am no scientist, or analyst. But after working charts on charts the truth is, I can't see anyone freaking out on peak oil untill america pays > $6 a gallon. We are 1/2 there now, but fuel prices are falling back.

Keep your hats (tinfoil) on, but DO NOT PANIC. Just plan for it. Use less now, so you wont feel squeezed (compared to your neighbors) later.

Is peak oil (crises described by peakoil website) a potential reality? In my opinion it is, but not likely. Not for a long time anyway. The more time we have, the less likely it is that we will have an actual crisis, but obtain technology to avert it. Until gas hits $6/gal, I'll be sitting just fine.

[conspiracy theory for ya] Besides, you know all those technologies that GM and Ford stole/bought in the 70's? They'll just start USING them to increase fuel economy on a scale as they see market demand for it.
[/conspiracy] happy now?