Slashdot Mirror

Just because wireless power tools use batteries does not mean that all R&D required to put batteries in an electric car is done. Just because Borg Warner makes gearboxes does not mean the Tesla gearbox is not innovative. We are now 2 steps closer toward electric cars becoming more common, and those are just the inventions that I know about. I'm sure there are many more. Your hand-waving cannot diminish the value of the contributions Tesla engineers have made.

The powertrain that Tesla designed is more efficient than any to come before it. And they had much to do with the design of the gearbox.

Tesla it nothing but a exotic car company.

Repeating the same premise over and over again does not constitute an argument.

Not usual, perhaps something very specific with your car.

A similar question popped up on econbrowser a few months ago. They traced the origins of the chart to a 1998 study, whose data can be found at Table 7.23 of the DOE's Transportation Energy Data Book (large pdf warning).

At the time, I found a 2006 short note on greencarcongress , about a comparison published by Auto Bild, a German weekly magazine. Their data support the notion of a steady increase in fuel consumption with increased speed, even with modern, high speed autos.

Don't know much about diesel do you . Have a look at these figures, they're from 2005 and the standard they refer to has been in effect for a while now. Euro 6 is due and there are already vehicles claiming to meet it. Basically while diesels give out slightly more NOx, gasoline gives out a much larger amount of hydrocarbons per mile than diesel does particulates (soot).

You're proving my point that it's a matter of choosing your poison - hydrocarbons that are only toxic in high quantities, but are ozone depleting, or diesel particulate matter that appears to be toxic even in very low quantities. This is why I say that diesel is bad in cities where there is a high concentration of vehicles in close proximity to people.

Don't know much about diesel do you .
Have a look at these figures, they're from 2005 and the standard they refer to has been in effect for a while now. Euro 6 is due and there are already vehicles claiming to meet it.
Basically while diesels give out slightly more NOx, gasoline gives out a much larger amount of hydrocarbons per mile than diesel does particulates (soot).

Depends on when you run it. Coal plants burn more coal at night than they need for electricity to keep the furnaces hot for peak usage periods. If you run F@H between 9PM and 6AM, you're actually not having much impact on fossil fuel use, pollution or carbon footprint.

That's why electric utilities and some companies are developing programs to make the best use of off-peak power. Electric cars, for example, are exciting because they could engage timers that charge them only during off-peak.

F@H could do the same in principle, with a check-box to run only during late hours. I don't know if they have that feature now.

What were you trying to show with that link? Someone repeating a bunch of debunked talking points? Because that's what she's doing. For example, that "2000 acre" thing. The oil is not concentrated in one 2,000 acre area; it's in more than 30 deposits spread across 640,000 acres of Alaska's North Slope coastal plain (out of 1.5 million), which means stretching roads, pipelines, and other infrastructure that practically renders the area uninhabitable for large wildlife. Even if you only want to look at the "touching the ground" measure of how much land it takes up, the combination of oil infrastructure, drill sites, airports and roads, and gravel mines is *12,000* acres, not 2,000. No rivers in the North Slope? Um, BS. I mean, come on -- you think that all the water on the north side of Alaska drains all the way to the south? I could go on and on. This is a woman who thinks that an animal that spends most of its life hunting on ice flows isn't going to be adversely impacted by their imminent disappearance, and you're acting like she's some kind of environmentalist? Give me a break.

Actually it means horizontal drilling at safe distances below sea level.

It's not rocket science.

Department of Geology at Univ. of Wisconsin

http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g115/oil/4.html

http://www.horizontaldrilling.org/

Natural Gas Horizontal Drilling

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/01/researchers-say.html

Geothermal Conference on HD

http://www.nationaldriller.com/CDA/Articles/Industry_News/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000399698

NaturalGas.org

http://www.naturalgas.org/naturalgas/extraction_directional.asp

OPEC supplies 53.8% of our oil imports (a little over 5.25 million barrels per day out of a little over 20 million barrels per day used).

The rest of our imports (the other 5 or so million barrels per day) come from countries like Mexico and Canada.

If people bothered to look up the numbers instead of just ASSUMING every damn thing, they would see that it isn't that difficult to fathom that in 10 years, if we cared to try, we could replace a QUARTER (not the 100% naysayers seem to want to believe) of our Oil with alternatives.

Such as T. Boone Pickens plan which ould eventually replace 38% of current oil consumption with Natural Gas.

That would be more than enough to NEVER have to buy another barrel of Oil from OPEC.

OPEC being the countries that, generally, may not have our best interests at heart.

Obama's plan is a hell of a lot better than McCain's that basically wants to drill off shore to MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER, but won't actually help things at all (at most, 200,000 barrels a day, versus replacing 5 MILLION BARRELS a day with Obama.)

People, it's simple math.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/us-imports-of-o.html

if their car uses 5l/100km or 12l/100km. (the former is unphysical plainly impossible, the latter contributes to increased global warming with a very high probability (i.e. basically a certanity))

Are you trying to tell me that my wifes car doesn't exist? It's not even an exception these days.

The article at the Green Car Congress site titled New Approach to Developing Thermoelectric Materials Doubles Efficiency" has a lot more scientific details than that article linked from the summary, especially on the actual formula that determines "zT", which is the thermoelectric conversion efficiency coefficient:

The dimensionless zT for thermoelectric materials is calculated by the formula zT= T*(S2)/), where S is the thermoelectric power or Seebeck coefficient of the TE material, and are the electrical and thermal conductivities, respectively, and T is the absolute temperature.

And also detailed nanomaterials engineering analysis of the quantum structure of the quantum chemistry's thermoelectric effects.

As is usual whenever electric cars comes up, it's time for some mythbusting.

No, they don't increase pollution and overload the grid; precisely the opposite (more specifically, the only pollutant that goes up is particulate matter, and it's displaced away from population centers. NOx and SOx remain the same, CO2 drops, and CO and VOCs are nearly eliminated; the grid gets to make use of its surplus off-peak capacity and, with smart charging, can eliminate the supply/demand fluctuations that are currently so troublesome).

Yes, they are far more energy efficient than their alternatives.

No, modern batteries don't take forever to charge. The phosphates, titanates, modern spinels, and others can all charge in 5-20 minutes, given sufficient power.

Yes, fast chargers exist. The SAE J1772 standard covers Level 3 charging at hundreds of kilowatts. Yes, chargers as strong as 250kW exist. Yes, there's already a network of 60kW Level 3 chargers in place around Oahu. Install one yourself.

No, the batteries are not toxic. Current li-ions are only mildly toxic, and this only because of their cobalt-based cathode. The phosphates and spinels eliminate this cathode in favor of nontoxic elements.

No, lithium is not running out.

Yes, the batteries last a long time. The phosphates last 7000+ gentle cycles, having only 20% capacity loss after 1000 abusive cycles. The titanates? 20,000 cycles. Accelerated aging tests suggest LG Chem's packs will last 40+ years in typical use.

Yes, both rapid charging stations and EVs make financial sense.

Hmm, did I miss any?

Here is a report which has been posted by others in this story DOE Study: Off-Peak Production from US Grid Could Support 184.8 Million Plug-In Hybrids

This is a quote from one of the linked articles:

Lightner noted that "the study suggests the idle capacity of the electric power grid is an underutilized national asset that could be tapped to vastly reduce our dependence on foreign oil."

I've talked to people from EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute), who say that EVs charging off peak is a power companies wet dream. It even makes thermal plants last longer, and more efficient.

Also, a large number of PHEVs would enable V2G (Vehicle to Grid) technology. In the near term, demand side V2G (charging time controlled by utility) would enable us to make considerately better use of the resources we have right now, by enabling us to stop using natural gas peaker plants. Longer term, fully bi-directional V2G (kWhs of energy moving in both directions) could allow for more efficient and practical use of renewable energy sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

Thanks!

You really have a severe case of ADD, if you can't get past my first line.
It takes 5.6 pounds of natural gas to provide the equivalent energy of 1 gallon of gasoline (GGE).
(1 gallon of gasoline weighs between 5 and 6 pounds, depending on temperature).
According to the Green Car Congress, a gasoline Honda Civic SE consumes 6.9 liters of gasoline for every 100 kilometers driven (34 mpg); the CNG Civic GX requires 7.4 liters gasoline equivalent (31.7 mpg), making it 7% less efficient. The GX carries 8.0 GGE, for a range of about 200 miles.
In Massachusetts, CNG is selling for $2.96 GGE, vs. $4.09 for gasoline, making it 28% less expensive.
There are approximately 120,000 CNG vehicles on the road in the US. [Gene]

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html

Someone, somewhere, will claim that this does not help solve the gasoline problem. Please read the above link, which states that current off-peak electricity could power nearly 200 million PHEVs, according to the DOE. Adding green energy sources will greatly reduce pollution in urban areas when combined with ultra low or zero emission transit.

We'd still have somewhat of an oil problem, but commuting can be covered by existing electric infrastructure.

Here in Tacoma, WA our Transit System runs off natural gas and has run of it for quite a while.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html

Someone, somewhere, will claim that this does not help solve the gasoline problem. Please read the above link, which states that current off-peak electricity could power nearly 200 million PHEVs, according to the DOE. Adding green energy sources will greatly reduce pollution in urban areas when combined with ultra low or zero emission transit.

We'd still have somewhat of an oil problem, but commuting can be covered by existing electric infrastructure.

Does it have to be the storage medium? Aren't ultracapacitors with their rapid charge/discharge capability and unlimited reusability an alternative to hydrogen storage? Research indicates ultracapacitors should be capable of storing as much energy as batteries. They aren't there yet, but they are improving at a rapid rate.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/mit_carbon_nano.html

Well, according to this source 9.5kg of H is equivalent to 25kg gasoline which also requires a 17kg container, so you get about 118kg to about 42kg, or almost tipple. Now most of that weight penalty can probably be made up by the fact that Honda has a fuel cell stack that weighs only 67kg which is way less than an IC engine.

Its my understanding that in the US starting with 08 models the metric for MPG is changing and for the most part its driving the official mpg down quite a bit. In other words, if your current car gets X mpg by the old standards, a car getting X mpg in 08 is actually significantly more efficient.

So which metric is being used?

Research findings released today indicate that mid-range ethanol blends--fuel mixtures with more ethanol than 10% (E10) but less than 85% (E85)--can in some cases provide better fuel economy than regular unleaded gasoline, even in standard, non-flex-fuel vehicles.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/study-finds-cer.html

This is costing AT&T a lot of money, Avestor is bankrupt so they won't pay for it.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/11/avestor_shuts_d.html

"Gee, so, given that coal powerplants in the USA alone produce 1.8 millon metric tons of CO2 per year, we would need 11 million of these devices installed in the US to make American coal power carbon neutral.

+ Correction: I messed up the calculation, the actual number is 240,000 units - but stil, a ridiculous quantity. "

US Coal/CO2 emissions on the order of 2 Billion metric tons of CO2 per year...
Ergo you're off by a factor of 1000x.. (on the low side)..

Let's assume 1.8 MMT of CO2 covers just one boiler.. (out of a thousand)..
240,000 ... 88 sq.. meter tracking arrays.. would need to be spaced at a ratio of at least 5 to 1, depending on latitude.

Math: 240,000 * 88(min foot array foot print ) * 6 (spacing) ==
126 M sq. meters per boiler.. or an area of 126 Sq Km.. per BOILER.

Some how I think the local residents would object to having 49 Sq miles per boiler covered with pipelines and large solar tracking towers. (For a US average X1000... 49,000 Sq miles .. or 126,000 sq km.)

Once you oxidized the resulting liquid fuel, one would still have the net effect of releasing GHG into the atmosphere. By all indications, Humanity needs to progress to a Carbon NEGATIVE economy. 390ppm ->350ppm. So this really isn't a long term solution.

======== Now for a real solution ===========

Meanwhile... once could accomplish most of the same effect by putting up 12,000 sq km. of 20% eff, PV solar trackers in some high desert regions (Space them out by x6) and DISPLACE ALL electric generation sources in the US..

Naturally.. we would keep generation capacity like Hydro, Wind, Biomass,. maybe some nuclear...etc..
I would also keep all the NG/combined cycle plants as backups (fueled by H2, stored in depleted NG fields.)
Using spare electricity generation to produce H2 via hybrid solar thermal/electrolysis SO2 cycle.
Note: The H2S04/SO2 process originally envisioned nuclear power supplying the thermal energy component, but desert solar thermal plants could easily substitute as the heat source, and the resulting SO2 gas stored underground awaiting excess electrical generation.

Wind energy production should also be expanded by 50x..
Spare electric power would be used in highly eff SO2 +2H20 electrolysis(0.6V) phase to produce H2SO4+H2 .

Modern EV's are roughly 10x more efficient than ICE vehicles, and could be used to manage grid demands on the renewable energy sources.

Note: Our society would experience a significant reduction in overall energy requirements (~30%), once the fossil fuel industry is displaced by high grade renewables.

Seems to be a couple years old though, this page (second story down) which includes the same photo is dated feb 2006, and includes a much better description of how it works, including how they use alternate direction rotation rings for heat conservation within the drum, although it looks like they've more recently been trying it with CO2 instead of H20. This page contains more info and diagram of the counter rotating drum. Very interesting stuff though.

Here is a link for more technical information on how this works http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/sandia-applying.html

more to the point the average European car does 43mpg and the average American one does 29 (stats from first source I found) granted some of this may be due to differences in testing but up to now fuel economy has not been a major selling point in the US market.

Actually, as indicated earlier, they've been testing systems in New York City using another regenerative braking system called HybriDrive from these folks...

No idea if the BAE system has the "70%" conversion rate of this one or not.

Like this? http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/07/kyocera_solar_g.html

Is already being done. Microsoft and Google are also taking advantage of their rooftops and open spaces. There's a stadium somewhere that has also gone solar over their walkways and roofspace and is generating a huge amount of power when it sits mostly unused during the day. Pretty neat stuff IMO and I'd like to see solar charging stations for plug-in hybrids. For to and from work a plug-in would work well for my use.

I spend several weeks in India last summer studying Jatropha.
  My wife's father S.W. Mensinkai founded University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad, near Hubli in Karnataka India (8 hrs by train north of Bangalore). He is considers the father of plant genetics in India. They are doing genetic engineering of Jatropha there.

See photo's
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/images6/index.html

One of the programs they are pushing is for farmer to plant Jatropha on the borders of other crops in the fields, turns out the bulls that wonder freely in India will not go near the stuff, so a row of these trees keeps them out of the farmers crops.

Very interesting work.

I brought back a hand full of seeds with me, and planted them, but they didn't take, maybe the Airport X-ray scanners killed them.

Anyhow;
  Jatropha is related to the Castor bean plan that is responsible that the neurotoxin ricin is derived from.
  It also have a toxin called curcin that is similar to ricin.

  I don't know if burning Jatropha oil release this curcin toxin into the air?

  But apparently when it's pressed to get the Oil out, the curcin remains in the "Cake" this is the solids left behind after the seeds have all the oils squeezed out.

From: http://www.intox.org/databank/documents/plant/jatropha/jhast.htm
-------------
      2.5 Poisonous parts
                        All parts are considered toxic but in particular the seeds.
      2.6 Main toxins
                        Contains a purgative oil and a phytotoxin or toxalbumin
                        (curcin) similar to ricin in Ricinis.
------------

  Apparently Canola oil (Short for Canadian Oil)is a genetically modified Rape seed (in the mustard family) with the toxins removed.

  So if Jatropha had it's toxins removed through genetic modification it could also be a valuable food product.

Later in 2006 I moved to Santa Barbara and it turns out the first company in the US to start producing Jatropha Oils and Bio-Diesel was here in Santa Barbara. http://www.biodieselindustries.com/ They were even doing a project with the local High School to grow Jatropha.

Also Jatropha Oil is being use on the Indian Railways for some time too. I guess the plan is to plant Jatropha trees along the tracks, it keep the animals off the tracks and also since labor is very cheap, they would use the same trains to harvest the tree's for oil to power the trains.

One of the projects I was thinking of was to develop an engine optimized to run on Jatropha Oil.
More importantly these three wheeled auto-rickshaws (called Tuck Tucks in Thailand) all use the exact same engines, so the idea is to make a direct drop in engine for rickshaws. The rickshaws there are Two-stroke gas engines and are a major source of pollution there spewing clouds of choking soot behind them. Maybe some day.

More good links:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/10/20/stories/2005102002021100.htm
http://www.biodieseltechnologiesindia.com/
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/04/tnt_starts_biod.html

yep

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/11/avestor_sh uts_d.html

our telecom outfit had ship issue after ship issue and RMA issue after RMA issue, before we finally got a tech advisory that the vendor was shyt outta luck, and use sealed lead-acid for field replacements.

which will probably improve reliability immensely.

if you have any, seriously consider replacing them with non-incendiary technology.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/11/avestor_sh uts_d.html

Avestor, the Canadian developer of Lithium-Metal-Polymer (LMP) battery technology, is shutting down. The company filed with the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy in Montréal with a view to making a Proposal to its creditors on 31 October.

In August, the company had produced and shipped its 20,000th battery. At that time, Avestor said it had signed multimillion dollar, multiyear contracts with major telecommunications service providers in North America and also was a provider to several other telecommunications customers in North America.

The batteries implicated in the fires were advanced, very expensive lithium-metal-polymer types developed and built by Avestor. They were built for long-life outdoor installations: rated for -40C to 65C, temperature regulated, self monitoring: these were no low end batteries! AT&T retained an independent failure investigation quoted here, which "...found that the battery design was sound, as were the safety features, and concluded that the risk of hazardous failures with this battery is as low, if not lower, than the risk with alternative batteries, which are used by other telecommunications and cable companies in similar applications."

While the technology was impressive, the business was unprofitable and Avestor closed in 2005.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/08/study-iden tifie.html

If so, it would suggest that diesels particulate filters are important for more than just preventing lung disease.

Let's see what is possible now:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/06/2006_solar _drag.html

      Solar drag racing (without batteries) can run the 1/4 kilometer (800 feet) in 57 seconds (using no batteries).
Well, the new record is 30 seconds for 820 feet, and 50 mph on finish - see http://users.applecapital.net/~jim/solardragrace.h tm

      And the future is shiny:
"As the race develops over time, solar dragsters may eventually exceed two horsepower"

Well it is relatively "cheap" now. Companies like CalCars and the like are modding Hybrids for 8-20k a pop. That's on a case by case basis. If they mass produced them, which Toyota will do with the Prius by 2010, it should become affordable for a fair amount of Americans anyway.

The Candian company HyMotion has released kits for "mass" consumption... http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/hymotion_u nveil.html.

Quote from the article: "The company is targeting fleet buyers initially. In unit orders greater than 100, the L5 Prius kits will cost $9,500; orders of greater than 1,000 units would see the price drop to $6,500."

Not bad, but what if ya bought one hundred thousand of them? :)

These are still only good up to 34 mph, when it will force switch to gasoline, but that can be improved on.

I guess my main point is, "This technology/infrastructure is here. It works. Let's support it and create competition in this area." /shrug

Yup, that's what I went to go get numbers for to compare this against.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/mit_carbon _nano.html
Now, if they can even get anywhere near their potential 60 kW/kg that's
damn good and comparable to NiMH with much better economics of use.

Hybrid sales have increased year over year in every month since 2004, at least. http://www.greencarcongress.com/images/2007/05/03/ hybrid_sales_apr07_1.png

No plug in hyrids?

Don't tell these folks:

http://www.calcars.org/priusplus.html

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/05/commercial _retr.html

Not to mention the GM Volt.

It is not that hard, they just didn't think people wanted to plug them in!

The article mentions improving gasoline mileage to meet or exceed current diesel technology, but mentions in the next paragraph that the tech can also be used with diesel. With production diesels in low 70's (Audi, Volkswagen) to the 157MPG, Loremo LS, a 10-15% improvement would yield seemingly astounding figures.

Fossil fuels have a critical economic role right now, as they supply over 80% of our energy needs, and 98% in the transportation sector. We really don't have any economically viable replacements for gasoline, for instance. There are potential replacements in bio-butanol (BP and DuPont are working on that, among others). And a recently developed process can turn basically any kind of lipid into gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.

We also can use algae, which have some massive oil yields, to replace fossil liquid fuels, especially using the process linked above.

The problem is that until these technologies are truly proven and commercialized, any efforts at reducing CO2 emissions will meet with limited success at best. All we're really doing is closing down factories and other energy-intensive manufacturing and moving it to China, which could surpass the United States as the biggest emitter of CO2 this year.

So I would qualify your statement with "If we do something before we're ready, the economy will implode."

Especially with large appliances, cars, and the like, you typically save a hell of a lot more energy by continually repairing it and by not buying a newer, more efficient model

As of 2005, the energy cost of manufacturing a car is 3 MWh (0.6 tons of CO2 equivalent), partially thanks to the fact that many parts of a car are recycled. Your mileage my vary, but that is equivalent to burning about 300 liters of gasoline. Replacing a gas-guzzling SUV (12 liters per 100 km) by a compact (6 liters per 100 km) will pay back in just 5000 km, energy-wise.

Another site says that 94% of the CO2 emissions of a car are related to fuel production and consumption.

I believe I saw what might pass for Zt values given for the stuff in another article:

benzenedithiol: 8.7 microvolts/K
dibezenedithiol: 12.9 microvolts/K
tribenzenedithiol: 14.2 microvolts/K

To put this in perspective with what we already have in the way of commonly used thermoelectric materials, Bismuth Telluride weighs in at -287 microvolts per degree Kelvin for N-doped material and 87 microvolts per degree Kelvin for P-doped material.

What we're reading about is roughly 1/5th as efficient at doing thermoelectric effects as the most efficient stuff we have for P-doped material at the consumer level- which isn't really all that efficient, but is useful enough if you're needing cooling or thermoelectric generation in tight spaces that wouldn't accomodate other answers. The "wow" comes from it being the Thermoelectric equivalent of an OLED back when OLEDs were still more of a lab curiosity than a sort of fielded part of the time technology.

Brass tacks here: It's NEAT beyond words, but it's not the thing the article made it out to be. It's not even as good as the best we have in Peltier devices yet.

If the issue is quick charging during the day with electriciy generated at night, why not use a flywheel at the charging station? This system http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/11/beacon_pow er_re.html#more (thanks Ron Backman) is well along in development. A bank of these should provide both the amperage and the capacity to run a commercial charging station with load shifting.
--
Make you car run on the Sun. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

The thermal efficiency is the real killer - according to this post, the expected thermal efficency is somewhere between 3 and 8%.

That's problematic for two reasons - one, a plant made of thousands of these would use way more fuel than one using a conventional piston engine and one generator, and, two, for small-scale apps it means you end up with a massive pile of waste heat to dispose of. As somebody put it - if you want 10 watts of power, that means 100 watts of waste heat to dispose of. Go put your fingers on a 100-watt lightbulb to get an idea of how much heat we're talking about...

A few items back engineer-poet posted this link: http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/solix_and_ color.html which claims to get to jet fuel-like stuff:
"The algae oil can also be refined into other liquid fuels, including ethanol and jet fuel."
In this case they can leave out the intermediate step of making sugar and take advantage of the higher photosynthetic productivity of algae over rooted plants. I wonder if the two groups should get together to try to further process the algae biologically to get increased yields?
---
Candy is dandy but SOLAR is quicka in 40 US states but not Costa Rica: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

For instance, I postulated 50% efficiency for the fuel cell end of the biomass processing system, but some people are already talking 80%.

I also didn't postulate any liquid-fuel production from the charcoal pathway. Feeding the charcoal to direct-carbon fuel cells yields CO2, which can be fed to algae same as at the biomass-processing stage. The algae produce fats (biodiesel feedstock) and carbohydrates (ethanol feedstock). The only issue is that the products will almost always wind up in the atmosphere rather than sequestered, but that's an issue of priorities. Roughly 2/3 of the carbon winds up as charcoal, so you could potentially triple the liquid fuel output beyond my basic analysis.

The problem with most of the algae-based systems is that they rely on powerplant exhaust as a carbon source, and don't even manage to capture all the carbon. They cannot be part of a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative energy system. A better possibility is a scheme for using wild-type algae growing on sewage-treatment effluent, pulling carbon out of the air. If this also captures and concentrates nutrients like phosphorus, it will be a triple-play: clean sewage, generate energy, recover elements otherwise lost.

"Sustainability" links to Greenfuel (a company which recently produced fuel-grade ethanol and biodiesel from carbon scavenged from the stack gas of a powerplant in Arizona), but there's now the example of Solix which might be a better fit. Solix's test system is growing algae on CO2 from a brewery, which is about what you'd get from the combination of fuel-cell exhaust and fermentation products of algal carbohydrates.

I thought that it was precisely because capacitors have fairly small changes in value over temp that they were being aggressively developed for use in cold-start as battery replacements or supplements, or even as APU replacements in trucks. I'll even quote from that last source (since it takes a bit of scrolling to find the relevant section):
"Starting can be a problem if batteries are discharged too deeply, a situation all too common in extremely cold weather. Supercapacitors are devices with the ability to store large amounts of current and release it quickly at high energy levels. They replace starting batteries, allowing deep-cycle batteries to provide HVAC and hotel loads.

Developed in Siberia to start construction equipment in frigid climates, supercapacitors quickly recharge from batteries too weak to start a truck's engine. Although they cost close to $1,000 each, only one is needed and they are still substantially less costly than APUs.

With supercapacitors, batteries can exclusively power both 12-volt and 120-volt appliances using an inverter. Dollar-for-dollar, battery power may be less expensive than APUs, in terms of both initial and operating costs.

The ability of batteries to accept a recharge is inversely proportional to ambient temperature. As the climate gets colder, the batteries accept less recharging current. Over time, their state of charge may severely degrade. Cold doesn't affect a supercapacitor." [emphasis mine.]

Are these sources wrong?

Not too long ago, a brilliant discovery was made in engine design. It is now possible to build a clean and efficient two-stroke engine which runs on a variety of fuels. This engine is fully balanced, and stable enough to balance a golf ball on during operation. Furthermore, the engine is very compact, with a high power to weight ratio. (under 1lb/HP)

For more information on OPOC engines, have a look at the following:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/05/fev_develo ping_.html
http://www.propulsiontech.com/opocengine.html
http://home.arcor.de/hildst/EnEx99e.html

NYC Hybrid Buses Improve Fuel Economy 45% Over Diesel, 100% over CNG

My Google search terms

That is 70 miles per kilogram. read http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/10/hondas_mor e_pow.html and http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/

Make Congress ratify Kyoto just like the other 142 countries did?

Increase the car efficiency standards at least to the Chinese level in the USA?

Stop trying to deny the manmade global warming, which the scientific consensus supports and engage in a worldwide debate about what steps need to be taken in order to minimize CO2 output? Just off the top of my head...

Are your cars Hybrids or some alternative fuel thing like BioDiesel?

Do you bike to work?

Have move moved close enough to work/school to make Biking practical?

Have you replaced at least half of the lights in your house with LED or compact florescent bulbs? If you haven't done all or most of those things then I really wish you'd get off of "Bush", "The Democrats", "The Republicans", and Fox news and go save a baby seal or something. If you have done all or most of those things, then great job. Keep it up and encourage your friends to do the same. Either way, stop waiting for "someone to do something" and do something yourself.

By the way, I do all of those things, am not a supporter of Kyoto and not at all a fan of computer climate models (Software sucks).