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I will refer you to a study on this subject, which shows hybrids getting significantly worse dust-to-dust energy ratings than a Hummer H3.

Don't forget recycling costs, too. Traditional cars are mostly metal, and easily scrapped, while the batteries in a hybrid are a much tougher problem.

This study seems sketchy. Their website has a link to the 450+ document (which I have to admit I haven't read), but from what I've found so far they take the total cost of vehicle development (R & D from 20 years ago, cost of prototypes, cost of energy production, etc) then divide that by the number of vehicles produced, then divide that by the life expectancy of the vehicle.

If you take the $3.25/mile cost * 100,000 miles you come up with a Prius costing $325,000 over its life. That is obviously bogus.

There is more info on this article here, I'd be interested in hearing feedback from anyone who has read the 450+ page report though, maybe I'm missing something.

http://thewatt.com/modules.php?name=News&file=arti cle&thold=-1&mode=nested&order=1&sid=1070

So it seems that these guys know what they are talking about: the global efficiency of pure hydrogen is lower that alternatives, such as the electric grid.

Dr. Ulf Bossel, organizer of the Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum, about his announcement that hydrogen will no longer be a topic of conversation at the conference

Please also note that because of the staggering loss of exergy, use of
electrolysis for bulk hydrogen apps is a really, really dumb thing to do.
It is the equivalent of exchanging two US dollars for one Mexican peso.

"Hydrogen power will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas admissions"
- Speaking on the topic of energy independence, Washington D.C., February 6, 2003 Or how about the mere announcement of spending "In 2003, President George Bush announced an $1.7bn investment to turn the US into the world leaders of hydrogen-powered automobiles."

Now....who ya gonna believe....Don Lancaster (who has more geek cred than most /. readers), Dr. Ulf Bossel, or some hack writers at Popular Mechanics and President Bush?

Electric vehicles are 3 times more efficient, 2.5 times cheaper today (although still too expensive), today Li-ion EVs have better range than Honda's FCX, refuelling won't be a big issue since Li-ion batteries can be charged pretty quickly these days (like within minutes to 80% capacity) but it doesn't really matter because 80% of our driving is within 35-ish km's anyway.

Hydrogen fuel was proclaimned to be dead 2 weeks ago at the Lucerne Fuel Cell conference because it is not sustainable (since EVs are 3 times more efficient). Another fuel that is not sustainable is ethanol by the way, even cellulosic ethanol because of nutrient depletion.

Hydrogen is dead anyway. Way too much energy is required to make hydrogen. Batteries are at least 3 times more efficient, today they are 2.5 times cheaper than PEM fuel cells (although, still way too expensive) and the new Tesla EV actually has a better range (at 250 miles) compared to Honda's FCX which has a range of only 190 miles.

...yes, hydrogen is hype, and unfortunately ethanol seems to be the new hydrogen.

Since Bill Gates just invested in ethanol does that mean all of slashdot is now for BioDiesel???? The truth be told, the energy return on alternate fuels is not yet as good as it needs to be.

But you'd need to lay down miles of electricity lines...that's expensive and there are lots of efficiency losses involved. Fuel cells in trains actually make more sense than they do in cars because trains are bigger and heavier so a huge heavy tank of compressed hydrogen wouldn't be all that significant. In a car, the weight of the hydrogen storage becomes a problem.

In the end, I'd rather see a diesel-electric hybrid train than a fuel cell train and I'd rather see battery electric vehicles than fuel cell vehicles. Fuel cells have will have a tricky time finding the right market...well, at least if they're trying to get into the transportation sector. Portable fuel cells for laptops should come soon.

But you'd need to lay down miles of electricity lines...that's expensive and there are lots of efficiency losses involved. Fuel cells in trains actually make more sense than they do in cars because trains are bigger and heavier so a huge heavy tank of compressed hydrogen wouldn't be all that significant. In a car, the weight of the hydrogen storage becomes a problem.

In the end, I'd rather see a diesel-electric hybrid train than a fuel cell train and I'd rather see battery electric vehicles than fuel cell vehicles. Fuel cells have will have a tricky time finding the right market...well, at least if they're trying to get into the transportation sector. Portable fuel cells for laptops should come soon.

By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

You're way behind the times; they already do. The US burns about 9 million barrels/day of motor gasoline out of a hair over 20 million total.

Lightweight SUV class vehicles have been demonstrated using plain gasoline to acheive fuel economy beating today's compact and subcompact cars. By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption.

Setting aside the question of why you drive a Suburban while touting light SUV-class stuff (hypocrisy?), the SUV form factor is inherently draggier than a car. The same powerplant technologies that can make a 40 MPG SUV can make an 80 MPG car. You know, like the Daimler-Chrysler ESX3, the GM ParadiGM and the Ford whateveritwas.

Hogwash. Do some research to at least validate part of your namesake.

Done long before you ever thought to ask. (More here).

Take it from the horse's mouth: 2005 ethanol production was only ~4 billion gallons. Production this year isn't even projected to reach 6 billion gallons.

Cellulosic ethanol has so much resource available to it only someone ignorant of the reality would make such a statement. Apparently this includes you. Cellulosic ethanol utilizes paper sludge, grasses, agricultural waste (of which we produce about one billion tons/year) that currently is generally burned or dumped into landfills. Waste biomass along can produce approximately 25-30 billion gallons of ethanol per year at current level of conversion technology.

I've read The Billion-Ton Vision. It projects a whole 10% of transportation fuels will come from biomass in 2020 (see the sidebar in the first page of the introduction, page 18).

How many people can actually use E85 when ethanol is only 10% of transportation fuel? That's the proof that the whole flex-fuel vehicle thing is a scam. The auto companies are getting CAFE credits for guzzling monsters that can run on E85, without there being enough ethanol to run more than a small fraction of them.

Production of ethanol loses about 50% of the energy right off the top; it disappears into the process either as metabolic losses of the yeast or process heat in hydrolization or distillation. That's energy that can be used productively if you aren't wedded to the idea of using liquid fuels. There are other ways to use biomass, such as carbonization. Direct-carbon fuel cells (a variant of molten-carbonate fuel cells) can convert charcoal to electricity at up to 80% efficiency, and the off-gas from carbonization is combustible and can run engines. With a scheme like that, you can do a lot more than just offset some fraction of oil consumption; you can:

• Provide all transport energy.
• Between carbonization and wind, provide most scheduled electric generation requirements now provided by gas and coal.
• Manufacture excess charcoal for use as a carbon-sequestering soil amendment (search for "terra preta de los indios", or start reading here).

Ethanol is a very lossy way of making biomass suitable for even lossier internal combustion engines. It's a dead end.

By using industry standard breeding and cropping practices, by 2050 using switc

theWatt has done a survey of peak oil dates, avaialble here. Basically, it seems as if 48% of the publications predict a peak oil date by 2010, 20% predict peak oil between 2010-2020 and 25% predict sometime after 2020.

...this is. 62MW is being built in Portugal compared to the "supposed" worlds largest 18MW in Nevada.

There, under the turbines, I saw a total of:

1 dead bird
1 dead sheep

Where they near each other? I see two possibilities:
1) Bird gets smacked by turbine blade beak-first into sheep's temple, killing it. The solution to this problem would be to sharpen the blades, so instead of striking the bird like a baseball it would cut them in half so the two halves would fall at normal speed to the ground.
2) The sheep, being of a species well known for their craven cowardice and deep cunning (they only act stupid so as not to appear threatening), saw the dead bird, and upon considering the environmental implications, died of a heart attack. The solution to this problem is to give sheep internet access so they can research the problem themselves.

The Altamont Pass is a disaster which was produced by irresponsible economic incentives of the time which put up low quality turbines willy-nilly throughout California. Add to that the fact that many of Altamont Pass's are placed on angle-iron framework towers. These make them ideal nesting grounds--well, if one ignores the 30 m food processor out front. Modern towers take great care in leaving no place for avian habitation.

Just for everyone's convenience, here's a link to a page which shows the old-style tower and the new style and the obvious difference it would make in problems with perching and nesting. There's also the non-obvious scale difference, with the new larger one being much safer due to slower and thus easier to see/avoid blades. It also has per-turbine death rates for birds for various sites, with Altamont being much higher in raptor deaths than the others.

For energy issues such as peak oil, fuel cells, and hybreds check out http://thewatt.com/. They have a nice (PHPnuke) site. The folks behind it are a bunch of Canadian engineering Grad students

Energy prices are going to hurt everybody.

From here:
"EIA expects energy expenditures will be 18% higher this winter compared to last winter, which will be 8.3% of the annual gross domestic product, a record since 1987 when it was 8.4%."

And for those of you who want to find a way to save energy: Here's 60 Tips To Save Energy This Winter

Energy prices are going to hurt everybody.

From here:
"EIA expects energy expenditures will be 18% higher this winter compared to last winter, which will be 8.3% of the annual gross domestic product, a record since 1987 when it was 8.4%."

And for those of you who want to find a way to save energy: Here's 60 Tips To Save Energy This Winter

The link between global warming an hurricane activity isn't quite there yet...they need more data, which means they need more destructive hurricanes.

Here's a good overview of the current thinking with the link between hurricane activity and global warming. Basically they can't prove the link between the number of hurricane's that make it inland, but it seems as if a link between hurricane strength and global warming is there. Since the 70's the number of class 4 and 5 hurricanes have gone steadily upwards.

Blogs have great potential because the good ones are written by experts in their fields and the really good ones have their own contacts and generate their own stories. The blog that I contribute to (shameless plug for theWatt.com) routinely finds mistakes in news articles that the press writes, and so it's also a way of trying to keep things from going out of hand in mainstream media. A blogger's dream isn't always to get rich though, a lot of the time it's to gain some sway in the field that they blog in. There are so many great contacts that people make in the blogging world.

I'm just in the process of writing a consumer complaint against a lot of thin film solar cells, the type that you showed. Don't get any that were manufactured in China! The problem is that a lot of thin film solar manufacturers will overstate their peak wattage. If it says 12W on the box, then in some cases you'll only get 6W! There was a study done by Humboldt State University about this specifically for the Kenyan solar market but it applies everywhere since the same manufacturers sell worldwide (.pdf available here). First of all some of these companies just plain out lie about their peak wattage, and then after 3 months there's a further degradation in performance. If you do want to buy thin-film solar equipment, go with the PowerFelx model or any model developed by ICP Solar, as you can read in the pdf document, they are one of the most reliable companies in this area.

I'm just in the process of writing a consumer complaint against a lot of thin film solar cells, the type that you showed. Don't get any that were manufactured in China! The problem is that a lot of thin film solar manufacturers will overstate their peak wattage. If it says 12W on the box, then in some cases you'll only get 6W! There was a study done by Humboldt State University about this specifically for the Kenyan solar market but it applies everywhere since the same manufacturers sell worldwide (.pdf available here). First of all some of these companies just plain out lie about their peak wattage, and then after 3 months there's a further degradation in performance. If you do want to buy thin-film solar equipment, go with the PowerFelx model or any model developed by ICP Solar, as you can read in the pdf document, they are one of the most reliable companies in this area.

Here's a study that says that oil and gas will run out too fast and prevent any type of doomsday global warming. Actually, it's not the fact that oil will run out, it's the fact that oil and gas will peak and so we won't be able consume them at a fast enough rate.

That is of course if we don't replace the depleted oil with coal, which may be a possibility. But even still, it seems as if there are enough signs of global warming already and the oceans will be releasing so much CO2 that even if we stop using fossil fuels today there will still be net CO2 emissions.

Any solar technology that doesn't use silicon is definitely a good thing these days. The Photovoltaic industry is the "poor cousin of the microchip industry", and so microchips get all the good silicon while PV gets the leftover crap that Intel et al. don't want. For this reason, and a general shortage of poly-silicon, there is a huge shortage of PV panels all over the world. Germany and Japan gobble up all they can and at a fair price too, leaving hardly anything for the rest of the world.

It's good to see the Stirling engine being used like this because in my opinion, the PV industry has some serious problems, especially if they have to compete with the Slashdot crowd for silicon!

Any solar technology that doesn't use silicon is definitely a good thing these days. The Photovoltaic industry is the "poor cousin of the microchip industry", and so microchips get all the good silicon while PV gets the leftover crap that Intel et al. don't want. For this reason, and a general shortage of poly-silicon, there is a huge shortage of PV panels all over the world. Germany and Japan gobble up all they can and at a fair price too, leaving hardly anything for the rest of the world.

It's good to see the Stirling engine being used like this because in my opinion, the PV industry has some serious problems, especially if they have to compete with the Slashdot crowd for silicon!

Any solar technology that doesn't use silicon is definitely a good thing these days. The Photovoltaic industry is the "poor cousin of the microchip industry", and so microchips get all the good silicon while PV gets the leftover crap that Intel et al. don't want. For this reason, and a general shortage of poly-silicon, there is a huge shortage of PV panels all over the world. Germany and Japan gobble up all they can and at a fair price too, leaving hardly anything for the rest of the world.

It's good to see the Stirling engine being used like this because in my opinion, the PV industry has some serious problems, especially if they have to compete with the Slashdot crowd for silicon!

If energy issues interst you, check out the discussion forums at The Watt

Peak oil is actually acknowledged by the US Geological survey and the International Energy Agency officially, they think it will happen in 30 years, some people think it'll be well before then (like before 2010). Also, we can't replace it with nucelar reactors, because we've almost used up all of the uranium (Thorium is a possibility and maybe some experimental nuclear reactor will be more efficient). The only thing we can do (that is, if we want our grandchildren to have any type of life similar to ours) is stop consuming like we're consuming today. Exponential growth is impossible unless we populate another planet.

The best thing we can do to get off of our oil dependency is to all become vegetarians and stop driving. Growing meat requires 10 times the amount of hydrocarbons as it does to grow vegetables. The US uses 25% of the world's total daily oil production, 2/3rds of that oil is used to fuel the 200 million cars in the US so 16% of the world's oil is used to fill up cars just in the US. The only solution is stop driving the way we drive today. We have to make public transportation work otherwise we're not going to be able to afford to eat meat in about 30 years (when peak oil hits).

Bascally, the cost is $1-2 million, the engine is 86 kilowatt fuel cell with an ultracapacitor which is charged from regenerative brakes, the car can go about 190 miles before a fill up the fuel efficiency is about 57 miles per gallon of gasoline equivalent.

A few weeks ago there was a British team that wanted to break the electric car speed record (by driving 252 mph over a distance of at least 1 kilometer). They said that a geared car can achieve 100 mph in a few seconds but their rate of acceleration falls away much more quickly compared to the acceleration of this electric car that can accelerate past the 300 mph mark. Also, electric vehicles have, theoretically at least, infinite torque (at 0 velocity).

But, in saying this, growing crops for fuel is just not sustainable, for one thing it requires a lot of land, for another it sucks up all of the soil nutrients and so you can't continue to grow crops in the same location indefinitely.

But there are a couple of things that are being done about this problem. For instance, the biotech industry doesn't want to use corn/wheat directly, they focusing on using the waste streams of agricultural products (such as corn stover) to extract sugars using advanced enzyme systems. We can also make ethanol from by products of making paper using the same techniques.

But, in saying this, growing crops for fuel is just not sustainable, for one thing it requires a lot of land, for another it sucks up all of the soil nutrients and so you can't continue to grow crops in the same location indefinitely.

But there are a couple of things that are being done about this problem. For instance, the biotech industry doesn't want to use corn/wheat directly, they focusing on using the waste streams of agricultural products (such as corn stover) to extract sugars using advanced enzyme systems. We can also make ethanol from by products of making paper using the same techniques.

So, like the same old story goes for all alternative fuels and energy, we'll just have to wait for peak oil to make it economically viable.

shameless plug for my podcast: theWatt Weekly - energy news and discussion in mp3 format

Sure they're $50,000 but you'd be spending at least as much on the fuel even though oil has gone down in price a bit lately.

Damn...and I thought people were finally getting the idea that we have to conserve energy. Imagine how much oil/jet fuel that flying car would go through? It has four sets of rotary engines! I'd much rather see people driving an electric vehicle like this Reva NXG that can go 200km after a 6 hour charge.

I guess there's always the problem of where to get that damn methanol from though...

I guess there's always the problem of where to get that damn methanol from though...

This is the big problem for people trying to fight the critics. For me though it's easy. The CO2 levels in the atmosphere have never been as high as they are now (at about 370ppm) and they're expected to increase up to 700ppm if we finish off the oil (which may be in 70 years or longer). But the point is, even if global warming is/is not happening, having over 370ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is just not good! Here's a pretty good summary of the global warming argumnts.

I guess in the age of high tech toys where batteries are the real limitations, every body's trying to get a one up on the battery front. I mean, can you have a super PDA that acts as a cell phone, GPS, mp3 player, movie player, connects to the internet etc etc? Sure, they can make it but the battery that powers it will only last for about 5 minutes.

There's a big market for batteries and anything that can make them better but pretty much, I think their maxed out technology wise. Fuel cells are the next big hope for tech toys.

Yep, but if you live in Washington, DC there's a Shell gas station that sells hydrogen for $1.99/kg. Apparently 1kg H2 produces about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline.

So did theWatt

It could be ironic that high oil prices might actually hurt fuel cell development since the companies that rely on cheap oil are the ones that are also pushing the development of fuel cells.

It could be ironic that high oil prices might actually hurt fuel cell development since the companies that rely on cheap oil are the ones that are also pushing the development of fuel cells.

I'd bet my bottom dollar that this will last for a long long time. Oil prices have been going up for some time now and even OPEC is saying that the prices are out of their hands now and even increased supply isn't going to stop oil prices from increasing. OPEC says that oil could hit $80/bbl within 2 years. Many people think that oil has peaked and the oil available in Alaska won't last long.

I'd bet my bottom dollar that this will last for a long long time. Oil prices have been going up for some time now and even OPEC is saying that the prices are out of their hands now and even increased supply isn't going to stop oil prices from increasing. OPEC says that oil could hit $80/bbl within 2 years. Many people think that oil has peaked and the oil available in Alaska won't last long.

Within more nuclear plants will come online the next 15 years there will be 60 new nuclear plants coming online. Nuclear power's share in the world electricity market will then increase from 16 to 17 percent, reversing previous downward estimates.

Carbon nanotubes are also all over the map these days so why not nanotubes and solar? I guess we'll have to wait a while until this becomes commercial though because I don't think carbon nanotubes can be scaled up very easily.

Carbon nanotubes are also all over the map these days so why not nanotubes and solar? I guess we'll have to wait a while until this becomes commercial though because I don't think carbon nanotubes can be scaled up very easily.

These solar towers sound pretty cheap to me. At $2.5-$3.75/watt, they're far cheaper than solar pannels which go for about $8/watt. And, nuclear has had subsidies out of the wazoo. Nobody's subsidizing this thing at all (this is mentioned in the Wired article).

The chimny is twice the height of the CN tower...that's huuuuuuuge!