Fed-Up-With-Fuel-Price-Whining asks:
"Why are people still looking toward the gasoline companies for fuel? Is it because gasoline in a combustion engine is the most efficient, or is it because oil companies buy off the efforts of other possiable fuels? Fuel cells are a much better and cleaner way to use the fuel and there are other fuels out there with MUCH better potential than gasoline. Why don't people stop their crying and answer the oil companies jacking up of prices by converting their cars to other fuels?" Good question. The problem for most of us, I think, is availability. You mention Arizona, USA but what about the other American states? If something like this could be done here in good ole Virginia, I'd happily switch, assuming there existed a decent number of places to refuel. Honestly, if this were to be a reality for the states, alternate fuel sources and the infrastructure to support them would have to evolve pretty much simultaneosly. What do you think?
"Here in Arizona it costs around $6000 to convert your car to natural gas. If you do it Arizona will PAY the $6000 to convert the car. If you buy more than $280.00 a year in gas you will not have to pay for taxes or registration of your car.
I don't know, it just seems like a MAJOR buy off by the oil companies, the gas stations, and politicians. I know for FACT in Brazil you are able to buy a car which burns gasoline or methonol. And the Gas Stations have BOTH gasoline and methanol pumps. The methanol cars are still combustion engines.
There is one problem I know of methanol based cars. They are more like diesel engines. They are hard to start in COLD weather. But if they were converted from combustion to fuel cell based they would be even more efficient and much cleaner burning."
Slashdot Mirror
Brazil tried to use ethanol as a replacement for gas, but it didn't work because of several reasons: -Compared to current oil prices, ethanol is much more expensive. -The government had to subsidize ethanol prices in order to make it compete with gas. -Ethanol cars were difficult to start in cold mornings. The cars should have a small tank with gas, which was used to start the engine when it was below a determined temperature. -Sugar cane farmers had a monopoly over the production, just like OPEC, and when the government refused to raise the subsidies, they simply stopped providing alcohol to pumps, causing a major distress (this was in 1990's). After that, Brazilians lost confidence on the alcohol producers and slowly stopped buying ethanol-fueled cars, going back to gas-fueled ones. -The worst part is that planting sugar cane spoils the land, making it difficult to reuse it. It also uses land that could be used to plant food, not fuel, which is much more important for a 3rd world country. Conclusion: before we jump to the first apparently viable alternative, we must carefully study all its consequences, not only environmental but social, political and economical.
People don't like public transit because:
So long as combined transit is a PITA, people will want their own personal car. But since they know that they will *sometimes* want to carry more people in their car, they don't want to buy a tiny car that only holds one person. So they get a big car, and use it inefficiently most of the time (I'm guilty of this).
I think one thing that would greatly improve efficiency would be a tiny car that is designed to only hold one person, without much cargo, BUT can still go at freeway speeds, and be street-legal. If such an animal existed, and (this is the important point) was cheap enough, then people could easily get such a car *and* a second car for trips with more people. Then for trips where they know they are going alone, they can take the efficient one-seater vehicle.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
didn't need to have a gas station w/ diesel on every block. All I needed was one place that I'd go to across town once a week.
Thats fine until you go on a vacation of more then 500 miles. With diesel that isn't a big deal since it is a popular fuel. Propane has some infrastructure, you have to refuel when you can find a station, but if you plan for it you can make trips on propane.
Most fuels are not that popular. Your car might have a 500 range on methanol, but I challange you to drive your car across several states running only methanol. You have to have someone ship your fuel to drops along the way.
This is what I heard too. Actually when I read it they said something to the effect of "If the government would put more money into research, fuel cell engines for cars could be produced within 3-5 years."
I just had to give a short speech for a speech class last week. I did it on fuel cells. There are a lot of interesting developments going on with that technology. Apparently the only commercially ready fuel cells are phosphoric acid fuel cells (originally developed by NASA about 30 years ago I believe). There are several other types that should be ready within the next 5 years though.
They're also coming up with some interesting ideas for fuel sources. Powerball Technologies had one of the more interesting ideas.
Here's a few more links to check out:
Fuel Cells 2000
Commercializing Fuel Cells
Fuel Cells - Green Power. This is a 36 page PDF file from Los Alamos National Lab
Here's a bunch more.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Electricity. It's basically an electric car. The only advantage I see from this one is that instead of using an electric motor to compress the air (as you would do when it's parked at home), you can go to a fueling station and have it filled with compressed air directly, cutting down on refueling time.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Canada already has busses running on fuel cells. Made by Ballard, they're also running in Chicago. They say they'll have a car engine ready in the next few years.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
True. Several companies are working on fuel reformers to allow fuel cells to run on gasoline. Of course there are many other companies working on alternatives. Since pure hydrogen is much too expensive, some sort of less pure fuel will have to suffice. It's just a matter of finding the fuel that is cheap, easy to store, safe, and yields the most hydrogen. In the end, the fuel used will probably depend a lot on what the fuel cell will be used for and where it will be located. Some fuel cells are already running on gasses produced by landfills and wastewater treatment plants. There will probably be a lot of different fuels and a lot of different fuel reformers to allow these various fuels to be used.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Of course, if we'd come to our senses and explore nuclear energy properly and scientifically instead of telling horror stories about Chernobyl we'd be moving in the right direction.
Author James P Hogan maintains an excellent website, of special interest to folks in this discussion are his thoughts on energy.
From one of his articles:
A single 1,000 Megawatt coal plant releases something like 600lb carbon dioxide and 30lb sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere per second, and as much nitrogen oxides as 200,000 automobiles, all of which is estimated to cause 25 premature fatalities and 60,000 cases of respiratory complaints per year, per plant. In addition, it has to get rid of 30,000 truck-loads of ash annually--enough to cover a square mile sixty feet deep--full of carcinogens, highly acidic or highly alkaline depending on the kind of coal, and, ironically, emitting more radiation from trace uranium than a nuke is permitted to. That's a real waste-disposal nightmare for you.
Nuclear's not looking so bad, eh? ;)
--
Gasohol damages the internals of older cars. Just ask my family who had to replace a good number of hoses in our old station wagon after the energy crisis.
Gasohol is just ethanol (the stuff many of us drink) and gasoline (which few of us drink). It is not harmful to rubber. The hoses might well have needed to be replaced, but it was probably not due to ethanol in the gas. Besides, there are VERY FEW cars that old still running at all. That was 25 years ago!
Since gasohol is just gasoline and ethanol mixed there is no need to do either 1, 2, or 3. (3 is by definition!).
High grade ethanol will run an unmodified gasoline engine with no problem at all. (It will actually clean the carb). It can go in the same storage tanks (at the gas station) and pumped by the same pumps.
A number of companies sell gasohol now, they just don't call it that because people are afraid of anything invented after they were born. Read the fine print at a Stopn'Go for example. 10% ethanol for the mid and regular grade.
The logical step is to increase production of Ethanol and up the percentage of ethanol in gasoline.
I still want a cirrus SR20. I also hear that they are working on a 82octane unleaded avgas, no idea when if ever it will show up.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
As for the efficiency, that is the correct figure. Shell Oils runs a fuel efficiency race at Silverstone Grand Prix circuit, each year. The ground is essentially flat, which helps. And remember, you only use fuel when accelerating or decelerating. Newton's First Law makes that clear.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
One thing I've not (yet) seen in cars, which would also help is doing something about the brakes. At the moment, conventional brakes are simply friction devices, blasting all that energy you've paid for into the surroundings in the form of IR radiation.
Trains in the UK have experimented with turning the wheels into dynamos, storing the power then re-using it later to accelerate. Even if each stage was only 50% efficient, you'd be able to get back up to 25% of your original speed, after stopping, without using any external energy.
A variant of this is used in very old steam-powered heavy machinary, where energy could be put into and taken out of a giant fly-wheel, as needed.
Getting back to friction-reduction, there's always the friction caused by the tires. Actually, you don't really need -that- much traction when you're travelling in a straight line. Only when you go round the bend. :) By reversing Colin Chapman's 'suction car' idea, and using the car's fan to reduce ground-effect to only necessary levels, you may be able to eke out a bit more life into the tires and a bit more efficiency into the car.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
> Internal combustion is not the most efficient way of powering transport
Actually it is. That's why we use it. Of course this has no relevance to the discussion as to why we use gasoline. You said it yourself, steamers can be designed to burn almost anything, including gasoline.
As far as efficiency goes, we are actually talking about the cost of moving your ass to where ever it wants to sit. Much more has to be entered into the equation than just the cost of the fuel per unit of volume:
1) Energy density: gasoline+air beats almost everything.
2) Power per weight and volume(at small scales): This is a huge factor in efficiency and again gasoline+air in internal combustion, reciprocating engines beats almost everything. Can you guess why power plants, ships, factories and so on use steam based power plants at large scales? Why are most lawnmowers, motorcycles, model aircraft, etc. powered by gasoline+air+IC engines?
3) Cost of power plant: one more time.
4) Complexity of power plant AKA cost of maintenance: are we getting bored yet?
5) Safety AKA insurance costs: yes, gasoline+air can explode, but so can just about any system devised for storing energy. Afterall, that's what it's all about. Batteries can explode, overheat, leak and be *extremely* toxic when they do so. High pressure gas or liquid under pressure storage tanks can also leak or explode. Flyweels bearings can disintegrate, etc.
5)Useful life expectancy: how long does a battery last? How many pressurisation/depressurisation cycles can a high pressure tank take before it begins to fatigue? How much polluted air can a fuel cell breathe before it becomes corroded or clogged? How much does a new one cost?
6)Research & Development: how much will you have to invest, and then recoup in order to compete with gasoline+air+IC? So far it's obvious that not enough work has been done. Gasoline+air+IC has 90+ year head start in development and refinement over almost everything else.
Add to all of this the true cost of the fuel. That includes the obvious component cost of the fuel per unit. It also includes the cost of the time spent in actually getting it. It also includes the inconvenience or devaluation of the vehicle in operation, ie: "We can't take this car because it runs on XYZ and I don't know where we can get XYZ on that trip".
>The oil companies encouraged the car companies to use it because it locked people into using asoline
Hahaha, gasoline was a waste product that was regularly burned off at the refineries that were making fuel oil(for steam engines and heaters of all types) until the early car engine designers discovered that it had all of the properties (energy density, heat of evaporation, fluidity, liquid over desired temperature range, easily controlled ignition, etc.) that they needed. Only then did it become a "product". The fuel delivery systems became "monopolized" to use your word when the gasoline powered cars beat out everything else except for a few niche markets.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Last time I did it cost me $58 USD for a small car.
NOoooooooo!!! I like paying the inflated $1.50 per gallon of gasoline. It gives me great satisfaction watching the people next to me fill up thier SUV's and extended cab long wheelbase trucks with dual 20 gallon fuel tanks spending $70 to fill up. Its so they can make the daily commute to work 40 miles away each day for eight hours then come home again. Its the American Dream.
To ease my pain, I bought a motorcycle with a 4 gallon tank that gets 50 miles per gallon. Its funny though. Even though I only live one mile from work, I started riding more and spending more on fuel. It must be the American Way.
We're already experiencing rolling blackouts due to summer time demands(air conditioning). If we cannot support peak demand, how can we expect it to support cars that must be plugged in? I suspect many of the electric cars would even have to be plugged in during the day as they have such a limited range before needing a recharge.
Sure, it's easy to say "build more power plants", but the NIMBY factor makes it very difficult. No matter how safe they can be made, nobody wants a power plant near them.
NIMBY = Not In My BackYard
I read an article in a local newspaper this week, saying that price of natural gaz has doubled here in Québec/Canada... so i don't know if it's less expensive to use gaz instead of gasoline... I don't know Canadian gas company selling "GPL" (Gaz de Pétrole Liquéfié=Liquified Petrol Gas?) like in France, where there's bi-mode car that can run on GPL and normal gas.
--
BeDevId 15453 - Download BeOS R5 Lite free!
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
And who better than ford to take an inefficient and expensive product and figure out a way to mass produce it for cheap? For has a car that exists that runs on a fuel cell. It seats a family of five and will be released in a few years.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Hydrogen+oxygen is the 16th most energy dense compound (source: guinness book of records), so why don't we use that? It's cheap and easy to obtain, as it comes from water. Contrary to popular belief, creating the hydrogen+oxygen mix can be done in the car with electricity. Burning the hydrogen+oxygen produces water again so it's not like we're polluting at all. Just a little more heat and rain, but that's not much to pay for clean air, and both of those are trivial. Lastly, the standard engine blocks gasoline cars use can be used for hydrogen+oxygen (though most everything else would have to be changed). So, why don't we, the hacker community, be engineers by nature, come up with a decently easy way of converting cars to run on hydrogen+oxygen ,hydrolysized as needed with the water possibly coming from the air (maybe a second generation thing)? Oh, yah, that's right, we forget we could. GET OFF YOUR DUMB ASSES AND HELP US MAKE THE WORLD BETTER INSTEAD OF RELYING ON CAPITALISM TO DO IT FOR US!!! YOU KNOW DAMN WELL THEY WON'T!!!
The battery in today's electric cars isn't a little D-cell. It generally weighs many hundreds of pounds, and often is part of the car's chassis.
There is no other explanation for 80+ MPG cars existing but not being marketed or alternative fuel vehicals existing but not being properly marketed, if at all.
Alternate fuels will be popular and readily available when the fuel and power grid holders say so. And they won't say so until fossil-fuels have been dried up.
---
seumas.com
"When public transit becomes as convenient as private transit more people will use it.
If I actually lived and worked IN the city I'd use it. But some people don't live in the middle of the city and there is no
need for those people to pay more for the privelage of being able to travel. "
I've heard the argument that people who live in one city and work in another, or live outside the city they work in, should pay a huge tax for the privelige. Most urban centers have traffic problems that would vanish if people worked in the areas where they lived. Most suburbs do not have jobs available because we take for granted that the jobs are in the city, miles away. There could be incentives for people to work, or create jobs, in the communities where they live, instead of crossing distances and zigzagging around.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The Toyota Prius, at least, is a loss-making proposition. Toyota freely admits to losing money on every Prius they sell. They're using them to validate the technology in the real world (and figure out mundane things such servicing, reliability, and the like), get in some brownie points with environmentalists, while they work on the next version of the car, which is reputedly a huge improvement.
Toyota, Honda etc. don't throw this kind of money around if they don't think these cars have a real future.
Of course, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the US and Australia by a similar amount to these hybrids, you could just put a punitive tax on SUV's . . .
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The development of engines and methanol processing plant in Brazil started back in the late 70's, after the second oil crisis.
After a couple of years of producing unreliable engines, the auto-makers got their act right, and a methanol engine would be almost as good as a standard one.
But there were problems. The methanol engine would burn as much as 30/50% more methanol per kilometer than its gasoline counterpart. So the government had to offer high incentives to the consumer, even garanteing that the methanol price would never ne higher than 70% of the gasoline price. In the middle 90's this promisse was forgotten. ALso, methanol cars had fewer and lower taxes in the beggining.
The second problem was fuel availability. In Brazil, methanol is produced from sugar cane. During the late 70's/early 80's large sugar cane farms, generally backed by one or more processing plants, were developed throughout the country. But the oil price crisis went away, the state-owned oil prospecting company started to find large oil reserves under Brazil's continental platform and people started using gasoline cars again.
A more or less final strike in the methanol experiment came when methanol production felt, and some big cities started to have methanol supply problems. That scared consumers more than anything else.
Nowadays most people will not buy a methanol car, no matter how cheaper thay are, for fear of a fuel shortage.
Al in all, it was a large and successfull experience for some years. More than government or business cluelessness, the changes in the international markets were the real cause for its eventual failure.
Actually, the day of widespread use of diesel engines in the USA is not as far away as you think it is.
Because of new EPA requirements for diesel fuel to have sulfur content under 80 parts per billion (most diesel fuel in the US usually has around 1200 parts per billion), this makes it very viable for the Europeans to bring over their diesel-powered cars in a few years.
Once the new low-sulfur diesel fuel is widely available, Volkswagen/Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz plan to offer a large number of diesel-powered vehicles for US sale with advanced technologies such as common-rail high-pressure direct fuel injection and other new diesel engine technologies (they've also managed to lick the problem of particulate emissions and close-coupled catalytic converters dramatically reduce NOx emissions).
And don't think they slow, either. I suggest people drive the European-market BMW 330d; people were amazed by its very fast performance and also gas mileage approaching 40 mpg!
I also do agree that dieself fuel is more easily refined than gasoline; in fact, you can make diesel fuel equivalents from biomass, coal, oil tar, etc. very easily also. In fact, there are a number of oil companies now working on a motor fuel called SynFuel that has the combustion characteristics of diesel fuel, but burns extremely cleanly. Unlike regular diesel fuel, SynFuel can be made easily from biomass sources easily.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
One reason why we don't see more diesel-powered cars for sale in the USA is the fact that US-market diesel fuel has a high level of sulfur compounds in the fuel (usually 1200 to 1500 parts per billion), which can damage the advanced diesel fuel systems in and fuel injectors we are starting to see in Europe.
But with the EPA mandating strict limits on sulfur compounds in diesel fuel (e.g. under 100 parts per billion), then we can see things like common-rail injection systems and direct-injection systems more often. Curing the other big bugaboos of diesel fuel (e.g., NOx emissions and particulate emissions) is already easily done nowadays.
I've read articles on the amazing BMW 330d, a 3.0-liter L-6 turbodiesel with great performance and nearly 40 mpg fuel mileage in daily driving. I won't be surprised once the new EPA limits are in place that we see this model in the US market.
By the way, you might want to hear some great news: Alfa Romeo is returning to the US market! They are planning to import the current GTV/Spider model in about a years' time, and they also plan to import the replacement for the 156 model (that should be called the 157). And it's likely one of the "157" models will have a 2.7-liter V-6 turbodiesel belting out around 205 bhp and getting 35 mpg!
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Speaking of alternate energy sources, back in the 1980's there was a homeowner in Cameron Park, CA (this is 22 miles east of Sacramento, CA) who had a house with solar-powered EVERYTHING (water heater, electric generation, and so on) and saw his Pacific Gas & Electric bill go from US$12.80 to US$28.00! He was definitely -not- a happy camper considering he was just about completely off the electric grid! It's situations like this that give the utility company a big black eye.
In my opinion, 25 years from now the average automobile may be fuelled either by something called Synfuel (it burns like diesel fuel but has vastly cleaner burning characteristics) or by fuel cells that use hydrogen.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
There is an extremely simple and effective way to ensure there will always be gasoline available when it's needed: prices.
If you are right that we have a decade of gasoline left, then gas prices will rise steadily throughout the next decade. By the end of the decade (when gas is almost gone) prices will be so high that no one will be able to afford it, and so alternative fuel sources will be adopted out of necessity.
In practice, there isn't a single reservoir of oil, so there's never a point at which we "run out." It will simply get more and more expensive to extract, and as prices rise people will switch to other fuels.
It's worth pointing out that prior to the current spike, gas was at the lowest price in history. That's evidence that if anything oil supplies are more plentiful than at any other time in history. People have been predicting the imminent end of oil supplies since the 30's. But to raise the price now on the (likely false) assumption that it's going to run out quickly is as wrong-headed as lowering the price on the assumption that supplies will last forever.
Let the market work. As supplies get tight, prices will go up, and people will use alternative fuels. People in the future will have better alternatives than we do today, anyway, so it would be foolish for us to spend a lot of money rationing oil now when there might be a breakthrough in 10 years that makes oil obsolete.
I'd like to see the 280HP "Lycombing" - are you sure it's not a 180HP Lycoming?
/. flames about it all the time).
:-)
:-)
Yeah, my spelling sucks (I ignore
I've got an Archer with a 180HP Lycoming, wanna race?
Nah, you'd win.
(I trained in Pipers and Cessna 172s)
Sundowners are wonderful aircraft to fly and very comfortable for long trips, but fast they aint. Mine is fairly clean, but it still trues out at around 110 kts, a far cry from the 120 kts the Piper's I used to rent would do (and they were fixed gear).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Small aircraft engines still use leaded gasoline because it is VERY expensive to certify a new engine, and the market has not yet been able to justify it.
...
This was made worse by the litigation of the seventies and eighties, which nearly killed the General Aviation industry (production of nearly all small aircraft ground to a halt for over 10 years). The industry only came back after congress passed a law limiting aircraft manufacturer's liability to nineteen years. Almost immediately, the small aircraft industry turned around.
In addition, a number of patents have expired, freeing up previously locked down technologies.
Composites are helping to bring down fuselage weight (and thereby improve performance), so some additional weight in a liquid cooling system is more viable with modern materials than it was even ten years ago.
All of these are factors -- the final hurdle being, as noted in the previous post, an expensive and arduous certification process.
Not only must the engine be certified, but to retrofit into existing aircraft, it must be certified with that aircraft.
I doubt I'll be swapping out the 280 hp 100 LL burning lycombing engine in my Beech Sundowner anytime soon
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I don't understand all the fuss about gas prices in the US. It's so much cheaper here than almost anywhere else in the world. Go to the UK and fill 'er up and you'll see what I mean. Last time I did it cost me $58 USD for a small car.
I've read once (don't ask me for references) that officials in California and Canada are looking into the Brazilian experience so as to implement a similar program at home.
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Nuclear fission power plant == > 20 billion dollars (American)
COal power plant == > 20 million dollars (American)
You go ahead and do the math.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You seem to be highly misinformed about the state of things. For starters, 50% of electricity in the US is produced by the burning of coal. Burning coal is very polluting so for every kilowatt you use to make hydrogen or power an electric car you're pumping a shitload of sulfur dioxide and carbon particulates into the air. Hydrogen fuel cells are fairly clean as they produce pure water but they are very expensive and drive under powered electric motors. Miles per gallon means shit if you can't drive on the freeway. You seem to have read one or two articles on hydrogen fuel and think its the raddest idea ever. Methanol is NOT a fossil fuel you dipshit. It's made by cutting up plant matter and fermenting it. Plants grow readily in Earth's biosphere. Methanol for a fuel is pretty efficient (about as efficient as natural gas) and produces water and carbon dioxide when burned (no harmful chemicals).
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
What I think makes this even worse in the US is that we talk about making public transportation (in the few places its usable) pay for itself. Personally I think if we make mass transport pay for itself than we should make the road systems pay for themselves too.
john
Give them a little time. This is still very hard technology to make cost effective for "small" applications, and there's a lot of active research going on. This has nothing to do with people "buying off" researchers or whatever. It just takes time to get new technology adequately designed, and we still have to figure out distribution networks for hydrogen.
Not that long ago, a fuel cell required several ounces of *PLATINUM*. This is not cheap stuff.
They're getting more efficient, but it's still very hard to make it work. I think GM announced that they hoped to have a viable car in production by 2005 or so.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Yes, natural gas prices have doubled in the past year or so, but so have oil prices.
The difference is that natural gas is produced in North America, and there is tons of excess reserves. So when prices shoot up due to increased demand, they drill more wells, and the prices drop back down.
I don't know about the efficiency of natural gas for cars, but for home heating, nothing beats it. (Well, solar is better, but the installation cost is prohibitive.)
Uhm, you don't seem to understand the difference between fuel cells and batteries.
With batteries, you use the electric grid to recharge. In that case, the pollution is based on whatever power plant is providing the electricity.
With fuel cells, your car uses a chemical reaction to convert fuel (hydrogen, gasoline, or a number of other possibilites) into electricity. Hence, no recharging, just refuling. That means no impact on the power grid.
This question honestly seems a bit strange to me. The major reason that we haven't moved to something else is that there is no reasonable alternative yet out there.
There are two kinds of problem, that of choosing what "new engine" to use and the costs of converting. Since someone else has already spoken very well about the latter problem I'll just say something about the former.
What's needed to power cars is a fuel that is highly portable, (e.g. no solar panels or wind turbines) capable of producing not only large amounts of power but high impulses, (i.e. no burning pure ethanol) is reasonably safe, (no nuclear-powered rocket engines) and reasonably inexpensive. Unfortunately, that rules out virtually all of the proposals on the market.
One of the things that has killed most of these (such as electric cars) is that they fail on one of the first two criteria. Insufficient power means that the car won't zoom fast enough, and yes, that is an issue; nobody is going to buy a car that tops out at 60mph. It's simply not a practical vehicle in a society built around major roads and highways. (Maybe in Europe or Japan one has a better chance) Insufficient portability means that there's not enough range, which requires any number of Rube Goldberg schemes to work around but always comes out to meaning that the car is good for commuting between a few nearby points with refueling docks already at them. This is why you only see electric vehicles driving around on large campuses or whatever.
Fuel cells suffer from an even more serious problems: They really don't exist yet. Cells capable of powering a car, satisfying anything even remotely like the above requirements, are still a few years away at least. Fuel containment, ease of recharging, inhibition of flammability, recoverability of fuel, and high-drain performance are all still significant issues. Once those are fixed, we get to talk about conversion costs.
The one thing that is making progress is hybrid systems, which use gasoline for the highest-drain parts of driving (acceleration) and switch to electric or other motors for low-drain parts. (highways, etc.) The technology isn't simple but it's advancing rapidly, and several such vehicles are already on the road. More are almost certain to come in the near future.
In most places electric power is just about as bad as gasoline. It's very likely that your local power company is burning fossil fuels to produce your power, mine certainly is, well we do have a nuclear plant, but it is never producing.
What I find amusing is that somehow people think its better to be disconnected from the problem, it's not so much their fault anymore. "Electric is clean, I don't know where it comes from, but my car produces no emmisions."
Personally I believe that the best long term solution is H2 as a fuel source. It's abudant (75% of the Universe's mass is hydrogen, and just about as clean as you can get, with the only byproduct of pure H2 burning being water. It can have the performance of gasoline, and I think that's key. People want a car that performs well. Most don't want the sluggish, egg shaped electric-hybird things I've seen.
The big problem with hydrogen, is that it has a really nasty rap because people think of the Hindenberg when they think of H2. The idea of stepping into anything powered by H2 is scary.
Hydrogen also has the potential to be distilled anywhere. I really wouldn't be terribly surprised if in a century, people produce their own.
Man wouldn't the oil industry hate that?
Check out The H2 information Network
It is also the way now.
You are probably aware of Home Power Magazine. Take a look at the current issue that is on there. They have an entire office with all the doo-dads running on solar - and the office is in Wisconsin. They do have a gas generator for backup, but, as they say, the thing has spent an entire 50 hours online in the past year. That is not a whole heck of a lot of time.
There are other reasons to do solar now - one solar panel can typically supply 100w to your home wiring system by means of something like the Trace Microsine Inverter. For under $1000 you can hook one of these panels up to your house wiring and feed it back to the grid. They are UL listed devices. Hook 'em up, plug 'em into an unused outlet, and sell it back.
Also, for every panel you have hooked up, you are effectively removing 1000 pounds of carbon from the air that would otherwise be generated by coal.
This is really one of the only ways to go when you think about it. Currently there are warnings about the Northeast part of the US starting to feel the strain from there just not being enough electricity available. If everyone had just one panel hooked to their house, that would be an ungodly amount of power being generated for these high use areas.
As an SUV hater (and a vegetarian :) I don't mind people who get trucks and SUVs because they need them (and having a ranch, living outside an urban area, etc. qualifies).
It is the yuppies and soccer moms, that get them because they want to drive a Sherman tank around on the freeways, that I hate. The "fuel crisis" of the 70's shifted emphasis on smaller more fuel efficient cars, with safety parameters designed for hitting other cars of roughly equal height. Now, the majority of new cars sold in the US are SUVs, which annihilate smaller fuel efficient cars in accidents, and have bumpers at about head level for my car. Most of these SUVs are for commuting in populated areas, by people who do not need them (IMO).
The insurance industry needs to start charging an INSANE amount of money for covering urban commuters with SUVs (because there will be lawsuits at some point based on the ideas I've just presented that will force them to), since the probability of small cars hitting a big SUV (or getting hit by) is MUCH greater than it was 10 years ago.
I'd also like to know exactly how much the current increase in (U.S.) gas prices can be directly attributed to the shift back to gas guzzling vehicles.
(To original poster, nothing against you. You are welcome to your SUV. I don't need one daily, but I sometimes rent one if I go on a trip to the mountains)
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Surely those that choose an SUV (and pay the price) are choosing it for what they think is in their best interest. And for quite a few it is justified. But is it really justified for over 50% of new car owners in the US? Surely SUV owners are safer in accidents with small cars (not necessarily with other SUVs), but their liability should be higher, since they may CAUSE far more injuries than a smaller car (and insurance must account for that, even in "no-fault" states). Your medical bill equation left out that term. So there certainly is no justification for charging the same for accident insurance. I personally think the minimum liability insurance requirements should be set higher for larger vehicles (and probably everyone in general) to account for this.
Please remember my argument was centered on urban and commuter use of SUVs, in a discussion about fuel use. Driving an SUV may be safer (until everyone has an SUV) but their high popularity does put fuel efficient vehicles at risk, and is part of the equation I must consider when deciding whether I want to buy a new breed of fuel efficient car and drive it on the same highways as all the SUVs.
As for vans and station wagons, well, you are right, they absolutley suck in terms of safety, fuel efficiency, and just about everything else but getting laid in (and they aren't exactly mate attractors anyway). But a minivan-type thing could be a safe acceptible alternative, if it were not for the high risk of getting hit by something bigger.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Of course, there are some other issues as well. For example, we may determine that Methanol is the most POLLUTION EFFICIENT vehicle-power method available, but realize that in order to generate enough Methanol, we'd have to turn the entire continent of North America into a gigantic corn farm. Obviously, this would negate the value of Methanol. Similarly, if we need to dam every river in the country to generate enough electricity to power our cars, causing a complete kill off of their entire ecosystems, we wouldn't do so.
This is of course why we need to reduce our reliance on "private" transportation. If everyone didn't waste so much energy we wouldn't need to dam every river or an obscene raise corn. I put private into quotes because it's not private by any means I'm subsidizing even who chooses to drive with my tax money. Interstates and highways aren't built with fuel tax dollars. I'd be happy to see a $1 a gallon tax on gas that went to public transporation.
And America will spend the forseeable future bitching about how expensive electric cars are, bitching (and suing) when they want to build a nuclear power plant within 500 miles of our house, spend every other waking moment bitching about how high gas prices are, bitching about OPEC, and continue sending every drop of oil in Alaska straight to Japan.
Dear fellow Americans,
Gasoline and the US Mail are the best deals around. Shut your collective pie holes. Gas is pumped out of the ground, shipped across the planet, refined, and sold for about the same price as water, which last I checked, fell from the sky.
-B
Has anybody mentioned CIDI yet?
If you want something that's signifigantly more economical and environmentally friendly than gasser engines, and that's available now, and doesn't cost way too much, and that's even *fun to drive*, then Compression Ignition Direct-Injection (CIDI) engines are where it's at.
Modern direct injection diesels are all over Europe, but thanks to poor market perception and yet poorer fuel quality, North America hasn't caught on yet. The best example that you can find in the U.S.A. is Volkswagen's wonderful TDI motors. More manufacturers will offer CIDI alternatives in the very near future.
Performance is quite good. Even though a 1.9-liter TDI only produces 90HP, it produces as much torque as a larger-displacement gasser engine -- and torque is more important, IMHO. Also, the maximum torque is available at about 1750RPM. You get power where at the revs you visit most.
There's a lot of scoot in there, if you tweak your driving habits just a bit. You won't win every drag race, but you can sure pass on the expressway with authority. Many TDI owners have modded their vehicles for performance, with surprising results (see Fred's TDI club below).
Emissions are impressive. Save for NO2 and particulates, TDI motors have lower emissions than gassers in the other four categories. Even so, the particulate levels are very low compared to the sooty old passenger diesels that you're used to seeing -- they rarely "smoke".
Puegot is developing a particulate trap that will further reduce this category of emissions. That can be retrofitted to existing CIDI cars, and will certainly come on newer models. There's a lot of research going on, but the phony enviro-types such as Gore in the U.S. certainly haven't been promoting it.
Fuel economy is very good. Many TDI owners report 49-52 MPG regularly, even with some spirited driving. Did I mention that diesel fuel is often cheaper than petrol? That's exactly why so many Europeans drive CIDI cars... both fuels are hideously expensive there.
Also, CIDI motors use very little fuel at idle, unlike gassers... so, they're good for the city, as well as the highway. It's very hard to stall a TDI. =-)
Maintenance on CIDI engines is lower -- there's no ignition system, for instance. If you change your timing belt every 40-50K, a TDI motor should last 500,000km easily. Contrary to popular belief, modern diesels are easy to start, even in the extreme cold. They were designed to work in Northern Europe, so they would have to! =-)
Everything else aside, alternative fuel availability is the real holy grail here. You can run on straight dino-diesel, or mix in some veggie-based biodiesel, or even work in some natural-gas based synthetic diesel. In a pinch, you could run several other substances. There's lots of room for future development here.
As long as the cetane level is high enough, and the lubricity is sufficient to make it past the injector pumps, &c. then it'll probably run great. Modern gassers (the ones that I like, anyways) will never, ever run on anything but premium petrol, made from dinosaur oil. That's the biggest difference for me!
Don't get me wrong, I like other automotive technologies, too... I just happen to like CIDI better. Especially since I can get a practical car with a TDI motor in the U.S. today for less than $20K.
The internal combustion engine is far from dead. Don't let Al Gore kill it off... that would be a huge mistake. Like a previous poster said, diesel contains more energy than petrol. It's also easier to refine, so there's less pollution and energy needed to make it compared to petrol.
For more than you ever wanted to know about CIDI (and VW TDI's in particular), check out Fred's. Be careful, it can be addictive. But so are french fries, for that matter. =-)
Fred's TDI Club
hey CIDI enthusiasts, did I leave anything out?
-cheers, fattyfox
We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone. -management
Because the electricity for batteries is reasonably cheap, but the batteries themselves are very expensive. Who pays for them?
OK, assume it's an investment on the part of the "electricity providers." They buy a couple tons of batteries, and you can go to any other station in their franchise, and swap out discharged battery for a charged one. They charge you for the service (forgive the pun), and put in some extra percentage to cover the price of the battery. Sounds great!
Except, the problem is, powerful, rechargable batteries don't last very long. And how do they know that the box you're bringing back as one of their discharged batteries really is? Powerful batteries tend to be a big case filled with smaller cells, sometimes with "smart" controllers that switch around bad sub-cells. You could be yanking out the insides, and returning them a battery case filled with gravel or something.
So the solution has to be some kind of internal security device. This drives the price up even higher.
OK, and what happens if you're driving through rural no-where, and there's no franchises of CityVoltageBatteriesInc? If the battery stations have exchange agreements, you're fine. But what that really means is that the Mega Battery Conglomerates will survive, and there will be no Mom'n'Pop battry stations.
And you know that they're gonna mess everything up in the name of competition. Bob's SuperCharge will tell you that Tina's ChargeYouUp doesn't fully charge the battery, and worse, smears some contact-cleaning paste on the terminals that'll shorten the life of your car. Tina, of course, will tell you that ChargeYouUp has a patented phased charge cycle that manages to put more high-energy electricity in your battery, yielding that extra few miles per charge.
All these problems have solutions, of course, but currently lack the political will and/or the price point incentive for anyone to implement the solution.
-
bukra fil mish mish
-
Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
I'm not a creationist or a scientific ignoramus. I don't care about the oil companies.
:( )
I know the Earth transfers heat and mass with the greater universe (especially through the sun, which shines on us and allows plants to grow and thereby life and evolution, even intellegent life and computers).
But, the unavoidable conclusion of this intellegence is that it will use all available energy it can. And this use of energy will always create entropy somewhere.
This is a philosophical point, not an indictment for love of petroleum products. Let's say you use solar power. As that technology currently stands, you have to replace the 10% effecient solar panels every couple years, causing about the same polution as the large, heavy batteries that also need replacement. Arguing that "innovation" will "solve" these problems is exactly why I proposed the philisophical point that no matter how the energy is harvested, somewhere entropy is created by its use. This entropy, in the end, will lead to heating the Earth, almost by definition. Waste heat, as discussed in many forums, is an inevitable consequence of any increase in energy use.
So what WOULD I recomend? Greater efficiency of energy that's being used now is the only reasonable course of action we have. This requires our devices be more expensive to build, but will work out in the end. Like the Honda Insite, which costs $18,000 (about $5,000 more than a regular car), which is a dual gas/electric hybrid, and gets about double the normal gas efficiency due to lighter materials, brake energy capture, and electric motor efficiencies.
Entropy is created SOMEWHERE when energy is harvested. Therefore we have to be careful and use our energy wisely and efficiently. Oh, and let the prices on gas rise. I bought the most fuel efficient car I could find (the ford escort) and will weather the rise better than most. (Too bad I don't have public transportation in this area
-Ben
Right. The best alternatives for gasoline are deisel, Natural gas, and arguably methenal. After that, the increasingly nutty ideas are Methane, Hydrogen and Electricity, or even solar.
Unless you've got a moped weight-car with as much of a footprint as a truck, solar power doesn't generate enough electricity. Electricity simply redistributes where the carbon is burned, and Hydrogen is very unstable (and can't be found in a mine like Petroleum). The others all contribute greatly to global warming (especially methane) and are more expensive to get.
Do you want to use Nuclear Power? That would quickly make a toxic, radioactive mess.
So if you're looking to solve the global warming problem, the expense problem, or any problem, by eliminating the dominant energy source, remember the second law of thermodynamics: "Any change in a closed system will tend to make the system more entropic." (more random) Basically any method of generating energy will negatively affect the world in some way (except solar, which negatively affects the sun, slowly).
-Ben
There's not really a good fuel source to switch to yet. Electric cars are fine, until you realize that you pollute more generating the electricity. Ethanol's great, but even if all the corn in the U.S. was put towards ethanol, it would only satisfy 4% of the demand for gas. Yeah, that's right. 4%. Hydrogen fuel cells-I love them , but they're not viable yet. The acid in them is extremely corrosive-I'd hate to see an accident where the acid spills. You can't turn them off either-kind of pointless to have a fuel cell running 24 hours a day. Also , hydrogen can't exactly be found on the ground in the pure form. You can have electrolysis of water, but then you're back to the power plants. Only the algae that produces hydrogen is really viable, but that's quite a ways down the road where everyone has an algae pond on top of their house. I think we need to get over electric cars, and focus on hydrogen fuel cells-it's our only shot.
Colin Winters
I know for a fact that many many times in the twentieth century, there have been inventors who came up with carburetor designs that enabled ANY vehicle to get 300 miles to the gallon or even more. My dad knew one such person personally. He invented a 300MPG carb, tried to market it, and instantly got bought out by Ford, I think it was. They bought his design for $50,000 (this was in the 50's, when 50 grand was actually worth something :) and then smothered it. Nobody heard of it again.
And if you really want to get into conspiracy theories, I suggest you just do a web search for "zero point energy". There are so many ways to use ZPE it's sickening, considering the fact that NONE of them have been even mentioned in mainstream media (owned by big business). It is possible to take damn near any existing electrical motor, add a few parts, and turn it into a generator that runs itself without any fuel. You just give it a spin and it runs forever. But guess what happens when someone tries to patent such a device? The patent office replies, "Oh. That, by definition, is a perpetual motion machine. We can't give patents on those. Sorry." They don't even bother testing the patent's claims, or try building one themselves, or even let the guy demonstrate it... they just refuse to patent it and move on. In New Zealand, a man who tried to patent a perpetual motion machine in 1970 suddenly found himself dead, and all his research materials and lab supplies and equipment just mysteriously vanished. History is replete with examples of this tyranny, and just about all of it is the big business collusion that keeps the oil producers making their trillions. What would happen if everyone alive knew they could get a generator the size of a small desk, put it in their garage, and cut the power lines to their house, and never have to buy fuel or pay for electricity ever again? Why, it would destroy Exxon, Texaco, Shell, and all of OPEC just about overnight. Can't have that. It's financial evolution: "Survival of the richest."
So, again, this is something you'll have to go do research on. Explaining how to convert a motor into a perpetual-motion generator is well beyond the scope of a slashdot post. Again, do "zero point energy" and "ZPE" searches on Metacrawler and prepare yourself for enlightenment.
Do not simply see the phrase "perpetual motion machine" in this post and scoff immediately. Science and physics doesn't even know what magnetism or gravity is, yet it claims to be able to state with absolute certainty that perpetual motions machines are impossible?? The sheer arrogance is staggering. "Yes, well, we realize we only understand about 0.01% of how the universe works, but we know you can't have perpetual motion. It's just preposterous." Give me a break.
Does anyone see a pattern here? Humans are so stupid that they believe things just because they come out of an authority figure's mouth. Think for yourselves! Do your own research! It sickens and saddens me to know that the salvation of humanity is so close, yet people refuse to reach out and grab it just because they've been brainwashed all through school and childhood to not believe in it. I mean, please... How far would we have gotten if Columbus had just believed what the scientists told him without question instead of being brave and intelligent enough to go find out on his own? What would the world be like today if Pasteur hadn't thought "Hmm; I know people are going to laugh at me and perhaps worse for publishing the results of my research, but I have to do it because it'll save lives"? What if Orville & Wilbur Wright had just given up because everyone kept telling them that only birds could fly because God gave them wings and not us? Who knows how many times in history some brilliant bit of new thought has been squelched just because the person who thought it up believed the rhetoric against it? Say people had listened to Nicola Tesla instead of destroying him. How much further along would science be today if he'd been allowed to produce his electromagnetic shield, or his car that ran on nothing more than the electricity in the air? He had a car with a black box in it that had a lot of antennae sticking out of it; no engine, no fuel tank, no nothing, and all of this verified. He drove it around for many many years. But how many people have heard of it? It's just one of the truly innovative inventions of history that's been crushed out of existence by Those In Power who'd rather keep making money than let us have something that will bring pollution to a COMPLETE END. There never should have BEEN any pollution; Tesla and Marconi had perpetual motion generators 100 years ago but they went nowhere with them. Westinghouse destroyed Tesla. Even the Smithsonian (run by You Know Who Inc., of course) is trying to bury Tesla in obscurity in favor of Edison's crappy stab at electrical production.
So. Does anyone believe me? How many of you can break through your years of schooling and conditioning and brainwashing to see the real truth? How many of you will go further, and see for yourselves what is possible in the field of fuelless power generation? 'Cause I can't take much more of this. If you people allow yourselves to be ruled and crushed by big business and politicians, there's no hope for humanity. We'll just keep falling farther and farther into slavery until there's no more clean water, no more clean air, and no more fossil fuels left... but you can bet that as soon as the earth runs out of resources, big business will suddenly go "Oh, looky here! We've just discovered perpetual motion machines ARE possible! Now bow down and thank us for saving you!" and you fucking sheep will do it.
Baaaaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa.
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
That's most likely a factor, but the MAIN reason is that it's cheeper than a gallon of watter or milk. Go to the store and look at the price of just about any fluid in the place - Gasoline is cheeper. And it will remain that way until we run out of it.
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Ironically, I had a lot of discussions about alternative fuels when I was out in the midwest last week. Why not ethanol? It can be made from just about anything organic (it seems..I heard mention of garbage, paper, corn, wheat, etc). It burns cleaner. They have 85% ethanol cars now (a few from ford and chrysler) that appear to run jsut as well, good speed, good efficiency. E85 (as they call 85% ethanol) had a 106 octane at the pump when I looked. What's the catch? We have the most farm land of anywhere I can think of in the world. We have a grain surplus. Most importantly, it's renewable. What's the problem here???
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
There's are a couple of good reasons Middle Eastern crude is so much cheaper than ours, and they have nothing to do with labor cost:
1. They have really, really good oil. This means that there are a lot of light fractions suitable for things like gasoline, with very little of the tar and other goop that reduces output and creates environmental concerns. This directly translates to ME oil producing more product per barrel of crude, and at a much lower price. Some Mubaraq *crude* is light enough to be lit with a match! This difference in quality is one reason why even having to drag it halfway around the world doesn't kill the economic advantage.
2. It's really, really easy to get to. There's an old joke in the oil business that says "Sure their oil is cheap - all they have to do is poke a stick in the ground to get it." This is not much of an exaggeration. Complex (and consequently expensive) drilling methods are almost never needed there - a big contrast to the directional drilling, complex fracturing techniques, and secondary/tertiary recovery techniques that have sidelined so many US oilfields, especially here in Texas.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Pat:
I'm interested in your electric car - that's a pretty good hack in its own right. Do you have a page up for it?
BTW: Thanks for both Pilot DOC and the NetWinder work - netwinder.org taught me a lot about Linux on other platforms. Maybe Red Hat will buy Corel after all - someone should, you're a pretty good deal right now... Best wishes.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Car & Driver had a side-splitting story about an attempt to travel coast-to-coast in a natural gas-powered car a few months back.
It was no picnic, and the guy's lucky he didn't blow himself up, but real drivers would do the same. It points out the importance of infrastructure, even for something so universally available as NG, and the pain that goes with being an early adopter.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Although there are many people out there spinning comely stories about the wonderfulness of hydrogen and fuel cells, the harsh reality is that hydrogen makes economic sense now or in the foreseeable future.
Car and Driver had an excellent set of articles exposing these realities a few months ago, and talking about what's possible in the lab vs. the real world.
Check out:
Hydrogen, cleanest of all no-pollution myths.
By PATRICK BEDARD (August 1999)
and
Fuel-cell miracles and urban sprawl.
By BROCK YATES (August 1999)
and this article, which points out the extraordinary staying power of a continually improving internal combustion engine:
The Survivor
News of the demise of the internal-combustion engine is greatly exaggerated. Again.
By PATRICK BEDARD (December 1998)
Add to this that one big 3 automaker has pointed out how electrics are both hideously expensive and subsidized by thier makers by remarking that, " the absolute cheapest way for us to get batteries for an electric car is to go buy one from Toyota and throw away the car." Somehow I don't think Toyota would let them do that for very long...
Bottom line: We still use gasoline engines because they are teh best technological solution to the problem. They may not always be, but they are likely to remain so for the next several decades, anyway.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
There's a LOT of innovation in Diesels that we don't see here in the US. (The VW TDIs being about all that's for sale here.)
Not only is range stupendous (the TDI wagon can go 800 miles before refueling!), but some manufacturers are even managing to deal with the problems of sluggish Diesel performance.
Look folks, when Alfa Romeo starts building Diesel cars, you know there's something afoot! (Italian cars are a sickness from which I've never recovered - I sure wish I could buy a new Spider or GTV here.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This is conspiracy theorist bunk! If you've got a clean, effiecient, cost effective alternative, then by all means go sell it and make billions.
But you don't do you? Niether does anyone else.
I suppose you think we'd all have flying saucers if the auto/oil/govt conspiracy hadn't suppressed the Dean drive, right? Time for a reality check, dude - those "much cleaner and more powerful energy sources" don't exist, or someone would be making money off of them.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
OK, I stand corrected. As a tourist, I buy my rides one at a time, which could get to be quite expensive.
Two of my three cars are paid for, and my total operating costs are quite reasonable. For that, I gat the ability to go anywhere, anytime, direct to my destination. I agree that mass transit makes some sense in high-density urban areas (which many of us despise and avoid), but it will not and cannot work in other contexts. I wouldn't use it here even if it were available and cheaper - it's worth the incremental cost to have the flexiblity of a car. I know people live with only mass transit, but I can't imagine living such a narrow and confined life.
There is a real differnce in culture and attitudes at work here, which is why mass transit generally fails in the South and West, where freedom and elbow room are more highly valued.
As for ozone depletion, first, there's room for reasonable scientific disagreement on the issue, and some reputable and serious atmospheric scientists insist it's a myth. Second, cars *produce* ozone, and that's one of the things the EPA is trying to prevent. It causes trouble down here, but eventually rises to the ozone layer. Cars do not hurt the ozone layer, alhtough jet airplanes may.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
O.K. time for another reality check:
SUVs use somewhat more gas than cars, but not a lot. Most modern SUVs get better mileage and pollute far less than many cars from the 80's - go check the figures yourself. The much-maligned Ford Excursion actually offers one of the cleanest-burning engines on the market, and is officially classed as an LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle).
SUVs are in no way responsible for the increase in gas prices. I'm no SUV apologist (I'm neither for nor against them - I prefer Ferraris), but let's stick to facts here.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Let's see, it's nearly 100 degrees out there today, and oh, yes, Austin has a lot of steep hills. Sure I could ride a bike to work (to one of my offices, anyway), but I'd smell like a goat when I got there, and be worn out on top of it.
Cars make far more sense than any other form of transportation for most locales. And actually, cars are a quite efficient way of moving around - todays cars are an order of magnitude more efficient and three orders of magnitude cleaner than the cars of the 1960s.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
My husband and I have a GM EV-1, an all-electric car, which we love. It has great acceleration and sufficient range (about 120 miles)for commuting. Usually, we charge it in our garage, but we've also used public chargers, such as the ones at my husband's workplace (NASA) and at Fry's.
You can already buy half-electric cars [...]
You do realize that they still run on gasoline, right?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Most folks have a second car. Probably most families seldom need to cart around more than four people in more than two vehicles simultaneously.
So, keep the Yukon for major haulting purposes. Commute in the Prius, which is larger than the Insight and can fit four adults or possibly two adults and three children (see picture) in a pinch. It also is going for about 20.5K, and gets 48MPG combined city and highway mileage.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
they're no match for gluttony.
I understand there are supply factors involved, but if you look around at the cars people are driving, you've got to wonder.
Some years ago when I worked in the non-profit environmental field, I was going to buy a car. Since I didn't particularly want to be a hypocrite, I asked an automotive engineer friend how to figure out which cars have the best emissions. Without batting an eye, he says, "Get a car with good gas mileage." Makes sense -- if you don't burn it, it doesn't muck up the place with emissions.
Fast forward to present day. I'm a fairly big guy, so I can't shoehorn myself into the tiniest econoboxes, but for chrissakes, people are driving HUMUNGOUS cars like the Lincoln Navigator. I drive a several year old escort that gets a bit over 40MPG on the highway, probably just north of 30 overall with the mix of driving I do. My brother, on the other hand, drives a freaking Ford Expedition, a car which is probably easily four times as heavy and probably gets about half the mileage, just to haul his carcass around town.
If all the people who drove my brother's kind of car who could just as easily get away with my kind of car (e.g. they don't tow a boat or drive offroad) switched, how much would you want to bet that gas prices would be way lower. It bugs me when politicians get up saying they're going to investigate the oil companies because of high gas prices. For obvious reasons, they can't get up and say you get what you deserve, you jackass, for driving a flagrantly wasteful vehicle.
I think fuel cells powered electrical hybrids have a great deal of promise for both fuel economy and emissions. However, if people insist on going to buy milk in trucks that could be used tow spacecraft out of the vehicle assmbly building, then we'll still be bitching about gas prices.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Why don't you take your social engineering somewhere else?
Like it's going to put a crimp in our lifestyle to have to drive a car smaller than the state of Missouri.
If people care about the effects of their gas powered vehicles then they will demand alternatives which will eventually become available (in fact, they will pay a premium for them).
Actually, it's more like the prisoner's dilemma. Most people DO care. They would like to see a world with lower gas prices, less pollution, less traffic, easier parking, more greenspace, less noise, and fewer fatal accidents. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of folks would be willing to buy a smaller, more efficient vehicle if this would do the trick.
The fact is, it won't, because you need a good hunk of everyone else to do the same thing. So, you can either opt out and enjoy the benefits of a very large, inefficient car, or you can opt in, and hope that others to do the same. Looked at in isolation, I can get big personal beneifts from creating a cost that, because it is shared among the public, is small to me.
By taxing gas guzzling cars, you are iternalizing the public costs of driving a gas guzzler. This is a much more benign approach than banning gas hogs outright.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As the current gasoline price increases have shown, the demand for gasoline is very very inelastic.
Over what timeframe?
The fact is, people drive where they want to go. It is the choice of vehicle that drives gasoline demand. In the eigthies there was a trend towards more efficient cars. Gas prices plummeted in the 90's and people started driving gas hogs again. If the current prices stay up, then we'll see smaller more efficient cars come on the market.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
is part of the car's chassis
That's great. So when the battery wears out you have to throw away the car?
I've always wondered why one of the objections to electric cars is the battery recharge time. Why not have battery stations where you can go exchange your low battery pack for a freshly charged one?
they don't produce the kind of power most people want. you could use a Honda Insight but why don't you have one? because it has 63 horsepower, that's why. it's slow...
when Audi releases a fuel-cell powered TT with 250 horseys, i'll be on the waiting list, until then,.. i'm sticking with the gasoline powered I-4!
...dave
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
5. Never trust air you can't see
4. The combustible engine was the greatest invention ever. We intend to keep it that way.
3. I'm a rich and powerful executive: I dont need a damn slogan!
2. Killing vegetation now so your descendants will have oil thousands of years from now.
1. Fuel cell, shmool cell: we can't make $100 billion a year on that!
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
First of all, I built a car for the SAE supermileage competition. The 3 hp briggs & stratton rototiller engines we used can move the cars 30 - 40 mph (at reduced efficiency). However, if you crash at 40 you will probably die. These cars can get 1k mpg if run in burn/kill mode. That is, full throttle for 30 secs, kill the engine, and coast for a couple of minutes (3-5 mins). Running at constant partial throttle will get you about 300 mpg. The international competition allows smaller engines like string trimmer. I think you can buy overhead cam string trimmer engines that are pretty efficient. I have no problem believing string trimmer engines can get 10k mpg when the wind is right. Wind makes a huge difference.
BTW, these cars are fun to drive. Much faster and more powerful than, say, a bicycle. It's like driving an aero go-cart.
Ryan
It is Ethanol, not Methanol, that is used in Brazil. Methanol is highly toxic, for one thing, and Brazil's alcohol production comes from sugar cane, which gives you ethanol.
And the cars do not accept both. You have to chose either gasoline or alcohol.
Aside from that, the reason why gasoline is used is really simple: it's the cheapest available, for now.
(8-DCS)
Brazil uses ethanol, not methanol.
:-)
But, then, this stuff evaporates. Gasoline evaporates too. You simply don't let it on the open.
(8-DCS)
The energy density for either ethanol or gasoline is incorrect. Brazilian ethanol-based cars had efficiency only 30-50% inferior to gasoline (range -- power was always much more a function of the engine).
(8-DCS)
I wanna know why in the mid 1970's one could buy a cheap little Honda Civic that got 50mpg. 25+ years later we've advanced all the way to 70mph for an EXPENSIVE "hybrid" Honda?
.zip file down and you'll find either comma or tab-delimeted files. Import to your favorite spreadsheet and see line 505, column L (or 12 if you've got numbered columns) of the file called 78FG.DAT.
There's virtually no value to the Insight beyond it's EPA numbers! No cargo space, only carries 1 (one!) passenger...
25 years of arguably the best automotive engineering the planet has ever seen and THAT's all we got for it?
I smell a rat.
References/Resources:
Historical and current data and abaility to compare vehicles at fueleconomy.gov.
Toyota Prius & Honda Insight stats
Here's all the info I could find at the EPA. They have data going back to only 1978.
Break this
(And a methanol burner, that maybe even comes with its own still - throw vegetable peels and grass cuttings in the top, out comes methanol, ain't biomass fuels cool - looks even better.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I spent a couple of years working for a company which writes software for E&P (exploration and production) in the petroleum industry. I saw a little bit of the cyclic economy of the industry and learned a little about the way it operates.
Basically, the global energy situation is controlled by the perceived oversupply of available oil, primarily from the Middle Eastern producers, and especially the Saudis. The price of oil is somewhat related to the costs of recovery. (There are oil reserves controlled by western companies for which recovery costs are higher, but which could be brought into play in the event we were cut off from the Middle Eastern supply. Also, even though the Middle Eastern nations have the lowest recovery costs for the best oil, even they couldn't sell at a loss for too long.)
More or less, though, the dominating factor in the price of oil is the large and cheaply recoverable supply of the Middle Eastern countries. They are only able to keep the price up to the degree to which other countries will not pursue other recovery options under their control (which comes into play as the price rises) and to which they can agree with each other to limit production rather than seeking individual national gain by selling more at a cheaper price.
Oil has a lot of economic intertia, and is practically an energy bargain at this point in time. Business and Industry doesn't care so much about efficiency when there exists a cheap oversupply of the energy source. Development of alternative energy sources will be relatively stifled by neglect as long as this is the case.
Of course, the view is short-sighted as is often the case for business, which seems to operate on a quarterly outlook. The oil reserves, while still potentially vast, are ultimately non-renewable in any reasonable time scale. Business will refuse to acknowledge environmental costs until they are enforced upon it as a normal course of action. However, it appears that increasing use of fossil fuels has some risk with respect to significantly altering the atmosphere with unknown effects on an already complex situation.
Other than the environmental effects, I don't see much wrong with consuming petroleum resources. However, it seems like we've reached the point where we're going to need to change some social priorities in order to protect the environment against our current and growing level of consumption.
Mryll
Which they should! If we tax something, that is saying that you are reaping a reward from this country that you should pay back to it. Corporations reap TONS of rewards from this country. They should be taxed. And if they do evil things, they should be taxed even more, or dismantled.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Why? Because big corporations run our government. Nuff said.
You think we really wouldn't be all driving clean vehicles that much better mileage, or better yet, have better public transportation systems, and using much cleaner more powerful energy sources, if big industry didn't have politicians' hands in their pockets? Government subsidizes this bullshit instead of aggressively trying to find better energy sources.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"And we are fed up with them paying their employees and paying those taxes. Pesky jerks."
Corporations pay a disproportionately SMALL amount of taxes. In fact, in many cases, the government just gives them big "gifts" of our tax dollars.
"Find a solution that will not result in hundreds of thousands of people being laid off. Find a way that will not result in the economies of several countries being tossed down the toilet which will further result in war, unrest and more people suffering not to mention economic problems for the rest of the world."
I.e., maintain the status quo? Don't rock the boat? If we were talking about sweatshop labor would you be saying "Don't do something that would result in laying off all those employees! They will lose their jobs and income!". There has been nearly ZERO innovation in the combustion engine and automobile industry since their existence. Things like seatbelts and airbags have been around since the 50s and even 20s. The combustion engine is virtually unchanged. There is no reason to subsidize this status quo. Let cleaner options compete. All those displaced people will find new jobs in the new markets that are opened.
"Find a solution that when implemented, will be as cost affective as what it replaced. For instance, don't force everyone to buy a new car which costs two and a half times more than a gasoline powered device and then force them to use a fuel that costs several dollars a gallon and have that same device and fuel get the same mileage as their previous gasoline-powered device."
The only reason cars are as affordable as they are is because we haven't sin taxed the oil and automobile companies for their pollution record. Had we been *correctly* doing this, cleaner options would be just as economic or more. We've spent a lot of money propping up these industries which have gone on to exploit economies of scale to give us inefficient crap for cheap. Efficiency should be cheaper, not more expensive.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"If someone were to build disposable cars, designed to last 3-4 years, using this ultra-efficient technology, you could throw away a good percentage of the gas-guzzlers."
We already have disposable cars. Do you think the automobile industry wants our cars to last longer? Hell no. And anyway, say we did have more disposable cars. How the hell would throwing away more cars possibly help the environment? Sure, a lot of a car can be recycled, but there is still a lot of junk that will just end up in a land fill.
"I can't blame the markets for pandering to demand. They're there to make money, not save the world. If most people want to turn precious reserves into pollutants, for no good reason, then the markets will respond and provide the means to do so."
Markets and demand are intimately tied. In the 70s we thought we could only buy gigantic boat-sized cars that got 10 mph and gruesomely killed passengers in any sort of serious accident. It took people doing some muckraking and bringing this to the press and really fighting government to get anything changed in the first place (_Unsafe at Any Speed_, Raph Nader).
So, no, I can't say I don't blame the markets. The markets spew toxic chemicals into the air and poison the ecology in various ways, and exploit third world workers. So YES, I blame the markets. I blame Americans for being all to willfully ignorant and greedy. I blame the money that pays the media and government to shut up.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
And guess who owns the patents for these hybrid and more effecient fuels? You guessed it, the automobile and oil industries. And their sitting their rich fat asses on them. Now THAT is an abuse of the patent system.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Brazil uses 100% Ethanol Gas. Why don't we in Canada use it too? Well, ethanol at 20 below zero celcius tends to freeze.
What's my point? Well. There are alternatives. But like the Mac: it's just too damn expensive unless tonnes and tonnes of people use it.
JLC
What I'm trying to point out is that there's a lot more involved than simple efficiency. Electric cars looked great on paper, but a large scale implementation would have potentially overstressed the generating power of several regions, thus requiring more big, ugly, polluting coal fired plants to be built. Why coal? People start screaming and protesting when they hear "nuclear", most feasible hydro sites are in use, and other "alternatives" like solar and wind are only feasible in limited geographic areas and require large tracts of land to place the collectors on. This land may not be usuable for anything else. Alternative fuels would be great - the "biodiesel" stuff seems to show great promise. More "exotic" technologies like fuel cells are showing promise as well, but are still in the early stages of commercial development. There's several companies that are supposed to have a fuel cell on the market by this fall that is designed to power a house. If they can be as reliable and clean as the designers claim you will start seeing lots of them in use, especially in rural areas. I would love to have a clean, reliable source of power that didn't require the time/money investment of modern "small scale" solar or hydro units. A fuel cell does, of course, require a source of fuel but most rural residences have them - they either have access to natural gas lines or they already have a tank used for storing gas (either gasoline or propane/natural gas). Depending on the efficiency of the fuel cell (natural gas is actually rather expensive when you're not on a pipeline. We have a 500lb tank, and I think it costs $300-$500 dollars to fill it up, but that will last 6-8 months depending on the weather and how much we cook - the stove is gas fired as well). If they could be efficient enough where a 500lb tank would provide 8-12 months worth of electricity, possibly w/ a small battery system to handle surge loads, then I'd be very interested. On the other hand, if that same tank is only going to last a month then it's going to be far too expensive. It also must be 100% reliable or be able to be repaired/replaced relatively quickly at a reasonable price. If your fuel cell malfunctions, and there's nobody to repair it within 200 miles, what good is it? If the only possible "repair" in all cases is replacement of a $8000 unit, what good is it? Liquid fuel seems to be here to stay (at least in the immediate future). The infrastructure for dispensing and shipping it is already in place, and current vehicles can be easily converted. Ethanol and bio-diesel may be the best option at this point in climates where they perform acceptably. I live in the Southeast US, so low temparatures are rarely a problem. :> Heat/humidity, on the other hand, is a sever problem. Fuels (or energy sources) that don't handle high heat/humidity will be useless in this area - 50% or higher humidity is the norm, and 90%+ humidity and 100deg heat isn't unheard of either.
What's the point of this long dialog? :> Well - there are alternatives, but there is no universal alternative that won't require major reworking of the fuel distribution system and/or private vehicles. High gas prices can actually be a good thing - the higher the prices of gas, the more incentive there is to develop alternatives and more efficient vehicles. Instead of writing your congressman to ask for controls on the price of gasoline, ask for research into alternatives.
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
I seem to recall Dad and my Opa thinking of buildiing a hydraulic car, where the IC engines is running at a constant speed (that at which it has peak efficiency). When you brake, the motor compresses hydraulic chambers as you idle, and when you release the brake, all that pressure is immediately available for acceleration.
/. become 'news for grease monkeys'?)
There were other details, such as that the traditional brake-accelerator set of pedals wouldn't work without some mechanical shenanigans. But the main thing is that the motor is constantly running at peak efficiency.
Related to this, I also remember hearing about a guy (perhaps someone else can remember his name) who developed a carbuerator that flash-vapourised gasoline instead of merely spraying droplets of gas into the chamber. This resulted in far less wasted fuel going out the exhaust pipe. I don't know what became of this idea (I think it was a 70s or 80s thing), but the main problem is the saftey hazard of using those highly volatile vapours.
(BTW, when did
-JD
I think the real problem is that Gas has been so cheap in the US for so long. We have had it WAY too good.
It is like this with a lot of things. People scramble for huge home entertainment centers, pointlessly fast PCs with monster monitors, and every appliance under the sun. That's because electricity isn't outrageously expensive here. If it were, you'd start seeing a turn toward to realistic.
On the plus side, you wouldn't need to live next to 10 million polluting cars, producing a far higher level of emissions and with poorer control of toxic elements.
Typically only about 20-25% of the energy from an internal combustion
engine goes into use, the rest is dissipated as heat. With fuel
cells you make use of pretty much all of the energy available
overhead, so the comparable overhead is that of your power station,
which is much much better, typically about 70%.
The size of fuel cells is coming down drastically. A great advantage
to using electicity-based power is that if a much better battery
medium comes along, you don't have the infrastructure problems to
switching over that you do now switching from petrol to electricty.
People just switch over on a car-by-car basis.
The research is being done. I have a good friend that is working with a cheap way of mass producing solar cells. Right now they are at 10% effeciency, if they can hit 15% effeciency, which it may this summer, then it becomes more viable because they become easier and cheaper to produce.
As computing becomes more powerful the ability to simulate fusion plants becomes more viable, ~9 FLOPs per particle. We do need to keep funding that research though, nuclear physics research is a dieing field in the US (other than weapon production) because it doesn't get funded. I was surprised that the laser at Lawrence Livermore Labs was produced.
I hate to place a rant here but it seems suited so.
<rant>
One area of scientific research that would push the development of a better source of energy is space research. The ability to power a space craft to other planets and for space exploration will require new sources of power. The technology that we have today is, although adequite, not at the level that would allow for "affordable" and effecient space travel.
By funding the space program the research for better power plants would follow, and would approach it from non-standard directions.
</rant>
Research is being done. The US just isn't funding it as well as they should.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Although both Honda and Toyota have come out with hybrid cars, one limiting factor is price. The Honda Insight costs > $19000 and the Toyota Prius conts >$20000. Sure, they are first generation vechicles, but if they aren't shown as profitable then they will probably be deep sixed.
Personally, if I wasn't a poor student that can't afford to spen $19000 on a car, I would buy one of them. The Insight has a 10.5 gallon tank, and can go 61 miles/gallon in city driving. Imagine not having to fill your gas tank for >600 miles.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Actually, cars are the problem. Today, a typical car is about 30-50% effectient, the rest of the energy is converted to heat. A typical oil powerplant is a lot more effecient than your average car. That is why the electric car would be a better choice than a gas car, in terms of air polution. Probably the only cars that are close to the effeciency of a powerplant are these new hybrid cars which burn at ~80-90% effeciency.
As for a new power source to replace the oil and coal, what do you suggest? Wind is highly ineffecient, on a blustery day maybe 40% of the windmills are moving, and considering the amount of space each windmill takes, 40% is not very good.
Solar, the typical solar cell is too expensive and is ~15% effecient. There are cells that have hit ~30% effeciency but those are ungodly expensive, to the point of not being practical.
Water power is extremely effecient, but at the same time it has its own eco problems. Water that exits from a hydroelectric plant is generally a lot colder than the water from the natural stream that it came from. This interferes with the spawing of fish, and other wildlife.
How about nuclear? Fusion is a good 100 years away, and fision is really expensive and I don't think that you want what they give back.
We are in a no win situation. Do you want to make a difference, buy one of the new Honda or Toyota hybrid cars. They are expensive but they are the most eco friendly vechicle we have today. Also, add solar collectors to your house, maybe your children can experience the benifit of the savings overrunning the cost, until then you will be helping save the planet.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Go hybrid. The Honda Insite uses a small effecient gas powered engine to charge the batteries it uses to go.
One small problem, it costs $19000 right now.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Hey, where'd you get that statistic? I learned in my Thermodynamics class that new turbine/steam power plants can get only about 70% efficiency. If I'm not mistaken, the efficiency of the piddling powerplant in your car is nearer 20%. Friction in the engine, nonrecoverable heat from the combustion (biggie), friction in the transmission and tires, etc. You're also completely ignoring the benefits of regenerative braking in electric vehicles/hybrids.
For that matter, where'd you get the 40-50% efficient power grid statistic? I'm not trying to be hostile, I'm curious.
every last fender-bender on the Santa Monica Freeway would result in a Haz-Mat team cleaning up the road
Very good point. If i remember correctly, Ford engineers toyed with using Sodium batteries for their EV-1. Those babies have to be hot enough for the sodium to melt.
What will your electric bill look like as the demand for electricity outstrips supply?
The "Oh no, more electrical bills!" argument is crap. New power plants would get built, and while they would probably burn fuel, they would incorporate more effective smokestack scrubbers than your catalytic converter on your car does.
All things told, I'm just going to ride my bike - everyone else can do what they want.
Wah!
I remember Ballard's first bus had a fuel cell that took up half the space inside... The next one had it stored in the roof, if I'm not mistaken. It looks like the Mark IV might actually be able to fit into a minivan or something. Good for them.
BUT - Much as the word "Hydrogen" and "Clean energy" gets thrown about, they're still going to burn gasoline or other fossil fuels. The SOx sulfides and NOx nitrides (sp?) will be cut down, meaning less smog, but we're still going to be burning fuel that's irreplaceable and releasing CO2 into the atmosphere at a ridiculous rate. However, as the story suggests, we could be burning different fuels besides gasoline.
Gas is just too good of a fuel. It's fucking cheap too. Cheaper than bottled water. When we run out, we're going to look back on these days of Ford Explorers/Expeditions/Excursions and point and laugh. Some of us are doing it now.
Wah!
>new turbine/steam power plants can get only about 70% efficiency
A jet engine, which is a kind of turbine would need to put out about 100lb of thrust to maintain freeway cruising speeds in the average car.
I never said anything about rocket cars. Leave those to the hobbyists on the Salt Flats. Turbine/steam power plants achieve high efficiency by running a huge turbine on natural gas, then using the resulting (waste) heat to boil water into steam for more turbine action. Waste heat from that operation is often piped to manufacturing plants next door. This allows for great efficiency of power generation.
Gas turbine cars have (apparently) proven to be very efficient, using a small turbine running at 13,000 RPM to generate electricity for electric motors, not for thrust. They're rather dangerous though. A string of 20 buzzsaws aimed at your shins...
As for where my statistics come from
Links, man, links! You'd be much more convincing if you didn't write a novelette and instead linked to supporting evidence (I should too). Stats I'm not convinced of :
Prove those and your case is made.
And, [fuel cells are] clean. Running on hydrogen, the only emissions would be water vapor. Off gasoline, there'd be a little more
Running off hydrogen, there'd have to be more power plants, mass electrolysis, and a distribution system for a compressed flammable gas. Running off gasoline, there'd be the same amount of CO2 released as in a conventional gas engine now, you can't change the chemistry. What you get is better efficiency and no SOx or NOx gases, which are the source of smog. So yes, it's a good thing, but the hydrogen PR bit is just that. PR.
Wah!
re: icky city people, exactly. that's why staten island, the whitest of all five boroughs, is the only on not connected to manhattan via rapid transit, and why they keep talking about seceededing to jersey.
god is just pretend.
I live a short walk to the BART station, take that to Embarcadero, and transfer to the N MUNI line to get to work... works great for *ME*.
But at the same time, this isn't NYC, London, Boston, or Tokyo. The subway/rail system is nowhere NEAR as extensive as in those larger cities... and it's virturally non-existent in some MAJOR parts of the city (everywhere north of Market Street to be more precise (with the notable (but too infested by tourists to use to get to/from work) exception of the cable cars, and the F-line that runs up the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf).
So public transit works great for *ME*... $35 for the fast pass and I save HEAPS on gas and parking (it's also faster than fighting through traffic). My car sits unused the entire work week, and most weekends. But a LOT of people are SOL so far as transit is concerned (especially those people north of Market). And when none of the (only) five (six if you count the touristy F-line) is near you (and neither is BART, which is parallel w/ MUNI throught most of SF), guess how you have to get around... Yup, they gas up the 'ol car, and DRIVE to their destination.
So it's NOT the solution for everyone.
Oh, and did I mention that this applies only to the CITY itself? If I want to head down into the Valley (there is regretably (and stupidly) no Fry's in the city (yet(hopefully)), or north into Marin, or east to Mt Diablo, Tahoe, Fresno, or Reno... guess how *I* have to do it... internal combustion engine all the way.
I drive a Subaru. Not exactly a gas-sipper like a Honda, but it's no SUV (well, it's marketed as such, but is technically classified as a "small station wagon" by the EPA and (more importantly) my insurance company). Perhaps by the time it wears out to the point of being undrivable, the hybrid/alternative fuel/etc. techs will be more developed. But as it is... the vehicles are not USEFUL to me. I like to go camping, hiking, and mountain biking. All my geat fits in, or on an external rack of, my Subaru... and I get pretty good mileage when I remember to lighten the lead foot...
... but I've DRIVEN a Honda Insight before. As it is right NOW... hybrids don't offer the utility of an ICE powered car... Go ahead, TRY to get a weekends worth of camping, hikeing, and bikeing gear into an insight... I DOUBLE DARE you! Oops... having some difficulty? Now try to get a second person in there as well. See what I mean?
Oh, and when I moved here to SF, I rented a U-Haul trailer and towed all of my stuff myself. I'd like to see an Insight make it to SF from Florida with that kind of load.
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
We would never never ever consider driving less because we don't have much of a choice. I don't know percentages, but probably by far most of the population of the US has no reasonable access to public transportation.
And that's because public transportaion requires a concentration of people in one spot and a concentration of destinations in another.
That might work for some of the postage-stamp-sized countries in Europe, but here in the US (where we have counties larger than most european countries, and where the nearest cop shop can be three hours away on a road good for 70 MPH) we call such concentrations "slums".
Even where public transportation is in place and working well, two in a car is cheaper per passenger-mile than public transport.
But:
- If your time has any value (and you don't want to waste it making connections)
- If your safety has any value (and you don't want to risk it riding unarmed on a bus/train load of teen gangstas)
- If your quality of life has any value (and you don't want to trash it by moving to an apartment next to the tracks)
you'll generally find that you're WAY ahead in a driver-only car.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A big one is power-to-weight ratio. Otto cycle engines have just about everything beat on that at the moment, and diesel cycle engines are a close second.
Workable alternatives are:
- Steam
- Electric transmission, flywheel peaking, just about any efficient engine at about 49 horse.
The last time steam was tried was when Howard Hughes tried it. By his figures he needed to get the total manufacturing cost of the engine plus flash boiler down to $150 to make it a practical replacement for the otto cycle. He got the engine part down to $150 but not to $75.
Electric transmission/flywheel peaking is not simple. But the hard parts are the flywheels and the electronics. People are again working on the flywheels, and silicon just keeps on improving. We might see 'em some time. (Of course I've been waiting for the version with the lawnmower engine / generator in place of the fuel cells for about 40 years and it isn't here yet.)
A fuel-cell/flywheel-peaked electric car would blow the DOORS off an otto-cycle car, as would may other electric transmission configurations. But nearly everything would have to work all the time. (Exception: The fuel cell/engine could quit, and you could limp it several miles to a fixit shop.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This argument may be instightful, but it is full of holes.
First, it worships money. The same logic would say the same thing about the tabacco industry. It doesn't matter if it kills thousands of people because Joe Sixpack would lose his job at the plant? "Don't stop smoking, Joe needs to feed his kids." If Joe Sixpack works for tabacco, I say f_ck him and his kids.
The change would not be like a light switch, it would take time, so your countries and Joe Sixpack would have to realize that there is an economic shift, as there have been throughout history. Horses, rubber plants, salt, ice, etc.
Cost effective comes with size of production. If you had GM, Toyota, Mazda, Ford, etc. making thousands of natural gas cars a day, it wouldn't cost any different. If they make 100, then yeah, they're going to cost $50k each.
Taxes my ass. There's money coming out the governments asses. They, like everyone else, will use all of what you give them and want more. If you give them less, they will bitch, but survive. Plus, I think they have a trillion dollar surplus right now. Would the people working for the natural gas company or fuel cell company and its employees be exempt for paying taxes? We're not talking about killing them, just that they would have to switch jobs.
Lastly, the argument made elsewhere about infrastructure and production all happening at once is true. I would suggest that we start with something like the state of Arizona. All new cars purchased in Phoenix from 2002 on must be fuel cell/ NG or whatever. No gasoline. Gas stations know that they are going to have 10,000 customers with new needs and they will respond or someone else will. That part is basic economics. People learn from the problem, and the next Arizona city does it better. Then california does it better than that, etc.
I will ask the question to people against a fuel change: What is going to happen when we do run out of gasoline? Whatever problems are associated with a change, is going to happen at some point whether we like it or not. I would rather do it by choice, than have to do it by force.
- I like pudding.
I've already sworn to build my first and only house based entirely upon solar power, possibly with a wind backup. While it is possible to connect a solar home to the grid - and even push out your excess energy in return for monthly payments - dependency is something I'm determined to avoid.
However, solar is not only vastly expensive - the typical home can run you as much as $20,000 at building time, enough to pay for about 80 years of coal power - it is also unreliable. A solar panel captures 28% of sunlight's energy at theoretical maximum. In reality, your home's position on the globe and the variability of weather mean that you will probably need a backup system of some kind, such as wind.
Try fitting a system that requires vast, immobile panels onto a car. The Sunrayce Competition promotes the idea of solar powered vehicles, but so far the machines lag behind in reliability and power - and even are deficient in such exotic concepts as "passenger seats".
Solar power is the way to go. It's free, it's unlimited from a practical standpoint, and it's clean. But we aren't there yet.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Other than people trying to drink the fuel.
First of all, fuel made from hemp wouldn't have any noticable amount of THC, so it wouldn't be worth drinking. Also, depending on the process used to make it, it would be non-toxic. So it would be much better for drinking than regular gasoline. But there wouldn't be any motivation to do it.
I'm not sure where people get the idea that people are so hard up for THC that they'll grow crappy dope in hemp fields or drink the gas out of their cars. Better quality stuff isn't that hard to get in the first place.
Also, it's not that harmful. The true motivation for making it illegal in the first place was to prevent hemp industry. The "drug" issue is just a smokescreen.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
Yes, they chose to be farmers.
And if they hadn't, the people in the cities wouldn't have anything to eat.
Mass transit is not an advantage in low population. Which is going to pollute the environment more, a car with 2 people in it, or a big bus with 2 people in it. My point is, to have mass transit, you have to have mass population.
The other thing is, don't go from the big city to a small town and try to solve problems they don't even have in the first place.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
Just a note - hemp grows in about 4-6 months, and can get up to 15 feet tall. A tree doesn't have this kind of growth for a couple of decades, and oil takes thousands of years.
"Renewable" is a relative term.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
This is without even addressing the point that cars contribute to the breakdown of neighborhoods, and that a quarter of a million americans are killed in car accidents a year. F cars. They suck. No sympathy from me. Gas should cost 6 bucks a gallon, given the harm it does.]
Gee thank you, and now I can walk the 15 miles to the nearest bus/metro stop ride 30 miles into the city, then walk/bike (assuming they let me take my bike on the metro/bus) the other 15 miles through the city to work. And repeat at night. That's rather a lot of effort to go through when I could cut my commute time in half, be able to listen to whatever music I wanted to, and have decent climate control (biking 15 miles through the snow or in 100 degree whether is not exactly enjoyable). When public transit becomes as convenient as private transit more people will use it. If I actually lived and worked IN the city I'd use it. But some people don't live in the middle of the city and there is no need for those people to pay more for the privelage of being able to travel.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
(Both responders to my post make good comments, and it's a crying shame they weren't moderated up to match my post. Go back and read their posts.)
Both individuals respond to my assertion that distilling alcohol takes more energy than the alcohol has. Allow me to make the point that distilling alcohol from 3% to 70% is pretty easy, however due to the hydrophillic nature of alcohol, going from 70% to the better than 97% or so needed to be a good fuel for cars takes several distilation cycles, each of which converts higher-grade heat energy into lower-grade heat.
I will grant, some interesting ideas for getting rid of that last bit of water have been proposed: I personally like the idea of absorbing the water with corn starch, then fermenting the sodden corn starch....
If you use every bit of energy in the biomass, buring what you don't ferment, reclaiming the waste heat from one step to drive the next, feeding the leftovers to livestock to create meat, and (this is the biggie) use as little artificial fertilizer and pesticides as possible, you can make the energy cycle work.
The point I'm trying to make, because it often gets glossed over, it that if you think you can take the Iowa corn crop as it is produced today and think you can get a positive energy result by making fuel out of it, you are mistaken.
Too many times in the alternate fuel debate people don't look at the whole system costs (battery powered car people that ignore the pollution of creating the batteries and the electricity to charge them, for example). I am just trying to get people to take the whole mess into account first. Just as when you give a neophyte Linux and they find they cannot use it, building up synfuels with false promises doesn't help, it hurts.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I keep seeing people talking about methanol or alcohol as a fuel. It won't work!
Let's review:
The concept is that you have a renewable energy source. You effectively are harvesting sunlight.
This only works if the amount of energy you get out of the fuel is greater than the amount of energy it takes to produce the fuel.
In order to distill alcohol to the point where it will burn as a fuel takes more energy than burning the alcohol produces.
Conclusion: alcohol is not a renewable fuel source. Now, if you are locating a nuclear plant next to the distillary to make up the difference, then you can use alcohol as an energy storage medium, just as you can use hydrogen or really big springs. But it isn't an energy source, it is an energy storage system.
The neat thing about gasoline is that you get more energy out of burning it than it takes to produce it. It's just not a renewable source...
www.eFax.com are spammers
The way I see it, we use gasoline for two reasons:
1. It's here. It's there. It's everywhere. I can always get gas for my vehicle.
2. It's the cheapest option.
Sure, hydrogen fuel cells may be more efficient, and one day may be signifigantly cheaper than gasoline, but unless I can get it pretty much wherever I need it, it won't fly.
So, taking all things into account, a new non-gasoline fuel source has to have two things:
1. Availability; it's got to be everywhere, or else people won't use it. Unless they only travel on certain routes, where they know they can get the appropriate fill-up.
2. It must be cheaper then any other alternatives(including gasoline), and you've got to CONVINCE them it's cheaper. Show people that if they don't switch, they're throwing money away. The oil compaines have this part locked dead-on for a while to come; they'll just say "Hey, you can get a gas-powered car for about $14,000, brand new, but what'll this new-fangled thing set you back?"
My 0.05 cents
(inflation, plus I live in Canada)
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
"Plus the modern gas engine is very efficient,"
Bullshit. The modern gas engine is 40% efficient. This is light years ahead of the 15% efficient cars of the 1950s, but far worse than the hybrid cars which use batteries and a small gasoline enginer for eletricity generation which are 90% efficient.
You might was well just throw every second dollar you pay for gasoline right onto a fire, because all that energy is lost as heat in today's current engines. The hybrids don't have this problem as much because the eletric motors that move the wheels don't produce nearly as much waste heat as 4 cylinders.
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Petroleum is a finite resource. This argument is similar to the argument used by the logging interests to clear cut the rest of the old growth forests, Think of the jobs that will be lost! When the resource is gone the jobs *will* be lost.
How many *more* people will be dependant on these resources then?
How much more pain will be inflicted as a result?
How much more environmental degradation will both the consuming and the supplying nations suffer?
We *will* run our of petroleum some day. Perhaps it would be wiser to look at other options now before the last barrel is squeezed out of the last oil well or oil shale deposit. The oil industry and their apologists seem to have a hard time seeng through all that money, at reality.
"pull my finger" - Uncle Chuckles
Along came the automobile. Naptha (gasoline) turned out to be a fairly good match for the fuel-air mixing technologies of the day. So all kinds of cars got designed to use gasoline, as opposed to kerosene or alcohols (which required growing and harvesting a crop, then fermenting it). This led to a distribution network for gasoline.
Fast-forward to 2000. Gasoline still has a huge infrastructure, largely because of historical accident. You can buy methane and propane fuel kits for lots of engines (IMPCO, out of Tukwila WA is a biggie in the biz), but going cross-country with such a vehicle is a bit chancy due to spottiness of suppliers (with the obvious impact on buyer demand). Brazil is promoting ethanol (not methanol, IIRC) because it has plenty of acreage suitable for sugar cane and world prices are low (compared to tariff-driven US prices).
Storage is an issue for some of these fuels. Ethanol and methanol aren't difficult, but propane and especially compressed natural gas require pressure cylinders (heavy ones, for CNG). The kind of tanks that just fit into the various nooks in the bottom of a vehicle can't be built for the pressurized fuels. Combine this with the large volume required to store compressed gases, and you start taking away from the passenger compartment or cargo space.
There are some alternative fuels without so many problems. California has a network of stations dispensing M-85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline). The gasoline fraction of M-85 allows reasonable cold starting, and the energy per unit volume is about 60% or so of gasoline so range is not seriously compromised. On top of this, it's not very difficult to make an engine which can run on M-85 or gasoline interchangeably. This gets around the problem of customer acceptance being killed by inability to find fuel.
Did that answer your question?
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Vapor lock is pretty much a non-problem with modern fuel-injected engines. Most such engines have a fuel rail that's fed by a high-pressure pump, and a pressure regulator which operates by venting fuel into a return line; the return line goes back to the gas tank. If you got a vapor bubble in the injector supply rail, it would last about five seconds before it was flushed out the return line and replaced by cooler fuel from the tank, and the high pressure of the fuel in the injector rail makes it much harder to form vapor bubbles in the first place.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I've gotten several flyers in the mail about the availability of *new* cars which can run on natural gas. They advertise that there are "over 47" locations in the Denver Metro area to purchase natural gas for these cars, and that natural gas prices have stayed steady for the last 5 years or so. But there are still a few problems:
Currently I can't afford to purchase a brand new car, and I've never seen an option to get a car converted in the Denver area.
I recently moved into the mountains, about 20 minutes away from the nearest city. I doubt the little town of 1000 people I live in will pump natural gas.
What if I want to drive my car across country? I've driven to Ohio about once a year since I got married to visit my inlaws. Once I head east through Nebraska/Kansas I doubt I'll find natural gas pumps at the stations along the interstate...
Yes there are alternatives, but in many areas, there just isn't the infrastructure to support converting your primary vehicle to an alternative like natural gas. The hybrid electrics are better for this, but again you still have to put out the cash for a new car.
I do ride the busses, bike to work, and I would love to switch to an alternative fuel, but right now there's no way I could do it with the resources I have available.
I've read in places that even the most modern gas engines are only 50% - 60% efficient
Offer strong incentives for companies that can to encourage telecommuting. I commute about an hour one-way to work and back and what do I do? Software development. I could telecommute two or three times a week and carpool the other days... if the company had a plan set up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
2) Distribution. Gasoline stations are everywhere. Hydrogen/Methane/Methanol stations are... pretty much nowhere. Though you can get propane tanks at most gas stations. Personally I want to power my car with several kilos of plutonium, a'la that space helecopter article that was on here a day or two ago.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
How do taller folks fit into these cars? I'm 6'1" and barely have headroom in the Saturn SL1 my fiancee and I just bought.
Also, Americans need larger/heavier cars for the safety factor. We have big spaces, and lots of fast roads. I've been hitting the freeway for 4 hours virtually every weekend for months now to get ready for my wedding. The semis are doing 68 MPH and everyone else is faster. Do Europeans drive this much? This fast? I know that I want some impact absorption around me if I should get in a wreck.
There's got to be a way to be more economical without trimming weight or engine size. We build better processors all the time. Why not better engines? Have we hit the theoretical limit for ICE efficiency?
Constitutionally Correct
The majority of SUV's I see are driven by a lady, with no passengers, on her way to work or wherever between the city and suburbs of Indianapolis. People love SUV's because of the commanding view of traffic while driving, plain and simple - Americans have always loved big cars, and demand that their politicians keep gas prices low enough to make them more convenient. Just check out the graph in this story and see how US gas taxes compare with other countries.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I don't blame them - I just wish they wouldn't piss and moan so much about how much it costs to fill up their tank!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The basic idea in the graph I was pointing to was that in comparing the US with the UK, Germany, and Japan, the portion of the consumer gas price that represents tax (about 25-30% in the US) is much smaller than in the other countries (around 60% in Germany & Japan, around 75% in the UK). It's an interesting point to debate, whether this level of tax sufficiently recovers the negative externalities of gasoline use (air/water/noise pollution, roadwork, etc.).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
This is inaccurate. The total cost of taxes on automobile transportation are more than enough to pay for interstates and highways. The only reason that doesn't happen is becuase people come up with hairbrained schemes like your proposal to transfer income from people who drive cars to people who take buses.
It is public transportation after all, not private, which requires exorbitant subsidies. At the college I work at the local Greens talked the college into subsidizing free bus passes for all students to cut down on automobile use, the only problem being that some like half a percent of all students actually use the service. Even when it doesn't cost money, the opportunity cost of public transportation is extremely high.
Hi, To a certain extent this is slightly off-topic... but you American's have NO right to call your petrol prices high. Here in England, we pay more than triple what your paying (even at its peak). If anyone needs alternative types of fuel for cars, it's us British... Roll on cold fusion.. =)
SysWear - Geek T-shirts (UK/Europe)
Internal combustion is not the most efficient way of powering transport. The oil companies encouraged the car companies to use it because it locked people into using gasoline (as opposed to , say, steamers which were capable of burning almost anything). Once they monopolized the fuel delivery systems, it became pretty much irrelevant. The big companies pretty much stopped developing other motive power methods.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
but allow me to play devil's advocate here: I would really, really miss my car if I didn't have it. the key thing to me (don't laugh) is shopping for groceries -- this turns out to be a real pain in the ass when you have to lug your bags of groceries (and cases of Dew, etc.) back on the bus (or on a trailer off your bike). there are other examples, but let's focus on this one.
hogwash, you interject. people in, say, France don't use a car when they go grocery shopping; neither did we, a hundred years ago. ah, but here's the rub: people in france don't use Safeway. they buy their bread and cheese in the morning, meat for that day's meal, a nice big bottle of wine (yay, stereotypes!) ... you get the idea. Point is, people in a lot of other countries go shopping with a regularity that boggles the American mind: the idea of going to the grocery store once every 3 or 4 weeks (as I am fond of doing) is a peculiarly American one. Condemn it if you like, but the point remains: to get people to get rid of their cars, you wouldn't just have to convince them to take a bike to work; you also have to convince them to change, in a thousand little subtle ways, the way they conduct other aspects of their lives. My picayune example is a grocery store, but you could find plenty of others.
It's also worth mentioning that some solutions to the above-mentioned problems (again using our example: in a lot of cities, companies exist which will do your grocery shopping for you! for a nominal fee, of course) are precluded in certain segments of the population, delineated by lines of both geography and socio-economics. No one in Amherstdale, West Virginia is likely to open a grocery-delivery service anytime soon. And if they did, it would take a long, long time to convince people they could afford it (even given the money they're saving by not using their cars). No bus lines in Amherstdale, either, I'm afraid, which brings us to the other big issue : the scale of the United States today is vastly different from that of most other countries (and from the scale of our own country of 100-plus years ago). People in the US are spread out, have family all over the place, like to go to the beach on weekends; if they live in a few major metropolitan places, you can get them on a train or something, but that's simply not an option in large chunks of the country, and (IMHO) never will be. Decry the large-scale-loving USA populace if you want, but again the fact remains: you'd have to change another facet of people's lives to get them to give up their cars.
Having said all this, of course, I'll still push for people to give up their cars for all but occasional use. But I'd wager the internal combustion engine has a long and happy future ahead of it in the US. ;-)
Find a solution that when implemented, will be as cost affective as what it replaced. For instance, don't force everyone to buy a new car which costs two and a half times more than a gasoline powered device and then force them to use a fuel that costs several dollars a gallon and have that same device and fuel get the same mileage as their previous gasoline-powered device.
Hmmm perhaps this Honda might be a solution?
Insight == 60-70MPG Cost: ~$20,000
Beats the hell out of all of the Excursions\Expeditions\Suburbans I keep seeing roaming about suburbia!
Sorry I will hace to disagree with you on that point. Gasoline is a limited resource, and once the technology is available, and refined, then people will start using it more and more. If there is no reason not to use gasoline then people wont mind picking the alternatives. It is just going to take a long time. Gasoline has only been in use heavily for the last 100 years or so. That is a speck of sand in human history.... give it time. Human viewpoint can shift massively of over time.
Even though gasoline prices were very high recently, a gallon of gasoline in the US is still cheap in comparison to the amount of energy it contains. It costs less for a gallon of gas than it does for a gallon of Coca-Cola (sugar water, coloring, some CO2, and gobs of marketing).
Not that I think the oil companies are saints. They gouged at the pump at every hint of a change in oil production, even if the wholesale price won't affect the channel for days or weeks. Their recent BS about dropping prices before the government started noticing was deception at best and an outright lie at worst. It's like the price of memory - a rumor in Taiwan and the prices fluctuate.
Solar and wind are exactly the things to use, and here's why:
While the efficiency of power conversion may be low, remember that what you are converting is free.
While solar and wind can't generate intense power or power on demand, "storing" them in the form of hydrogen allows for intense and demanding applications.
Nothing in solar or wind requires large-scale generation to be efficient, thus allowing production close to where you need it -- on your roof, for instance. This contributes to system-wide efficiency, and allows generation capacity to grow and shrink with demand.
Some success scenarios:
A poor country with no electrical infrastructure and few mineral resources but lots of shoreline deploys photoelectric cells on booms around an offshore electrolysis station. Hydrogen is transported out via a pipeline or tanker to the major cities, where residents can refuel their cars and home cells. Voila! an electrified, gasified country that doesn't have to build an electric grid or import oil.
A ranching town in the Australian Outback builds a series of hydrogen-producing wind turbines on a windy ridge. The citizens have car and home fuel cells to make use of it, and now the government doesn't have to run the electric grid or oil pipelines out there, and people can move to the town without huge startup costs.
A rural American city far from its power source can convince the local manufacturer, already attracted by cheap land and labor, to build their next plant here as well, as the city kicks in for its own hydrogen-provided electrical capacity. Maybe the state helps out, seeing as how it brings jobs AND relieves the pressure on the capital city's growing electrical needs.
You see, the Hydrogen Economy concept has more benefits than saving the planet (like open source has more benefits than users' rights). It is also about independence, flexibility, and global availability. Everywhere that people live, there's sun, wind, and water. That's all the fuel that's needed.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
That's where the Hydrogen Economy concept comes in: you use efficient, or even (gasp!) clean electric generation to separate hydrogen from water, then you distribute it through pipelines to where it can power fuel cells in homes and cars, creating water as a byproduct.
Of course there are inefficencies involved, but renewable energy generation costs no fuel, and hydrogen fuel is a more efficient and flexible means of power transmission than the grid.
Of course, what's holding it up is technology, infrastructure, and price:
Cheap fuel cells aren't efficient enough yet, and efficient fuel cells are made with platinum, which is so scarce there's not enough of it to power the cars in just the U.S., let alone the world.
A hydrogen distribution infrastructure would need to be set up, and the technology for making such a system safe is still being worked out.
And finally, generation by renewables is just too expensive compared to cheap oil. But the squeeze keeps getting tighter as oil prices go up and renewable tech gets cheaper and more efficient.
The first signs of this dam breaking has been serving the market in places that can't access an electric grid, and the infrastructure built for that market will bring the price for the rest of us down. Fortunately, this infrastructure does not rely on massive, central power plants, and thus can be more easily adopted.
Another X factor is that electrical generation capacity in the U.S. is becoming inadequate, and NIMBY attitudes are keeping conventional capacity from being easily built (especially nuclear).
So, as usual, it's the market holding things up, and it will be the market that will finally allow the breakthrough.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Honda has stated that it intends to convert most of it's cars to hybrid in this decade. Which is a good thing, kinda...
See, even if the car is electric then you still have to take into account that, even with Wind, Water, and Nuke based power the majority of our power is from coal, oil, and other fosil based fuels. The only benifit to electric is there is a single point of emmision. And that point can be controlled and scrubbed.
Getting electricity from the power plant to your home isn't an easy task. It's not really efficient. Much of the energy is lost along the way.
As for alcohol based cars....you can make your own ethanol and use it to power your car...many engines will run without modification (tho not well...much better to use a gas/alcohol mix).
Here in Brazil alcohol based cars have been in use for almost 3 decades AFAIK. There are pros and cons to using it (more pros than cons in my view).
The alcohol used here is a mix of about 20% gas and the rest if ethanol, made from sugar cane. Gas-only cars shoundn't use this because it shortens the engine's parts life... and this mix is more corrosive than plain gasoline.
As for price, the liter costs about 60 to 70% the price of a liter of gas, and it could be even less, if the process used to ditill the alcohol was optimized for the sugar cane we use (AFAIK, they use a method from Europe, where they get alcohol from another source).
As for some pros and cons, alcohol does pollute less than gas, and the cars generally have a slightly better performance. But, however, they tend to have a shorter life. And, before we had electronic injections, starting up an alcohol car in cold weather was an exercise for anyone's patience...
--
Marcelo Vanzin
Marcelo Vanzin
I don't see what people's problem is. People keep using outdated tech, just because whole segments of the economy are based on older, less efficient technology.
Nevermind that fuel cells and alternatives cost a fortune these days (in *theory* they shouldn't, but they *do* because it's young tech).
Nevermind that not everyone is willing to scrap hige investments in existing tech.
Nevermind that new technology almost always goes through a phase of unreliability, inefficiency, and debugging.
Nevermind all that -- people should drop everything and change from the tested, reliable, (relatively) cheap, and ubiquitous to the new, experimental, unproven, expensive stuff... because it's better!
This seems like a pretty naive topic, no?
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
1. Gasoline is a more efficient fuel than alchohol. It takes almost twice as much alchohol to go the same distance as with gasoline, which is why auto makers went with gas versus alchohol when cars first came out. 2. Cold morning starts are harder, due to the compression ratio of alchohol burning cars.
The reason gas prices are so high is because people are buying gas-guzzling SUV's and driving up the demand for gasoline to insane levels, while OPEC has not increased production to match.
The reason is because OPEC has decreased production early this year. Why? Because the Clinton administration asked them to. Why? So that certain oil-producing countries could make more money to pay off their debts. Russia and Iran in particular. In other words, this "risky idea" (to borrow Algore's favorite word) was a plan to get the American people get to pay off bad foreign debts.
Also, new EPA regulations went into force in the north-central United States, increasing the price because of new additives. At the same time, a pipeline which had been repaired wasn't allowed to run at full capacity for a few months because of EPA regulations. Most of the gasoline had to be trucked in, adding to the cost.
And now Clinton and Gore are blaming the American oil companies for the problem that they themselves created.
The interesting thing is that usually you can't get them all to keep production down for long, because one of them will get greedy and start producing more while the price is high. This time they seem to be staying in line better than ever before.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Gas is the standard. Like Windows. Oh... you drive a Macintosh... we don't have any Mac mechanics.
Of course there is also the issue of building out infrastructure for other fuels. If the fuel is a liquid comparable in storage requirements to gasoline, distribution is less a problem than retrofitting all those engines.
If you want to place bets on something that might compete with gasoline, I'd say ethanol or methanol, because they can be pumped like gasoline and the engine modifications are not too severe. Obviously what's needed is cross platform automobiles that can run on more than one kind of OS... err, um fuel. Java cars?
Of course, the Java car isn't quite as fast as the regular car, and sometimes you have to type SET CLASSPATH=/carburator/intake_valve/cylinder to make it start.
Propane might be a worthy competitor too. I've been thinking it would be really cool to drive up to the propane station and swap tanks. That infrastructure is already in place throughout much of the country. The only real motive we need is for the licensing agreement, er.. um... the price on the gasoline to become a real nuisance.
Then we will start seeing all kinds of similar but slightly different fuels competing in the market place. Linux cars.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
At this stage of the game, saying that electric or fuel cell based vehicles are a 'solution' is simply a fallacy. Electric vehicles AREN'T significantly more efficient in terms of energy usage. With signficant energy loss in electricity production, storage and use, you don't end up with any higher thermal efficiency than a simple gas engine. Not to mention the problem of transmission of that power. Up to 75% of the electricity generated by power stations can be lost over long distance high tension transmission lines. Right now, the most flexible part of our electricity supply happens to be fossil fuel powered production facilities. Any increase in demand for electricity will be supplied by coal plants and gas turbines. We certainly can't use much more hydro, since we've dammed everything up that we can in N.A. Nuclear power has it's own problems. Solar power just isn't economically viable at this point. So, while electric and fuel cell based cars are fantastic at reducing localized pollution problems (L.A. anyone?) they don't 'solve' the problem by any stretch of the imagination. Mass transit, on the other hand, is FANTASTIC. We've just got to wrap our heads around the fact that using a car to commute is ridiculous. There are many applications and situations where cars make more sense than buses, subways and trains, but the BULK of car usage is at 9am and 5pm, in gridlock and traffic jams on the major arteries in our cities. What's the point of that when public transit does the job much better? Greg
Gasohol damages the internals of older cars. Just ask my family who had to replace a good number of hoses in our old station wagon after the energy crisis. Gas stations wishing to sell gasohol would have to do one of 2 things.
1) Stop selling gasoline, clean out their tanks, and fill them with gasohol
2) Increase facilities to sell gasohol.
And of course, the 3rd option that makes neither the gas people or the gasohol people happy.
3) Start selling a mix of the 2.
You can make your own gasohol, but that doesn't help much on a road trip unless you want to forget your luggage and carry what in most states would probably be considered a bomb with you.
It's a nice idea, but the cost of switching to gasohol doesn't make sense, and would only lose companies money. If you have a nice little moped or a car that you only take around your home town with you, yeah, I could see it, but I'm not switching from gasoline for my truck any time soon.
Eh...
I have a minivan, precisely because it's the logical family vehicle. It wraps the whole family and our stuff, and takes us on vacations. For normal life, it wraps the wife and kids, and perhaps some friends and kids, and transports them safely. It holds wood, mulch, footlockers, and other occasional stuffl. The mileage could be better, but an SUV would be a lot worse.
Sure, the image stinks. But it makes too much sense in my situation to ignore.
For my commute, I'm presently driving (alone, I guiltily admit) in a beater. But at least my gas mileage is in the 30+ mpg range.
The car is due for replacement. Since it's a commute vehicle and gets less than 10k miles/year,
I just can't justify a new car as a replacement, let alone a pricey hybrid. It'd rust out (New England salted winter roads) before anything close to wearing out.
I just wish there was already a market in used electric cars.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Did anyone else see the TV spot about the used cooking oil powered van?
That is a very nice alternative fuel if I've ever heard of one...
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
People here seems to think that by putting stuff other than gas into their cars can (1) save the environment (2) save costs (3) look cool.
But this is all a myth, just something to make us feel good. The fact is that _cars burn fuel_ to move whatever the fuel is.
Electricity? Sure plug in your batteries into your house jack to charge em up! No Gas? WRONG! How the hell do the electricity gets to your jack anyway? It's coal, burnt at your nearest power station. That's more damaging to the enviro then gas.
Natural gas? That's still fuel. And it costs money and energy to either (a) compress them (b) process them. (I know, I work in a gas compression facility before.) That's fuel burned, kiddo. The savings to the environment is minimal.
(Now methanol is cool : it's made of sugarcane which is eminently renewable.)
The future is not about "what fuel you burn". It's about "how efficient is your engine". Natural gas has higher Hydrogen to Carbon ratio then gasoline, so they are more efficient. So is methanol. But NOT ELECTRICITY (unless it is solar powered. but solar powered cars are not going to be powerful enough since nature puts a limit on the efficiencies of GaAs solar cells at 25%.)
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Honda's Insight's New 2001 Electrical engine :)
http://es.epa.gov/new/contacts/newsltrs/prevent/ fall93.html#battery
Seriously, this technology has been out there for a while. I think the time to market and climactic differences have so far prevented these alternative fuel technologies from becoming public. Plus, the performance factors of these AFV's do not come close (yet) to matching the output of traditional gasoline.
It is nice to see that Honda and Daimler-Chrysler are taking the challenge. I'd buy some stock in Ballard if I could :)
Has anyone asked why we use cars? I think it's just an assumption that we need cars. I think a nuclear(electric) powered rail transit system for mass commuting accross country, and also for large items would work as it did in the past(well steam trains anyways)...
and then instead of commuting to work we could live near enough to our workplaces to either ride the metro, the bus, a bike, or walk.
We didn't have cars 200 years ago, and people survived, I think we could probably figure out a way to do it again!
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
What exactly is informal about OPEC? I agree that the US, Canadian, and former Soviet companies are only infomally in leauge, but it seems to me that the only thing blocking anti-trust procedings are that most of these companies are not controlled by a single govenment.
Oh there's absolutely nothing informal about OPEC, but that wasn't what I was talking about. There are two cartels operating here. OPEC countries work (largely) together to cap oil production and thus raise prices of the crude oil shipped to refineries.
But I was talking about the refinery companies themselves (Exxon, Shell, Mobile etc.) who also own the vast majority of the retail outlets (your local gas stations). They are accused of operating an informal cartel to maintain high gas prices at the pumps. This is separate from restricting the supply of crude oil.
Sailing over the event horizon
Correct, but misleading. Let's look at some facts:
Fact: All power other than nuclear that we use is solar power.
The sun grows plants which were kind enough to get crushed into oil for us. The sun evaporates water, allowing it to move up hill and provide us with hydro. sun = heat = atmospheric convection = windmill. biomass, see oil minus 1 billion years.
Fact: Transitions of state and transport invariably lead to losses in efficiency.
Godd ol' Isaac and his nifty laws. Keep 'em in yer wallet I say! Sun - > plant loses a lot of efficiency. Plant - > oil even more. So, we're not talking about "efficiency" when we talk about oil burning. We're talking about "convenience".
"Obvious" conclusion: We all burn the sun in our cars (unless you have a nuclear car. There's a thought "Car crash, millions die of cancer") We choose how we do that based on convenience not efficiency. Oil, ultimately, is the least efficient way, because even if we start burying leaves right now we'll never be able to generate more in time...
oh yeah, my electric company offers wind power. $15 more a month, which isn't bad. I've got that. Now all I have to do is pick up a voltsrabbit electric conversion kit and I'll be all set.
2 1337 4 u!
Here is an example of my point:
In the late 80's, early 90's, the government (signed by George Bush Sr) decided that Freon, being hazardous to the enviroment, was going to be federally controlled to the extent that a) the auto makers had to come up with an alternate refrigerant for cars and b) current Freon supplies would be tightly controlled and no longer for sale for the general public to install themselves.
The result?
Freon which cost 3.00 at any auto supply shop was removed from the shelves.
Freon had to be installed by a licenced technician.
The cost of a recharge at an auto shop went from 7.50 where I live, to 35.00 in one day.
Technicians were still free to buy it and a healthy black market ensued for the product.
Cars with the updated refrigerant were not available for some years (the car I bought in 1994 did not come equipped with it).
To have your old car upgraded to a safer unit, was the cost of a new unit 600.00 to 1000.00.
It is 100 degrees on summer days where I live. I went a whole summer being unable to afford 35.00 to fix my then truck. Nor could I ever afford a new unit.
Fortunately, I ended up in different circumstances. But what of all the people who were forced to suffer due to this shortsighted policy?
It works the same way. You can spit out all the rhetoric about "greedy companies" and conspiracy theories about bribes and whatnot, but the fact remains: All too often, the best laid plans of enviromentalists and politicians affects those with the smallest voices.
And telling someone on minimum wage who files a 1040EZ form, "Look, we will give you a tax credit for the Bluebook value of your 78 Ford pickup!" is like handing a drowning man a donut.
All I am saying is for the ivory tower enviromentalists to realize that we are talking about people down here who have to work, feed their children and live. Figure out an alternative that respects these people who have no voice in this society.
Aviation combustion engines are air cooled. As such
at high power output, on takeoff, they need help cooling
their engines. Leaded fuel is somewhat better for this
as well as being significantly less volatile (emergency landings).
Also all these engines require 100+ octane fuel which
I believe is much cheaper when leaded. Using lower
octane fuel cannot take place as all of them have
2200-2700rpm redline (props are direct drive) thus
knocking would destroy these.
What I'm trying to say here is that if everyone switches to propane, Standard/Mobil and the other oil giants would just become propane companies. They would continue to be filthy stinking rich.
It might change over the next few years, but right now, liquid fuel is still the very best way to run your car. It's cheap. It takes less cargo space that gasseous fuels. It weighs less than a lead-acid battery storing the same ammount of power. It's abundant. It burns relatively clean (yes, enough air pollution to kill you if you sit in a garage full of it, but not nearly as bad as burning yard waste or coal.) It's easy and safe to transport (as long as you have naval support getting you through the Persian Gulf).
When you drive a battery car, you are charging it from the power grid. Unless you live in an area that relies on all nuclear power or windmills or something, you are getting your power from oil or coal burning generators. Those big plants run a lot more efficiently than a typical car engine, but you are going through many transfers of power (burn fuel to turn generator to send power along wire to feed outlet to charge battery to turn motor to push car), and those of you who took physics in high school should know that the more you transfer energy, the more you lose some of it.
Alternate fuels look promising, but most of them are in a gasseous state, which means putting a huge tank in your vehicle. Don't expect to see natural gas Harley-Davidson hogs on the road anytime soon.
Solar looks good, if you want a one-man car with a top speed of 30 and don't mind staying home on cloudy days.
Electrical induction motors are kind of spiffy, but they are also a ways off.
So, there you go... we need gas for now. When something better comes along, I will be first in line to switch, but I have been shopping for a non-gasoline car for quite some time now, and have yet to see one with half the appeal of the Ford Crown Victoria or even my '91 Mazda Pickup.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
*Warning* Shameless plug about to follow: From "The Electric Vehicle Unplugged", Technology Review:
The energy density of lead-acid batteries-the kind used in conventional cars for startup and auxiliary power-is about 35 watt-hours per kilogram, less than one-three-hundredth that of gasoline, which is about 12,000 watt-hours per kilogram. As a rule of thumb, 1 gallon of gasoline, weighing about 8 pounds, has the same energy content as a ton of lead-acid batteries.
IOW, gasoline has a rather incredible energy density, particularly when you consider the fact that it can be (relatively) safely handled by the public. In fact, you have to work pretty hard to make it explode.
As has been cited elsewhere, the infrastructure today is the thing that governs the fuel that we use. Cost of delivery is a real fraction of that cost, and setting up another infrastructure to handle some new fuel is a real bear. That's why there's so much work going into figuring out how to convert liquid fuels (with their high energy density) into something that a fuel cell, which doesn't incur the thermodynamic losses inherent in combustion, can use.
Otherwise, the only really credible mechanism for increasing fuel efficiency using an "alternative" fuel is the diesel engine - stratified charge diesels can achieve +45% efficiencies, while the Otto cycle pretty much tops out in the high 30s.
Methane/propane are certainly cleaner burning, but the tanks impose huge space constraints on vehicle design and the distribution and refueling issues are huge. A big gasoline spill is an environmental mess; an LNG spill in an area with a storm drain system is an incredibly effective way to think about blowing up a city!
Excuse me?
1. How does planting crops attribute to erosion? Since hemp has a long tap root, it does exactly the opposite.
2. soil nutrient depletion - Because of this long tap root, nutrients are brought to the surface of the soil. For this exact reason is why hemp has been known throughout history as a good rotational crop. Thomas Jefferson supported hemp for this very reason (comparing it to tobacco, which does depelete the soil).
3. fertilizers/pesticides - hemp is virtually immune to pests, requiring no pesticide. Also, 14-18 tall crops are easily acheived without fertilizer.
4. YOU CANNOT GROW CANNABIS IN HEMP FIELDS - The reason why is easily explained when you understand how marijuana is produced. To make "pot" you grow only female plants. Depriving them of male pollen is what creates the "bud" that people smoke. If you planted your marijuana plants in a hemp field you would end up with pollenized plants and have wasted your time.
Rudolf Deisel used hemp hurds as the base for his biomass component of deisel (which was replaced by petroleum after hemp was made illegal). The hurds are cellulose material that resides between the fibers and is very similar to petroleum cells because of their thick walls.
Vegetable oils (at least in the case of hemp) comes from the seed, a completely different component of the plant. The oil has an extreemly high viscosity rate, so it's good for lubrication, but not for fuel.
For hemp fuel to be made the hurds are put through pyrolysis (applying heat in the absence of oxygen). This creates a liquid, solid, and gas; all of which can be used as fuels (replacing coal, gasoline, and natural gas). When the liquid is distilled with methanol, you end up with a clean burning fuel that gives your car the same explosive power as an alcohol fuel racer. I haven't known too many alcohol fueled cars "gum up".
Uhh... The only way to get that kind of energy out of gasoline/petroleum is if someone has managed to figure out a way to convert mass into energy.
So, unless Mr. Fusion has been pulled off the back of Doc Brown's DeLorean and stuck into a car, I think you've got a decimal point in the wrong place.
Mechanical and chemical engineering is a far more mature science than electrical engineering. All improvements in fields involving these two disciplines tend to occur at an incremental pace, not at the pace we've become used to in the computer field.
The Mobil Economy Run typically has 100MPG turnouts now, with a few spiking up as high as 110MPG.
To demonstrate the pace of change,a Slant-6 powered Plymouth Valiant won the 1964 Mobil Economy Run. It managed a whopping 38 MPG. Just 12 years later, Chrysler brought out a Plymouth Duster (Valiant derivative) which included some aluminum body panels and was capable of the same mileage. The '76 Plymouth Feather Duster is a rare and highly sought-after car today.
If someone were to build disposable cars, designed to last 3-4 years, using this ultra-efficient technology, you could throw away a good percentage of the gas-guzzlers. Less gasoline requied = more gasoline to go round.Cars with shorter lifespans = more manufacturing of cars. More manufacturing of cars = more steel mills, more transportation, more tooling required for the factories. In short, you're replacing a problem seen at the tailpipe with a far bigger problem seen at the factory smokestack.
The one good thing about SUVs is that the real ones are built to last. They're full-frame, rear-wheel-drive. Sure, they're heavy gas-hogs, but most people don't drive more than about 12,000 miles a year. An SUV is built like a Chevrolet Caprice Classic or a Ford LTD Crown Victoria - either one is a car that has no problem surviving 150,000 miles in police duty before being sold for a second life as a taxicab.
Manufacturing the average car uses fuel and energy equivalent to driving that same car over over 180,000 miles. (Note that this isn't expressed in expensive terms like $/gallon; generally electric prices for steel mills are somewhere in the range of $30/megawatt.) This doesn't include toxic waste from both manufacturing and disposing of the plastic products that are used extensively in a modern car to reduce the weight (and therefore increase gas mileage).
Since the average car currently lasts 8-10 years, and since the average number of miles travelled is 12,000 per year, that means the investment to make the car is 180,000 miles, yet the useful life of the car is only 120,000 miles.
That's a net loss. And replacing the car every few years for only a very incremental upgrade in gas mileage is just crazy.
That's not to say that a disposeable car couldn't be made quite inexpensively. But the most expensive part of a car is the labor required to build it to the exacting tolerances to which it's built. If you reduce those tolerances to reduce the cost of the car, you're also reducing the efficiency of the car. Emissions and gas mileage are a direct factor of how precisely the valves close and how well the pistons fit into the cylinders.
If you want a car that is disposeable, look at the way most of today's cars are built. They're pretty damned near disposeable. Pickup trucks, full-frame rear-wheel drive cars, and heavy early unibodies last a long time. But lightweight unibody cars - like most of the vehicles on the road - suffer metal fatigue and corrosion problems early on. (A Dodge Aries/Plymouth Reliant is a classic example. Look at the side of the roof pillar, just near the the top of the back doors, next time you see one in a parking lot. A lot of them have fatigue cracks there.)
This is, of course, to say nothing of the fact that in a front wheel drive car, even a fairly small accident can easily trash the drivetrain as well as the suspension, and therefore write off the car. Since most cars experience two accidents during their lifetimes, and the average lifespan of a car is 8-10 years, that averages an accident every 4 or 5 years. The more fragile the car, and the more stuff is located up front, the more likely the car will be written off.
As far as I'm concerned, the best example of a disposeable car these days is a Honda Civic. The body panels are very thin to be light, which means that they dent very easily, and will quickly rust out if the paint and galvanizing layer is damaged. (Good thing Honda makes great paint.) The engine and transmission are right up front, since it's a front wheel drive car. As with all front wheel drive cars, it takes a lot of work to change a bad part, since there's a lot of stuff you have to move out of the way first. (Look at where the alternator is in a Civic!) Parts are expensive, making repairs impractical. And the hard-working little four-cylinder engines produce a lot of power for their size, sure, but that means more load on the piston rings and the tops of the combustion chambers. The more load on the piston rings and the tops of the combustion chambers, the sooner you will need to do a re-bore/re-ring job.
It's truly a car that is meant to be driven 120,000 miles (or more, if you're *very* good with maintenance) and then scrapped.
Unfortunately, the Japanese influence on Detroit, as well as the ever-higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws, have reduced the numbers of cars that are built like the Caprice Classics of yesteryear.
Your only hope for a tough-as-nails, built-to-last vehicle these days is a full-frame, American-made SUV, as odious as it may sound.
Note that a Toyota RAV-4 or a Honda CR-V or a Suzuki Sidekick is a lightweight unibody that masquerades as a truck. You have to buy the real thing to get the real thing:
Jeep Grand Cherokee/Dodge Dakota/Dodge Durango
Jeep TJ/Wrangler
Any pickup truck.
Chevy Blazer/GMC Jimmy/Yukon/Suburban
Ford Expedition/Explorer/Lincoln Navigator
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Absolutely. I like BMWs, but I'd never buy one, though they're generally rather solid cars (even if they still are unibodies). Price for parts is often way too expensive to make it practical to fix them if they need too much work, so take good care of it.
Even if BMW recommends changing the oil every 9,000 miles (!), changing the oil more frequently could only be beneficial. And remember that while synthetic oil may not suffer the chemical breakdown that coventional oil experiences in an engine, *any* oil will still fill up with combustion products from blowby.
I change my oil and filter every 2,500 miles. At the same time, I also do a chassis lube, check the freeplay in my balljoints and tie rod ends, brake pad thickness, then finish it off by doing a quick engine shampoo. When the old oil comes out, it's still clean and amber. (And it gets recycled.)
My daily driver is a 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID (6.6L) V8. It's now got over 225,000 miles on it, but it still starts and runs like brand new, with the original engine and transmission. Driving my old truck is about the only thing I look forward to, during my 30 mile each way daily commute... Merely touching the gas too hard can result in both rear tires disappearing in a cloud of white smoke. :)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Uhhh... I think you're probably mistaken.
Last time I was under a Cherokee, it was a unibody. Pretty damned tough, but still a monoque vehicle.
But the Grand Cherokee shares a frame with the Durango, which is just a modified version of the Dakota frame.
I assure you, every Grand Cherokee I've ever worked on has been full frame. Box section, at that, with great body-to-frame isolating dampers and everything.
So, despite the silly carpets and leather seats, you may rest assured that a Grand Cherokee is *very* much a truck.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Wow. I can't wait to drive that. Sounds very comfortable, safe and practical.
But, sadly, those of us with statures less diminutive than the 5'0" indicated will have to continue to drive more conventional (and realistic) vehicles.
I, for one, at 6'4", shall continue to drive my 1976 Dodge Ram. It's 21' long, has a 400CID V8 engine, weighs about 4,500lbs and has manual steering. One cylinder on my engine could aspirate that entire weed wacker engine. The massive weight and lack of power steering give the vehicle other benefits that reduce the total cost of ownership (despite the fact that it only gets 7MPG). For one thing, I didn't need to keep my gym membership, since parallel parking it provides the best upper-body workout for which one could hope.
And, of course, the Ram provides a form of collision insurance just not sold by State Farm. It's the "if I'm gonna get killed in a car accident, I'm damned well taking you with me" policy. That would especially include carbon-fiber vehicles running on ten-speed tires. Sure, carbon fiber is great, but so is Michigan's finest steel: I could back over you in a parking lot and never even know it. 235/75R-15 Mud and Snow radials, while not huge, are big enough that an entire car such as you've described could become caught between my treads as easily as a piece of gravel.
With apologies to the very passe Lorne Michaels, the weed-wacker powered carbon fiber "I'm gonna lie down as I drive" car is another Not Ready for Prime Time Player.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Most cars are not that well maintained, and therefore will not last that long. Especially few people maintain the engine and neglect the body (and vice versa). Usually, if the body is neglected, the engine is, too.
Further, in order to reduce fuel consumption and increase power per cubic inch, many Japanese engines have very small piston to bore clearances, requiring very narrow piston rings. Now, this sounds like a good thing on paper, and in many respects, it's a great thing. It's like communism - it seems like a good idea until you try it. In practice, speaking as one who has rebuilt several Japanese car engines, it sucks.
The problem is that you don't want to put the piston ring grooves too deep into the piston skirts. If you do, that increases the weight of the piston, and therefore more energy is wasted during the reciprocation of the bottom end of the engine.
So, because the piston rings are narrow, as they wear, their cross-section is reduced, and so is the spring tension that forces their faces against the insides of the bore. Since these also tend to be high-revving engines that place an enormous load on their piston rings both thermally (from friction with the bore) and caused by inertia, the erosion of the rings is very much a design concern. As that happens, more blowby gets into the crankcase, and more oil gets up into the combustion chamber. Coked-up oil (which is oil that is not changed as frequently as it should be, and virtually everyone is guilty of that occasionally) will get into the tight bore to piston clearance and often creates sludge in the oil control rings, preventing them from working properly. Oil then leaks into the combustion chambers.
One of the most famous engines for this is the Mitsubishi 3.0L V6, sold primarily in Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyageurs. (It was the late '80s. People thought Japanese cars were better, but wanted to be patriotic and drive a domestic, so having a Japanese engine in an American car made them feel good.) Next time you see an older Caravan or Voyageur spouting blue smoke, take a look for the little emblem on the fender: 3.0L V6. Note that very few of the Caravans/Voyageurs with American-made 2.2L or 2.5L engines do this.
If the bore to piston clearance was a little more (like it is in domestic motors), the rings could have a lot more cross-sectional area, and be able to maintain their spring tension against the inside of the cylinder bores a lot better.
My '88 CRX Si has 196000 miles, uses no oil, gets 38mpg, and is still as fast as it was when it was new.Sure! And my 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID V8 has better than 227,000 miles on it, and still runs like it's new. My 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham has 297,000 miles on its trusty old Slant-6. They're all anecdotal, and with more mileage than most of their peers had when they hit the great metal munchers at the steel mills. The fact remains that generally a domestic engine will be more durable in the long run, and more forgiving of maintenance and mechanical failure than will be a Japanese motor.
God forbid you should be lax and not change your Honda's timing belt on time. It's an interference motor, meaning that the valves and the pistons don't have sufficient clearance for the valves to be open when the pistons reach top dead center. Of course, in a perfect world, that would never happen. In a perfect world, everyone changes their timing belts before they snap. We don't live in a perfect world, and our cars shouldn't require unrealistic maintenance to avoid a catastrophic failure. A timing belt snap in a Japanese car typically grenades the motor, often not just bending valves and breaking pistons, but also cracking heads and scoring blocks. While an intereference motor is great for performance and gas mileage, it's pretty nasty when they go bad. In a domestic car, when you pop the timing belt, usually the engine simply stops running. You'd coast to the shoulder, wait for the tow truck, and have a new timing belt fitted. When an interference motor grenades itself at highway speeds, normally the engine doesn't just stop producing power, it seizes because the debris blocks the movement of the pistons. If you're in a FWD stickshift vehicle, the front wheels will lock up, and you'll lose steering control until you have the presence of mind to hit the clutch or put the car into neutral.
(but yes, you do have to remove the left axle to replace the alternator )-: )Sure! Now, that's fun, isn't it?
The little boys out there who think a Honda Civic with a big stereo is the ultimate driving machine get to find out all about this.
Most domestic cars, if you overload the alternator, the regulator will crank up the field current to a limit. If you're drawing 100A off the battery and the alternator can only supply 70A to replenish the battery, your battery voltage will drop, and eventually you may be screwed, if you don't watch the gauges.
A Nippondenso alternator (Honda/Toyota/Nissan/Subaru...) will crank the field current up, too. Sadly, though, the tiny and lightweight alternator doesn't cool itself well enough for the field windings to be able to handle the continuous current that the regulator will allow to flow. Not only will the battery voltage gradually drop, but eventually something in the alternator gets too hot (usually field windings, which are actually on the armature). Pop goes the alternator. Cars equipped with stupidly big stereos and lots of bug lights underneath are especially vulnerable to this, since the alternator load is nowhere within design specifications, and the alternator's design doesn't explicitly prevent thermal runaway.
While overloading an alternator is never a good idea, I find it comforting to know that most Bosch, Delco, Motorcraft and Mopar alternators (all domestics and most of the European imports) won't fail in this way: turn off the excessive electrical loads, toss the car on a battery charger, start it up, and everything is usually fine.
My '86 accord I bought a year ago with 220000 miles and now has 242000 miles. Similar story with that one; no oil consumption, 32mpg.More power to you.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Yup. Domestic engines, especially older ones, were overbuilt, and depended less on precise mechanical tolerances to run well.
All these are anecdotal, but I'll tell you the story of a friend of mine. We were in high school then, the long-haired guys with the Motley Crue t-shirts that all the guys from the computer lab avoided (until they discovered that I was, at the time, an avid and good assembly language programmer).
Jay picked up a 1977 Dodge Aspen. It was rotted right out, having been driven in the winter by an uncaring owner. The car cost him $30 and still ran very well. He got it safetied by a garage that didn't really look at it, and put it on the road.
He drove that car for two years, never once changing the oil in the Slant-6. Since it had some oil leaks, it needed topping up occasionally, which he did...
You know how old oil, coolant, transmission fluids and stuff are collected in the high school auto shops? Generally, a bucket under the car. And that bucket gets filled with everything, including cigarette butts and the sawdust that's used to mop up spills.
Jay, wanting to spend money only for gas, used to top up the oil with that. He still managed to put over 50,000 miles on that car in two years, the Slant-6 still coughing to life at the touch of the key. He finally scrapped the car when he got T-boned by a Cavalier on a winter evening.
Again, it's entirely anecdotal; most cars never suffer that kind of abuse, and fewer still would survive it. But now, having rebuilt several Chrysler Slant-6s, I know how Jay's Aspen didn't die. I know why it kept going.
It was built to last.
The Slant-6 is by far my favorite engine, for this exact reason.
As far as the mitsubishi 3.0 V6 goes, I have another friend with a plymouth acclaim that has one of these; yes, it leaks oil from every available orifice.More so isn't the external leaks. The oil control rings coke up if the oil isn't changed frequently, and the engine starts blowing blue clouds when you hit the gas. Either rebuild the motor, or better still, yank it out and replace it with a good 2.2L or 2.5L non-turbo engine. It'll last longer.
Good thing it's a non-intereference engine because he's got over 160000 miles on it and hasn't changed the timing belt.Hmmm... Are you sure it's a non-interference motor? I know for sure that the Mitsu 2.6L engine, optional in K-cars and stuff before the 3.0L V6, is an interference motor. But that was an engine that seldom made it to the 80,000 mile timing belt change - usually, they cracked their heads long before then. There are, last time I looked, four companies that sell mounting kits that let you put a 2.2L or 2.5L Chrysler engine into your car in place of that 2.6L Bitsumishi.
My personal preference (maybe it's an acquired taste) is to drive something smaller and lighter with an engine that likes to rev. I've had fun driving, maintaining (I do all my own work), and tuning my CRX for 12 years.Okay. Tuning, or building?
Power is generally achieved through pulling off the head, porting and polishing it, increasing valve sizes, shaving the deck for increased compression ratio, port matching the intake and header to the head, etc.
Tuning is basic maintenance, not a performance upgrade, which is something that tends to confuse many rice rocket enthusiasts. Changing spark plugs, adjusting timing, adjusting fuel/air ratios, etc. is tuning, not building the engine up for better performance. Generally, building an engine takes the car off the road for a few weeks; most of these little kids who have the "Tuned by" stickers on their cars can't afford a second (or third) car, and therefore don't get any real performance work done.
The other thing is that once you've built the car for performance, real world street driveability is compromised. The manufacturers are interested in building cars for regular use, not drag or oval track racing, after all.
I'm guessing from your email address that your preferences lie elsewhere....Absolutely, and I suspect that you're somewhat more astute and informed than most of the Japanese car enthusiasts that I come across, based solely on the fact that you either know what "BigBlock" is, or that you know what "Mopar" is. Though I will confess that I have seen one Honda products that really did impress me. The thing was a perfectly stock looking 1993 Civic hatchback. The guy had hacked on a huge Garrett turbo that looked like it was off a Buick Grand National. This Civic ran 11.9 on the 1/4 mile, despite the fact that front wheel drive doesn't lend itself to drag racing. That was impressive.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
...people keep buying gasoline cars for the same reason they keep buying WinTel computers: there's a hundred times more places to buy the stuff that goes inside.
Where I live (Illinois) the fuel all uses ethanol, but the gas prices are jacked up because of the stupid USPTO. Down with patents to lower gas prices! </rant>
Check out The Secret History of Lead for a study in corporate greed.
Browser? I barely know her!
A friend of mine recently got a ford pickup (the model number escapes me at the moment) which can run off of gasoline or methanol. The only major problem he had was the availability of methanol. I'm not sure about the fine print, but it seemed like a good way to tackle the availability problem. He can get methanol when it's available, but if it isn't he's not completely screwed.
"Please, how about a little less love and a little more common decency?" - Kurt Vonnegut jr.
One word can sum up why gasoline is king of the automotive power hill: Infrastructure.
Another two can sum up why it'll stay there: market economy.
Gasoline is old. Really old. Yes, it's been reformulated (got rid of the lead, added detergents, etc.) but the general idea of having a liquid hydrocarbon that your horseless carriage runs on is old.
What this means is that there have always (all of my life, anyway - long enough) been oil expeditions looking for a source of oil to make gasoline from, there has always been refineries that can make the gasoline, there have always been distribution systems for gasoline, and there have always been gas stations that retail the gasoline to consumers. The infrastructure is there, and has been refined and adjusted and is working pretty well.
Now, fuel cells are a wonderful idea, but so far they either run on hydrogen, methan(e/anol), or other such light fuels. Do you see these at every 7-11 and Sunoco station? No - you'll find it added to select gasolines (but no more than 10%) in some places. Add to the fact that fuel cells use a LOT of platinum (the ones I'm familliar with) for their catalyst, and the fact that they aren't mass-produced yet, and there you have an expenstive alternative.
Alternative fuels are the same story infrastructure-wise, but without the added complication of developing technology. I could convert my car to ethanol, methanol, propane (LPG), natural gas (CNG)... and get excellent emissions, good drivability... but I'd be a fool to go on long trips without mapping out where each ethanol station is along my route. (Trust me on this - I did the 1997 Propane Vehicle Challenge, and we mapped out EACH and EVERY propane station from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada all the way down to Austin, Texas. Not exactly spur-of-the-moment "road trip" kinda stuff.)
(And before someone says, "But propane has infrastructure!", yes, it does. But very limited. It's big in Canada - mostly for BBQ's - and Texas, but that's about it. Drive around town, and see how many propane centers you see, and how many have the right nozzle for vehicle refuelling. Hint: try your local taxi depot or airport shuttle service. It may be your only bet.)
Meanwhile, gasoline engines are getting better and better. Honda can now get 71 mpg highway and 61 city with the IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) Insight. Many manufacturers have LEV (Low Emissions Vehicle), TLEV (Transitional), ULEV (Ultra-), and even SULEV (Super-Ultra-, or something like that)vehicles in showrooms right now, and more coming. Volvo even has a catalytic radiator coating that eats up smog and hydrocarbons (if memory serves) as you drive along. (Wish I had a link for that one - too bad I'm lazy.)
Add in the Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle (PNGV), intensive efforts by the aluminum industry to get their material into more and more cars (AIV's - Aluminum Intensive Vehicles), and the counter-effors by the steel consortiums to keep their product the mainstay of autobodies by making thinner, stronger, and lighter carbodies to compete with aluminum, plastic, and whatever else people come up with, and you'll eventually get vehicles that are lighter, more fuel-efficient, and barely sip the gas. There already exist cars in Europe that attain 3L/100km, or about 78 mpg.
Gasoline. It's old. It's new. And unless someone wants to dump in trillions of dollars into global infrastructure, it's staying for a while longer.
Mr. Ska
Mr. Ska
Another problem you would have with electric in most forms is that, overall, pollution-wise, it can be just as bad. Unless you're using solar power to recharge, pollution from the electric companies will replace the pollution from cars. There's also the problem that I doubt the world power grid could currently handle the charging of millions of electric cars. The original story has the best point that until the energy source and its infrastructure grow up at about the same time, or a crisis occurs in fossil fuels, we'll be with gas.
While lots of you would like to believe that it's all a big conspiracy by government, auto manufacturers, and big oil, the simple truth is that it isn't. It's an engineering issue - gasoline simply continues to be one of the best all-around compromise solutions for our current situation. While I know that's flame-bait, here's my reasoning (these should be fairly close, but as I should be working right now, I'm trying to hurry - if I screwed up a calculation, please dispute it...):
Typical Energy Densities in kWh/kg
Hydrogen...32.9
Gasoline...14
CNG/LNG...9.8
Ethanol...2.8
Pb Acid Batteries...0.04
NiCd Batteries...0.08
NiMH Batteries...0.12
Li Polymer Batteries...0.23
Hydrogen is better, but it's an issue of producing/manufacturing/distributing it. Electrolysis isn't that efficient, and the energy still has to come from somewhere - free hydrogen just doesn't occur naturally, so it's more of an intermediate stage between some other form of energy and something you can haul around. By the time you factor in the efficiency of electrolysis (the only feasible process for mass hydrogen production that I'm aware of - anybody more knowledgable about this than me?), it's about the same energy density as gasoline, and you've wasted 30% of your input energy. Same to worse with most other alternative chemical fuels.
Solar? Forget it - even if photovoltaics were 100% efficient (which isn't and won't ever be possible), that's still only 1kW/m^2 average in the US. (Practical terrestrial grade cells are currently 15-17% efficient and about $9US/W. By the time you get them encapsulated and strung together, they're about $25-30US/W. Prohibitively expensive, big, and most of all, fragile. Imagine instead of just replacing a panel and doing some painting next time you're in a wreck, replacing a $50,000 array as well, because it has hairline cracks all through it... ouch...)
It's fairly obvious that current batteries are not practical for any long-range vehicle, and especially not one designed for extended (multiple refuel/rechargings per day) as batteries just don't recharge that fast. Piling in enough batteries to give a common sedan adequate range for most Americans out here in the West (the Eastern megalopolis is another issue, with the close proximity of everything). On average, I put on about 1k miles/week, and that's more than any currently-available system other than ICE/gasoline can practically handle.
So, why not build an ultralight car and just reduce the amount fuel it needs for propulsion? Twofold: 1) ultra-light probably means moving away from steel, which significantly raises the cost and 2) ulta-light probably can't take much punishment without being irreparably damaged or injuring the occupants.
While I don't dispute that gasoline is not the final solution, for right now it's the best we've got. Certainly it can be made less-poluting (better engines, better emissions equipment, oxygenated fuels), and I'd be willing to pay a bit more for that. And I'd like to see more time and research thrown at improving alternative fuel sources [Especially my dream fusion tokamak I asked for earlier...;)] Just right now I don't think it's practical to switch most countries over. The Eastern US and most of Western Europe I think are notable exceptions, though - because of the small distances involved in normal travel, vehicles with less range and longer recharge/refuel cycles are practical. Anybody else from got any thoughts on this?
Quickie SUV Anti-Rant Just because all you anti-big-truck fanatics are bitching in here: Let it be said I do drive a large truck (1993 4WD K-Blazer) and the only way you'll get it away from me is to pry it from my cold dead hands. I don't care what gas costs, that's really irrelevant to me. The fact that I'm not cramped into a little itty bitty car shell is the only way I can possibly stand doing 1200 mile days (IL to CO). I've always driven large trucks (up to and including large tractor/trailer rigs, I used to hold a CDL, but no longer have a use for it...), unlike most of the yuppies buying SUVs these days, I actually use mine for hauling and towing and back-roading in places that would kill cars dead. Most importantly, I also realize that I'm driving a 3-ton kinetic weapon, and if I make mistakes at speed and I hit another vehicle, most likely someone is going to die. Just having moved to Colorado for work, I'm surrounded by people who don't understand that a K-Blazer/Yukon/Tahoe/Suburban is a full-sized truck and drives like such, not a passenger car. They also don't realize the implications of making a mistake while driving such a thing. When handled and maintained correctly, they're a beautiful pieces of engineering that can go places that eat little cars for lunch. The problem isn't the vehicle - it's the stupid fscking people who don't fscking know how to drive such a creature properly and responsibly. (Sorry to check my fs twice in one sentence...) They make the rest of us look bad. Did I mention that my SUV used to run Linux (for a vehicle telemetry project)? :) End of SUV-hater-hating rant.
I have worked at ExxonMobil.
Why the recommendation to switch to natural gas as a way to avoid the Big Oil companies? Natural gas and petroleum are often extracted simultaneously from the same well, and it will make no difference to the Big Oil people whether you use oil/gasoline/asphalt/natural gas...it's all the same to them...more or less
further, what makes you think that they won't capitalize on any available energy source? They are in the oil business to make money, not to "take over your fuel take option." A plausible short run strategy perhaps, but the whole game is about profits.
Most of the Big Oil companies are actively involved in nuclear, coal, and geo-steam plants operations, and they are always looking for new and innovative uses for older products such as your favorite, natural gas.
The real problem isn't the Big Oil folks, it's the cultural reluctance of Americans to try new things. And any hacker worth his salt should have experienced this problems in other realms of life...ever try to get a Dvorak keyboard in your home town or try to get a mechanic to work on a Delorean?
New ideas are not popular in folk-land that loves its SUV gas-guzzlers and its neo-Neanderthal meat focused diets...
get used to the concept that our culture needs an experimental elite that pays the way for the rest of them, that develops the agenda and the lawnchair for the rest...maybe solar needs Mr Popeil!
To elaborate on the safety aspect, a gaseous fuel brings all new problems to the table. What happens in an accident and the CNG, LPG, or Hydrogen starts leaking? That's not to say that gasoline is safe--it's extremely flammable and readily vaporizes, which makes it a real hazard.
However, since we've already accepted gasoline, we don't tend to sue when it burns a car to the ground. With new technologies, you risk the lawyers eating you alive, or so it seems.
In short, there are challenges on all fronts for the introduction of a new fuel source--political, economic, safety, technical, logistical, etc.
From what I've read lately, today's IC engines generally top out at around 30% efficiency. So far, fuel cells range from around 40 - 60% efficiency. The problem is still heat. When a fuel cell is large and stationary, it can get up to 90% efficiency through cogeneration, which is using the heat that is produced to turn turbines to create more electricity.
Now, if they can just get them small and cheap enough to work well in a car, we'll be getting somewhere.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Plus the modern gas engine is very efficient, it produces a good amount of power for the fuel that you feed it. Ok some people buy SUV's that have much more engine than they need, but thats another point.
What I want to know is why do small aircraft still use leaded gas.
The Cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I have to say this to all you folks out there.
The gasoline-powered automobile is still a viable means of transportation, because thanks to massive improvements in engine and emission-control technology since the 1970's, today's average automobile emit under 5% of the pollutants of a car circa 1970.
The development of catalytic converters, fuel injection systems, electronic engine controls and improved combustion chamber design has allowed automobiles to have excellent performance yet have extremely low emissions.
Remember, the entire world is going towards this end, too. The California Super Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (SULEV), Japan's upcoming Stage III standard for 2004, and the European "Euro 2005" standards are almost identical in regards to emissions, and already companies like Honda, Toyota and Nissan have already manufactured cars that can meet these tough restrictions, with companies like Volkswagen/Audi, BMW and DaimlerChrysler closely following behind. These standards are so strict that it is more than likely the air going INTO the engine will be dirtier than the air coming OUT of the engine!
By drastically reducing the amount of sulphur compounds per billion in both gasoline and diesel fuel (something already required in California), it now makes it possible to introduce direct-injection systems that has the fuel injector directly injecting the fuel into the combustion chamber. This allows extremely precise metering of fuel necessary to do proper combustion, and that in turn increases fuel economy and reduces exhaust emissions at the same time.
In short, the gasoline engine is still a long way from dead. The technology is now in place to reduce pollutants to almost one percent (!!) of what a 1970 model year car emits and still get 15 to 20 percent better fuel mileage.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
especially with gas being as high as it is right now
The reason gas prices are so high is because people are buying gas-guzzling SUV's and driving up the demand for gasoline to insane levels, while OPEC has not increased production to match. If any chunk of the population switched to alternative fuels, the price of gas would drop through the floor. The lower demand would also severly hinder OPEC, and possible break the cartel, allowing the price of gas to fall further. But with gas at ultra-low prices, nobody in their right mind would want to pay for the (comparitivly) expensive alternatives.
Car companies will start making high-efficiency cars, since a fringe of the population (myself included) has grown large enough to make it profitable to satisfy the demand. Honda has that new car (the Prius?) that gets ~60-70 MPG, and Toyota is going to start shipping a similar car. The vast bulk of people (at least in the US), however, will still want their huge inefficient SUV's.
I belive a Ford exec said that the company would be overjoyed to stop manufacturing SUV's, but that as long as people demanded them, Ford had to supply them to stay afloat. The solution is in convincing John Q. Public that running an efficient, clean car (gasoline or otherwise), rather than his big, overpowered SUV, is what he wants to do.
Good luck.
You wrote: "We need a way to show the oil companies that we're fed up of lining their pockets with cash" which is kind of funny since there are so many ways, and so many organisations doing so.
Rule #1: Buy NO unneccessary plastic items. I make an exception, personally, for my kids' legos. But I don't buy a new case for my computer just because the ATX form came out, I hacksaw the old one. Plastics are essentially a waste product of the petroleum industry.
Rule #2: Buy NOTHING from Exxon. Because we need to convince the Oil Barons that there are some things that don't blow over - and Exxon's had the most egregious crimes as well as being the last vestigal trace of the original Petroleum Trust (Standard Oil = S.O. = Esso = Exxon, you can confirm this easily).
Rule #3: Stop whining and do something. I am converting my truck to gas/electric hybrid ASAP. My bud Pete runs used fryer oil in his (unmodified) Mercedes diesel.
Alternative Energy Engineering
Ballard Fuel Cells
Electro Automotive
Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.
Greenpeace International Homepage
Home Power Magazine
Hydrogen Web (English/German)
innEVations
Jerry Halstead's Car
Low Rolling Resistance Tires
Phoenix EAA
Roofing Systems
Unique Mobility
Veggie Van (BioDiesel)
Wilde EVolutions catalog
United Solar Systems Home Page
--Charlie
and I'm not joking... the person who invented the diesel engine originally planned for it to run on Hemp oil and other vegetable based oils.
Plus it cleans the environment as the plants are growing. I can't see any drawbacks.
Even so, there's something that doesn't smell right. I read that EV's are a failure because GM and Honda have backed out of their public EV programs, never mind that they were only available in *very* limited areas and never really marketed. They were pretty expensive though. That hasn't hurt the Corbin though --- at $15,000 ea for a single seater, they've got orders into next year. And these things are really beta vehicles --- I've gone through 2 controllers already and they have a number of glitches. Nevertheless, it's very fun to drive, and I love it when it runs. If a large manufacturer started cranking them out for under $10K, I'll bet you'd start seeing them everywhere.
The upshot is that while the technology isn't here yet for a complete conversion, and most people can't afford to have a vehicle for every use, a large number can afford an inexpensive commuter car if the advantages are sufficient. A Geo Metro that makes a number of sacrifices for a small decrease in gasoline consumption isn't enough for most people, but some of us are breaking ground for a more promising future.
Actually, like most so-called "zero-emisions" vehicles, this one is in reality just a remote emissions vehicle.
Something has to compress the air, and compressed air is not a particulary high-density energy storage medium. That something may be electricity, which more than likely came from an oil or gas-fired power plant and further absorbed the non-trivial power losses incurred in transmission lines, transformers, etc. (Granted, nuclear is the cleanest overall, but effectively impossible because of environmental zealots - nuke plants are already a dying breed - and ther is that pesky waste problem.)
Further, it requires expensive, filament-wound composite tanks, which are themselves a serious non-trivial safety hazard in the event of an accident. (For all gasoline's faults, it is much safer in a crash than many alternative fuels such as ethanol, hydrogen, L[NP]G, etc., and it does not require complex, expensive, or heavy containment and fueling sytems.)
Further, a cursory look at the zero emissions engine (listed on another page at the site) raises the snake oil alert flags: Although a spherical combustion chamber has some benefits (hence the famous Chrysler "hemi" (hemispherical) head, common in many modern motors), it requires small, inefficient valves, and will have to deal with the friction of two cylinders rather than one. As an experienced motorhead myself, I fail to see how this concept could even theoretically approach, much less exceed, the efficiency of a conventional IC engine.
Keep in mind that some ideas that look great on paper have problems in the real world. Mazda's incredible rotary being a prime example: The motor is small, light, has low friction, only a handful of parts, and you can literally rebuild it on your kitchen table. Unfortunately, although its power-to-weight ratio is quite impressive, its fuel economy is not, so it has been relegated to use in high-performance sports car duty where efficiency is less of a concern. (That said, I'm a huge rotor-motor fan - the things are awesome marvels of engineering. With reasonable care (mostly making *very* sure it *never* runs low on oil), the things are darn near bulletproof, too.)
It's easy to put together a web page making incredible claims (like the split-cycle folks did in Australia a year or two ago) - it's another thing to deliver on them. The reality is that cars are as good as we can economically make them today. They will continue to get better, but painting the automobile as the enemy of the environment is simply not realistic - modern cars emit virtually no pollutants once the catalyst is warm, and there is much promising research on how to avoid those initial few seconds. (Many new cars emit more in the first few seconds after a cold startup than they do for the next several dozen miles of driving. That's impressive!)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Who needs farmers? Don't you know? Food comes from the grocery store, not from farms.
-----
I live in NYC, i ride the train to and from work every day, it's fast, cheap, and efficient, a marvel of engineering.
When i visit my parents in CT, however, you can't do a thing without a car. Now, of course, people outside of cities *could* constrcut decent mass transit, but they don't, and that's fine -- it's a lifestyle choice based on perceived convenience and, to some degree, an archaic sense that one's car contributes to one's identity.
But it's a lifestyle *choice*, and when the price of gas goes up and this causes what were, essentially, forseeable economic impacts, what am i supposed to do, cry?
Stop whining. Take the bus. In addition to saving a couple of bucks, it'll help prevent your kids from getting skin cancer.
[This is without even addressing the point that cars contribute to the breakdown of neighborhoods, and that a quarter of a million americans are killed in car accidents a year. F cars. They suck. No sympathy from me. Gas should cost 6 bucks a gallon, given the harm it does.]
god is just pretend.
Here's a site that I check out pretty regularly on the Honda Insight hybrid. It's a "personal log" kind of thing, with loads of honest personal experiences from a bunch of people who've been living with the car for a while now.
I'd love one for commuting, but I probably couldn't even bring my briefcase with me for fear of carrying too much weight.
There are two central reasons why it is preferrable to have a plant making the pollution than a car.
a) A plant can be located away from residential areas. You probably notice there are no power stations anywhere near the cities they power (except maybe some of the older cities that grew towards plants). We can selectively place plants away from population centers and in places where the typical winds do not blow emission over cities. With cars the pollution is wherever the person is driving, and that is typically in population centers (since most people drive cars).
b) A plant can have better emissions control. Plants (can) have higher yet reasonable pollution control requirements than cars. In chemical engineering when you try to separate out two chemicals, to decrease the impurities in your product by half you must use x^2 more energy, equipment, etc. (i.e. money) in order to acheive this. At some point it becomes economically unjustifiable to continue purifying the product because the cost of the product production becomes higher than the average selling price of the product.
Cars have a minimum impurity amount that they have to achieve (where the impurity is the pollutants). However, we must multiply that by the number of cars.
If we have plants instead of cars producing pollution, we can reduce the impurities further. The plants are emitting more impurities so they can cut down on them further while still remaining profitable because each plant is producing the impurity amount equivelant to large amount of cars.
(Note that this is not valid if the plant is also producing the same amount of total waste gas (exhaust) as the number of large cars it represents, because the impuriy level is a ratio of impurity to everything rather than an amount. Under this circumstance that ratio is the same--I am assuming that it should be easy to cut back on the total waste gas when you are producing much more waste gas, thus giving a higher concentration of pollutants, which in turn makes it easier to separate them out).
- Sig
I don't think fuel cells are efficient or cost-effective enough yet. It'll be nice to see more electric-gas hybrid cars out there, but with the 3-gallons-per-mile SUV craze going on, I don't think it'll happen all that soon.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
There's another problem with methanol: it's hydrophylic, so it will absorb moisture from the air, contaminating it. I'd be interested in hearing how Brazilians address this problem. Another thing about alternative fuels is that I don't know of any that have the energy density of gasoline, so you have these big, unwieldy containers to deal with if you want the same range. Not to mention, where am I going to get my liquid oxygen to refill my fuel-cell equipped car? By the way, the FBI is very interested in buyers of LOX and liquid hydrogen. It seems that they're quite useful to terrorist bombers (uh oh, Carnivore is gonna log that one!). Gasoline is a great example of what being 'first-mover' can get you: dominance due to the sheer magnitude of the investment in infrastructure that grows up.
Well, turbines are great for bulk power, but not for efficient power. A jet engine, which is a kind of turbine (admittedly being used in reverse to the application in a power plant) would need to put out about 100lb of thrust to maintain freeway cruising speeds in the average car. The jet fuel (kerosene) required to do that would be in the range of 4 MPG. Compare that to the freeway cruising efficiency of a modern car.
As for where my statistics come from, the statistic about the hydro grid comes from the book, "An Engineer's Guide to Hydro-Electric Distribution Systems". The figure about the efficiency of the average car is taken from an article that I recently read on SAE's website at www.sae.org .
Friction in the engine, nonrecoverable heat from the combustion (biggie), friction in the transmission and tires, etc.Not to mention energy wasted as noise, energy wasted pushing the car through the air, energy wasted as the car idles.
Many new car brochures have the engine's power rated in kW now. If you stop and think about how much heat the car throws off for the fact that it's converting x kW of chemical energy into mechanical energy, I still think that's pretty impressive. By comparison, consider how much heat your computer's power supply throws off when you've got it running at its full 200W load (lots of disk drives and cards)....
You're also completely ignoring the benefits of regenerative braking in electric vehicles/hybrids.Nah. They're there, but I'm sure it's negligible. Consider the energy used to make the vehicle maintain a given speed. When you apply the brakes, if the traction motor is 90% efficient both driving and braking the car, 10% of your kinetic energy will be wasted as heat. The other 90% will go to recharge the batteries. Recharging batteries is an inefficient proposition - on the order of 50% maximum. I'm sure that regenerative braking improves cruising range by a few miles, but not much overall.
The more important benefit of an electric or fuel-cell powered car is that when you're stopped, the electric drive motor is off. The batteries or fuel cells are not running an idling engine, the way a gas tank has to keep an internal combustion engine running at stoplights. For city drivers, I'm sure that's a far more important benefit.
The other great benefit is that a gasoline engine achieves peak efficiency only at the top of its torque curve. In other words, only at a rotational speed determined by many factors, including the shape of the combustion chamber, the ratio of bore versus stroke, the design of the runners and plenum in the induction system, the back pressure and scavenging properties of the exhaust system, etc... It's pretty hard to maintain this peak efficiency as you're tooling around town. The transmissions in most cars are geared so that at legal highway speeds, the engine will be spinning at about the torque peak.
I will give you this: as you'd use it in a car, an electric motor's energy useage increases linearly with speed, making an electric car absolutely ideal for the slow puttering around a city that most people end up doing. But for the reasons outlined in my orginial posting, I greatly protest to running them off batteries, for the chemical dangers and charging issues I outlined originally.
Very good point. If i remember correctly, Ford engineers toyed with using Sodium batteries for their EV-1. Those babies have to be hot enough for the sodium to melt.I know. That's terrifying, isn't it? Most accidents happen on rainy/snowy days. Now, what happens when molten sodium from a broken battery hits the big puddle on the wet pavement beside the remains of the car...?
Geez, that takes me back to high school chemistry classes...
The "Oh no, more electrical bills!" argument is crap. New power plants would get built, and while they would probably burn fuel, they would incorporate more effective smokestack scrubbers than your catalytic converter on your car does.Oh, no question. A gasoline fired power plant could produce a lot less emissions that the same amount of gasoline being burned in even the best of cars. (I'm using gasoline as an example because it's a simple comparison, not because it would be a likely candidate for a power plant fuel.)
But now that you've got the energy out of the gasoline, you still have to get the energy into the car, and the transmission and storage of energy is the problem.
If a gasoline-fired plant products 1kW of energy from every liter of fuel (abysmal example, but easy for clarity), and a car produces 500W of energy from a liter, this looks good.
Then, subtract 50% of that 1kW of energy to get the power to the consumer. That leaves you with 500W of enery remaining. On par with the car, but a much cleaner exhaust, it's still probably worthwhile.
Now, as you charge the electric car's batteries, you lose another 50% or so to the charger and the chemical processes within the batteries. That leaves you with 250W of useable energy from that liter. Which means that for a given distance travelled in an electric car, you could easily end up using 4 times the fuel as you would have if you'd just burned the gasoline in the car to begin with. Then, if the scrubbers leave the exhaust from the plant twice as clean, per liter consumed, as the exhaust from a car, you're still producing twice as much pollutant as the car would.
A better option is a fuel cell, as soon as they're ready for mass production. A fuel cell will burn gasoline with stellar efficiency, and coupled to the operating efficiency and lack of idling of an electric motor, a fuel-cell powered electric vehicle would be the best option.
And it means no new nuclear power plants, no new hydroelectric dams, no new coal-fired plants: it can be run off ordinary gasoline or methanol/ethanol processed from agricultural crops.
And, it's clean. Running on hydrogen, the only emissions would be water vapor. Off gasoline, there'd be a little more. Even if it's not perfect, running on gasoline, it would still be an order of magnitude better than today's cars.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Sure, the acceleration isn't great, and these are not going to win any Formula 1 races in the near future, but think of it this way. The people who buy the cheapest, dirtiest, least-efficient, oil burning cars are your OAPs and students. OAPs are not the sort of crowd who go out-dragging the local chapter of Hell's Angels - they're more likely to be stuck in heavy traffic, crawling to and from the stores, hoping that their morning trip won't take until nightfall.
Students, likewise, are more likely to be driving to and from lectures. Cross-country trips are less than likely, and hauling ultra-heavy loads are unlikely to be regular events.
If someone were to build disposable cars, designed to last 3-4 years, using this ultra-efficient technology, you could throw away a good percentage of the gas-guzzlers. Less gasoline requied = more gasoline to go round.
As trends tend to catch on, especially really weird ones, something like this could utterly crush the SUV market (another horrible bleeder of the world's resources), and lead to people wanting to buy efficient for a change.
I can't blame the markets for pandering to demand. They're there to make money, not save the world. If most people want to turn precious reserves into pollutants, for no good reason, then the markets will respond and provide the means to do so.
Changing the fuel won't change the result. Only changing the attitudes can do that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
On this site, you can also find this handy chart which shows visually exactly why ICE's are so inefficient.
--
Jake
Check out Zero pollution
Apparently the Mexican govt has ordered 1000's of these to replace taxis.
There's an old adage that in order to convince people to switch from an entrenched standard, you have to be 10x better. The infrastructure behind gasoline is extensive, and despite the technological deficiencies of gas, economically it is the cheapest way to get around.
The only way to make the alternatives that much better is to make gas worse.
Tax gas. Tax inefficient cars. Raise the pollution controlls on _gas_ powered vehicles through the roof.
You may think that this will hurt people and drive up prices. It may drive up the price of gasoline, and the price of driving around, but if you do it right, you can keep the cost of living about the same. Remember, the more expensive it is to drive around burning gasoline, the less gasoline will be burnt. The gas we burn, the less crude oil goes into its production. And the more crude we have, the cheaper we can make diesel, kerosene, plastics, etc. Artificially expensive gas means cheaper frieght charges (cheap diesel), cheap power (cheap crude/kerosene), and cheap consumer goods (plastics and other petrochemicals).
Of course, this would still look bad politically, but you can balance that out by putting all those tax revenues towards gas price relief for poor people, tax credits for efficient cars, etc. It would also (possibly) have the effect of breaking up OPEC. If demand falls, the marginal OPEC members (Veneualia (sp?) et. al.) will almost be forced to cheat on their quotas to make ends meet. And once enough of the small ones start cheating, the rest will follow suit, cutting the price of diesel/electicity/plastics/whatever even further.
If you are careful to balance the effects against each other, you can have your alternative fuels/low pollution without fscking everybody over.
They could construct it--but why? People "outside of cities" by definition have low population densities. "Mass" transit requires high populations.
This is simple overgeneralization; there are -many- places with the population density to support mass transit that don't have it - namely, just about every suburb. Presumably you'd run the busses infrequently and down only the major roads, but it'd be -something-.
Before you say it can't be done, consider the Sili Valley - despite the complaints about the efficiency or lack thereof and whether light rail is a waste of time, etc, there -is- a mass transit that runs all up and down and through the suburbs and shows no sign of vanishing. You can take the bus, the light rail, or the cal-train to various destinations, and at the other end take something else.
By contrast, in the Boston area, and most cities east of the rockies, -only- the metro region has mass transit, and the suburbs are left to hang. Or, (using the Boston area as an example) you have transit into the city with peripheral parking lots but no transit -out- of the city. In case nobody noticed, the high tech industry (and others that can manage it) are slipping out of the cities and building up along the highways that run out of them. I live -in- the city and work -outside- it, and the reverse commute is really only doable by car... it doesn't do me any good to be left in a 'commuter parking lot' with a residents-only sticker-required no-overnight-parking lot. I could, conceivably, even leave my car in the parking lot overnight and do -most- of my commute by transit and the transit-less leg by car, but the policies are set up to discourage it.
Anyway, the real reason there's no mass transit in the suburbs is because people in the suburbs don't want those icky 'city people' (read, minorities) coming out to shop in their nice isolated suburban shopping districts. Which, admittedly, they would probably do, but so what? Seeing a black face or hearing a conversation in portuguese isn't going to kill even the most whitebread of the suburb dwellers. (If you think I'm just trolling/flamebaiting, check out the zoning laws & transit-related votes in a suburb near you...)
Parity None
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
You can already buy half-electric cars from major manufacturers. Honda and Toyota both came out with hybrid cars this year. Check out the "Insight" and the "Prius".
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
But of course any alternative would take time to phase in. Loss of profits and job cutbacks in the oil industry would be gradual. The people leaving the oil industry could find jobs in the new markets created by the oil alternatives. The oil companies would have plenty of time to diversify into new markets. 'Protecting Jobs' is never a good argument for holding back a better technology.
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
I bought one back in April. I can get over 80mpg on the highway (at about 60-65mph).
:)
City driving is another story. I don't drive to much in the city, but here in Chicago I "only" get 50mpg, not the 61 they claim. I'm certainly not complaining, but I wouldn't mind getting 60+ mpg in the city.
Since I drive over 500 miles a week, I thought this would be the best choice for a new vehicle.
Why do we still use gasoline instead of another power source? There are many reasons but here are a few:
The chemical energy stored in gasoline is very high for its weight while still being easily accessible. Methane and ethanol all have less energy stored per unit weight. This means that cars powered by gasoline can out accelerate these alternative fuel cars because they can release the chemical energy faster and turn it into kinetic energy. They also have better range because they have smaller lighter fuel tanks which weigh less. In many alternative fuel cars you loose a lot of trunk space to the fuel tank.
More energy per weight is diesel fuel. The problem here is that the energy is harder to release easily since diesel doesn't burn at room temperature at one atmosphere. This means the energy is harder to release and performance drops. Fuel efficiency is slightly better however.
As for fuel cells, I think the big problem is that you lose performance again. They don't combust gasoline they release the energy using a different chemical reaction. It works more slowly but more uses all the energy more completely and produces less harmful by products. This is nice, but makes for lower performance.
Electric cars are nice, but all the batteries are heavy and they take hours to recharge. You lose range and convenience. Hybrid cars are nicer because you power a set of batteries with a small gas engine. The batteries then power the wheels. Honda makes one of these I believe. The problem is that after two to three years you need a new set of batteries because current battery technology wears out too easily. And that many batteries are expensive.
I've also heard of all kinds of wacky fuels like vegetable oil. The guy did this to his volkswagen and got the oil from local fast food places that usually have to pay to get rid of it. His car exhaust smelled like french fries. No sure why this caught on, probably because it was an obscure idea that isn't practical on the large scale.
Basically what is preventing the widespread adoption of an alternative fuel is that nobody wants to loose anything. Nobody wants a slower car with shorter range. Nobody wants to pay more for such a car either. People also don't like to buy unproven technology. If you want an accepted alternative fuel car which is more efficient, buy a diesel.
BTW has anyone done studies to see if, after the power loss in transmission of the electricity to the house and the loss in the car itself, electrically powered cars actually pollute less than gas. The engine is less efficient, the transmission of the power to the house loses efficiency, and the power plant creates pollution just like the car would. By advocating electric cars are we simply changing the location of the pollution instead of reducing they levels of it?
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
One thing that seems to be forgotten in all these debates is how dependent we are for oil for other purposes. What is going to happen to the chemical and plastics industries - and indeed all the subsidiary industries that rely on their products once we run out of oil? We may well discover other sources of energy for transportation and heating - but there is no obvious substitute for the oil we require to manufacture the plastics we use. Just think of how prevalent plastics are today - just look at the big lump of plastic in front of you right now - and all the components under the hood that are keeping everything ticking over! If we waste all our oil resources on transportation and our technological civilization depends on oil derived plastics then how long can we survive with this level of technology? If we were a more responsible and mature society we would restrict our consumption so that future generations (and we should really be thinking way beyond our grandchildren) will enjoy some of the same resources we have today.
I work at Ford's Enviromental Vehicle project and i can't legally speak for them. Without trying to give out anything proprietary, in general, energy density is the real killer. 1 kg of gasoline efficiently tapped can give you 42-44 Megajoules. NiCad, Lead-Acid and Sodium-Sulfur of the same weight barely have a fraction of this energy. To replace 16 gallon (approx 42.39kg) of gasoline you need 14838.768 kg of lead acid battery. This is ten times the average weight of a car (around 1500kg). Since the car is 11 times heavier it should require 11 times more fuel. You do the math. It may more costly to your pocket and the enviroment (more energy use and heat dissipation).
Ultracaps? That's great. I know one company that sells ultracaps with 10,850.69 Joules/kg. Packs a punch for your house intruder but can't you anywhere (literally).
Ah.... somebody mentioned fuel cells. You can check out one of the suppliers ballard This is promising but the energy conversion unit is still heavy. Hydrogen actually packs more energy than gasoline: 38khw/kg (that's about 136.8 mejajoules/kg). Unfortunately, it hoards a lot of space. We could use methanol and carry methanol->hydrogen reformer that would take up more weight. After reliasing that the conversion unit takes more weight you begin to wonder, why don't you burn the hydrogen in the first place, instead of investing in the fuel cell stack, electric drivetrain and stuff? We are bothering with eletric motor? Why can't we just improve the efficiency of the internal combustion engine?
Relative to electric motor, internal combustion engine (ICE) is highly inefficient. While good motor with a good controller can give you close to 95% efficiency, an ICE is at 17% in a good day. Worse it's peak efficiency is at certain torque and at certain speed. That is why we have gearbox system and clutch. When the car stops, you have supply it with some fuel to keep spinning (idling) which is 100% loss (0% efficient). With electric motor you can adjust your torque and speed electrically and reclaim energy in braking.
I think I better stop here. in the meantime you are welcome to buy Ford electric bicycles and other stuff http://www.thinkmobility.com
Hasdi
Not speaking for Ford
I think the real problem is that Gas has been so cheap in the US for so long. We have had it WAY too good.
Plentiful supply, no shortages, cheap prices. Hell yes I enjoy it too. Even today with higher prices, gas is still fairly cheap.
Its cheap, its what we know. Whn the masses are confortable, there is no push to invest and research alternative fuels. Face it...any new system will need to be able to compete with the existing fuel infrastructure.
As for alcohol based cars....you can make your own ethanol and use it to power your car...many engines will run without modification (tho not well...much better to use a gas/alcohol mix). You can even get a licence to distil your own ethanol for fuel really cheap from the BATF. (in the US obviously).
Linday's Publications (http://www.lindsaybks.com) has a book on building a fuel alcohol still that talks about all this stuff. Really good book. Of course the MPG is less than Gas, but it burns ALOT cleaner....and thus keeps the engine cleaner.
I am personally of the belief that there is alot of potential in these feilds. I would like to get a Gas/electric hybrid (the honda insight beats the pants off even my motorcycle for MPG) and see it modified to run off Ethanol or methanol....now that would truely be a great car.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It will happen sooner or later with enough incetive, but right now, there is a strong infastructure built up in the support of gasoline automobiles, and not one in support of alternative fuels. There are also a wide variety of fuels, and people want cars that run THE NEXT FUEL, not just a cleaner fuel. Also, cost is a big factor, most states won't pay to have your car converted. Most people know how to work on/supe up gasoline powered cars. They don't want to take them in to a mechanic to work on them when they are used to working on them themselves. Mechanics are trained to work on gas powered cars. Companies manufacture mainly parts for gas powered cars. The infastructure to purchase fuel, inexpensively, for alternative fuel vehicles isn't everywhere.
I mean, I would love to have an electric powered car, right? Where would I charge it? Just about only at my house! What would I charge it in? I plug that I have to get specially installed that is more powerful than the ones on my dryer, possibly requiring that I have lines run to my house for the power requirements.
It's not like, "Why would anyone run open source software." When the infastructure is there, and in fact better than that of closed source software. This is something where you really have to use the options given to you.
Eh...
If our province had that kind of incentive. Natural gas is much cleaner (and more efficient) than gasoline. The oil companies are a much greater monopoly than what Microsoft is, and everyone does complain.
The parallel to Microsoft is interesting because, of course, the first major anti-trust breakup of a company was of Standard Oil in (I think) 1911. The government ruled them a monopoly and split them into a number of smaller companies, which were the forebears of the major oil companies we have today.
The argument against the present oil companies is that they operate an informal cartel to keep prices up. This is one disadvantage of splitting a monopoly - it is much harder to show that a number of companies are colluding to act monopolisticaly, whereas its relatively easy to show that a single company is a monopoly. A two Microsoft cartel may be even worse than one Microsoft monopoly.
Sailing over the event horizon
"We need a way to show the oil companies that we're fed up of lining their pockets with cash."
And we are fed up with them paying their employees and paying those taxes. Pesky jerks.
Find a solution that will not result in hundreds of thousands of people being laid off. Find a way that will not result in the economies of several countries being tossed down the toilet which will further result in war, unrest and more people suffering not to mention economic problems for the rest of the world.
Find a solution that when implemented, will be as cost affective as what it replaced. For instance, don't force everyone to buy a new car which costs two and a half times more than a gasoline powered device and then force them to use a fuel that costs several dollars a gallon and have that same device and fuel get the same mileage as their previous gasoline-powered device.
These are just a few of the problems that enviromentalists and politicians usually don't address: What affect will this have on the working person in this country? Using the excuse "Well, it may cost you more, but we know what is best for you", will result in insurrection when deployed in this scale.
Gasoline is here for a while. There's just no good substitute for most people yet.
Natural gas/Propane are both great, but the infrastructure to support them just isn't there. Gas stations would have to make a huge investment to be able to support them at all stations. It's great for fleet vehicles like taxis, since the cab seldom leaves its home city, and the driver can get to be very familiar with which gas stations have already added propane/NG fueling services.
While gasoline is very nasty stuff, it's a little safer than carrying around a large tank of compressed and invisible fuel. A car accident that ruptures a full automotive propane/NG tank would be far more likely to be deadly than a car accident that ruptures a gasoline tank and causes a spill. Let alone the dangers of hydrogen as a fuel, which, like acetylene, sweats its way out of cast iron tanks.
You'll note that most parking garages won't allow propane/NG vehicles. If, over the years, one of the fuel lines corrodes or develops metal fatigue cracks, a slow fuel leak could cause a parking garage explosion. Since parking garages tend to be under buildings, conceivably, the building could come down. Dire consequences? Yup. One in a million chance? Yup. But if there are millions of propane/NG vehicles out there, it's a bigger worry than gasoline.
Gasoline tends to drip, and you can usually see a leak. You can always see a puddle. With invisible gases, that's not possible: you have to rely on the odor, which you might not catch if it's windy.
Admittedly, conditions have to be just right for a propane/NG explosion, but it's unquestionably somewhat more dangerous than gasoline. Much like a Ford Pinto's gasoline tank is more dangerous than the average.
Fuel cells are a great idea, and I'm sure they'll be with us in a few years. I've had the opportunity to drive a Ballard-powered golf cart, and it was a lot of fun. Silent, fast, much more efficient than an internal combustion engine. It was nice. But the problem is that fuel cells still require membranes that are as difficult and unreliable to mass produce as color LCD displays were a few years ago. In time, that will change.
Fuel for fuel cells will still have to be something combustible. A fuel cell simply burns fuel through what is essentially a catalytic reaction, as opposed to a combustion reaction. So we're back at the same choices: drag around a tank of liquid gasoline/methanol/ethanol, or drag around a tank full of compressed hyrdrogen/propane/NG.
Since the infrastructure already exists for the distribution of liquid fuels, you're probably still going to be pouring some sort of liquid fuel into your tank.
Fuel cells, by virtue of their basic operation, will be very sensitive to impurities in the fuel. Deposits formed inside the fuel cell will require the replacement of the expensive membrane. A conventional paper fuel filter, like your car currently has, will not suffice. That's going to mean very expensive processes of lining tanks in every refinery, truck, gas station... which will be carried on to you, fair consumer.
Electric cars are a great idea, but they're not practical for two big reasons.
First things first, all batteries use a chemical reaction to convert chemical energy into electrical energy. The more efficient the battery, the more efficient (and therefore nasty) the chemicals must be. In order to achieve range in an electric car, every bit of free space is going to have to have batteries crammed into it.
Now, what happens when you're involved in a fender-bender? A battery will probably rupture somewhere, spraying out strong acids or alkalines. Accident victims will often have chemical burns. And every last fender-bender on the Santa Monica Freeway would result in a Haz-Mat team cleaning up the road. As if gasoline wasn't hazardous enough.
Electric cars also need fuel. The fuel, of course, will be electricity to recharge the batteries. If you're plugging your car in at night, your electric bill will go up. No big deal, it will probably be cheaper than gasoline. But what happens when the majority of the 6 million or so cars in LA are plugged in every night? The power from your wall outlets comes from somewhere... how many nuclear power plants will have to go up to deal with the increased electrical needs? How many more Hoover Dams will have to be built? Remember, tidal and solar power just aren't capable of serving any sort of electrical need yet. Building coal or other fossil-fuel powered plants just defeats the purpose of electric cars.
What will your electric bill look like as the demand for electricity outstrips supply? It already does that every year just with air conditioners. Look at the situation in Montana at the moment.
Add to that the fact that a modern gasoline car is about 70% efficient. Not good, right?
Most electric distribution systems are only about 40-50% efficient. So, on a per car basis, you're already using more energy by running an electric car. Then consider that batteries are at best 70% efficient. While the car's electric motor itself may be upwards of 90% efficient, your efficiencies have already added up and negated any benefit.
Gasoline is evil. Electricity is evil. Cars are evil. But they're here to stay; better just to continue to refine what we have. And when the fuel cell is ready for mass production, I'll happily fill my efficient fuel-cell powered vehicle up with renewable and clean methanol/ethanol.
I know for FACT in Brazil you are able to buy a car which burns gasoline or methonol.Most American cars now will run very happily on either gasoline or methanol.
Methanol is, of course, a form of alcohol, and has properties somewhat different from gasoline. For one thing, it's significantly more corrosive to some of the rubber and plastic parts in a car's fuel system. That has been addressed; for example, all new Chryslers since 1991 (correct me if I'm wrong) include fuel system components that are meant to handle it.
Chrysler had a wonderful test car at about that time. It was a 1990 or 1991 Dodge Spirit R/T with a 2.2L or 2.5L engine - the same motor as most K-Cars, Dodge Shadows, etc. With very little work, they'd adapted the fuel system to happily take methanol/ethanol. And the fuel injection system (discussed below) was fitted with a fuel type sensor that would allow the car to run happily on any ratio of gasoline/ethanol/methanol.
Combustion properties are quite different. Since methanol burns differently, if you were to just dump it into your gas tank, your engine would run.... sorta. But since your carburetor and ignition timing are calibrated for gasoline, it wouldn't run very well. Knocking, poor performance, poor gas mileage, and stinky tailpipe.
Over the years, as the car makers have adopted electronic fuel injection systems, this has become less of a problem. EFI systems are meant to enhance driveability, gas mileage, performance and emissions by monitoring how the engine is behaving, and then adjusting fuel/air ratios and ignition timing accordingly. It's entirely a closed-loop, feedback oriented system.
As a result, if the engine is knocking, for example, a sensor on the engine will detect it and the computer will retard the ignition timing until the knock is gone. If the oxygen sensor on your tailpipe is reading too much oxygen (ie. mixture too lean), it will add more fuel. If the O2 sensor reads no oxygen, it will assume the mixture is too rich and lean it out a little bit. This happens hundreds of times a second as you drive. In this way, the engine can adapt a great deal to the kind and quality of fuel being used, with the benefits of better performance and lower fuel consumption.
And, if your oxygen sensor's (or any other sensor's) readings are way out of whack, the computer will realize it, and light up the "Check Engine" or "Service Engine Soon" light. At that point, the computer is making a best guess for how to run the engine, and while the car will still run, performance will not be optimal. If the car's engine can't cope with alternate fuels (ie. the computer isn't allowed enough range in its adjustments to timing and mixture) then this is probably what you'll see. And, likely, when you next fill it up with real gasoline, the little light will go out.
Of course, if your Check Engine light doesn't go out, take the car to the dealer as soon as possible.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.