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What Does the Future Hold for Low Emission Vehicles?
Bryan Andersen asks: "While searching for information on electric vehicles to make an EV Hot Rod I came across this Op Ed piece at EV World about James Cameron's Dark Angel series for fall. It got me thinking just what would it take to get low or zero emission vehicles common place? What has to change? What do people think is the future of low or zero emission vehicles? And just what is the state of the art in both manufactured and home built ones? What cool technologies are down the pike? Electric vehicles are something that I very much like the concept of. Every year or two I get the crazy idea of building an electric vehicle. Last time it was doing a motorcycle. This time it's a street rod. A few years before that it was for a hybrid/electric drive for an RV."
Most people care about convenience, performance and price. Becuse these vehicules aren't up to par with regular cars on those standrds, I think it may be a ways off. As much as I dislike government regulation, I think it will always be needed when protecting the environment.
I apologize that a lot of this post is just me talking out my ass.
"It's because they're stupid. That's why everybody does everything."- Homer Jay Simpson
H2 + O2 -> Fuel Cell -> Electric Power -> Electric Motors
The hydrogen's safer than most other fuels because in case of a leak, it dissipates in the atmosphere VERY quickly (molecular weight of 2 and all :-) ). Remember the Hindenburg blew up because the paint on the skin was made of kerosene...
One possible variation of these vehicles includes something called a reformer, which lets the vehicle 'cook' gasoline to extract hydrogen. All the infrastructure of gasoline, all the energy density/range of gasoline, but none of the emissions and much better efficiency.
--
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Zero emissions vehicles are neat, and there are a number of technologies (the various flavors of fuel cells being the current 'baby' of the industry) that will allow it to happen. But even though the cars themselves may be emitting near-zero pollutants, you have to be careful to sum up the emissions along the whole chain of production: For the fuel cell example, where is the hydrogen/methanol/ethanol coming from? For batteries, how much soot are the power plants producing the recharging current kicking out? Sure, it will probably be more efficient having the pollution generation confined to one big stationary power plant rather than millions of inefficient motors, but I don't necessarily want to live nearby...
Even at $1.60/gal gas is still cheap here in the US. Until gas prices get really bad there is not going to be a big push for alt fuel cars.
Re: Dark Angel: In case of an EMP attack a carburated car is going to run much better then an electric one.
And on diminishing natural resources... we will never run out of oil... of course that last barrel is goning to cost a few trillion dollars... but we won't run out.
Wide acceptance of low-emissions vehicles is almost completely dependent on the existence of a, for lack of a better word, refueling infrastructure. People don't want to have to drive across town to the one electric recharge station (or hydrogen station, or whatever) when they could drive their combustion car 2 blocks. And they dont' want to run out of whatever fuel they're using out in the middle or nowhere, or in a bad neighborhood, etc.
/constructing/ that infrastructure is basically dependent on wide acceptance of these vehicles.
But naturally, the profit motive for
Soooooo, unless there's a mad rush of early adopters, or some venture capital finds its way to a alternative-fuel-station startup, or some other wildly improbable set of circumstances come into play, we'll simply not see wide use of LEV's.... until the government steps in. Playing to the environmentalists in all of us, the gov't will justify a huge subsidy (and likely a huge tax to go with it) to the large gas station chains to get them to install electric rechargers, hydrogen dispensers, or whatever. Or worse yet, they'd create a new gov't agency for providing these services ("hmm, I don't seem to see 'LEV' in the constitution... but who cares!").
So the short answer is, its highly unlikely that in the near future, natural market forces will bring LEV's to a large number of motorists. But since economic boom has made the environment a viable concern again, we'll likely see the government use a little bit of (or a lot of) force to bring it to the market, "because they say so".
MoNsTeR
As with any technology, one of the best ways to move it along at a rapid clip is to pit talented people against each other in competition! Case in point:
Formula Sun
Fun stuff!
Mike
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Even nuclear reactors must be shutdown, and the core disposed of evetually.
With EVs, you're trading in mobile emissions (cars/trucks/buses) for point emissions (power plants). THEN you have to add on top of that, efficiency losses due to transmitting the power over the power grid, and losses in storing the electricity in the battery (and then again in taking it out).
Check your thermo here -- (3) Entropy is always increasing. (2) You can't get more energy out of something than you put in it. (3 restated) You're going to have losses at every transition -- i.e. You're gonna get less energy out than you put in.
EVs are a net loss for the local environment around the power stations, the greenies don't want us to build the one type of powerstation (with current technology) that minimizes polution -- fission reactors.
Don't you think it's time to start communicating?
Low Emission and electrics seem to be synonymous these days. But a pure electric is entirely depedent on the electricity coming out of the house wire and you've got no say over that. Sure, power plants get tremendous efficiency throught scale. And then they loose a lot in the wires and loose a lot in the vehicule battery. Moveover, it just makes the technology pretty unautonomous. A technology that appeals much more to me is bio-diesel. This is a system for converting new or used vegetable oil into a fuel that can be burned in an ordinary diesel engine of a car, truck or whatever. Thus non-poluting and renewable and do-it-yourself.
Not that one can expect a solar panel to extend range, but it can reduce the cost for use. Most cars sit in the parking lot during the day. Why not let the cars "refill" for free?
Fight Spammers!
1. what if it breaks
2. Do I have to plug it in.
Since right now there is no real way generate electricity without using gasolene, people will never buy purely electric because they are afraid that if there isn't a plug then they will be stranded somewhere. This is why the future is with hybrid cars, at least for the time being.
Basically, a hybrid is a car that runs on a gas engine, and when the engine is turning it also turns an electric generator which charges a special battery. For example, with a normal car, when going downhill the engine is in idle and its still using juice, but nothing is being produced. In this situation, the gas would be off and the battery would charge.
Also, in a normal car when you break the extra energy is dissipated in heat and friction. with this, that energy is harnessed to turn the electric motor. The result is that when the car is going under 25 miles an hour, the gas motor is completely off and its super efficient as well as quiet. Because of this, the emmisions of these cars are two to four percent of a normal car. In other words, one hybrid equals about thirty normal cars.
They are actually pretty cheap too. The one we got is a toyota prius, it just came out and its 19,900 bucks. pretty good. They've been out in japan for a while and sold about 30,000 units, and they are making 10,000 for the U.S. and if they sell out they will make more. The one problem with this is that the batteries are still pretty expensive to make, and they have to come down in price. Still, with the full package for under 20k and you don't have to plug it in, this is going to be a big seller. Also, it looks exactly like a normal four door car.
In general, people want to do what's right for the environment, you just have to make it easy to swallow. That's what hybrids do. The ease of a normal car, but with the preformance near an all electric vehicle.
What is the future of high emission vehicles?
No seriously, this worries me. Every year, my dart becomes more and more illegal. I could never register my car in california, and someday soon it will not be legal here in utah.
I'm not driving a car such as this (dodge dart - 383 cid small block) in order to ruin the environment, but I would never consider driving a metro with a paltry 60 horsepower.
I think low emmission vehicles are a great idea, but I've usually found them weak, light, and slow. I'd rather see better fuels engineered, so I can keep my big engine.
(on a side note, my engine with no catalytic converters has passed smog check two years in a row.)
In short, I would like to see more performance to go along with low emissions. Civics are a decent start, but I would personally like to see more.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I wish 0 emission vehicles has been around a few years ago, that way the Civics I drove during college and high school would've been beasts of cars.
"Wow, he's got a gas burner!"
end communication
I'd love to drive an electric car as my daily commuter to work. I do a lot of driving around town for various things, and an electric car would suit me perfectly... My main reason for wanting one (or two; one for the wife) is these electric cars will be almost maintenance free. The short trips around town that can cause excessive wear on a regular dino-powered vehicle wouldn't even faze an electric car.
Of course, I'd still keep my dino-powered cars for long trips.
haha i beat you. who is l33t now?
What I don't understand is why car makers skipped over hybrids to electric cars (like the EV1) and then came back to hybrids. Hybrids seemed the logical choice for an easy win; gasoline distribution has already been figured out and the stations are in place, hybrids are easily much more efficient and less polluting, and hybrids get better range than electrics.
I suppose they're a bit expensive, but so are 12-packs of marine deep-cycle batteries on electric cars. Any thoughts?
The United States (as opposed to European countries as an example), has artificially low gas prices. I don't think that the gas in any state is above $2.00/gallon, where in Europe it's easily that for a liter! To make these cars that don't use a lot of gas popular, the government has to inflate the price of gas. Before you moderate me down, let me say I don't want expensive gas. But it is likely that the number of SUVs is directly proportional to the price of gas. Also, companies have to start competing in the area of gas/electric hybrids. I think there is only one major manufacturer with one on the market (though I could be misinformed). Long story short, there will probably be another "oil crisis" before the gas-guzzling/high-emissions cars begin to die out.
-The Mighty Willtor
"The knee is the elbow of the leg." -- My wife
Why do we have an environmental problem in the first place? Because capitalism requires companies to continuously grow or else die, and thus is the antithesis to sustainable development.
LEVs are really just a patch on the symptoms of a deeper problem. Even if we switched over to them, we would be replacing one environmental problem (emissions) with another (e.g. disposing of toxic substances in batteries).
Electric cars are still machines and are going to require periodic maintenance. And depending on the energy source a major over haul when the power source runs down.
I agree that there is not nearly the infrastructure for purely electric vehicles doesn't exist and might not ever exist. However the hybrid vehicles are truely fabulous. They run on both a gas engine and a battery, and they use the battery to do all kinds of cool stuff. For instance, the battery can recapture some of the energy from braking. This allows for quite great gas milage. The Honda Insight gets 70 mi/gal in the city, costs 20k, and supposedly performs about as well as a Civic. Personally I make the environment friendliness of my vehicle quite a high priority, I only wish more people would do the same. The problem is people do not have to pay the real cost of the impact of their gasoline use on the planet. I think it would be great if we could have a $3-4/gal tax on gas and use the money to make public transit free for all. I mean why do we use our tax dollars to pay for roads, and yet expect public transit to somehow "pay for itself" Michelle
OK, so because /. readers dig computers and programming and that sort of thing they should ignore everything else. Got it.
(Disclaimer: You should not have read this thread. You will become stupider for having done so.)
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I test-drove one about a week ago. When you pull up to an intersection it is dead quiet. It has plenty of passing power on the interstate, and good acceleration on the low-end. You can tell that you're sitting inside some difficult design compromises, but I think they did an excellent job. Has anybody else experience a Prius?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
If you believe in Nader, voting isn't enough. Bush/Gore is spending millions of dollars on television commercials that have been donated by corporations (and even foreign governments!) The only way that Nader and the Green Party can get a message out is by grassroots organizing. If you call your local Green Party, they'll welcome anybody who wants to help with open arms. There's no more enjoyable way to spend a Saturday than to put on a party button and talk with people about politics. Most people are delighted when they find that a political party has sent somebody out to talk to them and listen to them.
Because she's hot!!! =)
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Every been in the drive-through line behind a '70 'Cuda? Thos who are old enough will recall that ALL cars used to smell like that. Car emissions have been reduced so radically (albeit gradually) over the last 30 years that we don't notice just how much has changed. The air is vastly cleaner than it was 30 years ago, even though there are twice as many cars on the road. And that trend will continue. We're not headed for a pollution-filled hell, we're emerging from it.
Of course, some folks are so intent on keeping people from enjoying their cars that they continue to push the silly idea that cars produce so much carbon dioxide that the sky will fall. After hearing this nonsense for thirty years, you gotta start asking... when? According to the predictors of doom, we should have been through about three apocalypses by now.
The reality is that the only way to reduce CO output is to reduce the utility of cars in some way, by making them smaller or slower or more dangerous. And while that may seem fine for the Beautiful Person who commutes from one side of Palo Alto to the other, the potential impact on average working folks is somewhat more severe.
I expect that we'll continue to make incremental improvements in efficiency and emissions. And people will continue to insist that unless something drastic is done, civilization as we know it will end. But we needn't do anything drastic; incremental improvements over a period of years have made a very real difference, and they will continue to do so. And people will be able to go on with their lives without disruption.
What most people do not realize is that today's cars with catalytic converters surpass LEV parameters -- _except_ for the first mile or so while the catalytic converter warms up.
A granny in Scandanavia suggested that cars have a inflatable bag that stores the first mile's (dirty) exhaust, then re-filter it through the catalytic converter once it has warmed up.
Seems to meet most of the requirements -- LEV, low cost, simplicity, etc...
Huh? Do you have reading comprehension problems, or did you deliberately misrepresent me in order to attack me?
From the context it is absolutely clear that what I said is that the requirement to grow or else die (not plain growth, as you misrepresent me) is the antithesis to sustainable development.
Its a 1 person vehicle, meaning that if you are driving you are 100% occupancy, so you get to use the carpool lane, and can bypass bridge tolls. Also since its so small, insurance is cheap (same as motorcycle insurance because it can't cause any damage to other cars) It also parks in motorcycle slots.
Here in California, every new supermaket, mall & anything with a big parking lot has special parking spots with EV chargers. So getting your amps is not hard unless you go on a long drive out of town. The Sparrow is basically a nice urban commuter car which uses no fossil fuels. Obviously its not a "family car"
Many people are already using zero-emission
transportation -- the bicycle. It's convenient,
inexpensive, fun, and good for the environment.
My commute to work (downtown Chicago) is 5 miles,
takes 22 minutes, and doesn't degrade the environment in any way. Why would I want to wait
for some future, technology-intensive solution that may not solve any of the other problems that cars create (traffic congestion, parking problems,
fatal injuries)?
Right now I have the Toyota Prius on order.
Advantages: 45-55 mpg (better in stop-and-go than on the highway). No need to charge the battery because the gas engine does it for you. You can drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco AND BACK on a single tank of gas. (Don't know for outside California but...) Can also drive in the carpool lane even when I'm alone and I get a tax break.
Disadvantages: Small car that can be crushed easily by an SUV. Braking is a little weird; regenerative braking (charging the battery with energy reclaimed from braking) gives an initial tug at speed before "normal" braking behavior kicks in.
Personally the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages for me. Now with that background, answering the question at hand. It would take
1. an end to the stupid war of attrition with regards to vehicle size that we have here in the US. "Oh no! The other guy has a huge SUV and now I don't feel safe. I'd better get a SUV too so that I can make everyone left with a small car really paranoid!"
2. low/zero emmisions vehicles must behave like standard gas-guzzlers; there cannot be anything new-fangled or weird about the way you drive your car (Americans are creatures of habit that way).
3. gas proces need to continue going up so that there is incentive to buy a more efficient vehicle.
That being said, I think pure electric are sunk with regards to the mass market. I don't see them getting the range/size/horsepower of a gas-guzzler anytime in the foreseeable future. That and the fact that there aren't nearly enough charging stations. After all, I can't see people being happy about calling a tow-truck when all they had to do before was walk to the nearest station and fill up a gas can. And with the current maximum range for an electric (abysmal), this becomes a more real possibility.
Curent hybrids on the other hand can take advantage of the existing availability of standard unleaded gasoline. The only improvement I can see here is replacement of gasoline with a feul cell to cut emmisions.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
I am personally getting sick of people who say "we should all move to electrical vehicles." The main problem is the the answer to, 'where does the electricity they use come from?' And the answer surely does not come out of thin air like many "wantabe" environmentalists think it does!
Electric cars use upto 5 times as much fossil fuels than ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles.
How and why? First off, the electricity is produced at a power plant, of which, the nation still relies on 70-80% of fossil fuels to generate. Secondly, the efficiency of first generating the electricity from fossil fuels to drive a motor by electricity, rather than via an ICE is much, much lower. And, finally, there is a lot of transmission loss between the power plant, relay stations to your home (the most likely location where you will charge your vehicle). And there is the fact that the current power generation infrastructure could not meet the power generation needs to support home charging of electrical cars if 1/4th of America was driven them. In addition, I think most Americans would take exception to a $400-500 "electrical bill" even if they did not have to fuel their vehicles elsewhere.
In addition, because the elctricity is still generated from fossil fuels 70-80% of the time, the belief that it is "zero emissions" is just untrue. Now on the flip-side I will admit that power generation from fossil fuels at a power plant is less of a polutant than generation from fossil fuels in an ICE -- probably by an order of magnitude. So even if it takes 5 times as much gas to power the electric vehicle and, therefore 5 times as much fossil fuels are used, the total number of pollutants are probably cut in half. I.e. 5 (times as much fuel) x 1/10 (the pollution per unit fuel) = 1/2 (the total pollution).
So, at best, the "zero emissions electric vehicle" is a flight of fantasy, at least until we either develop direct heat to electricity generation (by passing the traditional steam turbine/generator system of today), possibly in combination with commodity fusion power generation (until which, we will be dependent on fossil fuels).
And if you are even thinking of solar power, don't bother. Solar cells would have to be 25 times as efficient as they exist now. Putting solar panels atop of your hood, top and trunk would not even yield enough power to go a few miles after several hours of charge. Wind power is in the same boat, although it it is more efficent than solar.
The reality of reduced fossil fuel dependence comes not from its total elimination. No. The best solutions come in "hybrid" electric vehicles where an ICE is used in combination with electric systems. Everything from alternators to flywheels are used to generate and charge the batteries while the ICE is running. Hybrid vehicles can almost double the MPG (miles per gallon) rating of vehicles over their ICE-only components.
Looking beyond just they ICE-electric hybrid, we can look at one petroleum replacement, and another one electrical source (other than direct battery storage and recharge). CNG (compressed natural gas) is one since it burns much cleaner than petroleum, and is in limited used in largely application-specific commercial vehicles (like various commercial utility trucks, etc...). Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising technology that will make electric cars much more efficient than charged and discharged batteries. But, both CNG and fuel cells have serious safety issues in their on-board storage in that massive explosions can result in rupture of their tanks (much larger than possible with petroleum-based ones because of the pressure and density of CNG, and the volitity of hydrogen in fuel cells).
Lastly, some may remember "gasohol", an ICE fuel replacement for petroleum. Gasohol is a reality, and can be used to power ICE. In fact, the US' total agriculture capability could meet the world's total demand for gasahol at least two times over if petroleum did not exist tomorrow. The reason it does not today is because of the cost of its refining into an end-user product. Not so much in the refining process itself, but in the massive and quite useless by-products and waste as a result of the refining process. As such, until petroleum resources start to dry up and drive costs of a crude barrel at least 5 times more than the cost today, gasohol will remain a relatively untapped technology.
I seriously hope I educated some individuals here. I don't work the petroleum industry nor do I defend them -- I'm actually quite critical, especially in light of the little effort by everyone in the US to push for the development and maturity of economical fusion power generation (which I believe is possible). I'm just an engineer who is sick of reading various comments on "electrical cars" or "renewable energies/fuels." Let's talk reality people or not talk at all!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
I'm not looking for an electric powered car, because most of my gas consumption is related to short trips around town - trips where most of the time I'm not carrying any other passengers. I live in L.A. where weather related issues aren't much of a problem for me, so naturally I've had my eye on this thing for the past few months. Looks like the perfect thing to tool around town with, as well as deal with the parking situation here.
I'll keep the gas powered vehicle for long trips where I can get the most MPG.
Hybrid electric vehicals, that is vehicals that use a drive train consisting of electric and conventional drive or pure electri with on board power source, such are a generator or fuel cell will be the dominate vehical in the upcoming decades. Fuel cells will come into play someday but not for some time, the infustructure is not there yet not is the technology up to par with the current requirements. Electric vehicals are all but dead, unless battery technology suddenly improves but it barly has in 100 years. also electric vehicals are nto zero emission, they have upstream emissions from power plants, and since people have a misguided problem with nuclear those emissions will still be there from the plants emmissions. the most clean vehical that the technolgy is in place for is a Desiel/electric hybrids, desiel has the best emmisions of all engines. and when fuel cells come about where they can fit in vehicals and have enough power they can replace the desiel generator. and for those of you who think electric drive is week check out this www.futuretruck.org I have been working with these and they intime kick the ass of a stocker, check georgia tech they had 380 hp I belive.
Dependending on where you are, there's a good chance that those electric cars are actually being powered by, say, coal or oil power plants. That is not an improvement over a standard car engine. And some leftover hippy out there is probably driving around in a car that is ultimately powered by a nuclear plant.
I'm holding out for a car with a built in hydroelectric plant...
My mom is not a Karma whore!
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| X < (O===8
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http://vagina.rotten.com/fish/
No thanks...the US government is too close to a police state as it is. Putting the Green Party in power will just encourage the productive to get the heck out of the US to go somewhere that work and ingenuity can be rewarded. I urge people to actually go read the Green Party platform and see what an oppressive socialist government they have in mind for the US.
These cars are open-wheeled electric race cars. At up to 140MPH (as Ohio State's car recently hit), these cars certainly arn't wimpy or slow.
:)
One of the problems with pure electric cars is that of range and recharge time. Our car, for example, runs for only 10-20min on a set of batteries. Since it take so long to recharge them, we simply swap out all 56 sealed-lead acid batteries during a pit stop (1200+ lbs). One interesting note: electric motors develop peak torque at low RPM's giving good accelleration and great burn-outs.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
The best, from Vancouver BC, Canada The already have busses! Ballard Power Systems Check it out. They have partnerships with tons of companies.
I love modding my car as much as I love working on my computer and until you can make a 600 horsepower rear wheel drive EV capable of peeling out, you'll never get me to give up my mustang =c) of course, i'd rather have the EV to drive to work, but on the weekends, cars are as much about fun (to some of us) as transportation, and it's not going to be that easy to convince some of us to give that up.
http://www.nakedandfree.com
Thank you very much for pointing out a very important point. However, the idea of powering vehicles with electricity is not a bad one, the problem is that we simply need a new method of power generation.
There have been many people to work on this and a lot of that work has been surpressed over the years. I don't claim to be an expert in anything but I've read a few books about a guy named Viktor Schauberger (don't know any links off the top of my head, but do a search on altavista and amazon, I know there's lots about him), who was a very interesting austrian scientist something like a hundred years ago, who propsed many interesting alternatives and ideas. Also, we can't forget Nicola Tesla (same things, do a search), who a lot of people think was on the verge of solving a lot of these issues but again, whos would could have been surpressed.
I don't mean to be spouting conspiracy theories, but I think it's important that we look at every problem fresh and not dismiss any ideas just because they don't jibe with what we already know. Someday I hope to study these scientists and people like them in detail and perhaps follow up on some of their work, who knows?
--Joshua
The gas prices in Europe are artificially high! Their gas taxes are far higher than ours. This is probably a legacy of their socialist past, when only the very prosperous had cars (true into the 1950's). Also, the tiny size of their countries pretty well ruled out long-distance driving before the EU. After all, if an Austian or Italian goes on what would be a pleasant, all-day jaunt into the next state over here, he winds up in the next country.
The same situation of artificially inflated gas prices holds true in Canada and Taiwan. Probably other countries as well, but these two I know about first hand. Gas taxes are an easy source of revenue in Europe and Taiwan, because gas is really a luxury for most people. Those countries have also fairly comprehensive public transportation systems, not because the people want it, but because it is subsidied by their socialist governments. The public transport is well-used, since the people can't afford anthing better, after the government has robbed them blind and jacked up the price of gas. Their environment is certainly no cleaner than ours, to boot.
See what I've been reading.
We don't need to collect solar energy with photovoltaics. In fact, the two best (most efficient) methods of collecting solar power right now are through farming, and passive solar heat. While growing corn may not be the most efficient plant to farm fuel alcohol, it IS sustainable. If we want to get serious about removing our dependency on a non-sustainable fuel (never mind the foreign policy issues of dependency on foreign oil), HEMP and JUTE are the the most efficient means of doing so. See The North American Industrial Hemp Council and Hemp Lobby.org for an insightful look into what we (as a society) are wasting by preventing farmers from growing industrial hemp for paper, pressboard, fuel alcohol, and fabrics.
You may also be interested in this Eurekalert release Scientists create organic photovoltaic devices to convert light into electricity which discusses the use of ionically self-assembled monolayer process onto a fullerene (bucky tube) surface, which generates a molecule thin organic photovoltaic cell -- without all those nasty solvents used in the traditional process of making the silicon counterpart.
There are real alternatives to implement if we want to get off this crazy dependency on fuel oil. But the real issue is not infrastructure, but politics; as the oil industry has it's hands on our political establishment. Just which of our presidential candidates comes from a family of oil tycoon and has a vice presidential nominee that's a former CEO of a large Texas oil company?
ps - Frankly, Gore's record on the environment is just a bunch of enviro-talk hooey as well. I think they both suck. I'll be voting Nader this time around.
moderate up--insightful
Given the general level of human intelligence and the way politics work, I think I can glimpse the future...
SUVs and the beloved 426s will be popular until the MidEast decides to truly put the screws to us,
and I think the poster sees the answer. We will probably be doing a lot more walking.
And I dont even want to explore his girlfriends ob-gyn problems, but it sounds like she really needs to see a doctor.
There is a word for people like you.
That word is dinosaur.
Once upon the time, dinosaurs ruled the world.
Now they power your car.
Enjoy being a dinosaur while it lasts.
BMW has been researching the use of liquid hydrogen as an alternative fuel for a few decades, and has created several generations of prototype engines. But what is most exciting is that they've created a limited-run production version of the 750 sedan (the 750hL) that is capable of running on either conventional gasoline or liquid hydrogen, and switching between the two modes with the press of a button (even when the car is running). Most recently, they've been using a fleet of 750hL's as shuttle vehicles at the EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Germany.
;)
.
There are some limitations to this technology, the main one being that while liquid H2 is very effecient in terms of stored weight to power produced, it is extremely inefficient in terms of storage volume to power produced (gasoline is 3 1/2 times more efficient in this area). Also, because H2 liquifies at -420 degrees Farenheit, the cars must be refueled by a robot (BMW installed a demonstration fueling station at the Hanover airport to handle the EXPO 2000 fleet).
Despite these limitations, I believe that this is one of the most promising directions for zero-emissions vehicles. You don't have the generation or battery-related environmental problems of electric cars (well-described in a post above), and the car is compatible with existing standards - it can easily run on gasoline where liquid H2 is unavailable. It makes for a very clean upgrade path
As far as I know, you can't buy a 750hL yet, but you can get more information on them here
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Where do you get your figure that electric vehicles use up to 5 times as much fossil fuel? Is this figure by mass or by volume? How can you even compare coal from a power plant against gasoline in my car?
The fact is, even though some power is lost in transmission, power plants are 70-80% efficient, and electric motors are upwards of 90% efficient. Meanwhile, typical internal combustion engines are 19% efficient. There is no way that the cheap-ass motor in your ford escort can be more efficient than a billion dollar power plant. It is in the power companies best interest to make sure that efficiency is high so that costs are low.
That said, I think you are correct that hybrid vehicles are currently the best option, since they have the best of both worlds.
It's not a moral issue. Think of it more as a public health issue. Are we not right to complain if someone tosses bucketloads of shit onto the sidewalk? Is it wrong to enact laws that forbid such things?
I don't want my children to have to live in a nasty, ruined environment because a bunch of self-righteous bastards thought they had a God-given right to a Suburban.
I believe that the pollution problem stems more from accepted lifestyles in our society than anything else. Look at all the SUV's out there today!
I don't think it's so much "lifestyle" as government interference steering people towards vehicles that are inefficient.
A major reason people are driving SUVs is due to government legislation. The CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy, if memory serves) standards added thousands of dollars to the costs of big car - the kind of car a growing family would want to cart themselves around in.
So given a choice between a $18k station wagon or $12k mini-van, the average family doesn't need a slide rule to figure that one out.
There is a book called Forward Drive by Jim Motavelli that explains all of the different technologies that are competing to become the accepted standard. It's pretty in depth, but is a light read at the same time. For those curious, amazon.com is selling it for 20 bucks, and they give it a 4.5 star rating.
We don't have millions of years to press a huge history of plant matter down into a barrel of oil in order to sustain "the wonderful economy" (though I'd argue that the economy can't be altogether too well off over the long haul if it's ignoring issues which involve our very survival while in a feeding frenzy of over consumption and energy utilization -- some day we'll rue how poorly we managed this resource). But we CAN grow alcohol based fuels, and we CAN use these alchohol based fuels in a sustainable manner; the CO2 released from burning alcohol would be absorbed by the next generation of plants being grown.
From a photovoltaic standpoint, since surface area is the limiting issue why not cover a segment of the ocean -- say at the equator -- with solar cells converting ocean water into stored (and transported) hydrogen? Transmitting electricity generated by solar may not make much sense, but hydrogen is an excellent transport mechanism.
Its not just that there is no where to charge them up, that would be more commonplace if you could get more miles per charge. And if you could get more miles per charge, the demand would increase.
The fuel cells being developed sound pretty cool. If I remember right, they split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and use that for energy. These cells would increase the amount of energy batteries can store by a huge amount.
Another problem is that like any battery, these wear out as they are recharged more and more. And it would end up costing 20,000 dollars about every 10 years to replace them. Ouch. Right now every EV sold is subsidised by the goverment so much that the cost of the batteries is absorbed when initally purchased. But the technology truly is not that great, and until it improves I think that hybrid vehicles with super low emissions will be the thing to go to.
Incidentally, my friend in emissions told me that in some areas the new models of cars have such low emissions that the air coming out is actually cleaner than the air coming in!
From an environmental perspective, we should all keep in mind that diesel trucks contribute about 25% of the bad emissions, and are only about 4% of the vehicles. This is not a problem with deisel engines - Europe has some great diesel engines - but a problem with the crappy deisel's installed here in the U.S. An easy way to help the environment would be to develop and use better Deisel's here in the states.
Eh? Mini-vans aren't SUVs... Ford Explorers, Dodge Durangos, Chevy Blazers, Jeeps and other vehicles like those are SUVs. Mini-vans are jacked up station wagons that get worse mileage than most station wagons, handle worse than station wagons, and in my opinion looks much worse than station wagons. Also, there are wagon style cars out there that are much less than a mini-van in cost. They're just not as "cool" for soccer mom's to drive.
I do own a '95 Chevy Blazer 4x4 LT, and it doesn't do too bad on mileage for what it is. I've gotten over 26MPG on the highway before, loaded up with luggage and three people. While it doesn't do bad on the highway, it really guzzles gas in town/city driving.
This is my wife's main vehicle... We bought it out of necessity (needed a new vehicle, also needed something for winter driving, and I needed some form of truck badly to haul computer equipment/car parts in all kinds of weather), and nothing else fit our budget that she wouldn't mind driving every day. It does go off road every once in a while for camping trips and other trail excursions, so no, we're not those idiots who bought a 4x4 that will never leave pavement!
Ooohhhhh, the puns, the puns! Make it stop. Make it stop!
Louis Wu
"Where do you want to go ...
> gasohol will remain a relatively untapped technology
...and lets hope it remains that way. Like organic farming, 'gasohol' will take up much more farmland than is currently in use, effectively wiping out all natural land that can be farmed. Goodbye, nature preserves. Wetlands will be drained, forests razed. It's even worse than windpower, otherwise known as "avian quisinart".
In fact, most "alternatives" proposed by environmentalists are only better when done by a tiny minority. The second the entire population starts doing it, their consequences, while slightly different, are equally bad or worse than fossil fuels.
There IS a technology, currently available, that only puts out a few tons per year of waste per plant, is emission-free, doesn't have to be fought for in the Middle East, will easily and feasibly tide us over until fusion power generation is achieved, and already supplies the major power for several industrialized countries that US, British, and German greens don't want you to know about. Whatizit?
Nuclear fission. Don't believe the FUD spread by the Greens, it really is a better solution. No, it's not perfect, but it could provide the power for electric vehicles (though fuel cells are a better technology, and hydrogen gets a bad rap for being unsafe--the Hindenburg's problem would have occurred with or without hydrogen--it was the skin that burned). And the wastes are easily controllable, despite what the NIMBY soccer mom psuedo-environmentalists from GreenPolice, I mean, uh, GreenPiece say.
It might be convienent for the roadside phones, and electric cattle fences. But then why for houses and walkway lights, calculators?
I saw some 100W units for about $650. I remember seeing some things on flexible sheet style.
Maybe it's not practical for cars, yet.
Fight Spammers!
Either compare two engine's emissions, or compare the entire industry consumption related to the manufacture of the fuel the engines need, but do not compare on one hand the energy cost of an internal combustion engine and on the other hand the entire industry cost of electric motor-based engines.
The calculations done that supposedly demonstrate a five-fold decrease of efficiency in electric motors would turn out very differently had both the electric motor and the engine been compared fairly - that is, compare the power plants, transmission etc. of the electric engine against not only the gasoline engine but also the entire industry that supports it. This includes the gargantuan Alaskan pipeline that consumes massive resources to keep it active, it includes the large refineries that work twenty-four hours a day to provide refined fuel, it includes the massive ships that carry the petroleum across the seas, and it includes the ground transportation of this fuel to consumer-usable sites (ie, gas stations). All of the costs in manufacturing this fuel must be included if it is included with the electric alternative. Although I cannot provide numbers, I would suspect that this comparison would be much less impressive, perhaps even impressive the other way, when the comparison is modified to provide a fair view of both sides of the industry, as well as the engine itself.
Those figures would provide a more accurate view of reality.
I bought one two weeks ago. I love it. It does 80 miles an hour up steep roads. It is *very* comfortable. It does however corner like a three-legged pig. My favorite accessory is the color coordinated rake that I use to pull samller vehicles out from under the grill when they don't get out of the way in time.
A nice side-effect of this approach to low-emission hybrid vehicles is that we get a lot of interaction between the model airplane community and the experimental automotive community which could have some surprising results -- like jet backpacks such as those portrayed in the movie "Rocketeer".
Seastead this.
It is a common misunderstanding to call electric cars clean. They just produce the polution in another place. If one is interested in clean transport, consider other fuels like hydrogen.
Christian fundamentalists aren't worried about how undercrowded 'heaven' will be if you don't follow their ways (some seem downright smug about it, which makes me wonder why they don't just put a sock in it and let me go to Hell in peace).
Environmentalists, on the other hand, believe that your 'sin' is going to take them down with you. The problem, though, is that while they can afford to be wrong, you can't. Biological cycles limp along for a very long time before they show gross signs of trouble, at which point it requires herculean effort to keep the system from collapsing. Ever have a fish tank?
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Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
Care to point out an example of that? I went to their web site and found statements like this that are about as far from oppressive as you can get. They may not be very friendly to corporations (ensuring that they will never get any real power) but that doesn't make them oppressive. Socialist, yes.
"Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect their lives; no one should be subject to the will of another. "
"Decision-making should, as much as possible, remain at the individual and local level, while assuring that civil rights are protected for all citizens."
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
While I personally believe the first step to Low Emissions are Hybrid cars like the Honda Insight (saves up energy in batteries and then when you accelerate (where all your gas is really used) it uses the batteries instead. Gives you a smoother ride and 70mpg!), I think we have to examine the bigger issue.
Reducing emission is one thing, but what about the environmental damage of building a car and the degregation of cars once they're used up?
But even that isn't the biggest issue.
More efficient cars simply means MORE cars. The way our suburbs are being designed is disgraceful. Everything is segregated into areas where we work, where we play, and where we live. So much space is wasted. Cars could become much less necessary with higher-density living environments where people live closer to where they work and play.
Why do millions of people wake up and drive for sometimes hours to get to work? We're all doing the same thing, why not structure our living environments around our needs. Bakeries, grocery stores, office environments, Hockey arenas, could all be more integrated and an efficient affordable public transportation system put in place.
There could be so many more unique living environments where people could be so much happier.
I believe it will take a few hundred years and then suddenly the environmental consequences will become expontially great and then the environment will become a political issue.
After seeing Dr. David Suzuki and Dr. Ralph Torrie speak during the Canadian Environment Week presentations in Ottawa, it opened my eyes to just how Simple sustainable development is. But its not on any politician's agenda and most people are pretty apathetic to things like where their car will go when it dies.
my two cents....apathy will be the death of our planet.
Hmmmm. Let me get this straight. I've been reading every post and they all seemed to mention electicity being generated by fossil fuels or nuclear power, etc, etc. Well I'd just like to mention that I live in Quebec, Canada. We are the world's bigger producer of hydro-electricity. For those who don't know, the power is generated by water pressure-activated turbines. It's 100% emission free, except for a few gases that are released when the reservoir is filled for the first time. It's so efficient that we are producing enough for almost all of Ontario, Quebec, and 4 US states. And we still have a lot more rivers where we can put new dams if needed.
Electrical power doesn't have to be generated by fossil fuels. In fact hydro power is probably one of the cleanest way to generate electricity.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Like organic farming, 'gasohol' will take up much more farmland than is currently in use, effectively wiping out all natural land that can be farmed. Goodbye, nature preserves. Wetlands will be drained, forests razed. It's even worse than windpower, otherwise known as "avian quisinart".
Where have you been? This has already been done in the US. Gasahol would at least provide a welcome addition to the ag market so that the govt could stop price supports and paying farmers to not grow crops. Also, if birds are that fscking stupid to fly into a windmill, so be it.
I completely agree about nuclear power. It's too bad that that the NRC in the US never standardized civilian nuclear plants like the military and the French have. They would be cheaper and safer.
What about hyrdoelectric power? I would think most people would be for that. Take advantage of the potential energy of the millions of gallons of water flowing out to sea. No hazardous waste and they usually create great recreational areas. Sure, they transform one ecosystem into another, but so what! It's not like the original one has been there forever and will change into something else if geologic history is anything to go by.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Okay, never mind, I found their "progressive and ecological tax reform" page.
"Universal Social Security: A Basic Income Above the Poverty Line for All" (Where do they think the poverty line comes from?)
"Maximum Income: Build into the progressive income tax a 100% tax on all income, regardless of source, over ten times the minimum wage."
While I agree with some of their ideas, they don't seem to have a very strong grasp of economics or human nature.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I don't really understand the craze we had/have over electric vehicles. Batteries are HEAVY. The more weight you move around, the more energy it costs. And our electrical power plants are spewing plenty of pollution into the air. If we want to decrease pollution and consumption of LIMITED fossil fuels, then the only solution is to decrease the amount of WEIGHT we are moving about the country. We can do this by transporting ourselves LESS, or decreasing the amount of weight that we transport WITH ourselves. Increasing the efficiency with which we get energy from our fossil fuels is also an option, but has a finite limit. For many of YOU, this will require changing your LIFESTYLE. You can already hear it in the discussion thus far, people do not want to change their comfortable lifestyles and it WILL ruin us in the end. Our ever-growing population is already pushing the limits of our earth's carrying capacity. Are we going to continue to push it? Population control may be the only answer! We are quickly consuming our limited resources away!!!
Your claims are rife with inaccuracies and misleading statements. Look at just a few of the real doozies.
Modern oil-fired and coal-fired plants are getting 35-40% efficiency ratings. This compares wonderfully with the 25% efficiency of petrol engines or 30% efficiency of diesel engines. Even with ridiculously inefficient transmission, storage, and final conversion, electric cars are still more efficient in terms of quantity of fuel used. An ICE also produces far more toxic emissions due to not having the benefits of high-quality scrubbers and catalytic convertors (though you did comment on the reduced quantity of emissions, you didn't mention that the gasses produced by ICE are thousands of times more toxic to plant and animal life than power plant emissions).
This is just an outright lie. Even factoring in ridiculously high transmission losses from plant to car (say 40%), and even given a highly inefficient electric motor (say 75%), an entirely electrically powered car is still going to be more efficient and result in fewer emissions to the air. The quality of air produced by fossil fuel plants is amazingly good compared to an ICE so there's simply no comparison here.
Solar Power Plants don't ever rely on solar photovoltaic cells or panels. Not only are they far too expensive, the cells "wear out" after only 10 years usage. Modern solar plants use the tried and true heliocentric model. Mirrors or chromed surfaces reflect large areas of sunlight into a single point (either a tower with a collection point at the top, or using new trough technology with a copper pipe running down the centre of the reflective trough). These plants are in operation RIGHT NOW in Australia, and are turning 6c/kWh which is very favourable compared to the 4c/kWh of coal (currently the cheapest source of electricity).
I also see no mention of true, realistic, and even commercially viable zero-emission plants. They do exist but your rant seems to imply every person pushing for zero emissions is living in fantasy land and none of this is possible. Let's take a look at some of the zero emission plants in operation right now.
Hot-rock power is a new finding in a joint Australian-American investigation. You send water pipes 2km into the crust then use the temperature difference between surface and bedrock to drive a steam turbine. Estimates are that a single 2km cube of rock in the Australian desert could power the entire of Australia's power needs. Still in the experimental stage.
Wind power, currently the best bet for future zero-emission plants. Currently pushing 5c/kWh which is better value even than nuclear. It's in the running for beating oil/coal plants in the near future. People are concerned about the ugly nature of wind farms, but these same people never seem to complain about open-cut mines or tailings dams or the unsightly fossil fuel power plants.
Dam power, such as found in the hydro-electric power plants in Australia. Uses the natural water cycle (evaporation, condensation, water flow) to produce vast amounts of power. These plants have no emissions, are very cheap to maintain, and the high construction costs are easily offset by the long running lifetime.
This argument is ridiculous. By the same token nobody should ever have built modems, because at one stage there weren't enough ISPs to dial into. Power plants take a while to build (the typical estimate is 10 years per plant) but electric cars won't magically appear overnight. They'll slowly phase in alongside normal cars and power plants can be built to meet demand. The people who build and run the plants already know how to figure in rising demand: they've been doing it for decades.
I agree electric cars aren't a magical panacea but there's no reason to be a cynic just because they aren't 100% perfect. Electric powered vehicles are an incremental evolutionary improvement. Crying "I won't consider anything that isn't 100% emission free and costs nothing to run and has all the infrastructure already in place" is the attitude the oil barons want you to have.
Hypercars don't solve the basic problems of too many miles driven by too many people in too many cars. Indeed, they may-without good accompanying public policy-worsen these problems by making driving even cheaper and more attractive.
Many of the social costs of driving have less to do with fuel use than with congestion, road-building, lost time, accidents, urban and suburban sprawl, and other side effects of auto dependence. Of those social costs, a sum estimated to be approaching $1 trillion a year-perhaps a seventh of U.S. GNP-is borne by everyone but not reflected in drivers' direct costs. Hypercars would cut those costs perhaps in half, but half of such a big number is still far too big.
It's hardly surprising that doubled U.S. new-car efficiency over the past two decades has been offset by more cars and driving, which also dilute the benefits of cleaner and safer cars. Global car registrations are growing more than twice as fast as population; Hypercars would do nothing about that alarming trend except slightly accelerate it.
Solving transportation problems without creating new ones requires not only having great cars but also being able to leave them at home most of the time. That in turn requires real competition between all modes of access, including public transportation and alternatives to physical mobility (such as telecommunications). And of course the best form of access is already being where you want to be-achievable only through sensible land use.
Just like all new technologies, electric vehicles go through their stage as being the new kid on the block and never get adopted as fast as they could just because of thier pricetag and peoples unwillingness to try new things. Also, at this point there just isnt a big infrastucture out to recharge electric vehicles, just like gas stations are placed every 30 miles on a lonely highway, recharging stations also need to be placed too. This is just like ADSL, its a great technology, but still isnt widely available because the word needs to get out, the prices need to come down, and the infrastructure just isnt in place yet. But, as for ADSL, electric cars have a bright future in my opinion.
Systems Administrator
Servu Networks
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Brent Jones
The State of Arizona Department of Commerce and Department of Revenue have an aggresive plan to fund the purchase of LEV & ULEV vehicles by private individuals. Now I am not one to encourage the government to spend my money, but when they do, I take any opportunity to get some of mine back. Basically, AZ is paying 30-40% of the cost of a ULEV or $10,000, WHICH EVER IS HIGHER. Honda makes a version of the Civic, the GX, which is a natural gas only car. The retails for around $21,000. Arizona's plan coupled with Federal incintives breaks down as follows: $21,000 for the car + NO SALES TAX + $80 for registration FOR THE LIFE OF THE CAR - $10,000 state grant - $4,500 Federal tax refund = around $6700 for a new car. The Honda dealer I talked to has been taking orders for around 20 a day, and they are back ordered well into next year. There are only 6 public natural gas pumping stations in the Phoenix area, but the state has grants for that too. The state will pay upto $400,000 for anyone to build a natural gas pumping station. Unfortunatly, only people who are somewhat well off can take advantage of these plans. It is impractical to have only a natural gas car, so you need two cars. You also have to pony up the funds for the car, while you wait for grant and tax refund money. I wish the government would not take my money and spend it like this.
The author (BitMan) raises some good points. But he oversimplifies and exaggerates some of his claims.
Electric cars use upto 5 times as much fossil fuels than ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles
In many states, hydro is the primary source of electricity generation. This includes the states in the West Coast (e.g. California, Oregon, Washington) and don't forget the TVA. Furthermore, most modern fossil-fuel generators now have Clean Air Act mandated scrubbers that make emission from these plants on the whole less than from a ICE (I think he concedes ths point). So BitMan is right in that electric cars still depend on fossil fuels ... but 5 times is clearly exaggerated. I haven't seen the latest efficiency ratings for electric engines, but I doubt the usage is more than 1-2 times. Furthermore, ICE leads to emission everywhere while power plants can be concentrated. Yes, I know it's still environmentally bad ... but this is what we do with refineries, right? We don't refine our gasoline locally .. rather we do most of our refining in five locations in the U.S. and then ship out the refined gas.
This is static thinking. In any reasonable economic model, demand/supply react to each other. The reason why there is not enough power plants right now is because there are not enough incentives to build more power plants. Right now, power producers benefit from occasional situations where supply > demand (leads to price spikes). But if Americans were to start consuming even more electricity, they'd build more. Too hard to sustain a "price spike collusion" with the increased profit potential from selling this expanded baseload electricity. Furthermore, the problem right now is not in electricity generation but in peak electricity generation. There's more than enough electriciy during non-peak hours to satisfy new demand from electric cars. And electricity prices during non-peak times are fairly cheap (wholesale prices are less than $25/MWh ... I doubt an electric car recharge takes even 100 KW) So just recharge overnight.
Bitman raises an interesting argument for a hybrid system with merits. But his arguments relating to "where will the electricity come from" is flawed. With this type of thinking, Thomas Edison would have never begun stringing up electric street lights. Demand can and often does create its own supply.
The reservoirs created by large dams can require massive relocations of existing settlers. An estimated 1.3 million people, for example, will be moved in order to accommodate the notorious Three Gorges dam project in China. Additionally, the reservoirs can obliterate archaeological sites.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, a major concern about dams is how they affect salmon populations, as described here: "The dams impede juvenile and adult migrations to and from the ocean by their physical presence and by creating reservoirs. The reservoirs behind the dams slow water velocities, alter river temperatures, and increase predation potential. Reduced water velocity increases the time it takes juveniles to migrate downstream, higher water temperatures may have adverse effects on juvenile and adult behavior, and predators find prey more easily in slower-moving water."
Some folks also claim that the reservoirs of large dams actually contribute more to greenhouse-gas emissions (if these are really anything to be concerned about) than coal plants due to the increased amount of decaying biomass.
Personally I'm hoping two developments will help solve the energy-generation question: (1) microgeneration with small gas turbines and (2) instantaneous market-driven pricing and smart controllers that will cut aggregate power consumption.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
as long as big business controls the government, and there's money to be made by polluting the earth so badly that we kill ourselves and everything else on Earth off, low emission vehicles will be ignored. 'nuff said.
And if you are even thinking of solar power, don't bother. Solar cells would have to be 25 times as efficient as they exist now.
Why is it that when some says Solar, they are cut off with 'but solar cells..."
Solar cells are simply one way to harness solar power. As far as that goes, I agree, they're not there yet, and probably won't be for a good while.
What's wrong solar powered steam turbines? That approach has the advantage that only the boiler changes, and with clever engineering, can be a dual system with solar by day fossil by night setup. The nice thing is, that the solar part is working during peak demand times.
Solar steam is a nice low-tech solution to power generation. We know how to produce enectricity from steam, and we know how to use sunlight to boil water.
yea as long as the nuclear waste isnt stored in your backyard, right? lets just put it in areas with low property values. sure people live there, but hey, fuck the underclass!
There is a real audio interview with Ed Begley, Jr. over on EVworld and he brings up some things I found to be very interesting.
First, EV is a lot like the early VCRs, CD players etc. Everyone worried "are they going to stick around?" EV is in that stage right now. He pointed out that things like ebike.com are going to help turn consumers onto the idea of plugging in your vehicle when you get it home.
I am preparing to build an electric bike (note this is not going to be electric-assist). There is a cool one here.
Another place to check out is Esarati. They look pretty damn cool.
I plea for the deprecation of the term "zero emissions vehicle" (ZEV) in favor of "emissions elsewhere vehicle" (EEV), for that is what they really are.
I agree with many of your comments about battery technology, though, especially wrt cold weather.
A new company across the street from mine has been
working on inventing new hydrogen/electric car. Esentially its a totally electric car with a small 2 stroke engine burning hydrogen to recharge the batteries. They are getting normal cars converted as well. They have a Honda prelude, and a ford explorer, and a few others. Really neat to see a
ford explorer pull away totally silently. Its essentially a zero emissions car. All it produces is water as a by product. Now you are probably thinking hidenburg like I was when I frist spoke to them. Evedently they have fixed this by using some soapy chemical mixture that when passed through a catalyst it produces hydrogen. Evedently the car only makes hydrogen when it is really needed. So it only has a minumum of hydrogen on board at any time. I have no clue about milage or anything.. It was all very hush hush. I am suprised they told me what they did.
Malice95
You are right here, it was just a short comment.
The majority of this is just outright lying.
Complete lie: The air is vastly cleaner than it was 30 years ago.
The 'air' is bad and getting worse. A person who lives in the suburbs of rural America who goes to any city larger than 100,000 pop notices immediately. A friend of mine recently went from his small middle america town for a 2 week visit to Seatle, he said the hardest thing to deal with was the fact that for the first few days the air gave him a headache and he felt like he was breathing through a filter.
Americans are using more gas now than we ever have. Our mean MPG right now is lower than it has been at any time since 1980. True these vehicles are lower emissions but not -much-. A great many of these vehicles are SUV's which are classified as 'small commercial trucks' and as such their efficiency and emissions are not regulated under the same laws that control other vehicles. The average SUV gets 17mpg and mpg that drop to single digits are not unheard of.
"The reality is that the only way to reduce CO output is to reduce the utility of cars in some way, by making them smaller or slower or more dangerous. "
What is so bad about that? Does your average soccer mom really need the power to pull a fucking Oak out of her front yard or climb the rockies without getting out of her vehicle? Christ, she just needs to get around and lug some groceries once in awhile. Of course her vanity requires that she spend twice as much on a car that costs three times to operate, is twice as inconvenient (ever try parallel parking a Ford Expedition?) and 5 times as bad on the environment. At least she looks good to her friends.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Being that there is already a tax break for owners of electric vehicles, the wisest thing would be to extend that tax break, while at the same time creating a nation gas tax (for the US) of around $.50. However, it may not be in our hands*.
If you make an incentive such as a tax break good enough, more people will adopt them, and you'll break the hand-in-hand relationship the automotive companies have with the gasoline production/distribution companies.
*imagine you're an OPEC nation still high from the immense power suddnely bestowed on you from the US dependance on gas. Now do a little math and predict how long your supply will last (and therefore, your power). Now look at all the gas guzzling SUV's on the road in the US, and realize that at this rate of consumption you'll be dethroned much sooner than you thought. So you raise the price of gas to reduce consumption, but only enough to drive people into more fuel efficient cars, not electric ones.
Just to back up all the talk about hydrogen powered vehicles, here's a group in Canada who are selling a kit to part-power your car with hydrogen!:
http://www.makisoft.net/quantronix
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Vegetable oil is a great source of renewable energy. It is easy too make vegetable oil into diesel fuel. Much easier and much more effiecient to use vegetable oil (even old fryer grease) than using corn to make ethanol. Check out these sites http://www.greasecar.com/ http://www.veggievan.org/ I hope to make my own greasecar soon.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Maybe I'm just naive, but surely the birds-flying-into-windmills problem isn't that hard to solve? I mean, when they had a similar problem with desk fans 100 years ago, they slapped an aluminum guard around the fan blades, and few people have lost fingers since. If a bird guard isn't the solution for some reason, they could paint the blades red, or move the windmills to a higher altitude (more wind up there anyway), or put an ultrasonic bird repellent siren on it, or any of a number of other things.
Really, the whole bird issue sounds like nothing more than a red herring for people who enjoy the status quo to point to.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Unless your electric source is from hydroelectric, wind power or solar power (and not that much of the US's electric power does), then an electric car may cause more pollution than a gasoline powered car. Why? If you are burning coal or natural gas to produce electricity, and then you have to transmit that power a long distance (which has a lot of loss), and then you have to store that electricity in batteries (which are inefficient, and cause pollution to make and dispose of), then your net pollution might be higher than just burning gasoline. Nuclear power is cleaner than coal or natural gas (although it still has waste disposal problems), but it is highly unpopular with the type of mindless eco-nuts who are likely to buy an electric vehicle.
I think too many people think that if there isn't smoke coming out of a tailpipe something is clean, and they don't stop to connect smoke coming out of a smokestack at a power plant miles away with the electric vehicle. Its at best just moving the problem somewhere else.
Error: You define "EV" as a "zero emissions vehicle", then use the term to mean "electric vehicle". If you stretch the point, bikes are "zero emission".
Correct: There will never be a (non-human-powered) ZEV and probably won't be 100% electric cars. Hybrids are the way to go... you can optimize the engine part for maximum efficiency because you know the load. Also, you can power the engine with various fuels... hydrogen, alcohol, and methane come to mind. Or you can build a totally different type of engine... how about a Stirling engine?
As far as range of hybrids go, the Toyota Prius gets 55 highway/47 city mpg and has a 556 mile range[1]. Assuming they do all city driving to get the range, that's about a 12 gallon tank, which means fast fillups.
Incorrect: Transformers lose a negligible amount of energy... counting them as a "conversion" is stretching. Once you're done rambling, figure out your ideal efficiency; if it's greater than 36% (another ideal figure), you're ahead of your car.
1. At least, that's what their advertisement says.
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LoonXTall
~~~LXT~~~
Life is like a computer program: anything that can't happen, will.
Folks,
If you're talking about very low emission vehicles, they are here NOW.
Ever heard of the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius? They achieve their extremely low emissions because it uses a very small gasoline motor (with closely-coupled emission control system) plus battery power to get the car going. The result is extremely low emissions, qualifying for the California Air Resources Board's standard called Super Low Emissions Vehicle (SULEV).
Nissan has also achieved this with a special version of the current Nissan Sentra, which uses a very tightly-controlled emissions control system to keep emissions to the level defined by the SULEV standard. We do know that Honda and Toyota plan to introduce soon new variants of Civic and Corolla models that also achieve SULEV compliance.
Anyway, a slightly less stringent standard, ULEV, is already achieved by many 2001 model-year automobiles. I believe that the entire 2001 Honda Civic model lineup will be ULEV compliant, and the next-generation Mercedes-Benz C-Class sedans (C240 and C320) will also be ULEV compliant, to show only a few examples.
Besides, it should be noted that the CARB SULEV standard is the basis for the Japanese Stage III and European Euro2004 emissions standards. By 2004, the average automobile rolling off the assembly line in the USA/Canada/Mexico, Europe and Japan will have over 98% less carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and unburned hydrocarbons than 1970 model-year cars. These three pollutants are the major source of smog from automobiles.
I'm sure you're going to mention the issue of diesel engines, too. But even here, major improvements are on the way. The development of cleaner diesel fuels, improved engine combustion thanks to common-rail fuel systems and direct-injection fuel delivery, and a new generation of particulate traps will dramatically reduce the soot and other emissions that is a big problem with diesel engines.
In short, the technology is essentially available to reduce emissions from gasoline and diesel internal combustion engines by an astonishing 96% or more compared to 1970 levels.
And the improvements already in place today has drastically reduced pollution problems. Los Angeles in 2000 has much less smog alerts than even 10-15 years ago.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
It is political suicide in today's climate to call for increased taxes on anything, and we've seen the uproar that happens when the price of energy goes up dramatically (gasoline in the midwest and electricty in San Diego). People go nuts. They think the right to drive gas guzzling vehicles is written into the Constitution. Those that drive the gas guzzlers have to accept the fact that our fossil fuel supply is finite, and since we live in a capitalist economy (in the USA) that the price will go up as the supply goes down.
I admit- I have a truck with a gas guzzling V8. I'm willing to pay that premium so that I can use it to haul things far too bulky to put into the sedan. I can afford it right now, someday, I may not be able to. When that day happens, I'll accept the consequences.
from their site:
"Try to imagine owning the "ultimate" home production power plant; it heats your water, generates electricity, takes care of heating and air conditioning, etc, by utilizing the waste heat from refrigeration and applying it to storage or hot water, while the generator is giving you all the electricity you want.
This is all possible using the GEET Fuel Processor.
In simple definition, the GEET Fuel Processor could be called a new type of carburetor with a miniature refinery built in. With it, there is no need for catalytic converters, smog pumps and many other costly items on cars.
The GEET Fuel Processor is not just a fuel delivery system, it is also a pollution elimination unit! Your mileage will be greatly increased if you are truly consuming ALL of the available energy, from whatever fuel you may be using. "
It's certainly true that electricity doesn't get from the generating plant to one's outlets with perfect efficiency (I've heard figures anywhere from 85 to 95 percent efficiency)...but what's frequently overlooked is that refined gasoline doesn't just magically spring from gasoline pumps either. Fossil fuels suffer their own "line loss," having to be dredged up halfway around the world, transported by ship, refined, and transported locally by truck before reaching the consumer It would be interesting to hear what the corresponding transit efficiency is, in terms of burning fossil fuels to deliver fossil fuels. I have a suspicion, due to the number of mechanical processes involved, that the 'loss' for fossil fuels would be at least twice as high as for electrical transmission...though if you have the actual numbers to show otherwise, please do set me straight.
+1 informative, anyone?
If they dump the costs onto the citizens, how is it that we still pay low prices? We are paying the price in other places, believe me. Are you saying that the nebulously defined claim of 'environmental damage' is somehow added into EU fuel prices. All the claims regarding this phenomenon that I have seen have smacked of poor, if not outright contrived science. If so, how do they calculate this and not simply use it as a means to fund more government graft? In the US, no revenue from artificially maintained oil prices would be applied to alternatives--it simply is not in the government's ability to not fritter the cash away. or sending a few thousand troops over to Iraq to keep the oil flowing. Additionally, there are huge tax breaks and government subsidies for the energy industry.
Kuwait paid the US a LOT of money to defray the costs of the Gulf War. We are talking billions and billions of dollars. Getting their country back from Iraq didn't cost as much all the wasted effort and money we spend sending the UN lamers in there to do weapons inspections. Add it all up, and some have estimated that the true cost of a gallon of gasoline is around $5/gallon.
Please itemize that figure. The market only produces efficient solutions when all costs are internalized. Make people pay the true costs at the pump, and see how long gasoline remains the fuel of choice, and fuel-inefficeint vehicles remain popular.
Nice speech, but you still haven't proven your point, only made a claim of something being true. In a market driven economy, rather than one driven by government agenda(which I won't say is reality in the US anymore than anywhere else), there would be numerous alternatives of transportation that would be affordable for all.
Most of the US problem is that we still allow corps to buy and bury useful tech so they can preserve their revenue streams. This is the same issue, really, but I believe that considering that a carburator existed in 1955 that got 50 miles to the gallon, and that the oil companies and car companies basically bought and buried the design to pretect their thoroughly intertwined interests, then made Americans dependent on their gas guzzling solutions, is it wholly fair to blame the people who have been forced to buy those choices?
I will cheerfully buy a vehicle that utilizes fuel cells -when- they are available in forms that let me live my life pretty much as I live it now. Being out in the rural areas, or being a farmer would make some of the supposed solutions less than viable.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Looking beyond just they ICE-electric hybrid, we can look at one petroleum replacement, and another one electrical source (other than direct battery storage and recharge). CNG (compressed natural gas) is one since it burns much cleaner than petroleum, and is in limited used in largely application-specific commercial vehicles (like various commercial utility trucks, etc...). Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising technology that will make electric cars much more efficient than charged and discharged batteries. But, both CNG and fuel cells have serious safety issues in their on-board storage in that massive explosions can result in rupture of their tanks (much larger than possible with petroleum-based ones because of the pressure and density of CNG, and the volitity of hydrogen in fuel cells).
Couple of points about this: First, you greatly exagerate the danger of CNG. CNG is used as the primary fuel for automobiles (especially taxis) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and there is no greater risk of blowing up spontaniously, or in a car crash than there is in the US. The main reason that CNG has not been more widely adopted in the US is the lack of infrastructure. It is a classic catch 22. Until there is sufficient demand, no one will build the CNG refueling stations. And until there are abundent refueling stations, no one will buy CNG powered cars. The only reason that CNG has been restricted in the US to commercial and government vehicals is that those entities can also provide refueling stations.
As for hydrogen fuel cells - again the big problem is not that they might blow up (although people certainly have lasting memories, right or wrong, about the Hindenburg and the Challenger). While hydrogen fuel cells can certainly provide power more efficiently once the hydrogen is in the car and they produce no toxic emmissions (again once the hydrogen is in the car), this largely ignores the fact that the vast majority of hydrogen production in the US is from fossil fuels. Hydrogen is a byproduct of the oil refining process. Yes, hydrogen can be produced in other ways, but many of them are also fraught with dangers, toxic byproducts, or expensive infrastructure. For example, would you prefer to have hydrogen produced from sulfuric acid and iron filings, as it was commonly produced in the early days of balooning?
Im much more interested in putting an even BIGGER
engine in my TRANS AM.I couldnt give a shit how much gas is or how much I use.Anyone who creates a more efficiient carb or fuel system just gets bought up,beat up or dissapeared by the oil companies anyway.
I wouldnt worry too much about all the lefty environmentalists anyway.Their bogus research falls like dominoes under even astigmatic scrutiny.
Electric vehicles are like fat women,both fun to ride but you dont want your friends to see you with one.
I just had a vomitous thought,what if all the
commie little treehuggers actually(laughably)won all their battles?Electric Harley Davidson!
Makes me kinda glad that damn chevy 327 i got in there now smokes like a city bus.(no damn catalytic convertor either)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I'd really like to see Nader president, but I'm afraid if all us lefties vote for Nader, we'll simply split Gore's votes, and Bush will end up winning the election. Then I'd have to emigrate to Canada...
Is it me, or is the whole 2-party system just a big "good-cop/bad-cop" scam? :^P
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
What we really need are mod kits to replace engines, etc, in older cars that make them more efficient, etc. If these were cheap and subsidized by the govt, then perhaps more alternate fuel things would be used. Until then, the only real viable option is hybrid, as it allows the same range/useability as current vehicles, but with the lower pollution.
:)
And I know my EV's batterys (if I had one) would not last long powering 600 watts RMS of stereo equipment.
.sig
Fellowship 9/11
Is it me, or is the whole 2-party system just a big "good-cop/bad-cop" scam? :^P
Well, it's not you.
However, it's more along the lines of Pepsi and Coke competing with each other only secondarily to their more important goal of keeping any third parties out of their common market than it is the conspiracy theory that you imply.
Republicans and Democrats don't have to be controlled by the same people for them to all come to the conclusion that switching power between themselves every few years is much better than having to compete against genuine alternatives...
reply yea but they have to drive it across the country to bury it there! and st. louis, a major railway hub and one of the towns its supposed to go through, voted against it. so sure you want to bury it in the desert, but how are you gonna get it there?
Natural gas powered vehicles are an ideal solution and are already in use today. The fuel is cheap and domestically produced (no more overpriced gasoline from overseas), and a variety of vehicles are available, Chevy Cavalier, Honda Civic, Toyota Camry. For more info on natural gas vehicles see NGV.ORG
Over in Europe where a gallon of gas costs ~$4.00, it's no wonder many people invest in diesel cars. The trend stopped in the US many years ago because they produced a lot of exhaust, and while they had great MPG, they were slow, lumbering beasts that took forever to get moving. Fortunately, much of that has changed. Filters are now standard on exhausts and that thick black smoke no longer comes out the rear of diesel cars. Most are only a bit slower than the same car with a more standard engine.
BMW produces a fine 3 serioes diesel that gets somewhere aroudn 40 MPG, but it is unavailable in the United States. I think it's a shame. In a recent issue of a British, all BMW car magazine, they drove the 330d around for a while and said there wasn't another BMW they would rather have than this. It's 0-60 time was only milliseconds bellow the standard 330 and it got more than twice the amount of MPG, all for the same price!
VW produces a Europe only car that gets somewhere around 80 MPG. It performs better than the hybrid cars coming out and it's all diesel. There's no reason to switch to something that isn't quite here yet (hybrid/electric) until we've really looked into and gotten everything out of diesel cars we can.
There isn't anything I want more than a diesel car, but a truck is pretty much all I can do in the US. If you ask me, it's sad.
Another advantage is the chance to grow and process fuel locally, for local needs - oil-producing countries are not too keen on this possibility of course.
In England, one town (Reading) recently ran its buses on diesel from oilseed rape (this may be used in an unmodified engine). New government regulations meant that "because of immense bureaucratic compliance requirements the buses in Reading went back to running on diesel."
However the vehicles worked well: "Drivers reported the buses started well, had no breakdowns and produced little smoke. The fuel was as good or better than diesel." (If you scroll a long way down this link, you will find these quotes.)
For information on the project to use biodiesel in America's Yellowstone National Park, see here.
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
First off, I was trying to make a point that we should not be looking into 100% electric vehicles until both the technology and infrastructure exist! I am NOT saying we should not be looking into them period, just that people should get off the ignorance game.
Secondly, I stand by my "5 times" statement on electric power that is generated by fossil fuel power plants for 100% electric vehicles. Until the majority of America's power either comes from non-fossil fuel sources, or the vehicles themselves are not just stored electric vehicles (i.e. fuel cells instead of batteries), it holds true! It's one of those "trees make smog" type of deals that people like to play "politically correct" on where the base problem is humanity and you can't do anything to stop (besides getting rid of humanity ;-).
100% electric is a pipe dream until we can come up with an infructure that at least:
Some of it will come from the "'PC' Renewable Energies", but figure less than 25% total, period. I guess it is my bias, but I believe fusion power plants are the best chance and could be a reality in 25-50 years *IF* proper funding is re-implanted into the various research programs. It is too bad the world has been turned off of nuclear fusion, largely from the irresponsibility of various members of our science community (on both sides of the cold fusion argument -- never seen so many closed minds on both sides). While cold fusion may or may not be a reality -- in fact, I think it will not be, at least in my lifetime -- but I think traditional, high-temperature nuclear fusion *IS*!
For now, hybrid (petroleum and electrical return) and, soon, alternate fossil (CNG) and electric (hydrogen) fuels and fuel cells are our best chance. I sick of people blindly stating electric cars and zero emissions without knowing jack!
As far as solar, it's a mixed bag. Solar is expensive, period, and does not produce much. Some new solar technology is on the horizon, but it is rediculously expensive and the actual results are not concrete yet. It holds promise, but don't invent a reality that does not exist yet, let alone we don't know if it will be cost-effective (time will tell).
Wind is looking better and better. I have no problem with eyesores and someone brought up that point (I cannot believe people would argue against them because they are eyesores!). But that's an infrastructure that is a whole new bag.
Water is not an option to power the entire nation. There just aren't enough rivers and damns that can be built to power even 1/10th of the US. It is also questionable how long it takes to get a return on the initial investment which is extremely large in the case of hydropower.
Again, I'm just an engineer. That means I'm a scientist and a businessman. I'm not going to say things that are PC, just reality today. I hope for the best in the future but clinging to alternate realities or lying to yourself as you see fit are NOT 2 ways to get there!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Alcohol might not pack as much punch as gas, but it's renewable in the short-term--grow a lot of corn, turn it into mash, feed it to yeast with yeast nutrient to increase alcohol production, then put it through a still.
If every town had its own ethanol (which I think is the "pop" term for alcohol fuel ) plant (heh heh ), as opposed to trying to mass produce it for the masses, I think things would be better off in general.
And of course people could use manpowered vehicles for shorter distances.
However, I still don't believe that electric vehicles are likely to take off, and there are far easier ways to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I have serious problems with the assertion that "end to end" an electric vehicle is less efficient than a gasoline vehicle. Powerplants are about the most efficient energy producers we have for converting fossil fuels to energy. The transmission of electric power is very efficient. Electric motors are highly efficient since they are not heat engines like an internal combustion engine. We are famliar with the problems of gas storage but it's as dangerous as hydrogen or CNG. We've just develped the knowledge to use it relatively safely.
Libertarianism is one of the steps that smart young people go through in their political development these days.
Yes, this freedom thing that kids believe in is just a fad.
There is an SULEV rated Honda Accord EX available at dealers in California now, while the Toyota Prius is not yet available (though some dealers are taking orders). The Accord isn't a hybrid and so the milage alone is nothing to write home about, but the emissions (per mile! not per gallon...) are very competitive for everything but CO2.
Some information about Honda's environmental impact can be found here at Honda's official website. A PDF file describing the SULEV spec is available from the transportation website of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The only question is why all the other states are lagging behind California! The technology is out there, and cleaner air benefits everyone.
I am sure that if you took the time to do just a little reading, you would know that after a short conversion period, organic farming gives roughly the same yield as its chemical counterpart.
The real key to efficiently feeding ourselves lies in going beyond organic techniques and using good design to produce systems which use natural cycles to increase production and reduce pollution. See here for a randomly selected example, and here or here for more globally representative projects.
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
Many readers have pointed out that no matter what type of energy the car is actually using, it almost always originates with fossil fuels. Since most electrical infrastructure in the world uses fossil fuels to generate electricity, any electric vehicle would in effect still be using fossil fuels.
/. a while ago about a type of green algae, that would release hydrogen when shone on with light. Could this be a source of sufficient hydrogen for using fuel cell cars?
Still, there are certain efficiency advantages to this approach. Burning a whole bunch of coal/oil/[choose fossil fuel product] at a time to create electricity is more efficient than every person individually burning their own fossil fuels. I don't know whether the loss of energy due to the processes of transmission, charging batteries, and using electricity in motors would make electric cars more or less efficient, in the big picture, than gasoline cars, but it's worth checking out.
Then there's hydrogen fuel cells. The most common way of getting (almost) pure hydrogen is to use electrolysis with water. Again, the electricity to do this would usually come from a fossil fuel-burning power plant, and the loss of energy in using electrolysis might mean that fuel cells, too, aren't much better than gasoline cars.
I do seem to remember a story here on
"Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
Drivers of cars and motorcycles also have to eat to drive. Comparisons of bicyclists vs. motor powered vehicles need to include only the incremental food fuel costs of a bicyclist as compared to that of the driver of a car or motorcycle. Ever looked at a bicycle commuter? The ones I know are much skinnier, for a given height, than non-cyclists. Which means they have fewer pounds to maintain than that of a non-cyclist, in terms of required energy consumption. Since a physically-fit person's metabolism burns foods more efficiently than that of a less-fit person, a fit bicyclist is likely to waste less food in the form of turning it into body fat, than the non-cyclist.
One big problem with Hydro seems to have been overlooked here. It is *extremely* finite. It requires a fairly large volume of water with a very significant drop to produce power effectively. Why do you think the lower Mississippi has never been dammed? While the volume is there, getting a 30+ foot drop in the river would require backing it up into a lake 50 miles or more, flooding untold millions of acres of land (arable land in most cases, too).
The truth is - most rivers that would work for Hydro are already being used. The figures have doubtless changed with newer technologies, but I read ~10-15 years ago that Hydro was effectively 100% saturated in the U.S.
With that said, I think time will take care of the power-generation problem. Solar is making steps toward viability, as is wind (but keep in mind both are geographically sensitive - Quebec is a bad choice for solar) And there are other things on the horizon that might work out (Farnsworth Fusor is interesting).
We have made huge advances in the last 10 years in reducing the damage we're doing - another 20 and I think we'll have a reversal in progress...
Not trying to flame, and I may be missing something, but the carbon content in fuel must leave the engine somewhere - right now, that's generally as CO2, because CO is bad, Hydrocarbons (smog makers) are bad. Where does the carbon go?
.
Repairs on it took 10-45 minutes tops. I once watched a mechanic strip it to a bare frame in just over an hour.
Compare that to any ICE.
bm :)-~
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
EV's will not stick around in their current form, nor do I think it will ever. There are other forms of car fuels like fuel cells which could potentially be much more convenient. Plugging in your car at home is nice, but what if you forget? Wake up in the morning to go to work and find that your car has no power. Can't "quick-charge" it in 10 minutes now, can you? You're screwed. Anyway, I love EV's, but I know they won't work. Unless you have EV's which could run off of removable batteries (I mean, for god sakes, people sometimes forget to charge their cell phones... what makes you think they'll charge their car?).
...I am proof that intelligent beings are not always intelligent...
Solar cells generate electricity for less than 15 cents per kwh, (depending on where you see interest rates going) which is about what I paid for the stuff coming out of the wall here in san diego last month. Deregulation is going to give a big boost to alternative energy sources...
Sure, carbon dioxide isn't good for the environment. Nitrogen oxide isn't good. Hydrocarbons aren't good. But none of those is anywhere as bad as the lead and other heavy metals used in batteries. If you have a car filled with batteries, there is going to be leakage, and the batteries have to be created and recycled often, and these processes aren't great for the environment either. The emissions from electric cars are small, but particularly potent.
Electrical power has great potential, but not with conventional batteries. And I haven't heard anything at all hopeful in the way of nonconventional batteries -- perhaps, in an indirect way, hydrogen power could qualify (hydrogen being created with electricity, then being used to power vehicles).
My own preference, though, is Personal Rapid Transit -- i.e, small, automated, elevated rail cars, powered off the rail.
I think a lot of the emphasis on electrical cars is because the auto industry doesn't want things to change much. Electric cars are unlikely to be economical or effective anytime soon -- all current examples are heavily subsidized -- and even if they do, the basic economics are largely like current cars. Innovative public transit is a much better solution. Buses suck, will always suck, and are no solution at all. Subways have potential in some areas, but most development has been car-based so they won't work everywhere.
--
Nuclear power is unfortunately expensive. It looks damn cheap on paper (1c/kWh vs coal at 4c/kWh) and this encourages people to develop nuclear plants. Also the waste products from nuclear, though extremely toxic, are in such small quantities that it's like 0% emmissions when compared to coal or oil.
But the cost of disposal, due mostly to govt regulations and whining greenies, drives the actual cost of nuclear power up to 7c/kWh, or depending on the country even higher. So it's nearly double the cost of coal power, and it receives so much negative public attention that nuclear fission power is simply not feasible anyway. Nobody wants a nuclear power plant in Australia at all, despite the vast amounts of barren useless land Australia has to offer.
I'm personally peeved at greenies for being anti-nuclear. Sure, they can be catastrophic, so when they do pollute they do it in a big way. But compared to the destruction of the environment due to oil/coal, nuclear is nothing. Millions of acres of land are destroyed for coal mines alone but nuke out a few thousand acres of land in the middle of the poverty stricken former USSR and suddenly nuclear power is off limits. It seems to me sometimes people can't see the alternatives to nuclear power are far worse. It's not like anyone builds those dangerous carbon core style reactors anymore. The modern nuclear reactor is far safer.
But even given that, nuclear is not cheap. You're better off with wind power. There's nothing wrong with fois de gras anyway.
I don't know about you, but I'd take a Hybrid-Electric HMMWV. Both designs even perform much better than their diesel only powered originals.
"The Hybrid Electric Powered High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) developed by PEI Electronics, Inc. (PEI), Power Management Division is making the cross-country endurance trip as part of extensive testing of this vehicle?s new advanced hybrid-electric power train.
The utility model being used for the cross-country tour is a modified version of the more powerful tactical HMMWV developed for the military, which is also powered by a Unique Mobility hybrid electric propulsion system. The utility model utilizes a small 1.9-liter diesel-fueled engine and Unique Mobility?s permanent magnet generator to produce 55 kilowatts of electrical power to maintain the long-term operation of the vehicle. Two 100 kilowatt (125 horsepower) permanent magnet motors developed by Unique Mobility, one for each axle, power the vehicle. The vehicle with its 3,000-pound payload accelerates from 0 m.p.h. to 50 m.p.h. in only 10 seconds - nearly one-half that of a standard HMMWV. An operating range of up to 375 miles is possible with a smaller than normal tank of diesel fuel. The vehicle?s increased fuel economy of up to 16 miles per gallon is twice that of the standard HMMWV."
If they can make a Hummer perform better on less fuel, I bet they can also do it to the average car.
At this point I'm seeing the potential to take a 550 Spyder kit car and make it Hybrid-Electic while still having a great performer.
More - including prototype pictures - at www.ruf.dk
-- From Denmark
some of these comments flat-out amaze me. batteries are waaay behind from where they need to be, in price, power, size, weight, cost, life, and disposability. this is a *severe* damper on electric vehicles.
then there's people bashing 'suv's. i have an '88 jeep, and it gets 21mpg city. it gets good mileage because i dont floor it off the line, and keep the vehicle well-maintained. and for those of you who think that 21mpg is hogging gas, and think that my jeep is a waste of power/fuel/etc, (someone mentioned a $3-$4 per gallon tax increase on gas to subsidise public transit).....WELL
public transit does NOT fit my needs. my road wasn't paved until a few years ago, and is never plowed. i *NEED* 4wd and good ground clearence in the winter. i make use of these features on average atleast once a week in the winter.
dependability is also of huge importance. my dad's jeep is a little older, and sports 260,000 miles. most of the parts are still origional. these trucks are more durable than the $8,000 geo's it sounds like many of you drive.
when i move to/from school, i fill the back of my jeep to the brim. it swallows all of my possessions, and it doesnt tax the engine. no car would be able to give me this versitility.
i also work on construction sites, creating smart homes. i'd like to see a small car try and traverse this kind of territory....with several thousand pounds of wire in the back.
if the purpose of your vehicle is to get to/from work with your briefcase, fine - a little car is great for you. but dont think that everyone in the world is like you.
lastly, many of you seem to think that the internal combustion engine is obsolete. NOTHING IS FARTHER FROM THE TRUTH! with new technologies on the horizon including electronic (or pnuematic) valve control, new spark systems that flaunt near-total combustion, computer-monitored and controlled everything.......the advances in the short future to the engine are incredible.
in fact, i remember reading just a few weeks ago in pop.sci that several of the big auto-makers will start shipping pickup trucks and suv's with diesels in them that are so clean that they are considered "near-zero emissions vehicles." the author joked that if you feed one of these engines clean air, the exhaust will be cleaner than the air in southern california. and these engines dont even take advantage of the soon-to-be technologies i mentioned earlier!
plus, diesel takes *very* little energy to prepare. natural gas and other solutions may pollute slightly less, but when you look at the pollution and energy required to distill them from crude.....there's no comparison. diesel works out just plain cleaner, and more efficient.
If you do the numbers, you will find that the power plant emissions attributable to each mile of EV driving are about 3% of those of conventional internal combustion engine cars. The actual percentages depend on the pollutant in question. See the detailed analysis of this exact issue on my website.
You then proceed to list all the conversion steps in the electric vehicle fuel cycle, claiming that because there are more steps, EVs are necessarily less efficient. You should know that it's not the number of steps, but the product of the efficiencies at each step.
If you do the numbers, you'll find that current production EVs are typically at least twice as efficient, in primary energy consumed per mile, as conventional ICE cars. Modern combined-cycle gas turbine generating plants can exceed 50% efficiency, vs perhaps 20% peak for an ICE. The power grid is typically 95% efficient (that's the figure for SDG&E). The charger & battery are typically 70-80% efficient, though this depends on the technology. The inverter and motor are usually well over 90% efficient.
To be more specific, the measured AC consumption for the PbA version of the 1997 EV1 is 248 Wh/mile. It's 373 Wh/mile for the 1999 NiMH version, mainly because of the battery pack cooling required in warm weather. There is definite room for improvement here, btw.
Then there's the fact that EVs are the only practical way to use certain primary energy sources, such as hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear -- all sources that pollute far less than fossil fuels.
Southern California Edison has calculated that California could easily support several million EVs with existing plants and transmission lines -- despite our well-publicized shortages -- as long as they're charged at night. Right now, as my EV1 is charging in my garage shortly past midnight PDT, the load on the California ISO-controlled grid is 23067 MW. The load at which they start to have trouble is around 40000MW. That's a lot of slack for nighttime EV charging.
No production EV I know of uses NiCd batteries. They all use lead-acid, nickel metal-hydride or lithium ion. There's a well-established recycling infrastructure for lead-acid batteries, and nickel is also far too valuable to just throw away.
Several people I know regularly drive their EV1s on cross-country trips. The first went from LA to Troy, Michigan. Another went from LA to Florida. Yes, it takes them a lot longer than in an ordinary car. They do it for fun. They spent some time arranging for 240V outlets to be available, but it was possible.
That said, no one really argues that EVs can now replace every ICE vehicle application. But they don't have to! The vast majority of daily commuting is well within the range capability of existing EVs, so if we reserved ICE vehicles for when they were really needed we could cut total vehicle emissions enormously.
My EV1 is my only car. Most of my trips out of town are by air, and my EV1 gets me to the airport quite easily. On the very rare occasion I/we need to take a road trip that exceeds its capabilities, I either take my fiancee's car, or we rent an ICE. This happens very, very rarely. Maybe once or twice a year.
My EV1 does 0 to 60 in less than 8 seconds. Does that count as "barely move themselves"? That said, see the previous paragraph about it not being necessary to replace every ICE, only most of them. If I ever need to tow a boat, I'll rent a SUV with a big engine -- something I hardly need to commute to work every day.
I recharge every night in my garage. Takes me 10 seconds to plug in the paddle, and it's full by morning. Second nature, I have yet to forget.
My EV1 actually has a pretty good heat pump, augmented with an electric heating element. Works great in both heating and cooling modes, but then again I do live in San Diego.
NiMH batteries actually work pretty well in cold weather.
This is, in my opinion, the one valid concern about the present generation of EVs. The standard 6kW charger for the EV1 gives you about 25-30 miles of range for every hour of charge. On days when my total driving is less than a full charge (which is almost always true), charging occurs at night when I sleep, so as long as it's done by morning it doesn't matter how long it takes.
That said, I do believe we need high power public charging stations for those occasions when you need to drive more than a single charge will take you in a single day, and you don't have the time to spend at one of the public 6kW charging stations. GM is supposedly testing a 50kW charger now on a fleet of electric S-10 pickups. I'd very much like to see it publicly available.
Any car made by hand in batches of 500 (like the EV1) is bound to be expensive. They'd get much cheaper in volume production, but even if they remain more expensive than comparable ICE cars you have to trade that off against significantly lower operating and energy costs.
See my EV web page for another side to the story.
There's no question that we'll all be driving EVs some day. The only question is when -- before or after the oil runs dry, or before people are born and live their whole lives in LA without ever having seen the mountains.
Phil Karn
There is enough off shore wind power capability around the UK to power 1/ the country's electricity needs AND 2/ to power the equivalent number of electric cars as there are heat engine cars in the UK.
A company called ac propulsion is starting to produce a 200HP electric sports car, the t-zero.
OK, so storing one thousand barrels of nuclear waste in your backyard is bad. I agree.
The alternative is to store millions of barrels of sulfuric acid enriched waste from coal and oil plants. That combined with millions of tonnes of ash belched into the air. And the lakes used for cooling heated up by 10s of kelvin, causing environmental damage by killing algae and fish and plant life.
Nuclear waste is bad. No dispute. But people don't realise how bad the fossil fuel pollutants are. I think people should go see a tailings dam, see the dead stunted trees as far as the eye can see, smell the terrible stench of sulfur, and see the dying sick animals that have unluckily wandered into the area.
And even given how bad the power plants are, they are positively sparkling clean when compared to the pollutants produced by your SUV or sports car. Not an individual effort of course, but as combined across the entire country. The power plant is incredibly clean when compared to the millions upon millions of cars, each belching their own toxic mix of monoxides, lead laden gasses, and various nth-ene pollutants. These chemicals are already known to be linked to brain damage in newborns, cancer in adults, and respiratory or lung damage for everyone.
Oil and coal are disgusting fuel sources. Any of the alternatives, even nuclear power, would be preferable.
Well, first of all, let me contradict my subject. Solar power is not out completely. The only place I forsee solar power as being useful would be to run a charging station. The reason I am saying this is because I have built and raced 2 solar powered vehichle now. (where we placed 12th in SunRayce97, and 7th in SunRayce99, these are national collegate races). Solar power simply is just not efficient enough (only about 12-14%) If you want more efficient cells you are going to have to pay 2 arms and 2 legs for them. Then they will only reach upwards of 20% efficiency. Besides thier price, solar cells are extremely fragile, no matter what type up substrate they are laminated against. The large arrays required to generate the power needed to move a solar powerd passenger car is out of the question to fit on todays roads. Our racing vehicle had a 2 meter by 4 meter array, which generated around 1200 watts (enough to run my wifes hair dryer) While that is enought power for us to maintain speed of 60 mph, as a driver, I have to say, it's no joy ride. I'm 5'10" and barely had enough room to steer the rudder style stick. It's just not economical, and because of that solar powerd vechicles just won't be feasable.
-- galihad
I read a more indepth article in their glossy magazine about these 750hl (about 15 of them) being used at EXPO world fair. It seems they have a PETROL/HYDRO switch on the dash and the V12 motor runs on either petrol or hydrogen.
BMW seems to think we can buy these cars in about 10 years ... about the time I'll be ready for a new car ;-)
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I keep reading this type of comment about the toxins that are created in making solar panels. This is true - like creating anything you are going to have crap left over that you don't want. This is the same thing that the gasoline companies are using to combat the rise of the EV.
But it is one hell of a lot easier to control the pollution at one source than it is to control the pollution at millions of sources.
I really wish people would quit falling for the crap the oil companies are spouting. We can all see through the MS fud with no problem, why can't we see through other fud?
Clean distributed power !
Here is how we come to it :
Even considering advances in fossil fuel power efficiency and the fact that concentrating power generations outside the population centers improves air quality where people are living, electric cars in America do not significantly improve the situation globally : any way you look at it, coal and oil are ugly sources of energy.
Hydroelectric, solar and wind energy are nearly perfect, but unfortunately they do not scale very well : almost all dam sites have already been exploited, and solar and wind electricity generation infrastructure take vast amounts of space that make them suitable only for sparsely populated areas. Geothermal energy is also a winner, but suitable sites are rare.
Today, the only clean source of energy is nuclear energy. The FUD that has been spread about it is similar to what people believe about airplanes : people know how terrible an accident would be, but they forget the paranoid SOP and the enormous amounts of money and effort spent into making sure everything is securely run. But for now, more people have died early because of pollution related diseases than from exposure to accidental radioactivity release.
So as a matter of fact, in France where 80% of electricity production is nuclear, electric cars make sense. In fact, many utility services in urban environments are beginning to use them on a large scale. In Paris for example, trash trucks are electric.
But two problems remain :
- Nobody really knows how much nuclear energy cost. The reason is that nobody has yet dismantled nuclear power plants on a large scale. Provisions for end of life are being put aside on the electricity producer?s balance sheet, but the cost of doing the job properly remains a worrying prospect.
- Transporting electricity on long distances is inefficient. Lots of energy are wasted in the grid. As mainframe computing now coexists with distributed computing, it is likely that electricity generation to be truly efficient will need to use the input of smaller plants spread across the network. As when comparing ASP to in house solutions, ASP are more efficient, but the network costs makes them less competitive : small power plants produce more expensive electricity, but closer to the consumer and therefore with less waste and less distribution costs. Deregulation will soon boost this trend. And this leads us to...
The best candidate for future power may not be the holy grail of commercial fusion power but rather the more inconspicuous fuel cells : clean distributed power !
Ever hear of an old invention called the bicycle? Very low resource needs (remember, half the fuel burned and pollution emitted by an automobile happens in manufacture, before it does even a single mile of driving. For the low emmission/fuel consumption sort, I bet the ratio is even worse)
"but I can't" -- The median auto trip in the US is less than 2 miles. The typical commute (all modes) is around 6 miles. It would do us a huge amount of good if some of those trips happened by other means. Not just in reduction of congestion, or the huge infrastructure subsisdies that cars get, but in overall life expectancy. Cycling is actually safer than driving, (yes, I do have the numbers to back it up) and the regular exercise of utility cycling will do wonders to your risk of heart disease.
It should not take 2.5 tons of metal, and a couple of ounces of petroleum to transport a videotape 1.5 miles to the rental return. Its almost beyond ironic to use the same resources to transport an otherwise healthy 13 yr old to an athletic practice.
Organizer:New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society;The NERDS,first US team in the UK Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars
True. And when he's elected, we know the next 4 to 8 years of the USA's transportation will be heavy on petroleum. That's what happens when TWO Texas oilmen move into the White House (and the little gray house down the street, technically).
A bit of history: when Jimmy Carter was elected, he walked from the Capitol to the White House rather than take a limo. Shortly after moving in, he installed solar panels on the roof. He was THE Environmental President (and sucked at most other parts of the job). When Reagan moved in 4 years later, he tore the solar panels down, both symbolically and literally. Clinton was too much of a waffle wimp to try putting them back.
What does the future hold for alternative power (along with Microsoft, spotted owls, the obscenely wealthy, gays, and various others)? We'll find out in November.Why store it? All that nuclear waste is recycleable, with a by product of more energy then was gain from the initial fusion. (I don't know where the end of the line is on recycling, but nearly all the waste they want to store is easially recyclable)
Too bad the greenies are even more against recycling the waste then they are against nuclear power. (Okay, there is the problem that an insecure plant could allow a terriorist to create a bomb, but just mandate enough redundant security measures and then check them. Physical security is hard, but we understand it)
Not true. When I leased my EV1s, there were $5000 buydowns from the San Diego Air Quality Management District plus 10% federal tax credits. These reduced the monthly lease payments by > $100.
If you could get people to wait five minutes after getting into their car before they could drive away, then practical low-emmision vehicles would probably already be here.
If you could get people to stop speeding up above the limit so thay can brake in a short distance and wait at the light to go, then low-emmsions vehicles would already be here.
If you could get folks to wait more than five minutes to fill up their gas tank (battery, whatever) the low-emmision vehicles would already be here.
And most importantly, if you could convince people that being the first off the line at an intersection was not terribly important, low-emmission vehicles would probably already be here.
As long as autos are primarily self-driven, then you are not going to have low-emmission vehicles without massive increase in technology. The technology in place already was driven by the convienience factors involved for the driver, and it is the driver's comfort that sells cars. If it doesn't sell, it doesn't work.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
Even an exploding gasoline tank doesn't release all its energy instaneously -- the vapor above the liquid may explode, but most of the liquid just burns.
Am I the ONLY person that has every thought
of this before?
Why not use Kinetic energy off the tires?
There's 4 TIRES on a damn car. Can't the
turning of them be in it of itself the
generator-recharger for the batter? Like
a handcranked-electricity recharge that
cracks REALLY fast...
I would think you'd never have to worry about
pluggin in again if you had something like
this.. heck.. The alternator works on the
same concept, doesn't it?
Anyone explain to me why this isn't just so common sensilly LOGICAL?
-Matthew Cortes
Landway Estates, Inc.
But, let's not put aside safety! Do you really want to drive an electric/whatever car? The government mandates that apply to "normal" cars (crash tests, structural rigidity, etc) are, last I heard, *waived* for electric cars. How do you think the engineers are getting *any* range out of the things? Yup, make them small and light. No reinforcement, no crumple zone, thin construction, gawdawful tire/wheel combinations, etc etc etc.
Then, add to that -- the storage device. Take your pick 1000lbs of sulfuric acid? how about sulfuric acid at 900+ degrees? Or maybe a couple big tanks full of natural gas? Or, hey, Hydrogen! (think airships if you're curious about *that* solution). Gasoline, for better or worse, really *doesn't* explode like in the movies (usually).
Finally, entire safety infrastructures (fire, police, EMS) are going to be put at high risk (not to mention the need to retrain) because of these things.
Throw all that together and I'd much rather have a "normal" car... or a bike... or my feet.... or, hell, a *parachute* to commute.
Well, nickel-cadmium batteries are very bad for the environment (since they are loaded with cadmium!), and they suck. (memory effect, etc.) Lead-acid batteries are of course full of lead and sulphuric acid.
Lithium-ion batteries are much better, and have a higher energy density than NiCd or NiMH (nickel metal-hydride).
I think the problem isn't that the auto industry doesn't want things to change, but rather that many North Americans (especial in the US) are very attached to their cars. They refuse to consider public transportation. One bus carrying 50 people has a lot fewer emmisions than 25 cars, and takes up a lot less road space. (And is a lot less likely to kill you with bad driving!)
Busses aren't great now, but if more people took them, there would be more bus routes, the busses would run more often, and the fares would probably be cheaper.
As I see it, the only reason for having a car is for special trips, like camping or visiting friends in a distant city. Cars are terrible for commuting. Live close enough to work so that you can cycle there in 40 minutes or so, like I do. Then you don't have to waste your time going to the gym, because you already get your exercise.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
If you want zero emissions, electric cars are not the way to go. Remember, TANSTAAFL. To charge up your car, you'll still have to plug it into the wall socket, and so you wind up transferring the emissions to the power plant supplying your electricity instead of at your car's exhaust pipe. And as most power plants burn fossil fuels anyway, you may end up producing more pollution than if you burned the fossil fuels yourself in an internal combustion engine in your car. It's just somewhere where you don't smell it, at least not yet. And provided your standard gasoline engine is anywhere close to being moderately efficient, as is, you wind up wasting more energy that way, even if the power plant was completely non-polluting. Lose energy due to power line resistances, transformer core eddy currents, energy lost in your electric vehicle's batteries, etc... Use mass transit. It's a better way. Or better yet, telecommute if you can.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Needless to say, it didn't work. I was saying so ten years ago, and now I get to say "I told ya so."
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
If you could get people to wait five minutes after getting into their car before they could drive away, then practical low-emmision vehicles would probably already be here.
You are absolutely correct on all of your points - but on the above one, I wonder if you had in mind a Stirling Cycle engine (in addition to electric motors)?
Basically, an SC engine is a pure heat engine - it derives its power from the potential heat difference of two sources (ie, such an engine could run on the temperature difference between room-temperature air and a flame, as easily as between room-temperature air and an ice cube). In the past, SC engines haven't been very powerful or cheap to manufacture.
However, in recent times, they have - for use in quiet electric generators, for the most part. One of the other interesting things about an SC engine is the fact that if you turn it, the one side will get hot, and the other cool (think of this thing as a mechanical peltier device). In fact, they can get damn cold - for use as in refrigeration applications.
IIRC, one of the big three managed to make a drivable vehicle back in 50's or 60's that ran great, got excellent "gas" milage, acheived freeway speed - however, one had to wait 5-10 minutes for the engine to begin working after the key was turned "on".
SC engines are amazing devices that have been around for a long time. They are also extremely easy to build (generally the working fluid is helium, but it is possible to build one that uses ordinary air as the working medium)...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Not anymore, to be sure...
Yesterday I was behind a Peterbuilt tractor (no trailer), and I was suprised by it's "get-up-and-go". Maybe the driver was an expert at the gears or something, but normally it sucks to be behind a rig. After this guy got to about fourth or fifth gear (hard to tell - I couldn't go by exaust - nothing was coming out of the stacks! - all I could tell by was the "lifting" of the frame from the axles), he was cruising!
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I'm afraid that the "zapped city" idea is a hoax, and you bought it.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
[2] That's politics, not engineering. The greenies have as one of their express goals the closure of all nuclear powerplants. They have tried to force this by preventing plants from sending their spent fuel to the US Government for disposal, even though the USG is mandated by law and by contract to take it. Since the USG has welshed on their agreement (prompted by the greenies), the plants have moved some of their cooler fuel from ponds to dry-cask storage. This has really pissed off the greenies: they couldn't shut down the plants directly, they failed to shut them down indirectly, and now they'll have to either come up with a new idea (difficult for brains trained to dogma) or give up.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Your belief is founded on the "miracle carburetor" hoax. That belief is false. When you consider the engine technology of the time (which often included side-valve "L-head" engines, with their huge surface areas and large thermal losses) it is patently obvious that no possible carburetor could have improved the efficiency of the engine to the point where the vehicle could achieve 50 MPG at highway cruising speeds. Carburetors have long been eclipsed by modern fuel injection systems, and those don't break 50 MPG by much even in a Geo Metro.
A carburetor is just a gadget for generating a more or less consistent fuel/air mixture. Unless you are grossly away from stoichiometric or running a really bad imbalance between cylinders, you are not going to lose more than perhaps 10% to 20% from having a bad carburetor versus the best. 20% is nothing to sneeze at, but it won't take a 20 MPG car and make it a 50 MPG car either.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
But you've fallen prey to a hoax:
Energy is conserved. If you are going to convert 60 Hz electricity to RF, you will have losses. If you radiate it around the garage, some of it will leak. Not only will you be paying for more power just to get the same amount to your car, you will be radiating RF around the neighborhood (which may be illegal without the proper transmitting licenses) and subjecting yourself, your family and your neighbors to EMF's much higher than you'd otherwise have (with unknown effects). Plus, it'll probably screw up a fair fraction of the electronic stuff in your house.99% of the Tesla-related stuff on the Net is total bunk. Just remember TANSTAAFL.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The main advantage of the Stirling engine is that it can operate from anything which can supply heat at the required temperature. This can be a flame, a solar concentrator, or a nuclear reactor. It can also be very smoothly balanced and has no pulsating intake or exhaust, making it very quiet. This makes it great for some applications, but if it was going to beat the Otto or Diesel engine in any major respect you'd be seeing lots of them out there. You don't, which ought to tell you something.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Steam turbines are inefficient in small units and low temperatures.
I'm not talking about small units. I'm talking about full scale power plants. Changes in temperature can be managed with thermal mass and/or by combination of solar and fossil fuel burners. 50% solar beats not solar at all!
In any case, effeciency is not as important for solar power as it is for fossil. After all, requiring twice as much free fuel is still free. In practice, one must consider the costs to maintain and build the plant which is why it is merely less important.
Worst case reliability for a plant that combines solar and fossil fuel is slightly better than for fossil fuel alone.
It seems like a real shame to not utilize the largest working fusion reactor in the solar system.
An SE is an external combustion engine, like a steam engine - however, it works on temperature differentials, not just on heat (ie, put a block of dry ice on the cool side, and leave the hot side at room temperature, and it would still run). Normally, heat is used in such engines, because cold is hard to come by (though I would tend to think such engines would work a bit better on a cold winter day in Maine, heating the hot side with a propane burner or similar).
Also it should be noted that typically (in a well designed SE), the working fluid is sealed in the unit, and never needs replacing. Helium is typically used for efficiency, as well as the fact that it is an inert (and thus, non-corrosive) gas.
You are also correct in stating that the efficiency is limited to how high a differential can be made, and the limits (and cost) for materials to make the engine to acheive this efficiency.
The only other comment I can make is that the quietness of the engine is a good thing in that the quieter it gets, the more efficient it is (because noise = energy waste). I am not saying that diesels or other engines shouldn't be used or investigated, or improved upon - it was just that the original poster's comment prompted me to think of a Stirling cycle engine...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You can preorder the good looking Corbin Merlin now. Scheduled for production in late 2001, Merlin will be available as a year 2002 model with an estimated price tag of $17,900.
Solar steam shows real promise as an alternative electricity generator, along with wind, geothermal, and hydro, but I was discussing alternative liquid fuels -- for automobiles. Unless fuel cells really work out, I don't think current rechargable batteries will supply an electric car revolution with it's energy needs.
I think you'll find that with hemp and jute it becomes far more feasible. Consider that hemp grows across a wide climate. It grows in fairly dry and arid land, and generates copious vegetable matter. I also note that I buy organic, eat organic, and consider the move to consolidate power over our world's food supply by multination corporations pushing GMOs, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers puts humanity in great peril. And, of course, that's just one of the ways we could fuck ourselves long term.
I don't dispute your figures in the second paragraph.