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Soybean Powered Harley
westfirst writes "Harold Benich has refitted his Harley Davidson motorcycle to run on soybean oil, according to this article. It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries. Soybean oil is, of course, a renewable energy source, but it still costs more to operate per mile. His bike costs about 4 cents per mile, but a gas powered bike costs 3 cents. " I cannot comment on the scientific validity of the story, but alternative energy sources are intrinsically interesting to me, at least.
Lots of people seem to be missing the fact that this guy hasn't modified the engine of his Harley, he's replaced it with "an engine rescued from a contruction site". Basically, an engine that was already diesel. His big challenge - I assume - is getting the engine to mate up with the cycle transmission. However he did it, I guarantee it ain't pretty-looking.
I exchanged a couple of emails with a guy who put a John-Deere diesel in his BMW R-class bike. He had done a lot of engineering - had the thing all painted up JD green and everything - and it still looked odd. Especially with the exhaust stack sticking up with the flapper thingie on top. Har!
Never asked him if he gassed up at the local Chinese take-out tho...
The local city bus company ran soy-diesel mix as a test program. They're not still doing it - something about the fuel costing twice as much.
I'd be curious to find out more about bio-diesel's emissions. Sure, there's no sulfur leftovers, but what about soot and particulate matter? Does it leave a greasy film on things? Does it have to smell like fried oil?
the ever-curious
Capn Futile
I work on commercial kitchen equipment, and I can assure you, soybean oil will burn. Over time, fryer tanks will leak at their seams, and if the operator doesn't have the tank replaced, the burner will eventually light off the dripping oil, with spectacular results! :)
yeah, i saw that.
A bunch of grody dirts packed into a Grateful Dead VW Van.
From what I remember, it looked like they bathed in the oil before they put it in the van.
Remains the comment that an increase from 3 cents to 4 cents per litre is ridiculously cheap, when you keep in mind what most people in Europe pay for normal gas. Definitely pays then!
Vegetable oil is cleaner than fossil fuel when burned, but one of its most spectacular traits is not releasing sulfur into the atmosphere (which fossil fuels release in abundance causing acid rain). Also, the process of making vegetable oil (growing a plant), cleanse the air we breathe by removing a major modern-day pollutant carbon dioxide and releasing pure oxygen in its place. Instead of adding pollutants from inside the Earth (black oils), vegetable oil only results in polluting the surface and atmosphere of the Earth with substances which were already there (the things it grew from). In a sense vegetable oils recycle the pollution they produce for us, wheras black oils just keep adding and adding to the pollution on the surface of the Earth.
I would rather we relied on a renewable source, than a black, pollluting, sulfurous rotting substance from the bowels of the Earth. Plants make great solar cells.
Clovers, and many legumes like plants (i.e. beans and peanuts) are nitrogen fixing. Some trees harbor nitrogen fixing bacteria also.
However, its my understanding that amazonian plants (tobacco, hemp, citrus) are very nitrogen draining. Or maybe your just talking about one of the hundreds of hemp plants that have nothing to do with Marijuana.
I wish I could find the site that mentions all the problems with the dead kennedy's lead singers talk cd's. This kind of stuff gets spread too easy becuase people want to believe it.
The only evidence I could find that hemp is nitrogen fixing is that it is not nitrogen fixing, it just produced enough organic matter to turn into compost to add back to the soil for a balance.
~^~~^~^^~~^
Didn't anyone see that episode of the Lone Gunmen a couple weeks ago where they hunted down a water powered car? Just pour any ol' glass o' water in the tank and away she goes.
Wouldn't THAT be nice..
-kidlinux.
There's one really good reason to concentrate emissions by generating power at one point and distributing it, via electricity, to the surroundings: it has the great potential to reduce total emissions by making it more cost-effective to install scrubbers at one site (the power plant) rather than thousands (vehicles). It's not difficult to imagine that it's easier to scrub one power plant than to install super-duper catalytic converters and scrubbers on a hundred thousand cars.
I believe engines can be modified to run on pure alcohol without problems; somewhere I think I read that it requires designing engines with higher compression ratios. I think ethanol isn't really much of a problem, but methanol can become one due to corrosion. Also I read somewhere that ethanol burns hotter than gasoline, so temperature could be an issue. But I've heard of Brazilians driving on 100% ethanol, so doubtlessly they either modified regular gasoline engines or have engines built to take 100% ethanol, all engineering issues accounted for. The engines we use in the 'states are, obviously, designed and tuned to run on GASOLINE efficiently, and the 10% ethanol maximum is probably just the maximum tolerance the engine can take before combustion is hampered.
the real at&t mix
'til dawn...
When did efficiency of scale offset pollution generated by automobiles? The ICE (internal combustion engine) is inefficient in its use.
Yeah, but that doesn't explain hemp's relative economic unimportance. If hemp was as great as people say it is, then it would be produced more in third world countries -- if only for local use (where restrictions are not common). This US may be powerful, but it's not so powerful that it can put down such a good thing on such a large scale.If you think the US does not have an influence on these countries, I suggest you take a trip around the world and see how much of the US culture is permeating these countries. The US is well versed in dangling the carrots in front of people.
Industrial hemp is used throughout the world, albeit not on a large scale. Political and corporate pressures are mostly the reasons.
Making the argument "if it is as great as they say it is..." is asinine. You might as well say that of GNU/Linux and all of the free or low-cost BSD's in comparison of Windows; if its so great then everyone would be using it. Quality, sensibility, etc. is not indicative of wide use.
Really? China makes their own cars, don't they? They certainly have the ability to build large factories with their own capital. So why didn't they outsmart everyone and build electric cars instead of gas?Are you saying that China's pollution exceeds that of the US, Mexico, or India? Remember that the US is approx. 1/20th the world's population yet accounts for 1/5th to 1/4th the world's pollution.
By the way, China is one of the larger producers of industrial hemp.
That doesn't explain it either. Japan is still high-density, still uses cars, and has as much ability to produce electric as anyone. Of course, electric cars aren't useful when the vehicles are actually used efficiently, as they are in places like Japan. If the vehicle has to run all day (as with taxis or most fleet vehicles) then electric won't work. If the vehicle has any significant load electric won't work -- and carrying items is something that mass transit does poorly.What does that have to do with the tea in China? You stated that some places needed it more than the US and used Japan as an example. Japan's transportation system is more efficient than the US due mostly to its mass transit system. Whether Japan can produce electric cars is not the question or issue.
Also, carrying items is not poorly done by mass transit, unless you are of a poorly design mass transit as exists in the US.
Yes, they are behind electric because they are coerced to do so. Because they are forced to lose money on them, and they've decided they're willing to pay that price.They are not forced to lose money on them. They are forced to come up with ZEV's as part of their CAFE figures. The choice of paths is their [auto manufacturers] own.
Some car companies were making efficient cars before the oil crisis!Who and compared to what?!
Electric cars have only imagined advantages -- "imagined" because there aren't any practical implementations. If electric cars made sense we'd see at least a few, real implementations that weren't forced.You need to get out more. There are real implementations without force. Their major obstacle is the infrastructure is not in place on a large scale for their use. In essence, there only exists gas stations and not electric ones in wide use. Thus the hybrid as the interim answer.
At the moment, there are electric cars that out drag Ferrari's.
'til dawn...
Search the BBC archives around the time of the petrol panic and you'll find a story about Sharwoods, the indian food people, fuelling their vehicles on used cooking oil.
The curry houses and chippies of Britain are a vast untapped power source!
Seriously, there's nothing special about biofuel so why hasn't it taken off here with our high petrol taxes? Anyone know?
Alex
4 cents a mile isn't too bad compared to 3 cents a mile. Granted I wouldn't want to smell french fries all day, they should probably work on reducing the cost another 25% so we can fill up with Mazola at the pump.
Thing is, my car requires 93 or 94 octane, what would I be able to use instead? Bacon grease?
Mmm... bacon...
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We as a country produce enough food to feed everyone on earth -- the distribution is what stops us from doing it. I think that if there was a demand for soybeans, then they would get produced. Enough for the world's fuel supply? Okay, probably not. But isn't making a big dent good enough?
The enemies of Democracy are
You're right, and I'm well aware of the point you're making.
Three separate people have replied to me (including you) who misinterpreted what I was saying. The person a couple levels up (the one that I originally replied to) made the remark that you could just stop by a grocery store and snag a bottle of Wesson when making a cross-country trip with a biodiesel vehicle.
I was just observing that the bottle of Wesson ironically is 4x as expensive as gasoline. I felt it was ironic, as the Wesson is a renewable resource we make here in the US (all those wonderful fields of corn and whatnot), whereas gasoline is not quite as renewable.
I realize that suitable vegetable oil doesn't have to cost 4x the cost of gasoline. (In all actuality, the reverse should be true -- gasoline should be 4x the cost of vegetable fuel oil.) However, given the present state of the universe, the most readily available off-the-shelf vegetable oil does cost 4x as much as gasoline, and as I said, I find that vaguely ironic.
Now, if vegetable-oil biodiesel vehicles were ever to take off, I imagine we would see vehicle grade vegetable-oil widely available and quite cheap.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Well, I suppose it does, but it doesn't say it equivalently. It says that it costs 4 cents a mile to operate the biodiesel bike, vs. 3 cents a mile for ordinary petrol. And the difference of 4 vs. 3 is not too much different than the price of gasoline this month vs. the price of gasoline a couple months ago (or a couple months from now).
As for motorbikes, they can be very fuel efficient with ordinary petrol. (The 70mpg number you quote is pretty typical as far as the numbers I've heard, if maybe towards the high side.) It's not clear to me whether the 100mpg is due to difference in fuel, or difference in engine configuration.
Anyway, back to my original point, which I apparently didn't elucidate: The Wesson is significantly more expensive than petrol at the pump. Not 30% more expensive. Not 2x more expensive. More like 4x-8x more expensive. I just priced online a 48oz bottle at $2.19. That works out to $5.84 a gallon, which is about 4x what I pay for 93 octane gas at the pump. If you get the smaller-sized bottles, the ratio goes up. That's a much bigger gap than 4 cents/mile vs. 3 cents/mile.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Of course, interestingly, that gallon bottle of Wesson at the grocery store costs alot more than a gallon of good ol' petrol at the pump.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
This was supposed to be on the Rambus story! (DUH!)
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Actually, it's a fairly convenient way to store and transfer energy. Obvioulsly, won't work in a closed system (e.g., a car), but if you use a little solar energy, you can split out the hydrogen, fill up a fuel cell with it, and THEN use the hydrogen to cleanly power the car. (Produces heat and water as by-products.)
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Sorry, but the sun doesn't create energy through chemical processes. Apart from that I agree with your judgment of the previous poster.
There's good reason for that. Our cars need to accelerate like bats out of hell because people in America drive like idiots, and you need all the options you can get to get out of the way. And we need our cars to be big because even with good acceleration, you can't always get out of the way.
:-)
--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Nuth'n like playing a cycle poker series and then using your fuel tank as a fondu pot at the end. Fry up some of those splat deer pieces you see just lying all over the place.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
In most (all?) states of the United States, the legal driving age is well below the legal drinking age. Some states do not allow one to dispense normal gas until 18, even if their driving age is 16.. and in New Jersey, only employees of the Gas Station are allowed to dispense the gas.
:)
If we did use alcohol-run cars, New Jersey's non-dispensing policy would likely become very popular... of course, you will get minors drilling holes into their gas tanks... but then their cars will not pass inspection
There are other cars that get 50 mpg, aren't wimpy, and are very safe (among the safest in their class)--namely, the Volkswagen New Beetle, Golf, and Jetta with the TDI engine, the current incarnation of the VW diesel. Performance isn't earth-shaking, but it's comparable to the standard gas engine.
I drove a TDI Jetta and found it to be woefully underpowered, my parent's 2 liter 4 banger Contour has more power. Just getting up to interstate speed was a struggle. That is probably because of the small size of the engine chosen, if it had been blessed with a larger engine the efficiency would have likely been slightly lower, but at least it could have gotten out of its own way at interstate speeds. From a stop it wasn't too bad, but at speed it just couldn't accelerate. It's short power band diddn't help either.
I always knew the economy would be the death of us all..
dammit Jim... I'm a doctor, not an auto mechanic.
---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
but what is to say you can't use food oil tomorrow (i.e. recursive production :-) ?
Thermodynamics, Law 2.
And you thought the originals had an obnoxious sound. This will sound like a gang of farting bikers, because the sound really will be farts.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
what you have learned to accept as clean still kills animals heats the earth and smells horrible. The other main point about this fuel is that it's renewable. we're not going to come to a screaching halt because we can't make any more soy beans. Even a small improvement is welcome.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Run your farm machinery on the soybean oil you produce...
It's been around for decades: nuclear power.
Irrational fears about radiation output, and a bad reputation given to it by incompotent soviets, are preventing us from using the cleanest and least disruptive form of power generation we have.
Instead, we prefer to suck down the countless tons of toxic fumes produced every day by the operation of coal and gas power plants.
Nix absolutably seriousness.
Haven't you ever put a bottle of Vodka in the freezer before?!?!? I honestly don't know how the freezing point of alcohol compares to that of Petrol, but I know that it is a lot colder than 0 Celcius.
I think I would be in heaven if only I could find a Linux job.
no the energy required to split the bond is far more than the energy generated by recombination.
wouldnt work.
Well, in the movies, microwaves, toasters, vacuums, and toilets all explode with the same vigor as transport vehicles... while Pop-Tarts may catch on fire if left in the toaster too long, they don't posses nearly as much explosive force as petroleum products...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
If it were a two-cycle engine, you wouldn't have to, since the fuel mix is the lube, too... unfortunately, those can't achieve the compression necessary to combust diesel/food oil. That would be kind of neat, though... a jet ski, powered by the drippings from lunch and dinner - yum!
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Ah... my bad - thinking too much of jet-skis, lawnmowers, etc...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I have, trust me soybean, vegetable, corn oil...they're all VERY combustible when they get hot enough.
this sig is deprecated
Seems like energy taxes could take care of that problem pretty well.
-Bruce
You've never overheated a frying pan, have you? :-)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
...hydrogen powered Harley's, huh?
You figure out what to do with coal-burning emissions, and I'll support coal power... as of now, though, that shit goes directly into the air, and the air is getting pretty polluted.
At least with radioactive waste, you know where the waste is, and you know the waste will eventually go away.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I forget which municipality has been running their buses off of cooking oil, but this is not a new technology. There's a reason Diesel cycle engines are called "Oil burners."
And calling it a "Harley" when it sounds like the engine is an industrial diesel just seems . . . wrong.
Without going into the whole conspiracy theory thing, the main reason we're not seeing a mass conversion to "vegetable oil" fuels it because the vegatables themselves are used for numerous other things, and the supply isn't even close to what would be needed to meet demand.
Anyone know how many acres of corn (soybeans, etc.) it takes to produce a barrel of oil?
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
> It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.
Actually it's the other way 'round: McDonald's fries smell like Harley exhaust.
I have been looking into alternative fuels lately. Most modern gasoline internal combustion engines can be modified to run off of alcohol. They can be made to possibly run even more efficiently. It would require rejetting the carb and possibly adjusting the timing. Another thing to do would be to replace the fuel filters when switching and after running on alcohol for a time as alcohol is a great cleanser and you wouldn't want a bunch of gunk getting into your engine. With a few modifications any gasoline engine can be made to burn alcohol.
As for biodiesel, the only change one would have to make is a new filter when changing and after a bit of running as with the gasoline/alcohol switch for similar reasons. Other than that, a diesel engine should run off of biodiesel with no modification.
Kuro5hin had this article on hemp biodiesel a while ago. Another great site is Journey to Forever
What about the many other uses for the other parts of a hemp plant? Cloth, paper, rope?
I did forget that alcohol can damage some components of the engine. Rubber gaskets and hoses being very vulnerable. But thos can be replaced rather easily.
in case you didn't know, soybeans are commonly grown in America...
Oh, I know. I was going for humor. I eat a lot of soy =)
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
I used to live in the UK, and at one point I recall reading about an American executive who'd been shipped along with his family to I think Edinburgh or Glasgow.
They made a specific point that while they felt privileged to have been chosen to go, they desperately wanted to take over a number of appliances to ensure they had a similar comfort level that they had experienced in America. Prime among these was a huge refrigerator with ice-makers and built-in water filters and so forth. They claimed it saved energy compared to the older technology used by 'the natives' (apologies in advance for telegraphing my point of view on this) -- but I distinctly recall they used US figures generated by their government's Department of Energy.
In other words, those figures couldn't be taken at face value as the studies themselves were predicated on appliances used and built to American standards, not European ones. Now, I know this might be comparing apples to oranges, but that's precisely what this family did, with nonsensical results: there is no way one fridge with all the bells and whistles is going to use less power than an older one without them. Unless you're talking about fridges vs meat lockers...
In contradiction to this point, Steve Jobs once said in an interview not long after he returned to Apple that his family wanted to buy a washing machine. So they looked into it and they discovered that a specific European model washed their clothes much more efficiently while using much less water -- the difference was in the length of time the machine used for its wash and rinse cycles. It was something like twice to three times as much as the equivalent US appliance. And it cost more, in the initial purchase price.
The interesting thing about it was that his family ended up debating the issue and others around it for some time before making the decision. You say that you agree total consumption will go up, but that it's beside the point, as well as natural. I think that it is an important and not irrelevant one. It's when we don't challenge these assumptions or debate them that we are in trouble.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
What about the (possibly-anecdotal) evidence that suggests energy-saving appliances and cars are used more than the old sinkhole devices, thereby increasing total consumption? I can't recall all the specifics, but the Economist has talked about this, as well as other organs of both the left and right. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for things such as this. But the application of technology must consider implications of its use beyond the immediate short-term.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Isn't that the other way around? Higher octane = faster burning?
It is great. But ask your self a question. Technology went far in previous century. Man even went off Earth. Do you think that noone made engine that do not destroy the envirinment ? Or someone made it, bit cannot sell it. Of course, cause whole world is ruled by only one thing, money. Petrol industry can rule the world, cause they have huge amounts of money. Hence, they wont allow such things, since then they will be out of biz.
That's a really good point. Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.
iirc you cannot just flick a nuclear reactor or a coal/oil plant on and off. I remember some documentary saying that the electric cars could just soak up electricity wasted during the off-peak hours. Also, the electric car can be topped up from renewable sources, such as solar, when at rest. At the moment the big money is on fuel cell technology as the Next Big Thing.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Maybe you use petroleum today to produce the food oil, but what is to say you can't use food oil tomorrow (i.e. recursive production :-) ?
Even if it takes a lot of energy to produce crops it still might be the way to go in the long run, since that energy would come from renewable sources (the sun), instead of ceased-to-be dinosaurs...
Freevo - Linux Multimedia Jukebox
I bet you'll have lots of fun recharging your electric car in California when there power is out because people there have a not in my backyard attitude about electricity generation. This from the same people who get in their gas guzzling SUV and drive to the gym 3 blocks away and go run on a treadmill. This makes lots and lots of sense.
Please, when providing solutions to problems, consider all of the far reaching impacts, like in this case the major problems our nations power grid is going to be facing in the next 20 years, especially if we become more dependant on electric cars that need recharging at wall outlets.
Why would the way the engine is powered affect things like the clutch? This is a serious question - I don't know much about how cars work.
NPR did this story about 4 or 5 days ago. They
discussed how the idea wasn't essentially new. Rommel (the German WW2 tank commander) was short of gas in Africa and ran his tanks off cooking oil at one point.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The point he was trying to make is that there is no barrier preventing diesel rigs from using the stuff and they haven't yet. Vegetable oil is still more expensive than gas, even though gas is taxed far more heavily than cooking oil is.
I wonder if there's a good source of non-food grade vegetable oil that a regular citizen could get their hands on....
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The standard solution for radioactive waste is to concentrate it into dumps. The object is to package it well enough that by the time the containers start to leak, the radioactivity will have died down to acceptable levels.
Of course, nobody really knows for sure, because nobody's been around long enough to do a realtime test.
Any real nuclear engineer will tell you that the most effective way to dispose of radioactive waste is to evenly disperse it over a large area (for example, the ocean). If you spread it thin enough, it won't significantly raise the radioactivity above background levels.
This, however, is not a politically acceptable solution.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
(even if it's off-topic, it helps explain a joke that was on-topic.)
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
They say it smells LIKE McDonald's fries (seen it on TV so it must be true!). Not that they are burning on burgers, or whatnot. Have you even smelled this yourself to make such a qualified judgement?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
A great deal of the tax on fuel (such as gasoline and diesel) goes towards the upkeep of roads. That's why you can purchase "on-road" and "off-road" fuel. If you can prove you're not using the fuel on a public road, then you generally don't have to pay the road tax.
You're wrong. It's corn oil. Period.
Smile... tomorrow will be worse
Another problem is that when alcohol evaporates, it attracts water. This naturally doesn't mix well with iron or steel internal engine parts.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
If nothing else, this would really change the Road Warrior. From "ker-chunk ker-chunk" to "ker-leaf ker-leaf" in the opening sequence at the very least. It would also remove the wonderful Aussie pronunciation, "Guzzelean"
Carpe Deez
Not entirely true. I personally know some people who are not professionals, yet spend their weekends at the big rallies. Heck, I may risk my life in an attempt to blend in at the next big rally in Sturgis, SD.
ah, now i have a use for all that extra soy-sauce they give me when i get take-out.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
There are other cars that get 50 mpg, aren't wimpy, and are very safe (among the safest in their class)--namely, the Volkswagen New Beetle, Golf, and Jetta with the TDI engine, the current incarnation of the VW diesel. Performance isn't earth-shaking, but it's comparable to the standard gas engine.
Hell, there's at least one car that pushes 100 mpg, which is the VW Lupo TDI (not sold in the US, though). It's a much smaller car than the Golf/Jetta, but at least the size of the Geo Metro, and certainly no less safe (though possibly no safer, either).
If the soybean exhaust smells like fries, does the hemp exhaust smell like a Phish show?
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It's sells for about 16 cents per pound on the open market, so just slightly under that for actual production cost. That's for degummed crude soy. If you want to make any money at it, it would have to be hexane-extracted, not pressed.
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dman123 forever!
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dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
"and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries."
I think Federal Agents will hunt this guy down and beat him silly if he attempts to market this without fixing that minor detail.
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
I imagine somebody riding with a trained monkey on his back. When ran out of fuel, monkey climbs the tree and picks up some coconuts.
I cannot comment on the scientific validity of the story, but alternative energy sources are intrinsically interesting to me, at least.
What scientific validity? Do we expect you to give us a proof that such technology is possible? NO, so shut up! If your an editor for Slashdot then it is implied that you wouldn't know. It's "intrinsically" interesting to you? By nature you are interested in alternate energy sources? Thats a load of crap... Intrinsically all I'm interested in is food, women, and tickling my noggen. I don't think anyone has any innate understanding of fuels.
You are not talking to your buddy. Thousands of people read slashdot. You shouldn't be saying something that has no purpose to anyone.
The comment reeks of artificial yellow #5. Slashdot editors are idiots for the little comments they have to make. No matter what they say... clearly they are trying to look technical and gain respect.
So if palm oil was used the price difference compared to conventional fuel would be even smaller.
Anyway I believe prices can go down if demand and thus volume increases. It doesn't look like there's that much demand for it at the moment.
Cheerio,
Link.
Nobody suggested using *good* beer. There's plenty of bad beer that deserves burnin'.
"until afterwards, when it was a cat with a hangover,"
err? a hangover from what?
The SR-71 was designed so that its fuel tanks would leak like mad on the ground. It wasn't until it took off and heated up that it would completely fuel up. And what of the fuel that leaked like mad onto the ground? You'd have use an acetylene torch to light it up at surface pressure. I'd say the SR-71 qualifies as an extremely high-performance machine, so I'm sure it can work fine for a motorcycle, too.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
After doing some more reading on the subject, I've read about how gas puts out about 125,000 BTU's, and Diesel puts out about 147,000 BTU's, but after visiting biovan.com and biodiesel.com, nowhere did they mention bio diesel's power output...The harley goes slower than a gas powered one...I'm guessing the power output of Biodesiel is somwhere between 1/2 and 2/3rds of standard petrolem deisel?
Does anyone have good estimates on what the power output of biodiesel that was made from Rapeseed, Vegtable oil?
moox. for a new generation.
Just because farming is "natural", don't think it's all about ma' and pa' on the family farm. Family farms have been squeezed out by the brutal efficiency of industrialized farming. Having good lobbyists don't hurt either. See here for a case study on Archer Daniel Midlands:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html
The Volvo is a consumer market vehicle. A little hatchback that on the outside looks just like any other little hatchback, but gets 70 mpg on Wesson Oil, or kerosene, or heating oil, etc.
People don't WANT such a car right now. They want RAV 4s and Lincoln Navigators.
KFG
Yes, there was also a report in VW Driver a few quarters ago about a 15 year old kid that re-worked his Golf engine to run on used fast food grease. Pretty wild stuff. He would run the used grease through some sort of filter and then put it in his car. He got great milage too.
So long and thanks for all the fish, m i k e c a r o n
Ever hear of the car called the Tucker?
What? Me worry? NEVER.....
Funny, seems like all (most) of the pot I ever smoked had plenty of seeds, but then that was quite a while ago.
Mind you, the best stuff was the kind that was green or reddish with few or no seeds, but we smoked plenty of brown pot that had tons of seeds. Sheesh, I remember using double-folded album covers to separate out the seeds (Quadrophenia comes to mind). I don't think the definition of 'hemp you grow to smoke' is not having seeds.
Clearly there is a great deal of difference between the crap the Navy grew for ropes and the stuff grown in California or Hawaii or Panama that goes for hundreds of dollars an ounce. But I don't think presence of seeds makes it a different plant.
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There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
it would be really cool if he could just stuff some soybeans in a tank and it worked, he'd stop at piggly wigley to fill up
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Aren't there laws in your state already banning the dispensing of normal gas to those under the legal driving age?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
As someone who has had quite a bit to do with the solar power industry, I can tell you that the big corporations are only too well aware of what's going on with the depletion of fossil fuels.
They've got their fingers in the top-level pies at all the research institutions. Now it's not profitable for solar power or any other kind of renewable energy source to become commercially viable just yet, so every time someone makes a breakthrough it gets bought out.
In approx. 20 years (a professor of Geology's estimate) when the oil reserves really start getting squeezed, they'll start investing real money into other forms of energy.
The issue of retro-fitting manufacturing plants, developing supply lines, these will all dissapate as the big guys change their focus.
But at this point in time, it would be very very difficult indeed to develop a commercially viable alternative to oil. The efforts won't be squashed, that would be too obvious, but they do get restricted.
mick
This is a good point. But gas prices are only going to go up in the long term.
Josh Sisk
I have a friend who is allergic to both corn and tomatoes. I myself am allergic to aspartame (nutrasweet).
Josh Sisk
Fuel cells are almost the perfect energy source. Unlike contentional power production methods, fuel cells can be used on demand, as it only takes minutes to activate a fuel cell plant.
Fuel cells work by introducing hydrogen gas to an anode, and oxygen gas to a cathode. With new advancements in the design of the semipermeable membrane that separates the anode and cathode, the cell can operate at temps below 100C.
Fuel cells are nothing new. They were commonly used on the Apollo missions to the moon in the 60's (water being a product of the cell, is quite handy), and probably well before then.
The catch? Hydrogen, even though the most abundent element in the universe is almost always attached to something else (like H2O, or CH3), and getting the hydrogen out is more costly than current energy production. So until this issue is resolved, fuel cell plants will most likely be used as a backup (thats what they do in NYC, I recall).
Shouldn't that read "not an excess tax?"
And since it's 33% more expensive, the fuel requires 33% more production somewhere in the economy, which isn't necessarily clean or efficient. Price matters.
Binary Boy downloads movies, pictures and music while you sleep.
A diesel engine works different than a gas engine. In a gas engine, the spark plug ignites the fuel. In a diesel engine there are no spark plugs. The pistons compress the fuel, and the compression causes the fuel to ignite. A diesel engine has a compression ration about twice that of a gasoline engine. Soybean oil will work just fine in a diesel engine. From what I have read, soybeans have a longer hydrocarbon chain than diesel, that can make the engne a little harder to start on soybean oil.
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Alot of the people using biodiesel get there cooking oil from used cooking oil. Used cooking oil is considered a waste product and many times ends up in a landfill. So if you use cooking oil that would only end up in the garbage dump, should you even considered the resources that were required to make it?
http://www.windmeadow.com/
but here is a picture of the Bioharley anyway.
Like anyone would care...
I hope I wasn't projecting a "conspiracy theory" in the first place.
To answer your question, you have to understand OPEC. They're perfectly content in further controlling and advancing their market. Remmber, OPEC isn't a company, it's a cartel.
OPEC isn't an innovative company searching for the next technology. They're a beurocratic dynasty that has an interest in protecting their one product.
They're not scared of clean energy, because they're so powerful they can keep it away. And plenty of other countries still need oil. Do you think Iraq is investing in clear energy? Or Russia? Don't think so!
And as for the U.S... I really do believe our senators are concerned about energy consumption. And I really do think changes are going to be made.. but look at our situation. We're going to explore in the Arctic. We're insanely dependent on oil.
But the fact is.. we still need OPEC.. and pray they don't close the tap on us (or at least threaten to).. because outside of going to war, we can't do much. They're the supplier. And the only one, really.
So of course we also have a vested interest in clean energy.. but it's a mixed interest. It's as though we're pulling from both sides of the rope, and THAT equals slow turn around times.
Not a conspiracy.. just a mess of a situation.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Well, hypothetically, the total use of clean-energy = the total use of dirty-energy. Meaning, if I have one SUV that pollutes, and I were to repleace it with a cleaner SUV, I'm not going to use two SUVs. The result is a net loss in energy consumption.
:-)
That's good for the environment but bad for business. Only when "dirty-energy" anc clean-energy are at the same price point will clean energy replace dirty.
Maybe the Economist had some different angles on it that I'm not thinking of, but from what I can think of my own, their argument doesn't quite work out *in the current state of the energy*.
See.. the economy acts funny. Think about this: (it's interesting...)
Dirty energy is very cheap relative to inflation, but still makes billions upon billions for the big energy companies and ESPECIALLY the oil companies.
Clean energy is super expensive. So you'd think if we switched to that, those companies would make even more. Wrong. Clean energy is out of the reach of consumers right now. So the issue with $$$ here is your customer base would fall probably by 75%, and you'd be in financial ruin.
What happens is, over time... Clean energy prices fall toward dirty energy prices. And slowly, clean energy filters through the economy, bit by bit.
For the big companies, it's a self-correcting situation. But for now, they have to protect their product -- becuase it's what sells.
As for the argument that total consumption will go up enough to offset the loss in selling clean energy.. the numbers don't add up -- though I do think total consumption will go up faster once we do get clean energy.. but that's besides the point, and just a natural "human race thing."
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
It sounds like much, if not most of your suspicion is simply the result of you not knowing much about electric cars. I've thought they were a cool idea for a long time, but even then didn't think they would be anything more than novelties for at least 15-20 years, but in the last few months, I stumbled on a few things that opened my eyes - electric vehicles are already _way_ ahead of what I thought they were, and it definitely sounds like they're way ahead of your perception of what they offer.
:-)
:)
Be suspicious, that's fine. But continue to be hopeful rather than spread suspicion and naysaying.
You say they're all novelty, but the advantages over gas engines are so immense that should the energy storage problem be solved, even the tillion-dollar subsidy on gas engines won't save them. Gas engines are utterly dependant on a myriad of expensive inefficient kludges like clutches. They are 0% efficient when waiting at the stop light right up to a staggering 15% efficiency under ideal conditions, divided by every time you use the brakes and so waste your energy instead of putting it back into the tank. That's right up there with the steam engine, and likely to go the same way. On the topic, virtually all trains today are electric (they bypass the storage problem by using a diesel generator) basically because electric motors are better in pretty much every way compared to gas. The problem is building a car that can run an electric motor. Electric motors are not novelty.
If novelty cars are the only way to gain the experience to solve the design problems, so be it. Don't be fooled into thinking that because novelty cars are being used as testing and solving grounds, that the electric motor is a novelty. The storage problem is not trivial however.
You note you're very suspicious of battery cars. I don't like them much either, but it sounds like you're not up to speed on battery technology. Lead-acid is the stuff of the 70's.
Talking of batteries, have you heard much about the new polimer battery technology? I don't know anything about it myself, but I hear things like "light as plastic" "cheap" "high energy density" and stuff like that, even though it's not to market yet, but you can imagine the possible ramifications - cars where the body panels are the batteries, etc. So while I too am suspicious of batteries, it sounds like that approach to storage might be capible of bearing interesting fruit
Be suspicious, but be aware that the novelty show cars and expo demos are just the sillier tip of a largely silent iceberg
Octane Number has nothing to do with the n-octane content of a fuel. Octane Number measures the knocking tendency of a fuel relative to n-octane. There are two different Octane Numbers, MON and RON. The number on the pump is the average of the two: AON = (RON + MON)/2. Motor Octane Number (MON) is always lower than Research Octane Number (RON). Extremely wide difference in the two is usually due to high olefin (unsaturated paraffins) content in the fuel. One test is run in a special test engine at constant compression ratio, the other with varying compression ratio.
Diesel fuel is rated by Cetane Number, also obtained using a special test engine, which is the fuel's performance relative to n-cetane.
As others have indicated, or at least hinted at, most combustible liquids may be used as diesel fuel, but usually have to be blended to get the best performance. The situation is more complex with spark ignition engines because the fuel must not only atomize properly and also respond properly to the ignition spark without pre-igniting ("knocking"). Pre-ignition is a problem in spark engines because they aren't designed for the much higher bearing loads that compression ignition imposes, amongst a number of other problems.
Here in my town, environmental laws forced the shuttering of a large bakery because the baking smell carries 'pollutants' as far as the EPA is concerned. I predict soybean oil powered vehicles would be as popular with the Greens as SUVs are.
Though I give kudos to the companies who keep cranking out these small gains.. I'll be excited when I see a hybrid with trully impressive milage and doesn't look like shit (cough..Honda Insight..cough).
Bah... gnight.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
It would also, like take, at the current consumption level of fuel, like quite a landmass to grow these crops/whatever.
Doodz, I'm, like fuckin' stoned!
Get your fuckin head out of the clouds and get your facts straight.
Oh.. and for all the americans out there. Ya don't get most of your oil from opec.
Can we say Brazil and Canada, because those countries are sending you the most oil. We could, feasably tell OPEC to fuck off, but then we wouldn't have ruler sadam hussein to throw bombs at and then ask for more money. Fuckit.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
It's just a small change, really: from McDonald's to MC Donald's. :-)
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
better not let bush' cronies catch wind of this. they might start drilling on soybean fields.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Someone has forgotten their organic chemistry. The majority of 'gasoline' is the chemical C8H18, otheriwise known as Octane. Octane 'measure' of gas has nothing to do with combustability, it is the relative amount of C8H18 in the fuel. ie. an Octane rating of 92 means 92% of the gas is C8H18. The other whatever% is things like hexane, pentane, ethanol, etc etc. And you want a higher Octain rating, more octane = more expensive, just check out the premium gas next time you fill up.
- remove the primate to mail
If that's true, then why do you fail a pot drug test if you eat hemp oil? Outdated drug testing procedures?
Otherwise I've seen alcohol cars run... but not on the everyday streets; just a racetrack. Very intresting to see them not kick out so much smoke.
Karma whorin' since 1999
Since Harley performance sucks big time anyway.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
I think you guys are way off the mark. McDonald's fries are a blend of vegetable and animal oil. Unfortunately they contain 95% oil from super-saturated animal fat, and only 5% vegetable oil (and probably from palm oil, a very cheap fat source). So unless they make a motorbike run from pigs drippings the smell ain't the same.
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
A story on CNN tells about cars BMW developed that run on liquid hydrogen. I think, it's better than that fuel, at least, because it's clean(if you don't count the process of making it).
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Gasoline is much cleaner than diesel, for example, and modern reformulated gasoline reduces pollution significantly relative to the old stuff. The recent reduction in urban pollution is largely due to cleaner-burning gasoline - and newer cars, which are much cleaner than those from a generation before.
sulli
RTFJ.
Modern gasoline is a fairly clean burning fuel. Won't this cause more pollution?
sulli
RTFJ.
There was an article a while ago about some students that actually began marketing and selling in in their town- I forget where the article, much less the town, was. Anyway though, the biodiesel they marketed apparently was a mix of something like 30% fossil fuel and the rest vegetable oils. As far as converting vehicles to run like this (apparently the mix the students used worked in certain kinds of engines without converting...), would that void the warranty? Here in AZ we had a huge fiasco when the legislature gave rebates for converting vehicles to use alternative fuels (in addition to gas), only to later realize that everyone who got it converted just continued to use gas because using anything else voided the warranty on the vehicle. Oops.
The idea that we can make all sorts of foods from soy in the future, so they'll be healthier, is not good news for everyone. When I'm in the Hilton Orbital waiting for my PanAm flight to MArs, I don't want to have a food allergy reaction to some soysteak that they billed as a New York Strip Steak.
--
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I'd rather see ethanol or methanol vehicles become popular. Alcohol does burn much cleaner than gasoline, and is renewable in exactly the same way that vegetable oils are.
:)
Oh, and alcohol doesn't smell like fries
K45
This signature has eleven vowels.
It is also possible to throw a lit match into a bucket of gasoline and it go out. It's just a matter of the gasoline having sit long enough for the vapor to disipate. Gasoline vapor is explosive, gasoline liquid not so much. But I'm just nitpicking. Also, I've not tried this, just heard about it. If you have scorched eyebrows tomorrow, don't blame me!
Okay. That's spooky. All the more reason to plant a bigger garden. Makes you really not want to eat out anymore.
> the petroleum industry does not want to see in use until they can find a way to make money off of it.
Easy, they take a patent on 'a substance which fuels a device which powers a vehicle', let the alternative engines get off the ground, then slam them with an IP lawsuit. That's the American way.
When all other methods of communication fail, try words.
Recently, media reports have surfaced that describe diesel-powered automobiles that have been adapted to burn soybean oil, resulting in exhaust that is often said to smell "just like McDonald's fries".
I'm sure this statement concerns you as much as it does me. Certainly we all are aware of the incredibly powerful role that the smell of our hot, crispy fries plays in driving sales. On many occasions I've had customers tell me that, for example, they walked past someone in the lobby of their office building and caught a whiff of that distinctive smell of McDonald's fries -- and were thus induced to forgo the low-fat, healthful, boring lunch they had planned, and instead head to one of our fine establishments to indulge in a Big Mac (TM) or Quarter Pounder with Cheese (TM) Value Meal (TM). In fact, our internal market research indicates that variations of this so-called IFFOR (Involuntary French-Fry Olfactory Response) may account for as much as 35 percent of all McDonald's sales!
Surely you can see where this is leading. Should automotive engines be altered to generate similar-smelling compounds, our potential customers might well become desensitized to that distinctive odor, resulting in dramatic declines in sales. Perhaps even worse is the possibility that customers would begin to associate the odor of McDonald's french fries with automotive exhaust, and become actively disgusted by the thought of eating our most profitable food product.
My friends and colleagues, I firmly believe that this soy-diesel automative engine concept presents a clear and present threat to the future growth and profitability of every McDonald's restaurant. Therefore I urge you to lobby your local government representatives in the strongest possible terms to oppose any sort of support for such alternative-fuel engines. In the meantime, I will be assessing the situation with some of our nation's leading intellectual-property lawyers, in order to determine whether we may be able to patent the distinctive smell of hot McDonald's fries. Initial signs are promising; after all, if genetics companies can patent naturally occurring genetic sequences -- which is to say molecules -- what should stop us from patenting our artificially created odorand molecules as the protected intellectual property of the McDonald's Corporation? I promise to keep you apprised of any and all progress on this front.
Thank you for your continuing support, and always remember to Super Size.
Yours truly,
Harlan A. Jameson
Director of Brand Management, McDonald's Corporation
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
If all of the cars in suburban neighborhoods start to emit fry-smelling smoke to the same degree that they emit smoke-smelling smoke today, there may well be another smell pervasive in car-heavy areas: sidewalk puke from all of the nauseated, hacking citizens. I'll take smog over fry smoke any day.
Fry smog. Uggggggggggggghhh...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
>The energy from oil isn't put in it by the refinery or processing.
The energy is not. The enthropy is. The second law of thermodynamics is about enthropy. It's much easier to mix oil and other stuff than to separate them.
I have one question. Does the bike still sound like a Harley while using soybean oil? What would be the point of riding a Harley around if it didn't have that kickass sound that distinguishes Harleys from the rest of motorcycles?
[ ]
Even an electric car that is recharged entirely from dirty coal power plants still produces ten to a hundred times less pollutants than a modern car at the end of the day.
Lead-acid batteries (used in electric cars) don't last forever. And when they have finally broken down to the point where they will no longer hold a charge, the resulting waste is much more environmentally harmful in the long run than combustion engine emissions. What did you plan to do with all the waste from dead lead-acid batteries in 15 years?
Lead-acid batteries are not used in modern electrics AFAIK, because, well, they're crap.
Actually, lead-acid batteries are quite used in electronic cars. Check out The Center For Electric Car and Energy Conversion for more info. Ni-Cad's dont generate enough current to be able to cold-crank a car engine, or power the car continuously for that matter.
Plus, I could be mistaken, but the last time I checked, sulfuric acid and lead sulfate, byproducts of lead-acid batteries, isn't exactly sold in the health-food section of your local supermarket.
From the San Joaquin County Recycling Info Page:"The average lead-acid battery contains 17.5 pounds of lead and 1.5 gallons of sulfuric acid. An estimated 2.4 million lead-acid batteries are disposed of improperly-possibly exposing California's environment and water supply to 210,000 tons of lead and 3 million gallons of sulfuric acid.
Sounds like a problem to me.
Sheesh. Yeah, the Oil companies like a dependance on oil - but they know this is coming. You'll note that many of them have been restyling themselves as "energy" companies as opposed to oil companies.
Personally, I don't think that I'd even mind too much if the oil companies themselves branch out into other energy sources and become "energy companies", it'd be less stressful to the economy, easier on employment, and they actually have the money to do sufficient R&D if they'd get off their asses and do it. Look at what happened to watchmakers who wouldn't accept a new paradigm, and entire countries in Europe went into recession when their only form of income was dashed by the quartz crystal... I don't want that to happen here.
The Oil companies are relatively good at distribution, relatively good at transportation (yes, there are notable exceptions, but they thankfully aren't the rule), and do understand how economics work, and they don't want to go out of business. I wouldn't even be too upset if these companies developed the engine systems themselves to get 200 - 300+ miles per gallon on gasoline (or some other combustible) and then licensed the technology to automanufacturers and such to create the cars. They'd still have their profit, the car companies wouldn't have to do nearly as much R&D, and we wouldn't have to depend on one of the most volitale parts of the world so we can keep driving...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
We are currently manufacturing engines which are EPA Tier II on-road and off-road emission certified. Diesel emissions greater than other engines? I don't think so.
Engines are heavier. Yes they are, but you can make cars and truck lighter to compensate. And you can burn a wider variety of fuel in a diesel that you can in a gasoline engine (which is the real point of having this entire discussion).
Cold starting? Hah! I routinely work on packages which can be started at temperatures as low at -25 F (-32 C). This is a standard feature on most truck and industrial engines. Diesel engines can be started as cold as -50 F (-46 C) with relatively little modification. Glow plugs - don't make them, don't need them, heating the inlet air works just fine.
Expensive injectors? Who the hell ISN'T putting fuel injectors in new cars today?
Diesel not widely available? Find an interstate highway. Any truck stop or small town along the way sells diesel to truckers. Find a farming community. Where does the fuel for diesel tractors come from? If you can't find diesel in your community it's because you haven't even looked.
It's diesel! Soybean oil is diesel!
Naw, that wouldn't work in the states... some dumbfuck congressman would realize that, "shit, this is booze!", and restrict it to people 21 and above...
That's very true. Infact, when Rudolph Diesel premiered the diesel engine at the World's Fair in Paris in 1900, it ran on peanut oil.
cheers, joshuaos
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
I had the same warning in the manual of my bike (a Honda VT500). They provided an explanation as well: rubber tubing used in the engine would corrode.
I am not a mechanic, so mechanically inclined posters are free to elaborate.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Not even militaries? In the U.S., all the old Vietnam era 2-1/2 ton Army trucks (Deuce-and-a-halfs) had multifuel engines, and they could burn just about any flammable liquid: gasoline, diesel, no. 2 heating oil, vegetable oil, alcohol, kerosene, JP-4 (jet fuel), flammable solvents, or any combination thereof; just so long as it could be squirted through injectors into the engine, it'll run.
As a side note, some ship engines will burn crude oil straight out of the ground.
Has anybody ever worked in a fast-food restauraunt? Within a half-hour, your entire body is coated in grease. When you get home, every single piece of clothing you wore smells like old grease. No amount of washing will ever get rid of the smell. Believe me...this is not something we want to promote before they've dealt with this problem.....
Rubber products in the engine (seals and gaskets seperating oil from gasoline from antifreeze, for instance) would definitely dry out and leak. I'm sure this isn't a show stopping problem, however, since it's relatively easy to replace the gaskets with something immune to alcohol.
The other problem, however, is that ethanol at least (not sure on other types of alcohol, but I suspect it's similar) burns a lot hotter than gasoline, and could literally blow your engine apart. A lot (all?) of the high end drag cars run on pure ethanol, but have to use specially hardened pistons and crankshafts and whatnot to withstand the pressure. Oh yeah, and they go thru a complete rebuild after every event. Not exactly consumer-friendly, eh?
And yet what would happen if you tried to criminalize alcohol?
I've put cigarrettes out in both gasoline and lighter fluid, and have never had any harm come to me. True, however, tht gasoline vapor is pretty flammable....
Off topic aside: how many people does it annoy when an 18-wheeler (diesel-powered) explodes all to hell in the movies (non-combustible except under compression...)?
Shyster
Posting AC so as not to trip up the flow for those folks browsing at 1.
My opinion is that there's more crime when it's illegal. First off, you have the numbers of the people drinking alcohol...it wasn't a crime before, now it is. Secondly, anytime there is a demand (people want alcohol), someone will step in to fill the supply. So now, you have another previously legal class that's illegal.
And of course, the indirect causes are pretty simple. If the market is big enough and the consumer sticky enough to make a lot of money off of, (alcohol is, pot may be, other drugs definitely are) then whoever is the supplier is not likely to give up his share of the market. Since a drug dealer can't exactly complain to the DOJ that the Japanese Mob is an illegal monopoly, this leads to "turf" wars and beatings and killings. Normally, I wouldn't care if 2 drug dealers killed each other, but it's a self-preserving cycle, in that the large amount of easy money to be made brings in more and more people, who are then killed by other people wanting to make the same money. Also, unfortunately, this takes the greatest toll on urban areas and poorer minorities, as they are more prone to being seduced by the money.
And, of course, since the supplier is, in effect, a monopoly, they can charge whatever they want to maximize their profits. This leads people who are addicted to come up with ways to get money to get the alcohol/pot/drugs...this also leads to crimes such as burglaries, car theft, muggings, robberies, etc.
And, lastly, since the supplier is all about making more money, and is not really concerned with laws and ethics (he's breaking both just by doing the job to begin with), there's the issue of selling a)mislabeled drugs/alcohol (which are often more dangerous than the drug/liquor they purport to be), or b)contaminated drugs/alcohol (such as those that have been cut with something Not Very Good (tm)), and c)"pushing" drugs onto younger and younger children, while recruiting them to be dealers of their own.
This doesn't count the crimes caused by wholesalers and importers, people who make the stuff in their garage or a chem lab for resale and overzealous police and federal agents.
The drug dealers are only in the business because it pays (a helluva lot, I might add) to be there. If drugs were legalized and people could get their cocaine FedEx'ed via the Internet for $10.95, how many dealers do you think would show up to work on Monday morning?
If you want to put the dealers out of business, just do it the Capitalist way: take over their job. Deliver a better, cheaper, safer product more conveniently. Federal mandatory (or voluntary) standards for drug contents would make drugs both safer and "better". Without the huge expense dealers incur by fighting the Drug War, not to mention their ungodly profit levels, drugs would be cheaper. Legalizing drugs would make it more convenient.
It's just like Napster...if people want it bad enough, you better give them an alternative or they will break the law. Why not make a few bucks off the alternative while you're at it?
Al the current taxes on Fuel are due to violation of pollution statues in the US. When you have a fuel that does not polute, you cannot tax it the same way. On the other hand, even if they try taxing it, it would be nearly impossible to justify. i.e. It is sold right now without any excess tax. Also, never underestimate the power of the farmer's union... If a tax on rubing alcohol is proposed, the union wil throw it's weight and crush it quickly if it promised to decrease their profits, or risks preventing the fuel from catching on. Such things have happened in the past.
I had a good chat with my brotehr-in-law last night; he designs deisel fuel injectors.
He was saying how lots of bio replacements for diesel (rape seed oil, chip-shop-oil, madarin-peel oil, etc) are very corrisive and damage the engine - and in fact can only dilute regular diesel at 5% before too much corrosion occurs.
He also commented on why diesel engines are capable of higher mileage before they wear out - they have to be built stronger because of the higher compression ratios (compared to petrol), and so naturally last longer.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Actually hemp has no THC in it (the active ingredient in pot that gets you stoned).. Its good to argue on topics you know nothing about aye captain?? you a yank?? :)
if you realise that your puter is spewing out data to root name servers then you know how to stop it :)
Don't know about that. I knew someone who used to fish a lot, and who included hemp in the bait. It's just that one the day the cat ate the bait, and became a very happy cat(until afterwards, when it was a cat with a hangover, but that's besides the point...).
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Here in Cincinnati (ohio) we have buses (Metro) that are run one soybeans and yes they smelled like french fries. I think there was some other smells as well.
But one thing I never thought about is, I have seen, or smelled these buses in a long time. I bet it was a promotional thing, and they are packed away somewhere.
Exxon came and smashed them.
Get your Unix fortune now!
"and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries." McDonalds Exec #1: So, how's our project coming along? McDonalds Exec #2: Great. We've contacted our guy and told him what to say. And it didn't cost as much as you thought it would, either. McDonalds Exec #1: Excellant. You went with the chicken nuggets line? McDonalds Exec #2: No sir. We thought it would be best to avoid "chicken" in the media as much as possible, with what happened with that chicken head and all. We've instead switched the phrase to say "fries" instead. McDonalds Exec #1 That'll do. Keep up the good work.
Awesome! You know science may change and fuel sources may come and go. But we can always look foward to obese bikers wearing aging black leather and riding a bike! Does this give a new definition to the word "hog?"
bio-diesel is a good idea, especially since it makes the energy very portable (compared to current battery technologies), but a huge problem is the land consumption. One of the essays on www.dieoff.com suggests that if all energy we use today was to be produced from biomass, there would be three species on earth, humans, wheat, and yeast (an exageration , i am sure, but the point has some validity)
m
from my engineering lectures...
production of nitrogen oxides are mostly related to the temperature you burn the fuel at, and can be catalysed out again afterwards.
organic pollutants are a different issue, but really it should be possible to design an engine to give good and complete combustion of most kinds of fuel. Problem is only really if put corn-oil in a diesel engine, it will not be very well optimised.
m
Could you please post a source for this statistic? It sounds extremely suspect to me. I work for a company that designs combined-cycle gas-turbine power plants. Typical values for losses are FAR less than 66%. For example, on one plant that we're designing, there is 273MW gross production, and 7.5MW of that is consumed by all the pumps, fans, etc required to run the plant. Note that this 7.5MW includes all generator and transformer losses. Transformers are very efficient devices -- 1% or 2% loss is typical. I'll admit that I don't know how much loss occurs once the power leaves the power plant itself, but the whole point of having high voltage power lines is that there is less loss on an AC line as the voltage increases. I find the 66% loss statistic that you quoted to be waaaay off the mark.
About 8 or 9 years ago there was a show on the Discovery channel called Beyond 2000, They had a man on there that converted his VW Rabbit to vegatable oil by mixing it with alcohol(the worlds 1st emissions free gasoline alternative). Give me a still instead of a gas pump any day!
"The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
Plus, if you get in an accident... there's plenty of rubbing alcohol around to clean your cuts with! Now if they could figure out how to run a car on Bactine...
hemp oil has little or no thc, which is the part that makes weed fun
how dare you suggest we burn good beer for simple transportation, though we could use corn oil...
you figure out to do with all the radioactive waste, and i'll support you...as of now, though, all that shit just sits in pools of water, and those pools are getting full.
..about the HempCar, and that hemp is another great biodiesel.
:)
Wouldn't take much to pipe the exhaust right into the cab, right?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
What ever happened to Ginger? Wasn't it supposed to SOLVE all these energy problems? =)
if only my athlon would run in a glass bubble and eat algae
IIRC, the demand curve for fuel, gasoline, and the like are inelastic; that is, people will buy almost as much at a high price as at a low price. The reason for this is obvious: if a person does not have public transportation and must travel from his or her home to work/school/where-ever every day, they will do so as long as the benefit of traveling outweighs the cost. Increasing the cost to a truly prohibitive level is just not a good idea, as it will lead to widespread inflation.
To summazize:
High energy taxes = higher cost of everything = runaway inflation = bad idea.
My Blog: http://nic.dreamhost.com/
It just means that the exhaust is different. Smells like fries? That means it is putting out a soup of organic compounds like ketones. Sure that may not be bad for the environment, but neither is CO2 or aerosol- at low levels.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Very good points, althought I might add that the biggest problem with gasoline engine is not the traffic light effect, but a mere physical fact that a normal car engine simply cannot have kinetic efficiency beyond 15-20% (governed by an approximation of an Otto cycle, which is what happens in a car engine). And ofcourse when the traffic light effect is included the efficiency drops even lower than that. Moreover, having done some research on electric vehicles I can say that the energetic efficiency of them is beyond phenomenal compared to normal combustion engine, even costwise it's rougly 5-10 times better, _but_ the real problem right now is in battery technology. Their life-time is simply too short compared to their cost lifting the per-mile cost to about double that of a combustion engine based car.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Also, the original deisel engine could run on vegetable oil, and was designed to do so. Modern deisels need some slight modifications to the oil to use it without modifying the engine. The article above describes this process in detail.
Warning! The ingredients used to make the chemical used in the process are readily available and relatively safe to handle (methanol and lye), but when combined as in the article, they make sodium methoxide, a very dangerous compound.
get a bucket, go to local store to buy 1 kg of gasoline/soyabean old. Go get another bucket and buy 1kg of hydrogen.
Umm. No. Nuclear is not the cleanest source of energy. and yes, it does pollute, although not all of it is immediate. First off, they do radiate heat, which is a form of pollution, and look at all of the water that the cooling towers pump into the air. That has to have some effect on the environment. The spent fuel continues to radiate heart for years, and then, even once it's cool, they have to figure out what to do with it. Yucca Mountain is out, or at least should be. They've had probelms with groundwater, and seismic activity has been registered in the area
And, we can't forget the time limitations to nuclear power. The longest a nuclear power station in the US can run is 60 years. And when they deactivate the plant, they have a hard time reusing the metal that was in the containment vessel & first coolant loop. Any other type of power, when they shut the place down, they just wash off the parts, if need be, melt 'em down, and reuse the metal for other purposes.
By far, the cleanest form of power is the fuel cell. Especially the hot fuel cell. IIRC, they run at about 1200 degrees, and when they run the exhaust (water vapor) through a turbine, they get a combined efficiency of roughly 70% Not much can beat that. And although they would still have to get rid of some of that heat, they wouldn't put out nearly as much a nuclear stations do, because the heat also makes it easier to split the water back into H2 and O2 (easier to dissolve electrolytic substances, etc.) And, if they were to use a thermocouple (sp?), they'd boot the energy further.
...or -179 degrees Farenheit.
Not a problem.
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They want you to think that it's a responsible way to deal with a growing population of car-owners, but it's really a way of dealing with the growing population.
Soyoil fuel is made of people!
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Er....water soluble in this case is good. The alchohol will dissolve in the water and leave you with a few drunk fish. And we all know what crude oil does in water so I don't have to go into details there.
If I had the choice of being dipped in alcohol or crude oil I would definately pick the former.
"Are these questions testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?" -Rachael Tyrell
This could appeal to the greenies unless of course the soybeans were the product of genetic modification.
"Would you like standard or mutant fuel sir?"
If I could do this to my old jap bike and use a different type of fuel it would add a whole new meaning to the term "riceburner"
Berk Watkins
I'd like to see someone do some serious work with hydrogen powered vehicles.
Just think about the convenience of pouring water into your car before you got bed, plugging it in, and having a fully fueled car in the morning (for those of you who don't get it, the car uses electricity seperate the water to get hydrogen).
Just a thought.
*sigh* back to work...
We should really use more hemp. And with the money saved, we could ramp up enforcement of laws against intoxicating drugs, like the closely-related but not-the-same marijuana.
It would be a good thing to decouple hemp advocacy from the pot smokers.
I can't help but think about the car in "Back to the Future II", which had a little addition called (correct me if I'm wrong) "Mr. Fusion" - it powered the... um... time circuit things (sorry, it's been a long time since I last saw it) with junk.
So now I'm left to wonder, if soybean oil can be used to power engines, how long will it be until "Mr. Fusion" becomes a reality? That'd be kinda weird, powering your car with old junk, but a helluva lot cheaper.
Of course, it'd probably never happen, for one simple reason: They wouldn't like the idea of fuel being free... The same reason why things like this soybean engine will probably never be mass-produced.
Sorry, I'm feeling very pessimistic today. ;)
-- Shenzi
Would people really take soybeans, suck all the gasoline out of them, and then send the rest to some frozen food company? I think that this would be a great idea, especially to work in combination with the electric cars of today.
-- Life is like a box of crap, it smells.
The biodiesel industry is poised to expand (bigtime) in this country. The initial users will be fleets (buses, trucks) but there are supposed to be Merc/BMW diesel owners who order the stuff by the (55 gallon)drumful. Check out the WorldEnergy website: www.worldenergy.net for a example of the commercialization of this.
Yes biodiesel does have a evocative/irritating smell (depends on your pt. of view) but it does not produce the same level of carcinogenic particulates that diesel does.
Also of interest is the way Malaysia is investing hugely into a diesel mixture which consists of diesel and replaceble palm oil! The newsitem dated 01/15/2001, is here . It seems that they are already building their first processing plant.
People have tried to increase alcohol usage in the US, though I'm not sure how well it has worked. The father of one of my public school classmates put a lot of effort into starting up a production facility. I live(d) on the northern edge of the corn belt, so a source for the alcohol was readily available. However, I'm not sure if he ever got to be profitable..
Anyway, gasoline often carries 15% alcohol around here. I think there may be some additives in it to make it a little less hard on car engines..
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Well, I'm concerned for a few reasons. First, did you know that 2/3 of the electricity generated at power plants in the U.S. doesn't even make it to the customer? It gets lost when running through power lines, transformers, and so forth. Secondly, the energy consumed by transportation vehicles in this country vastly outpaces the energy consumed by eletrical devices. What would happen if we all had electric cars? We would probably be burning even more fuel to get the same output.
Of course, a lot of the slack would be taken up by the fact that most electric cars have much lower horsepower than their gas-powered counterparts.
I think there are better ways to make our environment cleaner than using fully electric cars. First off, most people probably don't need as much horsepower as they have. What would happen if people dropped down a notch from V-8s to V-6s or V-6s to 4-cylinder engines? Many people felt the need to go up in horsepower when automatic transmissions were less efficient. Today's transmissions are or at least can be as efficient or better than manual transmissions.
Another possibility is to use hybrid gas/electric vehicles. It's cleaner and more efficient to run an engine at a single tuned speed rather than to have it revving up and slowing down all of the time (however, the act of converting motion into electricity and back might not be very efficient). Of course, an electric car can shut off whenever it isn't moving.
In the same vein, it may also be possible to use continuously variable transmissions to accelerate, rather than changing the speed of the engine. Again, I don't know how efficient those are, and they seem to be very complicated.
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Otherwise I get suspicious. Like, with people who go on about how absolutely great hemp is for everything. Much of the world has no significant restrictions on the production or use of hemp, as far as I know, and if everything that hemp proponents said was true was actually true the rest of the world would be living in a veritable hemp utopia. It makes me suspicious.
I get suspicious about electric cars, too. There are places where these issues matter more than they do to us in the US -- places with more pollution and higher energy costs. Why haven't those places developed these kick-ass electric cars that are so obviously superior to gas cars? Like Japan, say. They are just now making viable electric cars -- and how viable are they, really? I'm not sure -- people aren't buying them left and right, they aren't buying them at all if they aren't someplace where its subsidized (like CA). It makes me suspicious.
Another theory for why car makers have gotten behind electric cars is because they know they will largely fail, and they are okay with that. It will get people off their back for a while, and they will be able to come up with good reasons why they haven't really succeded -- because there are very serious technical issues with electric cars. And if they succede, well, that won't hurt them either -- heck, even if the cars are still significant net polluters, people won't relate them to that because the pollution won't come directly from the electric cars. As long as people don't look to something other than cars. So they give this pipe dream. This might be all silly conspiracy-theory, but the car industry doesn't lead one much reason to trust.
So I eagerly seek an unbiased review of the real effects.
Electric cars fill a very specific gap that shouldn't be there anyway -- using a large, complicated machine to move a person a couple times a day.
Yes, they are behind electric because they are coerced to do so. Because they are forced to lose money on them, and they've decided they're willing to pay that price.Some car companies were making efficient cars before the oil crisis! That's a very important distinction. Compact/efficient cars have real advantages, and they existed regardless of the larger efforts that happened with the oil crisis. Electric cars have only imagined advantages -- "imagined" because there aren't any practical implementations. If electric cars made sense we'd see at least a few, real implementations that weren't forced. Then I could stand behind a concerted public effort to force car manufacturers to adopt electric car designs.
As it is, electric cars just look like pipe dreams, and they provide an illusion that keeps people from pursuing more aggressively the real transportation solutions.
But I am suspicious. I see no real evidence that electric cars will succede. A lot of effort has gone into them, and while they've had some success it's not very impressive at all.
Without any evidence, why should I believe electric car proponents? Because they say that the benefits of electric cars are self-evident? I don't buy it. There are lots of solid technical reason why electric cars aren't that good. Which side is right? I'm not sure -- the proof is in the implementation. The implementations have been lacking.
So a particular electric car can outperform a Ferrari -- Ferraris are rather lame cars anyway, made for prestige not practicality. Electric cars are all novelty.
Yes, electric cars are a maturing technologies. Many (hell, most) maturing technologies never see the light of day. They are funny novelties that seemed like good ideas.
Fuel cells? Maybe, there seems like some real possibility there. But I'm very suspicious of the battery-powered cars, and I would hope that plans for future transportation, pollution control, and energy use reduction don't depend on electric cars.
My friend Josh has written a book on making and using biodiesel. Those interested in this story would no doubt also be interest in his site and book.
Wil
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Wil
wiki
The problem with decoupling the two is that people who are informed enough to know the advantages of hemp are also informed enough to know that marijuana is less harmful than either alcohol or cigarettes.
Though I do see your point. Since marijuana is in the same group in the uninformed majority of minds as other illegal drugs, a hemp advocate who is also a pot advocate will immediately get disregarded.
The enemies of Democracy are
Both my car manual ('91 Nissan) and motorcycle ('00 Kawasaki) explicitly and emphatically state that gasahol mixtures in excess of 10% ethanol, or 5% methanol, will cause grievious harm to the engine.
How do you guys avoid destroying your vehicle engines? Are you using some special production models, or do you dispose your cars yearly?
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Actually, any high-density biomass source will work to make motor fuel.
If you saw my posting here, there are several commercial crops that could be used as base ingredients for bio-diesel fuel.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
It also helps that in Europe and Japan, there are strict limits on the level of sulphur compounds in diesel fuel (I believe it's under 300 parts per million, unlike diesel fuel in the USA, which has 1,200 parts per million).
The new EPA standard will drop sulphur compound levels to under 100 parts per million, the same as the current California Air Resources Board (CARB) standard. Given that bio-diesel doesn't have sulphur compounds to start with, that issue is now moot. The other nice thing about bio-diesel is that particulate emissions are also substantially lower, too.
Without sulphur compounds fouling up both the intake and exhaust systems, it's now possible to implement things like direct injection, common-rail fuel delivery and lower-cost catalysts, which means lower air emissions along the way, more power and lower fuel consumption.
I don't worry that the Detroit auto companies can't produce a decent diesel engine. After all, GM and Ford have all that diesel truck engine experience, and they can tap into their experience with diesel engines sold on the European market.
Don't think diesel engines are slow, either. Anyone who's driven the European-market BMW 330d knows it can easily keep up with the gasoline-fuelled BMW 330i easily up to 140 mph.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
One thing about diesel engines is that the torque peak comes much lower in the engine rev range than a gasoline engine. Anyone who's driven the TDI version of the Volkswagen New Beetle knows you can do tire burnouts if you keep the engine rev range around 1,900 RPM because of that engine's torque peak at that engine speed. :-)
That's why in Europe many diesel engines have turbocharging to overcome the issue of power in the higher rev ranges. The result has been spectacular: the European-market BMW 330d can keep up with the gasoline-fuelled BMW 330i up to 140 mph.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Tell that to anyone who's driven the diesel-powered BMW's in Europe.
The BMW 330d powered by a 3-liter L-6 turbocharged diesel engine is capable of keeping up with a BMW 330i fuelled by gasoline up to 140 mph. In short, today's diesel engines need not take a back seat to gasoline engines in terms of performance.
One thing about the BMW 330d: it can get up to 38 mpg, compared to 25 mpg max for the BMW 330i.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
You are forgetting that bio-diesel can come from many different sources.
Here are the following commercial crops that could be used for creating bio-diesel fuel:
Corn
Soybeans
Canola
Cottonseed
Sunflower
Wheat
Rice
Peanut
Jojoba bean
Coconut
Sugar beet
Sugar cane
We already have the technology to grow these crops on a massive scale. With proper refinery design all these crops could be used to create bio-diesel fuel on a vast scale. In short, countries with large tracts of ariable farmland could become huge bio-diesel producers.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Actually, the whole idea of using certain crops to create a bio-diesel fuel has been around for a number of years.
Crops such as non-sweet corn, soybeans, sugar beets, sugar cane, coconuts, canola seed, and jojoba beans could be grown on a very large scale to create the ingredients for bio-diesel fuel. This fuel has two advantages:
1. The source of fuel is renewable.
2. Bio-diesel has no sulfur compounds and very likely burns with extremely low particulate levels, which means easier design for emission control systems.
The only downside to driving a diesel combustion car is the fact that you have to adjust your driving style--diesel engines tend to have its torque curve peak relatively low in the engine rev range.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
...that smell like McDonald's fries?
I wonder if he couldn't get McDonalds to pay him for the free advertising they're getting? It would help him defray the cost of the soybean oil fuel. :-)
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Corn as a fuel source doesn't do much better than break even, because corn needs a lot of nitrogen-based fertilizer. Soybeans have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots and actually increase the amount of fixed nitrogen in the soil. They need very little fertilizer in comparison to other crops, and they're not normally grown in places that need a lot of irrigation. Soybeans are a much better choice than corn as a fuel crop. If soybean-based fuels boost the price of soybeans, it will also help encourage corn farmers to rotate soybeans through their fields more often, which will further decrease the amount of energy needed for fertilizer.
Thermodynamics, Law 2.
The energy from oil isn't put in it by the refinery or processing. If it were, we wouldn't bother having engines in the first place -- we'd just build a refineryin every car and cut out the wasteful step in the middle.
So yes, we can use food oil to process food oil in the future -- same as we use petrochemicals to power all the petrochemical processing plants (and still have enough left over for stuff like cars)...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
The energy is not. The enthropy is. The second law of thermodynamics is about enthropy. It's much easier to mix oil and other stuff than to separate them
The second law of thermodynamics applies to CLOSED systems.
The first poster was suggesting that we would constantly lose energy in the processing of oil (which is true) and that therefore we could not use oil power to process more oil (which is not true).
The potential energy is not put in the oil by the processing. The processing occurs so that we can RELEASE the potential energy that is already in the oil.
This is not a closed system, there is sunlight and organic matter and blah blah blah adding energy to the process over millions of years. It's not a perpetual motion machine, and the laws of thermodynamics have NO BEARING whatosever on the practicality of using oil as fuel for oil processing.
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
And before anyone accuses me of being a pothead, 1) the hemp you grow to smoke is "sinsemilla"... that's Spanish for NO SEEDS. No seeds, no oil. No oil, no use growing the stuff; and 2) I'm allergic to cannibis smoke. Makes me hurl my toes up. Ironic, given its usual medicinal value, but there it is.
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Good, Honest HEMP!
-- Robert Anton Wilson
Soybean Harley is made from PEOPLE!
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
How can an engine run on 100% vegetable oil? I thought that engines worked by burning gasoline (or diesel) that rapidly expands and pushes the pistons. But vegetable oil is hard to ignite, and certainly isn't explosive at all. So how does it work?
A quote from Henry Ford:
If this were true in Ford's time, it'll certainly be true now with the increased efficiency of internal combustion engines...
--frank[at]unternet.org
What happened was that our ever so thoughtful local government gave a rebate for alternative fuel vehicles (and when I mean rebate, I mean BIG REBATE - like going from a $15,000 vehicle to $8,000 if if was alt-fuel), but allowed the rebate to go to those who had current cars converted, bought them converted from the mfg (the dealer stuck NG or propane tanks, left in the gas system, so you could use either).
Here was the problem - they defined the alt-fuel as being propane or NG, I don't think electrics were considered alt-fuel (maybe they were - most people bought the gasoline/propane combo vehicles, though), and did NOT allow a certain alcohol fuel (it is called J60 or something like that), which actually can work fine in certain 4-cylinder Ford Rangers and Probes, with no modifications at all.
Most of the people went for the combo vehicles - which just happened to be mostly large SUV vehicles (!!) retrofitted, you could use gas or propane/NG in them (tank sits right between the rear bumper and spare) - but most people (read: yuppies on a stick) just fill up with gas, so we end up with:
A large city of gas burning SUVs, manned by "we-don't-care-about-the-earth" yuppies-on-cellphone-assholes, who have used the system to not only get lower taxes (and probably registration fees - plus the cute AF license plates), but got a cheaper car as well! I can only hope that their erratic on-a-cell-phone-can't-drive driving style causes them to be rear ended, earning them a darwin award (fat chance it would occur - I am sure the tanks are engineered to withstand that).
I would have loved to use that alcohol fuel in my Ranger (because I could've in mine) - but I wouldn't have gotten the rebate (and the rebate would've come in handy for me, since it is a bitch to get that fuel, as it isn't widely available).
I am sure there are some who are only using propane, and loved this deal because it allowed them to really do something for the environment - kudos to them. I am just as certain that the majority just took advantage of the system to get something for nothing, and actually make the problem worse in the end (typical for Arizona).
Oh, and BTW - the rest of the taxpayers are footing the bill.
I am not saying that what you said, WPL510, isn't true - it very well may be. I just think that it really boiled down to screwing the system, and saving money by shifting the end-cost to those who can't afford a new car retrofitted with the propane tanks...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Beer?
The day that happens, I will be selling really long straws to teenage kids.
You grow your own soybeans, and use soybean oil to fuel your tractor?
For that matter, what does soybean oil cost in bulk, if it's not processed to make it food-grade? (i.e, just crushed and filtered.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The problem with using byproducts for fuel is that they will sometime become insufficient to supply energy needs. The reason that gasoline is used to power automobiles is that it was a very cheap by product of making kerosine which was used for lighting at the turn of the centruy. Now that demand has obviously been reversed. I don't think that there is really enough supply of used fry grease to power the world's automobile population. Therefore we really need to look at sources of fuel that actually have the possibility of actually meeting the demand.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Those damn hippies and their soybeans! Why can't they use an American fuel source, like corn, or beer?
Seriously, if true, this is awesome. I tend to hear a lot of stories about government repression of good alternative fuels, but it's hard to say which are true, and which aren't. Unfortunatly, I don't think President Bush would care too much. Too many jobs (and too much of his own money) in oil...
The Good Reverend
I'm different, just like everybody else.
Actually - the life of George Bush (Sr.) was saved during World War II when he was supported by ropes made of hemp as he parachuted to safety.
- passion
the oil/auto industry has a long history of doing this just to make a *little more* money for worse decisions.
Near the birth of the auto industry, they found that running engines would knock, or ping, and this could be reduced by using certain additives to oil. One was methanol - made from corn. They figured that *breathing* lead wasn't as bad as eating it, and methanol couldn't be patented, so we got stuck with tetraethyl lead instead...
It's all about money. That's why we don't see flying cars or moon bases, is because those things haven't entered the realm of profitability.
- passion
It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.
That smell of McDonald's french fries is actually manufactured in a plant in New Jersey... like the matrix pulling the wool over people's eyes, the food this nation consumes is like "living in a dream world".
If you're interested in reading more about this, check out Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation"
- passion
Just one issue here. How much land does it take to grow a gallon of agriculturally derived fuel? The US uses 30 million barrels of oil a day so can you scale this technology up to accommodate a large portion of this?
I am always wary of people running around spouting great cost analyses of these technologies. Why? Because they usually get their fuel oils for free from resaurants and fast food joints who would otherwise have to pay to get rid of it. What happens when everyone is driving these cars and that process of acquiring fuel no longer scales? Then how much does it cost? Can we actually grow enough vegetables to supply Americas vegetable oil needs?
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Diesel has many strong points, but cleanliness is not one of them. It's true that you get less NOx because deisel does not burn as hot as gassoline. This is because diesel is made of heavier chains that may or may not burn perfectly as they break down. The result is the light hydrocarbon and soot exhaust we all associate with standing behind a city bus. It's not easy to clean up a mess like that. Think of oil burning locomotives and ships from the first half of the 20th century. Nasty. It can be cleaned up a bit but there is a cost.
Food should be eaten, not burnt.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That's a bit oversimplified. See this note on octane measurement for a more comprehensive version.
Alcohol as fuel is not cost-effective. The "Gasohol" program was basically a subsidy program for Archer-Daniels-Midland, and has been an embarassing scandal for years.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
If the gas mileage is better, and the hazardous byproducts are reduced, I think most of us could stand it. Or the government could just make it regulation and make us deal with it. I say someone has to do something about our increasing environmental problems, and while we may not always agree with such regulations, perhaps our existence would last a little longer if we'd make a small sacrifice now. (Or are we too selfish for that?)
I guarantee you : your vegetable oil will burn like crazy, as the black spot on the roof of my kitchen will testify.
Man, those things burn like hell.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Harold Benich has refitted his Harley Davidson motorcycle to run on soybean oil, according to this article. It gets 100 miles per gallon and the exhaust smells like McDonald's fries.
Darn...I was thinking of another kind of bean. Of course, the exhaust wouldn't quite smell like McDonald's fries then.... You'd get pretty good fuel efficienty though, due to all the CH4 that would be produced.
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The AOL-Time Warner-Microsoft-Intel-CBS-ABC-NBC-Fox corporation:
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Let me clear it up... :-)
How a diesel engine works.
How a gasoline engine works.
Is Diesel really cheaper than regular gasoline?
What is the difference between various crude oils?
And, since I saw a mention about it in another thread here:
What is octane?
Probably a little bit basic, but an easy read, and should give you an easy to remember understanding of the items in question.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
If soybean-based fuels boost the price of soybeans, it will also help encourage corn farmers to rotate soybeans through their fields more often, which will further decrease the amount of energy needed for fertilizer.
Probably not. Soybeans require a different infrastructure than corn. Plus, the price of soybeans is so low that the government subsidizes soybean prices with loan deficiency payments. If the price of soybeans rises, farmers will not see any more money, just lower LDPs.
I agree that corn is hard on the environment. Soybeans are a better choice.
No sig is worth reading.
If carbon dioxide is a pollutant, then you should hold your breath.
Remember he is using a diesel engine. The soybean oil does combust,but it combusts under great pressure not by a spark plug. Diesel fuel is not very combustible (compared to gasoline that is). A diesel engine has a compression ration about twice that of a gasoline engine. If you look at the specs on a military diesel engine they will run on just about any type of liquid hydro carbon. (diesel, motor oil, kerosene, Wesson cooking oil)
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.
The stuff came out of the ground, for godsake, we're just putting it back
:-)
Do you not understand the basic principles of nuclear fission, or have I been snared by a troll?
The elements mined from the ground are not the elements that are "just" being put back, and they have very different properties from the elements that were taken out of the ground.
This stuff is so basic, and your logic so bizarre that no rational, dissinterested person could be serious, so I guess I'm the sucker then.
Ah well. It was a worthy example of the art of the troll. That's my excuse
Why haven't those places developed these kick-ass electric cars that are so obviously superior to gas cars?
:-)
A lot of reasons. You seem to be thinking "since electric is being adopted slowly, it can't be as clean as claimed". Clearly, it is as clean as claimed, but there are other drawbacks slowing it's adoption. The big one is storage - electricity is easy to generate and easy to use but incredibly difficult to store. This means that to compete on price with gas cars, the electric car needs either cheap batteries (ie shorter driving range than a gas car) or some other storage system (liquid hydrogen for fuel cells for example).
Electric car manufacturers also seem to have under-estimated demand, and they generally sell very quickly, but that will presumably change in a year or so.
What it comes down to is basically that,
1) Electric cars are a technology that is currently being adopted, not a technology that has finished being adopted. (You argument almost sounds a bit like "If the latest CPUs are so much better than old ones, how come no-one in my hi-tech office already has them?") And
2) It is a technology that has to compete with billions of dollars of existing gas infrastructure, that means that in order to offer competitive value per dollar, it has to far more efficient and cheaper, because gas is operating via economies of scale, which is a huge "subsidy" if you are trying to evaluate technological merit via market performance, as you seem to be doing.
3) In a sense, it is still a maturing technology. Currently, when weighing up the choice between a gas or electric car, there are still advantages and disadvantages to both. The electric technology is still quite a few years away from the time when electric cars are superior to gas cars in every useful way. Example: I note that there are now electric cars that, at the fraction of the price* of a Ferrari 550, can out-drag the Ferrari, (0-60 quicker) though the top speed is lower. Still, it sounds like a fair amount bang for your buck
*Not yet in mass production unfortunately.
Lead-acid batteries (used in electric cars) don't last forever.
:-)
Lead-acid batteries are not used in modern electrics AFAIK, because, well, they're crap. (And heavy messy crap at that).
Personally, I prefer hydrolysing water and storing the hydrogen instead of a battery, but fuel cells are still somewhat costly (though AFAIK they run indefinitey if kept unclogged, and have no adverse environmental effect if dumped)
Furthermore, I'd should also point out that many countries don't just dump their lead-acid batteries as you assume everyone will, but use the waste. (Mind you, we were talking about the USA, so might have a point
As to being more enviromentally damaging if they were dumped, I suspect you might be wrong there:
Say the useful life of a battery is two years. If I were to eat, over the course of 2 years, the entire battery, I would not be healthy, but my (limited) understanding of the toxicity suggests I would be very much alive. If I were to inhale, over the course of 2 years, the fumes from a gas car, I would be dead very quickly.
Perhaps this is an unfair example, because of the different way the toxins affect the body, but I think you under-estimate gas emmissions, (or are possibly confusing lead-acid rechargables with ni-cd rechargables).
Regardless, there is no excuse for just dumping toxic waste.
As for Yucca, I seriously doubt it would have any radioactive leakage problems for, oh, a few thousand years. Glass is pretty stable stuff. If, by then, we haven't figured out how to deal with it (nanotech!), we deserve to glow in the dark.
That's not really an acceptable soltuion to me. I guess it comes down to cash or credit - some people like to buy with money they don't have, and pay it off over time. I prefer to buy with money I do have. Locking waste into glass is a bit like buying a flash computer on your child's credit card when you know you're going to die in two days time - you're passing the buck for immediate gratification.
You can argue that there is unlikely to be any "interest" to pay (clean up costs if there is contamination), but I look to the legacy of wonder left us by the ancient egyptions, and wonder if we will be despised and hated for our greed and immoral gratification at the expense of others. It is not a legacy that I want to leave, and I am prepared to pay more for power generation to achieve it. I don't know whether the heavy-but-short-term pollution of coal outweights the low-but-long-term pollution of nuclear, but it feels fairer that I should have to suffer my own pollution, not pass it on to future generations.
For the same reason, CA's actions, or attempts to dump US nuclear waste in other countries, also strike me as irresponsible.
A reason we've got such a pollution problem is because people are so used to inflicting their products on others and never having to deal witht he consequences of their own actions (until you reach the bottom of the heap, usually in the third world, where everyone is utterly screwed).
Who knows, just because we have no use for the underside of a mountain now doesn't mean we won't ever have a use for that, and I'd prefer not to place shackles on the options of future generations merely to get slightly cheaper power.
As demonstrated in CA, "green" energy production does not cost much more than dirty.
heat-> motion-> electricity-> chemical->electrical-> mechanical
instead of
heat-> motion.
My guess is it doesn't really save anything at all, although I'm sure that the turbines or whatever is used at the power plant is more efficient per BTU at converting heat into motion. I'm also not counting the energy required to extract fossil fuels from the earth and refine them, because that has to be done in our existing model of gasoline/diesel engines. I'm just comparing the extra steps for electric cars.
The only slight advantage I can see in an electric car is that by relocating the source of polution, you can eliminate concentrated sources, like in cities. The real solution will come when an efficient, non impacting form of electrical generation is perfected.
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
I agree with you 100% ryancooley, but...
...all taxes on Gas will not apply to Alcohol.
This statement is only true in the short term. In the long term, if it became a popular alternative to petrol, then it would be taxed. The government has a long history of taxing all products with a high price elasticity (i.e. you can increase the price, yet enough people still purchase the product so that you increase total profits). Things such as Cigarettes, alcohol, petrol, and luxury items all fit into this category, and as alcohol became a viable fuel source, it would too.
Keeping
Finally, as the grammar nazi, I must add that it's an excise tax, not and excess tax.
Keeping
Jimmy Fallon:
'New Scientist' magazine reported on Wednesday that in the future, cars could be powered by hazelnuts. That's encouraging, considering an eight-ounce jar of hazelnuts costs about nine dollars. Yeah, I've got an idea for a car that runs on bald eagle heads and Faberge eggs.
For anybody that wan't to convince the world to switch from Petrol, here's what you do...
1. Get diesel engine manufacturers to use pure rubbing alcohol as a fuel source. Alcohol is easy to produce (any left over crops can be mde into fuel) and the price will go down as the demand increases. Plus, the regulations are getting so strict on Trucks that the price drop for fuel would be immediate, Trucks would right away meet every healt and plution code there is, and all smog equipment would be a thing of the past.
#2. Once truck are using rubbing alochol as a fuel source, it will be carried by most gas stations. At that point it will be trivial matter to convince consumers to buy your alcohol burning cars because the fuel is available everywhere, cleaner than gas, and likely cheaper.
There are many other advantages to Alcohol, but I don't feel it would be beneficial to cover them here. Never fail a smog test, all taxes on Gas will not apply to Alcohol, our skys will clear up because alcohol's only byproducts are Carbond Dioxide (what people exhale) and some water. Smog equipment is a thing or the past, farmers will have no trouble growing crops to make fuel from, and with such an easially renewable resource, competition among makers will drop prices. Not to mention that we woulld be completely free of OPEC or any foreign country's control.
...cold fusion, what else?
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Take a look at the FAQ from the biodiesel.org site. They claim:
Biodiesel also has a positive energy balance, generating three or more units of energy for every unit required to make it.
"I cannot comment on the scientific validity..." I can, as I spent a year doing research on bio-based alternatives to petroleum (you can check out the Carbohydrate Economy program at ilsr.org - several years ago). Bio-diesel is not a new idea, and there are, as the article states, a number of vehicles running on vegetable-oil derived fuels. Typically these vehicles are not running on unmodified vegetable oil; they burn a fuel created through a chemical process called transesterification, where the oil is reacted with a catalyst in the presence of ethanol or methanol (grain and wood alcohols, respectively, to you): This seperates the glycerine component from the oils which promotes a better burn. Although the technology is well established it is unlikely to catch on in the near term due to the stated problems: vegetable oils still cost mere than gas, and there are performance limitations. This is Mad Max stuff - we'll be using it once we enter the technological dark ages thanks to all you dumb-ass conservatives and SUV drivers.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
besides all, how much money do you spose McDonals is going to give him for a similar model painted red for Ronald to ride around?
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Most non-brazilians don't know that in Brazil we have been using renewable fuel ( alcohol ) on our cars for 22 years. And it is, in fact, cleaner than gasoline. I mean a lot cleaner.
A government program called proalcool was created after the first oil crisis. A good english written document about it can be found here but do scroll down or search for proalcool.
Alcohol is available in every gas station in Brazil to this date. In fact, our gasoline is mixed with 25% alcohol. And the alcohol comes from Sugar Cane produced in Brazil.
I use to have a alcohol car. It was cheaper then gasoline, but consumed more fuel. In the end, I guess, it kind of had the same cost. On very cold days, we had to inject gasoline on the engine to get it started ( a button on the console ). Newer cars have that automatically.
I remember that when it started, cars had sticker that said "Moved by alcohol". And as we brazilians love making fun of everything, we soon had stickers in our cars that said: "Moved by alcohol, but just the drivers". Any chance this would be legal in the States?
Another story, on the grim side, is when there was a lack of sugar cane production, Brazil imported Methanol from abroad, and a few people died from drinking the poisonous imported alcohol. People would drink the fuel, after all, at less than a dollar a liter...
Given this isn't a hoax (which is smells like, even though it's a little late for 4/1 stuff), he is using pure oil. Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing" (my emphasis of course). So usually it is mixed, but not in this case.
I'd love to see how it's done though. I don't think soybean oil is combustible, but if this isn't a hoax, I guess I'll be wrong. If it isn't, I wonder how fast it'll take the oil cartel lobbies to make soy products illegal (protect the children from Tofu, or something? ;-))
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I wonder if anyone has given any thought to the entre economy - not just saving the enviroment. Lots of people are shouting that the oil industry is too big and powerful - and will prevent any "eco-vehicle" from entering the market, but there are more insidious things going on here:
;-).
- Design and Mfg'ing: Someone has to design and manufacture these vehicles in a large enough quantity that they are affordable enough. Perhaps no one is willing to risk enough cash to get someone started. Could you design something to retro-fit existing assembly lines (= cheaper production / design).
- Consumer acceptance: not all consumers care about the environment. Will they accept a vehicle that costs more to own (assuming the next step)?
- Gas costs alot, but it's out there in brute force. Most cities have dozens of gas-stations already there. How would you get the fuel to the end user? Will they compete with the gas bars or will they work in their own market (eg. a gas/econ-fuel hybrid station, or something).
- How are you going to sell it. AFAIK, it's taken 10 years to market the electric cars and they still have a very low acceptance level.
Anyhow, I think it goes back to that old addage: you can have any two of: cost, quality, and time. I doubt it will be affordabe (at first), the quality will be questionable if it remains untested, and it certainly won't be out today or tomorrow. Perhaps in a year or two when people are tired of breathing in toxic fumes they'll quit smoking and think about this kind of car
---
Computer Science: solving today's problems tomorrow.
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
Well, in the UK a gallon of petrol is about £4.00. That is $6.00. If a bike can do 100mpg (for arguments sake) then it costs 6cents a mile in the UK. A bike will probably do 50mpg, which is 12c per mile.
Yet this soyafuel can do 100mpg for 3 cents a mile. That is half to a quarter of the price of normal petrol in the UK.
Hey, forget fuel guzzling America, bring your technology over here where we need it. Please. Now. Not next month, tomorrow.
Now if a car could be made to do 100mpg from cheap soyaoil, then I will be a very happy man. Damn oil cartels.
Personally fully electric (with solar cell roofs) cars will be the best thing I think. Batteries are getting better it seems like every year and solar keeps getting more efficient over time too. Eventually your car will recharge during the day either by the solar cells or the free electric you get from your place of work(on cloudy days). For the meantime, cars like the Insight and the Prius are very interesting to me. I wish I could afford a Insight or Prius now. I also like the fully electric EV1 from GM but they still won't make those available here in Ohio (no way to heat the car good enoguh in the winter), and if I wanted to throw away 40,000 I'd buy a SUV (EV1's are leased only....once they are done being leased, GM takes them back....they don't even resell them, to my knowledge).
Gorkman
Newsflash: Slashdot sets new record for posting old technological news as new and awesome.
ANY diesel engine will run on vegetable oil, be it soy, corn, peanut, flax, etc.
I guess it's just "kewl" that someone did it with a Harley.
They've been doing it for over 100 years. Volvo even has a working prototype of a multi-oil car that they would love to produce but don't figure there's any market for. A Volvo executive has been driving it as a personal vehicle for 10 years now.
Hell, 15 years ago I used to run my Mercedes 240D on corn oil. Too bad for me there was no Slashdot at the time, I could have had my 15 minutes of fame.
KFG
Of course, we'll only develop alternative energy platforms when it's absolutely necessary. God forbid we think ahead -- no no... we'll procratinate until we have even more major energy problems, and only then will we shift over toward newer technologies.
The thing is, the major energy and oil companies don't want any of this. A major car company figures out a way to have a car run at 150 miles per gallon. The U.S. Government says, No way, buddy!
Why? Because if everyone drove cars that got such incredible mileage, gas consumption goes WAY down, and therefore prices collapse. Commodity markets would anticipate this, and spot prices for gas and creud oil would drop off a cliff.
OPEC has a vested interest in making sure this does not happen, and so does the US Government -- to an extent.
So, new energy technology will be a long and tedious transition. But you can bet in 50 years, there will be a company greatly benefitting from it, and making billions.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
Before we get too excited, someone ought to check to find out if it doesn't take more than one gallon of petroleum to produce one gallon of food oil with today's agricultural technology. IIRC, it takes more energy than you'd think to fertilize, irrigate and harvest crops.
Renewability is only one desirable trait of a fuel source. I wonder how cleanly this stuff burns, especially since (as the article states) the oil sometimes has to be combined with Diesel. I expect that hydrocarbon pollutants would be a major problem, along with possibly oxides of nitrogen, etc.
Can you imagine the majority of cars in Los Angeles (or some such city) converting to Soybean oil, and having the stench of McDonalds fries replace smog?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Read what it says a little closer and you see "Usually, though, food oils are combined with diesel fuel, rather than used pure, as Benich is doing"
My point is that I'm not sure the combustion process is clean, where I use the term "clean" to mean that the combustion products are free of pollutants (such as unburned hydrocarbons). The article is silent on this point (unless I have misread it?).
The fact that the fuel is pure doesn't matter. If the bike uses the Diesel cycle, the combustion products are likely to be dirty under heavy loads (such as during accelleration).
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Soon you'll not only see biker gangs riding around, but biker gangs being chased by the Hamburgler.
Or maybe Ronald McDonald will get himself a hog and join the Hell's Burgers?
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Smells like teen spirit!
As a sport biker, I love the irony. Harley riders enjoy deriding (Japanese) sport bikes, calling them "rice burners", among other things...
Now, really, how much better is a "soy burner"?!
The Biodiesel web site has more information on renewable fuel sources.
---
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Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.
When W Bush spouts about the impending energy crisis, I wish he'd fund programs that push alternative energy sources rather than building more refineries. After reading up on the www.biodiesel.org website, I'm quite convinced that we are not facing an energy crisis, but an inevitable energy industry shake up. (Which, for a former executive in the oil industry, is just as bad.)
If www.biodiesel.org is correct in its claims, then vegetable based energy sources solve MANY of our energy problems. They can be used in existing, unmodified diesel engines. It costs very little to make - a 1:3.24 energy production ratio. Its clean burning. Its safe.
The problems - not many people use diesel engines. But a significant amount of industrial equipment does. It would be a relatively easy conversion in the market place to produce more consumer diesel vehicles. It smells like McDonalds french fries. Annoying? Yes. Is regular exhaust particularly pleasant? No! Distribution - its hard to buy. But hasn't this been a problem with any other new type of fuel? We won't get past this until we're forced or someone invents a miracle fuel.
I'm not worried about the future supply of energy. If we run out of oil, we'll find something else. And I won't have pity for the oil industry either.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
...about the HempCar, and that hemp is another great biodiesel. These kinds of fuels, because they are infinitely renewable, are what the petroleum industry does not want to see in use until they can find a way to make money off of it.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
The thing is, the major energy and oil companies don't want any of this. A major car company figures out a way to have a car run at 150 miles per gallon. The U.S. Government says, No way, buddy!
I work for a major car company (GM) and I work in a position that is tightly coupled with the Vehicle Development Process (VDP). And I'm telling you now that GM will eventually have regular production gas/electric hybrids that get 150 miles per gallon! (The last prototype I saw gets around 90, so 150 is not far off)
Then there is the Toyota Prius, which currently gets 70 MPG, and a representative of Toyota claimed to me at the 2001 North American International Auto Show that next year, the vehicle will get 150 MPG.
Maybe your scenario was more on-mark 5 or so years ago, but with the rising fuel costs and OPEC's recent production cuts, believe me, the government is in our court on this one.
My journal has hot