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Chrysler Announces Hydrogen Fuel Cell Van
Juanfe writes: "Chrysler group announced a concept vehicle called the Natrium, powered by a sodium borohydride (NaBH4) engine developed by Millenium Cell. NaBH4 can be made from sodium borate -- basic borax, used in laundry detergent.
MilleniumCell is a US Company that, not surprisingly, has made strategic agreements with major borax purveyors in the US (which just happens to be thought of as the largest borax reserve in the world). Could this be the start of the end of big oil and the start of the start of big Borax?" superflippy points out that Chrysler's press release is related to the Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas (EVAA) Electric Transportation Industry Conference 2001.
is if it's possible to retrofit current automobiles with this kind of technology.
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------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Hardly...
The U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are so tight that work has been slowed or delayed for decades on all-electric cars.
While this fuel-cell uses borax derivatives, I would be willing to bet money that any production fuel-cell based vehicles deployed in the U.S. use hydrocarbon-based cells. They're not going to let you just stop filling up every week, after all.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This seems to be a very well thought out monopoly already. *Note to US Government: Wait until the technology develops beyond your control and cause extereme loss or discomfort to consumers - then you can pounce on them and obtain "compensation".
Why make rules early?
Toques are for Canadians. Eh?
So, are they gonna open back up all of those borax mines in death valley? Hmm.. I bet land out there is dirt cheap..
:P
Oh.. dammit.. it's a _concept_ vehicle. Eenteresting, tho.. the borax is apparently recyclable.. And they've retrofitted a Ford Explorer with an FC engine.
Ah, well, wake me up when I can buy one.
Indie rock lives! b-side!
i wonder how much it will cost to run the thing?
just pour laundry detergent into the thing and it turns it into borax? sounds rather interesting;
it says that is not dangerous and nonflammable, etc. but hydrogen is one of the byproducts?? that sounds rather misleading.
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
There's an article from '97 describing Chrystler's idea for the hydrogen cell fuel car. Interesting to compare their predictions and the result four years later. Quite thought-provoking.
What do you think of MusicCity now?
I know you're all out there checking out Millennium Cell (MCEL), who's "Hydrogen on Demand" system stores Hydrogen as part of a benign solution with a high potential energy density.
However, the real monopoly-in-training here is Ballard Power (BLDP), who have most of the patents involved in converting that Hydrogen into electricity.
...Borax has gone up to $1.75 per gallon, and older folks are telling stories about how they could get a gallon of Borax for a nickel when they were kids.
A nickel!
SIGFEH
If anyone's wondering, 'Natrium' is the latin word for sodium. That's what sodium is 'Na' on the periodic table.
Not that I expect them to take on the Dubya's oil folks, but Yahoo's Market Guide has some interesting background on the company, Millennium Cell.
The article states that the process of charging up the borax produces pollution, though so does this not (for now) just represent the "make the pollution elsewhere" paradox of electric cars, whereby one uses coal-generated electricity to drive around instead of gasoline, substituting one fossil fuel's energy for another?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
Being the clever industry they are, the oil companies LONG ago realized they were dependent on a limited resource. Indeed, the reserves wouldnt make it out of the 21st century.
Hence they all now refer to themselves as 'energy companies', and work with all sorts of things, not just oil.
Its in their best interests that things start moving off fossil fuels, given their limited supply, and people move onto things like hydrogen, which is pretty damn common. And they know this.
You'll still be getting your fuel from them in 20 years...it just might not be gasoline anymore.
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Everyone knows the only people who bought electric powered cars were those who were rich and environment-savvy peeps.
At least with those cars they were helping the ozone layer and fuel cells don't really change anything.
I say they should go back to the drawing boards but its a neat idea anyway.
when people will stop complaining about the noise from a car enguine and soon work will begin on silent tires
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
I'm happy to see advancements in stuff like this, because we can start stimulating our own economy! One thing that I'd like to know is what kinda fuel economy this thing has, and how much power the darned thing can kick out. If the preceeding two things are large, then gasoline will be kicked out of the market . I wonder, though, will these engines be as fun to work on as normal gas ones? I have one helluva time working on my '75 Benz.
Millenium makes the system that turns the sodium borohydride into hydrogen, then Ballard's fuel cell turns the hydrogen into electricity.
I want one.
I mean it's nice, but much too complicated and expensive. Why not use cheap, existing technology, i.e. combustion motors? They can be fueled by alcohol, methane and even hydrogen (BWM is already series-producing a hydrogen-fueled 750). We could have been driving on methane for decades, but the fact is, the oil companies have a lot to say in most governments, and without fuel, even the most high-tech car is useless.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
The idea of making cars with fuel cells has been around since most of us were little kiddies barely able to walk, and has anybody stopped to think why we have yet to see any great advances in the technology, like actually seeing them in a buyers market. Maybe the reason is, along with others, is that the money lost on oil would ruin current economies in many locations. Oil companies are large, rich, and often hurdle those standards that would make them monopolies, so rich in fact they might even be able to push some weight away from the idea of fuel cells. Just a thought but it makes sence and we have all seen instances where rich companies throw their weight around, can we say tobacoo products.
Have you seen the gas prices lately? They're cheaper than they were during the Clinton administration.
This has absolutely zero to do with who is or was president. If you don't think our fearless leaders are in bed with big oil then you are the one who is blind to "FACTS".
Millennium Cell is a good company trying to bring a viable, cheap (relatively), alternative fuel source to the consumer market, but they aren't the only company doing so. A few others are
Fuel Cell Energy Inc.
http://www.ercc.com/
Plug Power
http://www.plugpower.com/
Manhatten Scientifics
http://www.mhtx.com/
Anyway, I thought someone might be interested in doing a little deeper research into fuel cell technologies. It seems like the we're right on the edge of a power revolution, but most people haven't even heard of it!
So does this mean you need a huge water tank? I saw no mention of this in the article - but I would guess you'd need more water than you need petrol in current cars.
Have I seen gas prices in the United States lately? Hell no. I'm nowhere near your country, nor am I a citizen of it. I am, however, aware enough of international politics (and your domestic politics) to understand just how connected your President is to the oil industry both domestically and internationally.
Are you trying to suggest that the present depression in US gas pricing provides any evidence for or against the suggestion that US President Bush is involved in the oil business?
To attempt to drag this stuff back on topic and away from Republican American ethnocentrism, let me try this:
I would humbly suggest that this venture will face significant opposition from the traditional energy (nee oil) companies.
You're right tho, facts don't get points unless they're relevant or related to the discussion. Otherwise we could all get our 50 karma by posting mathematics formulae, now couldn't we?
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
The biggest problem with this approach is the distribution. Unfortunately, nobody really seems to give a rat's ass about the environment, so they'd rather buy a car that pollutes the air but can use gasoline available at every other street corner than take the risk of having to drive an extra 3 blocks to the new sodium borohydride station. Hell, you can buy a VW Jetta TDI (Turbo Direct Injection, diesel fuel, like you can't get that anywhere) that gets twice the gas mileage of the GLX (unleaded) version, pollutes less, and has performance comparable to their lower end gas models. You don't see the roads filled with TDIs, do you?
Even if you could convince people to buy the cars, none of the gas stations will want to take on the expense of converting to the new stuff in the first place.
A solution won't fly unless it's cheaper, easier, AND performs better than what people have now. Unless, of course, Microsoft's marketing people have at it.
Also there is a problem with that left over borax that has to be recycled and delivered back to the consumer. Once its used, its spoiled. You can't wash your clothes with it. It has to go through a process to recycle the chemical. How much pollution will that process create? Same problem with electric cars. If they are getting electricity generated from a dirty power plant are they really helping the environment? A truely Green car will have to have a power source that is clean from beginning to end not just from the tailpipe on.
I think I will stick with my buck a gallon gasoline for the time being and use Mass Transit when I can. The ironic thing about the war in Afghanistan were the initial liberal handwringers screaming that Bush II was just trying to jack up oil prices to help out his evil, rich Texas buddies. As we see today, its dirt cheap -- bottled water costs more per gallon!!!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The interesting thing about this article is not that they're selling a fuel cell based car, it's that they seem to have come up with a way to actualy power the fuel cell. For years we have been talking about hydrogen powered fuel cells "that's only byproduct is air and water", while ignoring the large amounts of energy needed to extract the most abundant elemet from the universe. Traditional hydrogen generation uses energy that (surprise) comes mostly from fossil fuels. If they've found a way to use borax instead of fossil fuels, I'll be very impressed.
Unless they've altered the laws of physics, it will still take energy to do this "recharging" of borax that the article talks about, but hopefully this can be more effient than todays batteries, and will at least provide an alternative to oil that does not pollute the air.
If our fearless leaders in bed with big oil actually wanted to help big oil, they'd be propping up prices to stop them from falling so low.
This is all about supply and demand. The summer road trip season is over. The economic downturn since 9/11 really cut into people's travel plans. Sucks to be you if you built a new refinery during the $2/gal gas days and it's just coming online now.
Ancient chinese secret, eh...?
This was a sarcastic exaggeration of the flawed motivation of its parent.
The original "Screw the Arabs" assertion (which ignored the myriad of other uses of petroleum and the difficulty of convincing industries to act for the greater payoff to civilization) was modded up while this hint to read more carefully was modded underground. This all in a few minutes, causing me to doubt how much consideration was exercised at all.
I miss kuro5hin.
E = MC^2 !
0 = ax^2 + bx + c !
s = s0 + vt +
Oh, wait, I've already got 50 karma.
Anyway, oil companies wouldn't have much to worry about. Well, they would, but it's not like the only thing we use oil for is to power our cars. There's plastics, there's airplanes until they switch over to something a little less nasty, fertilizers, all the common byproducts of oil refining.
Dyolf Knip
Ok lets say that in 5 years Crysler (Or Ford or GM Or whomever) puts out a van that runs on these fuel cells. Before I go out and buy one I want to know a few things:
1) Where do I go for fuel?
2) How much does it cost per mile for fuel?
3) When it breaks where do I get it fixed?
4a) When it needs a part where do I get it
4b) How long does it take for the parts to show up?
5) How much does it cost to insure?
In the US we are real good at Gas and Diesel fuel you can get them almost anywhere. And enough things run on them that getting spare parts and people who know how to fix the things is not hard. I have seen cars that run on Compressed Natural Gas, but there is no way in hell I would buy one. Why because there are like 3 places in all metro Boston that I can get CNG. Where as the 87 octane gas that my Saturn wants can be gotten anywhere.
Remember the cost of owning a car is not just the fuel prices.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
For example, engine output power will now be rated in scores of mule teams.
Here's a couple of links.
. pd f
r id e.html
http://espi-metals.com/msds's/sodiumborohydride
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/SO/sodium_borohyd
Here's what the article says about Sodium Borohydride...
"To solve those problems, Chrysler's system stores hydrogen in sodium borohydride powder, which is nonflammable and nontoxic"
Here's what the data sheets say...
"Stable, but reacts readily with water (reaction may be violent). Incompatible with water, oxidising agents, carbon dioxide, hydrogen halids, acids, palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts, glass. Flammable solid. Air-sensitive."
"Toxic by ingestion. Risk of serious internal burns if ingested. Harmful if inhaled and in contact with skin. May cause burns or severe irritation in contact with skin or eyes.
Toxicity data
(The meaning of any abbreviations which appear in this section is given here.)
ORL-RAT LD50 89 mg kg-1
SKN-RBT LD50 4000 mg kg-1
IPR-RAT LD50 18 mg kg-1
Risk phrases
(The meaning of any risk phrases which appear in this section is given here.)
R15 R25 R34."
Looks to me like big business is full of shit yet again.
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Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Some political pressure from the right people could potentially cut the time to market on this and similar products substantially.
"You have to ask yourself..."
Er, no. Because what *YOU* think about the evil of oil and gas doesn't count. Not one little bit. It's what Bush and his oil cronies think that counts... and what they think is that war and mid-East upset is well worth the cost. After all, not only do they get rich off the war itself, they get rich off the world's largest oil reserves, which just happen to require a pipeline to run through Afghanistan.
As long as your political system is owned and run by megacorporations, you can not reduce or eliminate your dependency on oil.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The thing that gets me is the energy has to come from some where. Everyone has been touting electric cars however you still have to plug them in to charge the batteries, well where does that energy come from, in the US it comes primarily from large coal burning power plants. Trust me coal burning is probably one of the dirtiest forms of producing energy, worse then oil or gas by far. So yes, our cars might be emitting less emissions but we haven't made any real progress if we are spewing out tons of coal burning byproducts just to generate the electricity.
My feeling is that we need to either harness solar power more effectively or other natural phenomena such as wind or wave. Maybe even Fusion has a chance eventually, regardless any of these methods will be considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
The U.S. auto industry and the U.S. oil industry are so tight that work has been slowed or delayed for decades on all-electric cars.
This makes a good story for movies in need of a bad buy but I've not seen any reason to believe it. As a matter of fact, no one in the industry (except the water injected carburator guy thats been in urban lore since the 40's), has ever accused big oil of maligning or hedging their work.
Its time to get out of fantasy land and into real life. Theres to many problems that need solving to get worked up over movie plots.
While this fuel-cell uses borax derivatives, I would be willing to bet money that any production fuel-cell based vehicles deployed in the U.S. use hydrocarbon-based cells
Its possible that this is a notion of the past. However, hydrocarbon fuel cells are non-puluting to California standards. So, I have no problem with it. After all, the energy has to come from somewhere no matter what transport agent is used.
Looks to me like big business is full of shit yet again.
You're invited to have a look at dhmo.org.
Humm, I had no idea we were viewed this way by the rest of the world. . .
"Hi, I'm from the United States."
"Oh, yes, big land of Borax!"
"Well, um, sure, I guess. . ."
The usual issues apply: finding a source for hydrogen, keeping the storage system and fuel cell from crudding up, and getting the system weight and cost down to manageable levels.
It's still at the "concept car" stage.
Every time I see a "X made from Y" I think of
-Guncotton is made from wood chips
-Sodium cyanide is made from salt
-Hydrochloric acid is made from salt
-Carbon monoxide is made from coal and air
NaBH4 is -nasty- stuff. You don't want to touch it, it will take the water right out of your skin. You don't want water near it until you want the hydrogen. It -burns-, too.
Probably less dangerous than gasoline, but it is NOT as innocuous as laundry detergent.
We were leaning towards Toyota's Prius, although Honda makes one too (the Insight, I believe). Can't speak for Honda, but Toyota is very serious about this, selling them cheap at about $25K (and you get to deduct $2000 on your Federal income taxes. Some states give you incentives, too). Obviously, they're hoping to make it up on market share (not like the dot-coms, I hope!) and maintenance. We test drove one and it was nice, with the pickup of a small V6, but it was uncanilly quiet -- your brain thinks you're coasting even when you're cruising or accelerating slightly. AT 50+ MPG and the tax deductions, we were hoping to come out ahead instead of maintaining our '94 Corolla.
...until our company laid my wife off. Damn recession. Still, the Prius is a pretty cool car. ;)
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Sounds promising. I wonder though, how long it takes to fuel up? Does the hydrogen simply get absorbed into the borax as easily as gasoline pours into a tank, or are we looking at minutes or hours to recharge the fuel supply?
I've gotta say, I love the idea of fueling stations that need nothing more than sunlight, water and a compressor to generate the product, though.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You have a good point here, since the final stage of energy production involves the production of water in large ammounts then why not recycle the water that you are creating and use it in the first reaction, thereby minimizing the size of the water tank required. In fact the size of the water tank would only need to be large enough to provide enough water to initiate the reaction since the final stage produces more than enough water for an ongoing reaction, plus or minus some for evaporation and other losses...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
And I'm still not sure where we're going to get all that hydrogen. In the US most of it is made with steam reformation of Natural Gas. This releases all the C02 from the methane into the atmosphere, and isn't particularly efficient either. Creating H2 with electricity is also possible but highly inefficient even when compared to the lowly lead-acid battery. Finally, where do we get our electricity from?... Oil and Coal. Back to where we started from. Watch out for the shell game folks!!!!
Still we have to do something about our oil gluttony. I think some better fuel efficiency standards would probably be the best thing.
My bottle has a big skull and crossbones on
it, right next to a little picture of a flame.
The text says: Contact with water liberates
highly flammable gasses. Toxic if swallowed.
Causes burns.
Sodium borohydride is a strong reducing agent!
It turns just about any metal cation (e.g. Fe+2,
Cu+2, etc.) into the metal!
According to the Merck, it also reduces:
aldehydes, ketones, acids, esters, acid chlorides,
disulfides, and nitriles. Ouch! Not exactly
inert or friendly. A mouthful of gasoline isn't
gonna kill you, but this stuff'll really do you in.
I don't see anything you've cited that indicates that the stuff is likely to blow up in a wreck. Gasoline is toxic, too, especially here in California where the air-quality geniuses have demanded that it include the carcinogenic MTBE.
I'd also point out that you don't often encounter palladium, ruthenium and other metal salts on your daily commute.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Work may have been slowed or delayed at the home office, but that's only because they're contracting it out. Total spending on such projects has been increasing every year, especially lately. In fact, it's made a couple of my friends rich... or at least rich enough to buy a house, and keep working on what they love.
riding on Segways in a couple years?
Otherwise we could all get our 50 karma by posting mathematics formulae, now couldn't we?
e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0 must be worth something..
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
The FAQ says:
The weight-energy storage is almost equivalent to gasoline. This means it generates about the same amount of energy per gallon of fuel as gasoline.
So, if this is true, wouldn't an electric car powered by this with fuel cells probably get better mileage than most gasoline cars? A gasoline engine is burning the fuel, giving up like 90% of it's energy in the form of heat. While fuel cells, and electric motors also produce heat, it's not nearly as much and a much larger percentage of the energy can be used for actually powering the vehicle.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
The are located right across the parkng lot.
They have been testing this engine thing for years
in many different cars.. even Suv's. Its totally silent at low speed since it runs off batteries.. once it runs out of juice or needs more horsepower the very small engine kicks on to power the electic system. Its realy wierd seeing a suv moving across the parking lot totally silent. Suposedly they also have regenerative braking hooked up as well. Everything runs off this soapy mixture (which I no know as borax.. ) the soapy mixture is put torhough a catalist which generate hydrogen on the fly hence there is no hydrogen stored in the car.
Upgrade kits aren't available yet, AFAIK, but are certainly possible. (Here's a golden oportunity for aftermarket car part companies!).
1) converting a carburator-equipped conventional car:
remove gas tank, gas filter, carburator;
replace with Hydrogen-on-demand unit with special adapter to replace carb with catlyst unit.
2) converting a fuel-injected conventional car:
remove gas tank, gas filter, fuel-injector system;
replace with Hydrogen-on-demand unit with special fuel injectors that handle hydrogen. The Electronic Control Unit would probably also have to be modified or replaced.
3) converting an electric car:
remove batteries, replace with Hydrogen-on-demand unit and fuel cells.
I couldn't agree more with your points - I'm all for (and have been for some time) finding alternatives to oil. Not so much for some blind need to "save the earth" (it's a lot cleaner than ever, but, shhhh, don't tell the screaming tree-huggers that, they'll have a baby) but to get off our dependency from countries that give us a smile to our faces and then preach hatred and outright lies about America all the while...all to keep people from looking too closely at their own little regime. It's time to yank that rug, ASAP - drill in ANWR in the meantime, but dump money and incentives into finding a comparable alternative.
Yeah, screw the hateful bastards. We don't need 'em, and they sure don't want us there - let's give them what many of them CLAIM they want, and yank our money and infrastructure out of there. See how good they do financially without us - BWHAHAHAHA. It's hard to generate any real wealth under a regime...unless you are just sitting on a goldmine like they are - if the need goes away, they are so screwed.
I read the blurbs on the Millenium website, but they don't answer two questions which seem important. Okay, this borax solution produces "hydrogen on demand" (TM), great. It leaves behind a safe, non-polluting, "recyclable" compound and emits no hydrocarbon exhaust. Sounds all hunky-dory.
Except a couple of nagging questions. Like, how do you recycle the waste product (sludge?) to make it usable again? You have to reintroduce hydrogen back into the waste product to make it usable again, but that hydrogen has to come from somewhere. They mention seawater as the potential source of hydrogen in this process. Okay, true, water is two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. But you have to expend energy to extract the hydrogen. Lots of it. Where does that energy come from? Power plants, most likely. Power plants that burn fossil fuels, for the most part.
From what I understand, it's more efficient to burn the fossil fuels directly in your car's engine than to burn it in a power plant, transmit the energy somewhere, store it in some sort of battery or fuel cell, and use that to power your car. Even if that's not the case, you still have to burn fossil fuels, nullifying the supposed benefit of this new "clean" technology. Plus, we're still beholden to "big oil".
The other question is, what happens to the waste product? I guess it would go into some sort of holding tank in your vehicle or something Does that mean you would have to not only fill your tank when you go to the borax station to refuel, you would also have to empty the waste tank?
Oh well, at least this seems more useful than cold fusion.
What fuel cells do for you is provide a better way to store energy. The energy still has to come from somewhere.
It gets even better. Sure, you can make a case that we only need a thimblefull of water. But we don't even need to store that water in a seperate tank! Notice that the reaction depends on a catalyst; in fact, without that catalyst, nothing happens at all. So, just dilute the fuel with a small (perhaps very small) percentage of water. And, of course, recapture water as was already mentioned. Problem solved?
I've had this sig for three days.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid /13691/story.htm
"Jacobson, in a presentation to the American Geophysical Union, said soot produced by burning diesel fuels, coal and wood had a much more severe impact on the environment relative to its mass than do greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane."
anything which lessen our dependence on Saudi Arabia and OPEC in general is a GOOD THING (TM)
>Here's what the article says about Sodium Borohydride...
>"To solve those problems, Chrysler's system stores hydrogen in sodium borohydride powder, which is nonflammable and nontoxic"
Aparently the article is wrong; the following is what Millenium's web page says:
"Q: How does Millennium Cell's Hydrogen on Demand(TM) system store and generate hydrogen?
A: Millennium Cell's Hydrogen on Demand(TM) system stores hydrogen in an innocuous water-based solution of sodium borohydride (NaBH4). This is a
benign, non-flammable solution that produces Hydrogen on Demand(TM); that is, only when exposed to a catalyst. When this solution, or fuel, comes into contact with the catalyst, hydrogen is released from the solution. When the fuel is not in contact with the catalyst, the solution is inert and no hydrogen is generated. After the solution has been in contact with the catalyst, the borohydride fuel is converted to a borate solution, which is collected in a waste tank. This borate solution is recyclable into new borohydride fuel."
Note that the anhydrous form (powder) is extremely reactive and corrosive. Ingesting the powder would cause severe internal burns because it violently sucks the water out of any flesh it comes in contact with (sounds painful!). But they say they use a "water-based solution". The solution, however, is not as reactive because it has already done the reaction with water, and needs a catalyst to continue breaking down into borax and hydrogen.
I'm curious, though, about how they form this solution in the first place.
Do you really want to put this in your car? I don't think so! The fact that it's similar to another chemical doesn't mean it has to have the same properties?! Just like you can say:
Toluene is not such a bad substance (it's found in ordinary petrol; as long as you don't drink or bathe in it), so toulene with three NO3 groups is just as safe. For the people who didn't get it: I'm talking 'bout trinitrotoluene(TNT)!
IMHO, The chance that this is going into production isn't that large.
I can see the ad campaign now...
The automobile needs to be redesigned from the ground up. We're still using the same basic design that Henry Ford popularized: cheap, bulky, easy to manufacture, and constructed mostly of steel. The average car weighs 20 times more than the driver. Right there, you cut efficiency of getting from point A to B by twenty-fold even if you had an impossible perfectly efficient engine. Obviously, there's a limit to how efficient a vehicle can be following law of diminishing returns as you try to make the vehicle and motor lighter. However, we're nowhere remotely near that point with the 99% inefficient metal beasts we drive today.
Food for thought: a 300lb. hybrid recumbent bike / motorcycle design, somewhat bullet shaped, made out of modern composite plastics with large crumple zones and a strong rollbar. It has interchangable wheels for different seasons (if necessary) and generally has a very low rolling resistance. The vehicle is powered by a 10hp electric motor, which (if the vehicle had no rolling or air resistance) and assuming a 200lb driver, would reach 35mph in 3.7s. Reasonably, lets say 6s, but less if you decide to help out by pedaling. Obviously the power source is the greatest weight. Fuel cells would be ideal, but even without, modern lithium ion batteries would be a decent replacement at 300W/kg power density and 100Wh/kg energy density. 10hp = 7460W, so you'd need about 55 pounds for the Li-Ion batteries. A 1000W solar array ($5000), will fully charge the batteries in about 3-4 hours in full sunlight. So now you have a very cheap vehicle which will last nearly forever (except the batteries and tires), require virtually no maintenance, and once paid for, be free to operate as long as you live somewhere with halfway decent sun-hours. Who wants to build one? (-;
The point you make about upgrading a centralised source to renewable making thousands of cars Green at once instead of having to upgrade every car is a good one. In addition, energy can be extracted in ways and from areas not practical within the car itself. You may put a solar cell on a car, but you can't take advantage of offshore wind or tidal power.
Phillip.
http://www.FutureEnergies.com/
Property for sale in Nice, France
The idea that's it inherently wrong to support fuel energy producers/distributors is insane on it's face, no matter who the president might be. The fact that GWB's family was in the oil business just makes it seem...errr...suspicious.
We all need to face one fact: until the energy needs of this nation are met in some other way, consistently and inexpensively, we will need oil to keep our economy moving at any pace.
All one has to do is consider, just for a mmoment, the inability of this nations's infrastructure to obtain the fuel necessary to transport goods and people (planes, traines and automobiles) and provide the electrical power to just survive in some basic fashion. That includes keeping food cold and fresh, keeping people on life-support systems alive, keeping our schools and job sites lit and, and allowing all of us here to sit on our arses and submit this stuff.
One can blindly blame the support of some politician towards oil companies for the lack of movement in developing new fuel sources. What I don't hear in this space is how the pressure from envionmental groups have nearly forced us into the dark ages, destroying our ability to build and operate nuclear power plants in this nation, the use of which would have gone a long way to reduce our need for fossil fuel.
Yes, I know the down side to that concept, especially in regards to disposal. But, we've come a long way technologically since the early days of nuke power, and there are other civilized nations (France, for example) who have been using it safely for nearly 40 years. Politicians in this nation are so frightened of the envionmental groups that they dare not breathe a word of support, lest they be accused of creating another China Syndrome or Chernoybl. Which is what 90% of this country views as the reality of nuke power, anyway.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
[they'd be propping up prices to stop them from falling so low]
Perhaps the conspiracy theory needs to be amended with an explanation that while the conspirators are clever enough to operate a vast network of wrongdoing without detection, they just aren't smart enough to figure out how to actually make oil prices go up. If I was one of these theoretical Big Oil execs with a bunch of politicians on the payroll, I'd fire them, they're doing a lousy job. I put gas in my car the other day for 98 cents a gallon.
On the other hand, perhaps we should consider the possibility that George W. just might have things on this *other* than oil companies.
I looked at getting one of those last year (the Honda anyway). Be aware the cargo (weight) capacity sucks out loud. IIRC, if you are carrying two adults you barely have any weight left for things like luggage.
I'll grant you that it would still be a sweet commuter vehicle, but I would want to own another "real" car as well.
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
I firmly believe energy corps/oil corps/whateva, are working on the next solution, its just still a toddler compared to its oil laden legacy.
-Malachi-
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
You know what this means?
ORL-RAT LD50 89 mg kg-1
89 mg of this chemical per kilogram of body weight is the LD50 (lethal dose to 50% of rats it was administered to orally).
(The funky bolding is to emphasize where each part fits in the LD specification.)
So, if a rat weighs 500g, there's a 50% chance that feeding it 44.5 mg (a very tiny amount) of this stuff will kill it.
Extrapolating this to an 80 kg (176-pound) human, ingesting only 7.12g of this chemical should be enough for a 50% chance of death (assuming it has the same toxicity to humans as rats).
All in all, pretty nasty stuff.
...is the recyclability of the reaction products. The remanufacture of the fuel could be coupled to solar, wind, or nuclear generation at the source, meaning that all of that industrial plant could be put wherever it is best sited, whether distributed or centralized.
(This reminds me of the "nuplexes" that James Hogan wrote of, which not only produce steel from ore but send cogenerated electricity *out* insted of taking vast amounts of it in.)
The petroleum companies have put all that money to good use - hiring lots of really smart people, and preparing for diversification when the time comes. They'll be happy to sell you whatever energy medium is in fashion. They didn't get rich by being dumb.
... Huge chunks of taxes will disappear some day, and most of them really aren't prepared for that situation. That will be an ugly situation.
On the other hand you can expect to see several US states collapse when the oil business finally goes away. Oklahoma, Texas, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Ever hear of biodiesel? It's diesel manufactured from vegetable oil that normal diesel engines can use with no modifications and no increase in wear and tear. You can buy it in 55 gallon drums for about $4.50 a gallon, plus delivery. The stuff can also be mixed with regular diesel in any percentage, and of course reduces pollution. $5 a gallon isn't much higher than fuel prices in Europe, AND if this product was mass produced it would be cheaper anyway.
The problem isn't necessarily that oil companies are trying to stomp out alternative fuels. They're just established. Petroleum transportation, refineries, and and stations all exist. Alternative fuels require massive investments for initial production, transportation, and sales... it would take years before they could hope to compete with petroleum prices.
Big oil doesn't have to compete. They've already one. Unless the government intervenes in a big way (always a very mixed blessing), alternative fuels won't be big in our lifetime.
It's not so much that W's family was in the oil business as the fact that Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton.
And for those who don't keep track of such things, oil prices are in the toilet because Russia is bringing new production online like they're Texas in the 20's, despite OPECs calls for a cut to raise prices. Russia now has the lowest cost-per-barrel and they know that they can win a price war with anyone, and be sitting very pretty when some other producers close up shop (especially ones with high costs-per-barrel like many places in the U.S.) and the price bounces back to $30.
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
... there will be bubbles, instead of carbon monoxide coming out of the exaust pipe?
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Since we are waving around MSDS data, it might be instructive to take a look at the MSDS for regular unleaded gasoline.
The oral LD50 in rats is approximately 5ml/kg.
INGESTION:
Because of the low viscosity of this substance, it can directly enter the lungs if it is swallowed (this is called aspiration). This can occur during the act of swallowing or when vomiting the substance. Once in the lungs, the substance is very difficult to remove and can cause severe injury to the lungs and death.
More scary MSDS stuff:
This product presents an extreme fire hazard. Liquid very quickly evaporates, even at low temperatures, and forms vapor (fumes) which can catch fire and burn with explosive violence. Invisible vapor spreads easily and can be set on fire by many sources such as pilot lights, welding equipment, and electrical motors and switches.
The point is, gasoline is an inherently dangerous substance, probably much more so than the proposed borate solution.
In spite of that, we have devised means of handling it that make the risk manageable, and that is what we will do here as well. So if the concept is ultimately rejected, safety is the least likely reason IMO.
Will it get 20 Mule-Power?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
These Hybrid Cars are cool. I own a 1992 Honda Civic VX. It was rated at 48 City and 52 Highway. I have gotten as high as 60 MPG. And it is a roomy car for a subcompact. Now days except for the hybrids you can not get a car with that good of gas mileage. Is that due to low gas prices? There are a lot of things one can do to improve gas mileage in cars, and the technology is not new.
Won't somebody think of the children?
Unintended consquences.
"NaBH4 can be made from sodium borate -- basic borax, used in laundry detergent."
Shouldn't the headline be
Chrysler Announces Soap-Powered Van ?
Many fuel cells have a by-product of heat to the tune of 600 degrees or more! If you were really crazy you could make hydrogen form water by using electrolysis, and a little electricity and the byproduct would be Oxygen. I have seen plans to use Ammonia as a fuel for the fuel cell. There are as many types as there are imagination. Often they make electricity from Hydrogen which requires thin membranes plated with patinum. Another type is made from a crystal tube that is reated up to radiate heat and then uses thermo solar electric conversion. In other words they make electricity from heat. They look like a giant vacum tube or a small drum. Pure electric cars that you have to charge are a complete flop. The EV1 uses Nickel Metal Hydride batteries and can only get up to 130 miles in good weather with no wind or hills. The batteries cost $10,000.00 and weigh 1,000lbs. It would be easier to make an electric car with a battery system and a backup generator that kicks on whenever the charge falls. this would prevent the battery from loosing its charge. If you are going to charge batteries anyway, why not use a solarpanel for a roof to charge the batteries while it is in the parking lot. You wont have trouble finding the sunny spot; Hee Hee, Everyone else will park under the trees. On a van you could probably put 4 solar panels on the roof for faster changing and run a little exhaust fan of the extra juice. I was thinking of a perpetual motion car that could make energy by a wind turbine hooked to a 3 phase generator or 2 or 3. a single shaft could propel several generators theorhetically. As you go down the road this would create some drag, but at 50 miles an hour you get plenty of wind to make the car go. Dual shaft Brushless DC motors could be hooked up to a transmission so the other shaft sticks out to run an alternator or charging system. Which could charge the batteries also. They make wind turbines that can spin up to 120 miles an hour, and can activate at 7 miles an hour. They slow them seves down when they go too fast. The possiblities are endless. The problem is people are not able to think outside of the box! It is too easy to keep doing things the same way because that is the easy way.
Ok, here's something I can actually comment on with some authority, since I'm a chemist. Sodium borohydride itself is not that bad. You don't eat it (would you eat gasoline?), and the biggest concern is its water reactivity, which is moderate (think baking soda + vinegar... this is a little more reactive, but by no means as bomb waiting to go off). I've worked with the stuff on numerous occasions -- you can weigh the white powder out on a balance with no extra precautions over what you normally use to handle lab chemicals. The thing is, they're talking about a WATER SOLUTION of NaBH4, which eliminates the main problem in the first place.
Yes, it's a chemical, people. Yes, it can emit hydrogen bubbles under the right conditions. That's kind of the point. At first blush, this is one of the safer sources of hydrogen I've seen discussed.
Since you're delving into MSDS's, take a look at another sodium compound: sodium chloride. Did you know that you have an inhalation hazard in your kitchen cupboard?
-john
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= John Reinert Nash -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The kicker is re-charging the borax with hydrogen. It will cost more energy than the charged borax produces to re-charge it.
The fuel cell is *NOT* an energy source. If you think it is then you are eligible for an Ignoble prize for reinventing the perpetual motion machine. It is an energy transducer, from chemical to electrical. What it does provide is a means of using energy in a mobile application.
If we build nuclear power plants, we could use the electricity produced to electrolize water and produce hydrogen. Thus we would have a way to increase our energy supply by using nuclear technology. Thus we could transition to a nuclear based energy economy , which would include, indirectly, mobile applications.
rm -rf microsoft*
They stop pumping oil and BANGO! - no more vaseline. The conclusion is obvious. Big Oil represents the shine in your palm. Hydrogen's got nothing on that.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
See here and here.
The Sinclair C5 was a plastic-bodied electric trike with pedal assist, and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing at one point. But, nobody bought it. It was about an order of magnitude cheaper than what you're suggesting, too.
Basically, a car has to be a certain minimum size to be useful to people. Even the existing subcompact cars are too small for 99% of the public. For most Americans, it has to hold 4 people and their luggage. A trike has no chance in the market whatsoever.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Low gas prices today are instrumental in ensuring continued dependency tomorrow.
They need to make Gasoline look more economically attractive and viable while all this "fuel cell" and "solar power" nonsense blows over.
Last year, after my third rolling blackout, I was seriously considering selling some stock-options to buy some solar panels for my house. If they were going to jack up prices and reduce reliability, then FUCK the power companies, they can buy power from ME at their spot market prices.
Unfortunately, I delayed just long enough for the market to crash, and make it rather unattractive, as the power crisis disappeared.
And I'm sure there are power company execs (like the ones at Enron that got $200k bonuses this quarter prior to their bankruptcy) who are breathing sighs of relief.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Don't forget the little "unplanned criticality" accident in Japan two years ago.
Fuck man, accidents happen no matter how careful you are. It's okay when an oil refinery catches fire. Maybe it sucks a lot when a tanker spills it's guts on pristine shoreline. Maybe it sucks a WHOLE lot when we have to bomb some uppity dictator into submission to keep them from clenching the supply line. But it's sure a hell of a lot better than watching a populated area get turned into an uninhabitable wasteland for the next 12,000 years. And if you reply to say that Kiev is inhabitable, then why don't you prove it by moving there, and raising a load of kids. Leukemia anyone? Thyroid cancer anyone?
The only thing fission power does is prove how prone humans are to screwing up, because when (not if) screw ups happen, they're of tremendously huge proportions.
We have to ask ourselves why these accidents happen. It's easy to point fingers to a profit-hungry power company cutting safety corners to pad the bottom line and the CEO's bonus - but if you look at Chernobyl, that wasn't the case because we're talking about a state-run institution. Sure - safety measures were in place, but laughably inadequate. At the end of the day, whether it's private enterprise, or state-run, someone's going to cut corners, and even when they don't cut corners, someone's going to screw up, and even when everyone is doing their best, some religions fanatic hijacks a plane, and even when airline security is tight, an earthquake happens.
My point is, no matter how careful we are, no matter how infinitesmally small we reduce the probability of an accident, the deal is - the CONSEQUENCES of this kind of accident are so profound as to be unacceptable to any person with the facility of reason.
The same is not the case of every other method of power generation. Proponents like to discuss safety in terms of the chance of an accident. I'm saying they need to forget about chance, and think about the consequences, because accidents happen and it's always only a matter of time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Two large borohydrate vehicles have collided on I-80. More than 6 people are presumed clean. Responding emergency vehicles have already begun the dirty up the scene, after a 30 ft stretch of the highway was rendered spotless. Bubbles have obscured visibility for 2 miles in either direction.
Seriously, this stuff sounds a lot LESS dangerous than fossil fuels, we don't have to import it. And the basic fuel component is recyclable?
Lee
Who's tired of sitting on his hands...
[Low gas prices today are instrumental in ensuring continued dependency tomorrow]
:-)
Ah... so if prices are high, it must be because of a conspiracy. If prices are low, it must be because of a conspiracy
Conspiracies might or might not exist. But I don't think that high or low prices per se are evidence of anything.
The comment about Enron execs and bonuses is right on, although it has nothing to do with the industry they are in. It often appears that large publicly traded companies are operated more for the benefit of top management than for the benefit of the owners (stockholders). As someone who owns some stock but it not an executive at a large firm, this annoys me.
Unlike some other conspiracies, the automobile/oil industry ones have some interesting history. I'd say it's more like interesting food for though, and it's not from some paranoid kook either --I'm not one to believe in paranoid conspiracies, new age cures, faith healing, visits from intelligent extra-terrestrials, mysticism, etcetera. I do however believe in sunshine (anti-backroom) laws, fair competition (through iron handed regulation if necessary, and good public policy.
Michael Parenti in Democracy for the Few (6th Ed.)[1] writes about some disturbing observations. The energy frugality of mass-transit was so "undesirable" to the oil and auto industries" that "[f]or over a half-century their response has been to undermine th nation's rail and electric-bus system."
The undermining of Los Angeles's 1935 "75-mile radius" "3,000 quiet, pollution-free electric trains [carrying"80 million people a year" was carried out by:
He follows up with the influence of cars, extended references of death rates --"2x accumulated number of Americans killed in all the wars ever fought by the United States"", urban air pollution, massive automobile land use, "$300 billion annual subsid[ies]", while "...mass transit--the most efficient, cleanest, and safest form of transporting goods and people" is abandoned. (p. 106)
I believe the money used "to subsidize automobile use" can be viewed, from one perspective, as an example of an economic freeloader. As auto companies undermine mass transit, thus using public dollars (which they only pay a fraction of) to fund expensive automobile public infrastructure.
I particularly like how he states that "[g]iven the absence of alternative mods of transportatoin, people become dependent on the automobile as a way of life so that their need for cars is often as real as their need for jobs." The economic burden of autos is pretty high for most americans. It's not like a $1000 tv, or $300 bike. It's a monthy loan payment, and then it's a bi-annual insurance payment, and finally its massive social/tax/healthcare cost from the "46,000 people killed" and "2,000,000 people injured" in traffic accidents. It makes wonder if the Segway could make a dent into this automobile entity we all have to live with?[24][25]
_____ >Parenti's footnotes<
23. Jonathan Kwitny, "The Great Transportation Conspiracy,"in Cargan and Ballantin (eds.), Sociological Footprints, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1982)
24. Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992); Andrew Kimbrell, "Car Culture: Driving Ourselves Crazy,"Washington Post September 3, 1989. Kimbrell notes that fatality statistics may be too low since they do not include deaths that occur several days after accidents or off-road.[2] he points out that motor vehicles kill easily one million animals each day, making road kills second only to the meat industry. More deer are killed by cars than by hunters.[3]
25. Kimbrell, "Car Culture" >/Parenti's footnotes<
_____
1. "a major voice among political progressives"...Ph.D from Yale...lectures frequently at college campuses across the country." --[from back cover]
2. My grandfather died because of accident related complications =(
3. Animal rights activists will have a hard time stopping consumers from driving though, considering how car ownership is ingrained. And/or how convenient it is.
Being a user of Mass Transit however I can assure you that the reason it isn't more widely used is twofold.
1) A personal car is a personal freedom. People will not give that up. This isn't a dependency created by the hedging of mass transit, its a dependancy on "I want to leave for Aunt Maude's on Saturday or Sunday and not make any stops on the way".
2) Mass Transit doesn't work in urban Sprawl. If Aunt Maude is in Talamazoo Ohio, its doubtful we would econimicaly get meaningful service between there and Columbus.
Recently (1992) a small town in Southern California called "San Diego" was honored for creating a mass transit system that was sooo economical that it recouperated 70-80% of its costs.
I wonder what that means in a free market system, where it costs more to ride the bus than it costs to put money in my car and drive to work. Now granted I don't use the buses in San Diego.
However, I am a major supporter of Mass Transit. Especially for the purposes of commuting daily routines. I agree with your evidence that they were maligned, but that is on grounds entirely different than electrical personal trasportation vehicles.
An interesting limit shows up in research over the past few decades. With all the increased conjestion, the average commute time is still about a half an hour. Why hasn't it gone up? Well becuase people seem to take action at about that point.
That to me suggests a tolerated limit of transportation time. On a bus, a half an hour's journey is litteraly 4-5 miles. Maybe 15 miles if you are lucky enough to be on an express route. That means that you need quite some density before Mass transit is tolerable in America. I support the new "Smart Development" happening in many cities where density is increased in waves starting from a town center, rather than continuing sprawl. That is really the key factor in making a mass transit system work.
However, that kills peoples desire for Land. Oh well, you can't have it all unless you live in New Mexico.
In any case, we were talking about Electical Vehicles which do not suffer from the problems of Mass transit, and have no identifiable signs of malicious tampering from Big Oil, etc...
Proponents do discuss both. But chance is as important as consequences. Look at it this way:
- Method A has a death rate of 1000 per accident and a 0.01% accident per unit of production. Result over time: 10 deaths per unit of production.
- Method B has a death rate of 10 per accident and a 1% accident per unit of production. Result over time: 10 deaths per unit of production.
Now you would automatically eschew Method A because it causes more deaths, but over time they are the same. This is the reason why air travel is safer than car travel, but appears not to be. An airplane crashes and hundreds dies. A car crashes and a couple die, but more cars crash than planes.Nuclear power has the same problem plus the added bonus of fear. Quick, which exposed people who lived five miles from the Japanese accident you mentioned to more radiation: their most recent medical X-ray or the accident? Yet this is far and away the worst accident in a modern, industrialized nation, slightly edging out TMI (TMI had no immediate deaths, Tokaimura did). Only one other accident (excepting Chernobyl, about which see below) has caused immediate death: SL-1 in the US. This despite the fact that several nations get signficant amounts of power from nuclear power.
The Chernobyl accident is the worst case you can show and it is not a very good anti-nuclear case for two reasons:
- Causes
- Effects
Let's look at causes: While the trigger was a human error the reasons it were so bad are all DESIGN issues that were possible only in an enviroment like the old USSR:- There was no containment beyond the piping. Unlike western reactors which are first put in reinforced concrete building and the use an multi-layered containment system to separate fuel from coolant Chernobyl was in basically a sheet metal shed and ran individual pipes over individual fuel rods.
- Chernobyl was designed such that loss of coolant increased reactor power. Western reactors use coolant that aids reaction (ie, is a moderator) so if it is lost the reactor begins to shutdown, leaving residual heat to be delt with. Because of design the water cooling Chernobyl retarded reactions and a loss of coolant sped up the plant.
- Chernobyl's control systems required both computer control at all times, were not passively regulating (ie, things like loss of power to the plant drops the rods and such), and were such that the reactor had to increase reaction rate during shutdown.
To give a comparison imagine building a car that when faster before slowing when you hit the brakes, had independent for acceleration, steering, and braking on each wheel, and the passenger front controls were done automatically by computer in response to your actions on the other three. How long would it be before you crashed? And when you crashed you had just an open frame and no seat belt. Would that be enough to get rid of cars?As to effects, Kiev is habitable and if you find me a job I'll be happy to move there. Correct action can minimize the effects of an accident in the immediate term, it is possible to decon much of the exposure, andrelatively short amounts of time are required for decomposition of the most dangerous radioactives (on the order of 30 years, not 12,000). The longer lived radioactives are less radioactive per unit by definition (higher radioactivity means more decays per unit time so the half life must be shorter) and generally are less dangerous when external, being dangerous when ingested. While clearing topsoil is not picnic it is arguably easier than the cleanup of an oil spill because it is easier to use large machinery to match the scale.
What this means is that consequences, while worse, are not irreversible and can, depending on management of the technologies can result in less consequences over a given time period than competing ones even if the individual events are worse.
Herb
Again, feel free to sentence me to death if my questions annoy you. I'll come back in 5 minutes anyway. -Sythi
NPR's All Things Considered did a segment on DeBeer's single-handed building of a commodity market. Visit the web page, or listen to the segment via RealAudio.
What's this Submit thingy do?
companies may be slow to change, but they dont get to be big companies by rejecting it completely.
-
Is your electric reclined bike going to be a 3-foot sphere of bubble wrap? No, it's going to be a hard plastic shell, and its only padding will be on the seat, so how is this relevant?
To answer your question, though, I'd MUCH rather be in the indestructible steel box, because if I'm in the bubble wrap, I'm going to be either crushed under the semi or subjected to far higher acceleration, because the bubble wrap and I together have only a tiny fraction of the mass of the steel box and I together. When the same amount of force is applied to a much lighter object, it gets accelerated proportionately more.
In ANY head-on collision, mass DOES help, because the lighter object will tend to get knocked backwards, while the heavier object is only slowed down. The lighter object undergoes much higher acceleration. To use your example, would you rather be in the bubble wrap, or the 18-wheeler?
Now, in a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler, a bridge abutment, or some other very massive object , it may not make as much of a difference what you're driving, because the super-massive object isn't really going to yield. But, in a collision with anything else, yes, size does matter. And most collisions are with other cars.
As a real-world example, my aunt was sideswiped by a big truck, which mashed her and her car into a guard rail. She came out of it without serious injury, because she was driving her company's full-sized Caprice station wagon, and it had enough mass, structural strength and crush room to absorb the impact before it got to her. They told her that if she had been in an economy car, there is no question that she would have been killed.
All other things being equal, bigger cars ARE safer.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Isn't it funny how often things that Americans call impossible are implemented successfully by other countries.
Nice try but no-one said it wasn't possible especialy Americans. You could add New York Subway, Chicago L-train, etc as successful mass transit systems. And they are in the USA.
Historicaly, and economicaly they simply aren't viable below certain population densities. And remember I am not against mass transit, I use it myself even when a 20 minute commute becomes and hour and a half. I am against people who raise it as a false flag.
Get Facts, get them straight, and please come again...
Hehe. At the same time, Dihydrogen Monoxide is also an inhalation hazard. :) It takes easily less than 100ml to kill you if inhaled.
:)
But then, your lungs aren't terribly resilient to much of anything when you inhale any number of substances, are they?
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
It's worth noting that pure water doesn't harm the environment, so it's no great sin to just dump it overboard, now is it? :)
What a silly question.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
So, let me get this right?
This is a car that produces "soap" instead of exhaust.
Do you realize how this will revolutionize gearheadding?
Pull into the gargage, open the hood, give her a tune up.
Now just revv the snot out of the motor and clean up the mess.
Improve on that if you dare!
-=-
-=-
Actually, due to very restrictive laws placed on major automobile manufacterors, it *may* (note the emphasis on may) be economicaly justified to destroy them. In the depression, while everyone was starving large piles of oranges were lit on fire becuase it was more expensive to ship them than to burn them.
And the Corbin Sparrow is my personal favorite. I had a co-worker that owned one, and they are very nice. And profitable from what I have heard.
You may not have heard that there is a theory that oil fields are self replenishing. The theory is actually more intense than that and is about life deep inside earth (deeper than you might imagine). Check out this posting. The guy that came up with the theory is Thomas Gold. He's a nobel laureate and he wrote a book about it called , The Deep Hot Biosphere. Here's an overview of his theory. I can't find the original article I read about this. But that article went on to say that this is a new field for Gold and his last theory which proved to be true had the same initial reaction as this one. He's usually booed and hissed and heckled off the podium when he presents his work at the conferences. No respect I tell ya!
Oops! He's not a Nobel laureate. I found Tom's bio. Click his name in the upper left corner of that page to check out his current work.