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Environmentally Friendly Race Cars, Military Vehicles
jackelfish writes "The non-profit organization IdéeVerte Compétition has created a 'space age' race car that runs on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (propane or butane) and is lubricated with sunflower oil. Sponsored by the European Space Agency, the car recently broke the 'LPG powered vehicle' speed record of 315 km/h. The car also utilizes space technologies such as a titanium fuel tank, heat shielding developed for the Ariane launch vehicles and an EGNOS satellite navigation system to determine the speed, acceleration and position of the car in real-time." And reader gkbarr writes "Is the DoD feeling the crunch of sky-high gasoline prices or are they being overrun by a bunch of Greens? Who cares, the latest Humvee looks to be a more capable and greener machine than its predecessors."
"Is the DoD feeling the crunch of sky-high gasoline prices or are they being overrun by a bunch of Greens? Who cares, the latest Humvee looks to be a more capable and greener machine than its predecessors."
I don't see any evidence of a shift at the DoD. Of course, increasing gasoline prices negatively impact anyone with vehicles - but if you want to save money due to gasoline prices, there are things you can do today.
For instance, government fleet vehicles could be hybrids. "But hybrids cost more, so the savings is negligable!". That's true... at TODAY'S fuel prices. But since fleet vehicles have a 3 year life (within the fleet), and since Wall Street says that gasoline prices will rise 40-50% within the next two years, a move to hybrids will cause the real cost of operating the fleet to fall dramatically.
Or, more fleet vehicles could go with LNG. The US has a lot of natural gas, and NG's price is a bit more stable than oil's price.
Right now, whenever you fill up your car with gas, remember that half the profits go directly to the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other terror-supporting states. In fact, they make enough money with these profits to do things like build nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran admits it is. Other countries haven't admitted it (Iraq, Saudi Arabia), but there is no reason to believe they aren't (or haven't) gone down that road covertly.
And for just that reason alone, LNG, with it's low and stable pricetag, is a compelling alternative to traditional gasoline.
Fleet vehicle operations cost the US taxpayer billions of dollars a year. Shouldn't these vehicles promote US policy and strive to reduce taxpayer costs?
We're not talking about taking away your car - we're talking about making some government beaurocrat's official vehicle much cheaper to run, and keeping US dollars here (and out of the middle east).
Is it just me or is 315km/h not very impressive?
I live in Poland (where car drives you) and people often modify their cars to use LPG instead of petrol (actually the car can run on both fuels).
The car loses some of its horsepower, but I've been driving at almost 200km/h on LPG myself, so I see no reason to employ space technology to go 50% faster.
..but all other solar/electric/natural fuel powered vehicles crawl slower than snails.Usually never more than 80-100kmph.
For these cars to be be commercially viable for production, the speed has to be near 200 kmph.Thats more than enough for most people.I think speed is one of the reasons why these cars don't sell.
Lord of the Binges.
There is research done in this direction (not by the DOD I would assume) - each piece of equipment has an "environmental backpack" which consists of the emissions generated and the resources used during it's research and development. Obviously, this is not exactly an easy thing to define clearly, or for that matter to measure. Also, the emissions generated during it's usage are typically considered more important simply due to the fact that the environmental backpack is a fixed cost (per item) while otherwise the emissions increase with usage. I guess (but don't know) the direct emissions of, say, a car are greater than the backpack emissions after a few months of average usage.
This all applies very much to computer parts, which have a relatively huge backpack compared to their direct emissions (ie. by power consumption): Recent research by the German-based Wuppertal Institute as part of a large-scale investigation of Digital Europe showed that a 200g handheld computer requires the equivalent of 58 kilograms of raw materials in its manufacture, a massive overhead that we rarely think about. (from an undated article)
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What's so good about running on liquified hydrocarbons? They're *still* producing CO2 on burning! This may better the dependency on oil, but it still doesn't solve the main problem of CO2 production!
What we need is cars running with hydrogen, which gives water on burning and which can be made from water:
1) H2O -(solar/wind/water energy)-> H2 + 0.5O2
2) H2 + 0.5O2 --> H2O + kinetic energy
The perfect cycle!
Haha, is there anything more harmful to it's environment than a military vehicle?
Several million soccer moms in Ford Explorers averaging 11-14mpg might qualify.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Is there anything more inaccurate than sweeping generalizations?
The new Humvee looks similar to the APC from Aliens. Granted the picture of the new humvee is in its travel mode, but there are still some obvious similarities.
The wheels look *very* similar. Also the low, compact, angular chassis with no protrusions - the "Aliens" APC was a design which would actually make sense for air transport to a combat zone (which of course was its role in the movie).
Freedom: "I won't!"
However, if people did not go out and purchase these vehicles and new technologies then we would all still be driving around in Model T Fords.
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The issue is not the purchase of new vehicles, the issue is the timing of the purchase and what is done with the old vehicle. As old vehicles wear out and are disposed of at the end of their natural life cycle they will, of course, be replaced by a new vehicle, preferably a "better" one than the old. The tide of technology can still move forward at a sustainable rate.
There are those, however, who advocate dispossing of (not reselling used, which is what happens to your old car when you buy a new hybrid; dispossing of) older, but still perfectly operational, vehicles and replacing them with new ones. In fact, many of them wish to mandate this.
I, for one, would not shed a tear if we got rid of 90% of all the cars, period, but I'm afraid I can only think of those people as ignorant twits. The ignorant part would be curable, if it weren't for the twit part.
I'm also likely willing to interpose my body as a living baricade between the crusher and the Bugatti T35, or even Ford Model T.
That said, perhaps we all should be driving the Model T. .
I've driven a few, and it is still a perfectly viable automobile for the sort of driving most people do, most of the time, given a few modern improvements. The latest technology often goes far beyond what would be perfectly sufficient, but at least it often costs a lot more (there are, of course, cases where the newer technology costs a lot less).
Note that Henry F. once made a Model T prototype from locally grown soybean oil plastic, and powered it with locally produced corn alcohol. His vision was a local farm produced infrastructure, so maybe we should all be driving Model Ts.
John D. had another idea, however.
People are People and they like shiny new things.
Which is exactly why no special, government mandated, accelerated program to replace older cars is needed in the first place, and they can leave those few of us that prefer older, classic things the hell alone.
KFG