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Modified Prius gets up to 180 Miles Per Gallon
shupp writes "The NY Times (free reg. required) reports in that some folks are not content with the no-plug-in rule that both Honda and Toyota endorse. By modifying a Prius so that it can be plugged in, Ron Gremban of CalCars states 'I've gotten anywhere from 65 to over 100 miles per gallon'. The article also reports that 'EnergyCS, a small company that has collaborated with CalCars, has modified another Prius with more sophisticated batteries; they claim their Prius gets up to 180 mpg, and can travel more than 30 miles on battery power.'"
More importantly, why has Honda/Toyota decided not to adopt these as factory options?
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
They've secretly replaced the gas with Folgers crystals. Let's see if they notice.
"By modifying a Prius so that it can be plugged in...
;-)
The 180 miles per gallon must be some extremely tough-to-calculate average since a car that's plugged in can only go as far as the power cord (unless they got a really , really, really long power cord
This is misleading. Is it 180mpg sustained? On a 10gal tank of gas, will it go 1800 miles??
Obviously not. Adding extra batteries and charging them up will let the car initially give better "mileage"; heck, in the first 20-30 miles it may give infinite mpg because it is not burning any fuel. But the true measure of mpg is sustained travel over a long distance under somewhat realistic conditions (like city driving or highway driving).
I'm not trying to bash what these guys have done - but isn't plugging it in and then looking at MPG very decieving?
On the other hand, it would be interesting to see how the $/mile stack up to see whether or not a plugged in prius can be more efficient in terms of cost.
It's idiotic to give a "miles per gallon" figure when you don't include the cost of producing the electricity you use to recharge the battery.
Well, okay, "free" in the sense that I've already paid for the solar setup -- but with oil prices rising, I suspect charging a car from my solar cells would make them pay for themselves a couple years ahead of schedule.
And before the eco-kooks chime in that it's electric and so cleaner, it's not. The article point out that 60% of the country's electricity comes from burning dirtier coal. Much like hydrogen powered cars really just shift the polution to a very wasteful and poluting production of hydrogen away from the car, the plug in car talked about here may not be bringing any real benefit. We need real numbers to know if it is, and they are not given.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What is the cost of the energy required to charge the batteries?
What is the cost of disposing of the batteries once they have become unusable (which they will)?
How much additional energy (regardless of source) is consumed by hauling the substantial extra weight of the batteries?
Are the people who are doing this also pressing for more nuclear energy plants?
Certainly. The same oil companies that tricked John DeLorean into buying cocaine, squashed the 500-mpg carburator, and killed the genius who invented the car that would run on snot.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Could it be that us Americans LOVE a nice beefy engine loaded with top end horse power?? I mean, you need to keep it fed with fuel right. And thus, we consume oil knowingly
So what's wrong if the oil companies what to sell us their product in a free market?
Life is not for the lazy.
In TFA, it said the price of adding plug-in tech was $3,000 to a hybrid vehicle. However, to recoup that $3,000 would require you to save about 1,300 gallons of gas (at 2.25/gal). If you were getting 50MPG, and bumped it up to 100MPG, you'd have to drive at least 130,000 miles to recoup it - and that doesnt even count the fact that you'd be spending money on electricity, that would only increase the amount of miles driven.
It can help in other ways, perhaps the power plant where you are getting the electricity from is cleaner burning (or nuclear) than your car, and it reduces overall air pollution.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote: "My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!"
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
So? You have limited emissions to a very few sources, instead of having to worry about tens of thousands of catalytic converters and pollution control systems. It is a lot easier to deal with one or very few sources.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The secret is to only drive downhill.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Still, it's a claim to be approached cautiously. Perhaps improved batteries can improve hybrid milage -- but by a factor of 3? In any case, the "up to" is a hint that this is one of those meaningless "gee whiz" statistics, as with "The IQ of Slashdot users is as high as 300."
At approximately 112000 BTU/gallon of gasoline that's about 33kWh/gal. In California where the prices are about $0.12/kWh electric, it costs you about $4.00/gallon saved. With gas prices at about $2.40 in CA that's about $1.60 extra per gallon saved.
For those of you who say "fuel savings at any cost" consider that most of the california electricity is generated by burning natural gas, and that there are considerable losses involved in generating and transmitting the electricity.
Nothing to see here at the moment. Wait until the price of gas goes to $5.00 and then buy some solar panels to charge your car (or at least net-meter your electricity).
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
Of course I didn't RTFA, that's cheating.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I saw a French research company that is making cars run off of compressed air. Using a Carbon-fibre based compressed air canister, the PSI in the tank is about around 3500 or 3800. There is enough air in the tank to drive about 130 to 180 km @ 60 KM/H.
This is really interesting. The technology is out now. And, AFAIK, this form of transportation is emmissionless.
Just as a curiosity, though, why type of hybrid technologies do we have for *airplanes*. Our economy relies so heavily on planes that we need to find alternatives. IANA-Engineer, but I doubt a 747 would run on solar.
Don't be silly. Just because it's not using gas doesn't mean that it's not using oil, or some worse form of energy conversion (it's noookular). How do you think the electricity gets made when you plug it into the wall? Just because you can plug it in, doesn't mean it's better than burning gasoline.
You'll have that sometimes...
I don't understand this argument. If this were the case, why are big, heavy, and above all else *slow* SUVs selling so well? I'd say it's a 'bigger is better' syndrome more so than having anything to do with real power.
A MazdaSpeed Protege will sprint to 60 in 6.9 seconds, gets 30 miles to the gallon on the highway, and does this with a 2.0L engine. It's hard to say that's not relatively 'beefy.'
It's a bit of an extreme example, sure, but the H2 which seems to be selling like mad is just as extreme in the other direction - you'd be amazingly lucky to see 60 inside of 9 seconds, while burning up over twice as much fuel.
I think saying that Americans have an obsession with power is a bit of a cop out. It's an obsession with size, plain and simple.
65 - 100 miles per gallon is:
17.17 - 26.42 miles per litre,
27.63 - 42.51 km per litre,
3.619 - 2.352 litres per 100km, or about
LXXVIII - CXXI stadions per sester,
depending on what measuring system you like.
I beg to differ, while oil is still a significant power source, that outlet could still be powered by solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, or even nuclear power.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
The book "The Bottomless Well" noted that if you get batteries good enough, meaning light enough and small enough volume, able to travel for a normal day's travel (say 250 miles) & inexpensive enough, to fit in a car that you can potentially drop your cost per mile for power to 10% of that using gasoline today.
How? Off peak power now at night (when stationary power plants would love to sell you power) is $.03-$.04 per KWHr, versus about $.40/kwhr for gasoline.
Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALTI) received 2 patents on a way to make Li-ion batteries that charge in minutes and hold 3 times the charge in January 2005, and Fujitsu just announced they will start shipping batteries probably licensed under this patent in 2006.
All-electric cars are FAR FAR closer to practicality than people think because of these dramatic technology breaththroughs.
Or better. It is a definite improvement to replace thousands (millions) of smokestacks, one on every car, with just a few (the ones on the power plants).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How much is a gallon of electricity going for these days?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"I beg to differ, while oil is still a significant power source, that outlet could still be powered by solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, or even nuclear power."
Sure, it COULD be, but in most cases isn't. In fact, there's a pretty solid percentage of North America that still runs on coal, while is not as bad as it used to be but still pretty dirty.
As far as nuclear power goes, I wonder what's better, relying on oil or nuclear power? My point was: The 100MPG they claimed did not take into account that they were using utility power which needs to be converted in some way and more likely than not is not solar or geothermal.
You'll have that sometimes...
Can any techie out there explain whether it is more efficient to use a gallon of oil to make gasoline, or to use half a gallon to make gas, use the other 1/2 gallon to make power, transfer this power to the prius, and then drive? I mean even electricity must come from somewhere; for all I know energy dispersion might burn all of the (potential) savings.
Are hybrid cars saving anything to society? Are they saving any money to the driver?
That's a beautiful theory, unfortunately not borne out in practice. A Prius engine is 37% efficient at its optimum operating point and better than 30% for almost its entire operating range.
A coal fired plant is typically 27% efficient, and there are distribution inefficiencies on top of that. (There are also distribution inefficiencies for gasoline, admittedly).
You need to examine what is known as 'well to wheel' efficiency to make a rational comparison, overall I think you'll find there is very little in it.
Too bad coal dust and carbon isn't the only thing that comes out of a coal powerplant's chimney... add in silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, titanium, sodium, potassium, arsenic, mercury, and sulfur plus small but not insignificant quantities of uranium and thorium.
Then put it in the air.
If you live next to a coal powerplant, you're getting much more radiation exposure than if you lived next to a nuclear plant (assuming both are in compliance with regulations)
=Smidge=
"I'll tell you what. I'll set up two cabins. One will have a bucket of nuclear waste under the bed. The other will have a bucket coal dust and carbon under the bed. Which bed do you choose to sleep in?"
Wow. That's a great argument.
Of course, in the REAL WORLD, we don't sleep over nuclear waste. Oh, and in the REAL WORLD, coal emissions end up in the air we breathe.
So, here's a choice: we produce a small amount of nuclear waste - waste that is disposed of away from humans and in a safe manner - or - we produce a large quantity of pollution and dump it into the atmosphere.
Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there are regulations and procedures in place to ensure its safe disposal.
With coal power, production by-products are simply dumped into the air. Yes, there are regulations, but as long as we are burning fossil fuels, there will always be substantial emissions.
Strawman. Unlike coal dust (which settles onto people property and into their lungs), Nuclear waste does not sit 'under peoples beds'. It's kept contained in the reactor or the cooling ponds, then sent to a remote (100miles to nearest town) location, and buried deep in the ground in an area that is geologically stable. ...or it would be if the f'ing anti-nuke people would stop opposing Yucca mountain and similar plans.
Excellent example because as everyone knows the bed-and-bucket method is actually how energy is produced.
...except they really haven't found a safe place for it yet, so much of it just sits around.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Aha! So that explains why my Prius seems so perky today :-)
As for radiation, coal fired power plants typically emit more radiation than nuclear power plants. For that matter, some sources of uranium are actually coal. (note: might be thorium, its been a few years since I was active in nuclear energy). In addition you have heavy metals like mercury and arsenic. Not only are they in the coal ash, they get into the air. On top of this are the sulfer dioxides, nitrous oxides, carbon dioxide, fly ash, etc, etc. Nuclear waste is no day at the beach, but coal is no picnic either. And remember, in between 300 and 1200 years the radioactive waste will be less toxic than the ore it came from (depending on which way you measure toxicity). A million years from now the arsnic and mercury in coal ash will be just as toxic.
A lot of the old pure-battery cars were marred by the fact that you couldn't go very far on them.
The hybrid concept is great, but I imagine manufacturers wanted to distance it from the pure-electric cars. A lot of people would have assumed that if a car had a power cord, it would have the same problems as the pure-electric systems.
So instead, you expose people to gasoline-only cars with relatively high gas-milages. Later on, once people have accepted that these new things work well enough, you can add a power cord. And even market it as "New and Improved!"
Basically, you don't want the public to assume that the power cord limits where you can go with it.
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Ok, so, it works something like this.
1) You plug your car into the house.
2) Your house gets electricty from "somewhere."
3) That somewhere is a diesel fired power plant.
4) The electric company notifies the cops of your excessive electricity usage.
5) Armed narcotics agents arrive with a search warrant and ransack your house looking for a grow operation.
You'd have to be nuts to plug a car into the wall if you live in the United States.
No. Every advanced driving course I have attended has pointed out that the tyre pressure recommended by the vehicle manufcaturer is significantly less than the optimum for cornering and braking (and for fuel economy, no doubt). Typically we'd put 4-10 psi more into a tyre than the placard.
So, you seem to be writing complete rubbish in an authoritative style.
Well, googling got me this:
"The energy content of a gallon of gasoline ranges from about 109,000 to 125,000 Btu. The average is about 114,000 Btu."
and this:
"1 kW = 3413 BTUs"
so, one gallon of gas (on average) = about 33kW
Electricity ranges from about 5 - 10 cents per kW, so a gallon of gas (more than $2) has as much energy as $1.65 - $3.30 of electricity.
I urge all readers of these lively threads to view our Fact Sheet, found at http://www.priusplus.org/ -- paying special attention to the fact that our MPG results must be combined with the electricity used.
Also look at the new section at our vehicles page where we document the benefits of PHEVs even when they're recharged from a dirty (coal-fueled) grid.
We've added a link to this discussion at http://www.calcars.org/kudos.html
Felix Kramer, Founder, CalCars
Founder, California Cars Initiative and PRIUS+ Campaign
No smacknuts. There's a thing called a deadman's switch. And Chernobyl didn't have one because it was a cheap soviet piece of shit. Look at what happened at Three Mile Island. Place suffers failure, and the safetys mean that there aren't any casualties. Then there's the 12 feet of reinforced concrete around the reactor dome. And the real reason you don't see nuke plants is because of the fucking luddites in green peace who run around screaming "YOU CAN'T HUG WITH NUCLEAR ARMS!!!" whenever someone tries to build one. And just the fence line? Hah. Fire doesn't stop at fences and all the wishing in the world won't make it. Oh and because of all those regulations nuclear plants are alot less likely to fail then coal fired plants. So go stuff it monkey fucker.
"When something like this happens it becomes amazingly clear that an industry can die."
Boo-hoo.
What really irks me about industries dying is when radical changes occur because of it. In Oregon, for example, you have to pay more to register your hybrid car. Why? Because they tax the shit out of gas. More hybrids means less tax revenue.
Okay, that's not the oil industry's fault, but it still bugs me. Frankly, I do think that it's not going anywhere anytime soon. They'll lower prices when demand goes down. They'll shrink. They'll find new ways to make their oil interesting. But I doubt it'll actually die quickly. Heck, they'll probably try to get legislation in place to secure their business.
"Derp de derp."
Wow. How then thousands die each year in cities like Toronto from smog? I guess their quiet deaths are not heard. Nothing spectacular like freaking out the uninformed about the dangers of "radiation".
Just because US has scaled up their submarine reactors to be used as energy producting reactors doesn't mean all reator types are that unsafe. CANDU (Canadian heavy water) and pebble-bed reactors are inherently safe. In the CANDU reactor, if the cooling fails and the pipes explode from too much pressure, the reaction stops. This is nothing designed by humans. It is part of physics of this type of nuclear reaction.
The amount of waste produced by a nuclear power plant is miniscule. The tons of crap we have are all good fuel that can be reused if it is reprocessed. But as of now it is cheaper to dig up Uranium from the ground.
A reactor can work for 5-7 years and the amount of actual waste produced will fit in a small bucket. And this waste is contained. With coal, it just spreads everywhere killing all of us, slowly.
Anyway, fusion reactors are around the corner (ie. they work now). All we need is will on the part of the governmnents to fund the development of the commercial fusion reactor.
...try keeping a running total of casualties for both cases. Nuclear power is downright harmless.
The Prius is not a small car. It's not an Expedition, but it's at least as big as a Camry or Accord, both of which are considered mid-sized sedans. 50mpg (about normal for the Priuses I've seen) is excellent for a car of that size. My Corolla (a typical "small" car, and quite a bit smaller than the Prius) averages 35mpg. Where are you finding all these "normal" gasoline cars getting 65mpg?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I did a bit of research and found out roughly what it would cost.
.4kw per mile of driving. That's about 400 watts, or 1-2 large rooms worth of light bulbs. I believe these figures to be correct because I've seen some similar ones elsewhere.
It turns out that electricity is extremely cheap per unit of energy. According to these folks, it takes about
The national average for electricity is around $ 0.10 per kwh, so this is a phenomenally cheap way to power a car. If we wanted to go 100 miles in a purely electric car, it would take 40 kwh, or $0.40.
I rented a Dodge Neon recently and got only 20mpg from it. (It must have had an old or badly tuned engine). Going 100 miles in the Neon would have taken 5 gallons of gas, at about $ 2.50 a gallon. That's $12.50! Even if I could get the peak mileage of non-hybrid cars, or 40mpg, that's still over $6 to run the car the same number of miles electricity would power for $ 0.40. Even if electric rates doubled, electricity would still be phenomenally cheaper than gas.
So why haven't electric cars taken over the world? Because often you need to go further than the charge range in a day. When I went to Sacramento a year or so ago to visit the Capitol, I decided to try renting an electric car. All it had to do was go about 20 miles, the round trip to and from the Capitol. With extra excursions to find parking and the like, I barely got there and back successfully. On the other hand, I had completely free "fuel". The rental company didn't account for it in any way, because it was, truly, too cheap to meter.
So it seems clear that if you can squeeze a big enough battery into the Prius, you could have the best of both worlds: The economy of having a purely electric car, combined with the "get home" ability of the gas engine.
I should briefly address a specious argument against this idea which seems to have gotten wide currency. Once we Californians got through our tiresome power crisis, we thought that anything that plugged in was Bad. Well, true, during the day when we run hefty air conditioners and the like. But once we've cooled down, demand for power plummets and there is no problem at all with plugging in something like an electric car. In fact, the power companies dearly want this to ramp up demand and enable expensive power plants to run at a higher duty cycle.
Once you express this idea in terms of costs, it becomes, well, pretty obviously a brainy scheme. I wonder why Toyota wants to shut it down, since it seems like a wonderful idea for everyone involved, and really, an amazing PR coup for Toyota.
Hope this helps.
D
Replace all instances of kW with kWh. kW are power (1 horsepower ~= .75 kW). kWh are units of energy (1 kWh = 3600 kJ ~= 3412 BTU).
You might want to read up on what actually happened before you start spouting Chernobyl as an example.
Not only are US nuclear reactors are significantly safer than Chernobyl could have even dreamt of being, but the majority of fault with Chernobyl was because of human stupidy.
I say stupidity instead of error because there was a lot more than one problem and many of them were done intentionally. They were doing things they shouldn't have been doing to the reactor and when things went wrong they didn't do what they were supposed to do to fix the problem. A lot of the casualties were caused because they didn't follow the clean up procedures we would be following today.
Claiming US nuclear power plants are unsafe because of what happened in Chernobyl is foolish at best.
Shoot Pixels, Not People!
What the heck ever happend to Fusion,
Politicians are currently deciding where to build ITER, the prototype reactor. Europe and Japan both want it. It costs 4.6x10E9 euros in parts and will take about 10 years to build. Running it for 20 years will cost about the same.
ITER will provide the knowledge for DEMO, the first model fusion reactor, to be operational 5 years after. Followed by commercial reactors.
According to this EFDA folder.
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
And, indeed, if only economics (and not governments) were in play, gasoline should be much cheaper than it is now---it's not as bad in U.S., but in Europe and Asia, more than half the gasoline price is tax.
Nevertheless, this comparison shows... well, that the prices are nearly equal (with the order of magnitude) and there are no economic incentive or disincentive to use electricity on its own---only coupled with either environmental or political incentives.
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It's interesting to look at the actual numbers. The Prius is shorter lengthwise and heightwise then both the Corolla and Camry, but the wheelbase is almost that of the Camry (106" to 107", with the Corolla at 102"). The luggage capacity of the Prius (16.2 ft^3) is much closer to a Camry (16.7) than a Corolla (13.6). Curb weight and passenger volume for the Prius are about halfway between the Corolla and Camry. Interior dimensions are all over the place - the Prius has less headroom than the Corolla (and Camry), but more legroom than either. Overall - I'll agree with you that the Prius isn't quite as big as a Camry, but it's definitely larger than a Corolla.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
That's sort of misleading. Modern combustion engines are only about 20% efficient at best, most of the energy is lost as heat, so using electricity from the utility company would be roughly FIVE times cheaper.
Power plants are much much more efficient than an engine that has to fit into a car and run at a wide range of RPMs. So even with coal this is a much better alternative.
Toshiba's new nano-battery should make this an even more attractive technology. A quote:
"For example, the battery's advantages in size, weight and safety highly suit it for a role as an alternative power source for hybrid electric vehicles."
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Um, no. The Chernobyl people had turned off most of the safety equipment in order to conduct a test. The reactor was almost at zero power. They were pulling out control rods in an effort to start the reaction up. But they made a fundamental mistake with reactors. The control rods control rate of change, not the absolute power rating. So when the reaction did start up, it rapidly overloaded the reactor. On top of that, the reactor was designed with a positive thermal coefficient. English translation: the hotter it gets, the faster the reaction runs. No wonder the damn thing exploded. Its like Windows, when you see how well it was designed, its no wonder it gets hacked.
But this is old technology. Look at the more recent technologies like pebble reactors. They figured out the maximum temperature a reactor could hit, and then designed the ceramic shell to melt at a higher temperature. It can't melt under its own power. Its passive safety, which I trust a lot more than active safety with all its pumps and valves and moving parts that can fail.
TMI was within a couple of hours of a *total meltdown* before they finally figured out what was going on
According to the Kermey (sp?) report, the reactor actually melted down about 25-50%. The reactor designers were quite conservative. They assumed that steam would not cool the reactor core at all. In reality it cooled about half as effective as water. So in spite of the operators turning off the ECCS (emergency core cooling system) pumps, the absolute wrong thing to do, the reactor didn't completely melt down.
it's not a given that the containment building would have stopped a liquid pool of molten nuclear fuel from eating through down to the water table
Kermey report actually goes into that. TMI-2 had a relatively new reactor load, therefore had few waste products built up. It would not have penetrated the containment building. I think the doc even questions if it would eat through the reactor vessel. Its been years since I've read those docs, so memory fades a bit.
Sure, it COULD be, but in most cases isn't. In fact, there's a pretty solid percentage of North America that still runs on coal, while is not as bad as it used to be but still pretty dirty.
Then address the actual problem, i.e. use less coal powered electricity stations.
Hydro, solar and to a lesser extent wind as well as of course nuclear are great options here.
As far as nuclear power goes, I wonder what's better, relying on oil or nuclear power?
Then you should probably hold off on expressing an opinion before you wade into the discussion. Any 10 year old should be able to tell you the answer to that is very clearly Nuclear.
If one persons electricity needs for their entire life time were met using electricity generated from a Nuclear power plant, the total amount of nuclear waste generated as a result would be approximately the size of a tennis ball.
You then simply collect large amounts of it together, encase it securely (in reality quite easy to do, large amount of concrete come in handy here) and dump it somewhere, e.g. in the sea. Given 3/4 of the planet's surface is water and it has valleys several miles deep, finding space to put isn't going to be a problem). If you think this is bad, consider that each of us in the western world uses more landfill space than this on a DAILY basis, and it's easy to see how trivial the problem of disposal of the tiny amount of waste generated is. The result is something that's completely inert too!
Let's take a long hard look at the safety aspect too...
The worst nuclear disaster in history was Chernobyl, which has killed 30 people.
The worst coal disaster in history (to my knowledge) was at Benxihu Colliery which killed over 1500 people.
Oil, as we know from very recent events, is also far more dangerous (as seen from events in Texas). The Piper Alpha disaster alone killed over 150 people (and that was in a supposedly well maintained modern Western environment).
Across the world, have been quite literally hundreds of coal and oil retrieval & power-plant related disasters in the last century, with tens of thousands of people killed. Gas and oil are inherently extremely dangerous to handle, coal mining especially so. Nuclear disasters make for far more sensationalist news though, so one disaster at a very poorly run nuclear power plant (which should never have been allowed to run, and wouldn't in any Western country) and so people who can't be bothered to do any research, decide that nuclear is 'bad'.
Nuclear power isn't the only answer, in particular it's not a great solution for unstable regions of the world (politically or geologically), but for Western regions, like North America and Europe it's far and away the best solution we have for a sustainable reliable energy source, that is by and large environmentally friendly to boot.