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First Algae Car Attempts To Cross the US On 25 Gallons of Fuel
Mike writes "San Francisco recently saw the unveiling of the world's first algae fuel-powered vehicle, dubbed the Algaeus. The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug, runs on green crude from Sapphire Energy — no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary. The set-up is so effective, according to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, that the Algaeus can cross the US on approximately 25 gallons of fuel — a figure which is currently being tested on a coast-to-coast road trip."
When they factor in or go without the gallons of oil, pounds of coal, cubic feet of natural gas, amount of uranium or other fissile fuel, wind turbine hours, and other electric generation measures, then I'll get excited. Until then the 25 gallons is a bit misleading, sort of like the volt's 240mpg. Either that or I'll forgo the above if you give me a dollar amount in electricity donated, borrowed, bought, or rented along the way.
a plug-in hybrid should be able to cross the US on zero gallons of fuel as long as the battery pack is large enough to get to the next plug
...if you rtfa..., guess a full algae-driven car isn't feasible yet.
Can someone explain this to me??
TFA says the car is running on a 5% mix Algae, with the rest being gasoline. What exactly does this prove, apart from being a marketing stunt?
If anyone has better knowledge on what just 5% of this fuel can change to the overall MPG rating, I'd be glad to hear about it, but call me sceptical about the whole claim.
...of whale oil, since it's actually using gasoline, not whale oil, as its fuel. But, hey, whale oil is fuel, and I don't need more than two gallons of it, so my claim is exactly as well-founded as theirs.
Plug-in hybrids are a great idea. But stop already with the stupid and misleading claims about "gas mileage" based on getting most of your energy from the grid.
Back to the MPG debate when dealing with electric/hybrid vehicles. Any time one take electricity from the grid, which this car does through the plug, that energy is not counted in the MPG. This makes MPG rating suspect at best. It also merely shifts the carbon load to the electricity plants rather then the vehicle causing the carbon footprint to be distorted.
And why did they choose a Prius? Do they plan to go across the USA on city streets?
Most folks would take a highway, where the electric motor and battery do not get used at all-- they're just useless weight.
I just noticed that the past paragraph states "Algaeus only runs on a 5% blend of algae fuel". Basically only 1.25 gallons of algae fuel will be used. The rest of the energy will come from conventional fossil fuels and the electrical grid. Not much of a big advancement.
750$ dollars of Gas. But I still have to connect to the grid when I stop every time. Haven't found a gravity fed gas dispenser yet.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
a GREEN car.
It says no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary.
It could just as easily be an Exxon Mobile car. Or a Chevron car.
I guess the point is to try to draw attention to algae fuel extraction technology, but it's a bit misleading.
What's the exchange rate between $ dollars and regular dollars?
because this algae are neither the food of some lifeform, nor do they take giant amounts of space for production, for no reason.
Would you please finally offer me energy from concentrating solar thermal power plants?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I don't know what they are saying in this article.
:') Or is that 25 gallon just a number? (Just like that previous electric car add about some car driving 1/100)
They speak of 25 gallon to get from coast to coast. Coast to coast is about 3000 miles (google earth tells me).
A regular 25 gallons of diesel would get you to about 750 miles?
So i was thinking: yeah good deal!
Then further on in the article they say that only 5% of the fuel is algae fuel.
Then what do they mean with the 25 gallon thing? Is 25 gallon 5% of the entire fuel used to get from coast to coast? In that case, i guess you're far better off with running regular fuel
What did i miss?
well with $ dollars you've got square dollars, so just take the square root and you should get a decent approximation. sqrt(750) = 27.3861279 so about $27.39 in normal dollars
Come on guys! A single look at the website shows that this is a marketing stunt. It seems to me that there are quite a few "green" sites that are completely misleading.
Currently I am very suspicious of over-engineered websites like these. I remember the site of ThinFilm. Brilliant to look at, technically very interesting and technologically completely misleading (oh, the capacity that they could reach!). Now their main applications seem to be kids toys and RFID for which they are planning to use a few hundred bits.
$ = ""
Fixed that for you.
...they can pull up to my neighbor's scum-covered swimming pool, fill their tank and then go merrily down the road for another 300 miles.
Most folks would take a highway, where the electric motor and battery do not get used at all-- they're just useless weight.
Not how it works at all. The electric motor in my Prius works at all speeds. It contributes to the drive chain when it makes sense to do so regardless of the speed. If I take my foot off the gas at 65mph the car coasts and the motor runs in reverse as a generator and charges the batteries. If I lightly rest my foot on the gas the gasoline motor stays off and the electric has enough torque to maintain speed. Until I hit an incline or need to accelerate, then the gas will pop on. Under most conditions if you watch the Energy display screen, you can see both the gas motor and the electric drive contributing at the same time.
The whole system is pretty dynamic. It's not like there is a kill switch on the motors at 30mph.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I ran a car with about 5% piss in the gas tank. Long story, but yeah 5% is nothing to brag about when it comes to fuel additives. When they can use a 15% blend and beat ethanol in efficiency (meaning MPG/KPH) then we will talk. Until then the algae has a long way to go.
The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug
I believe the Prius are tricked out from the factory with NiMH batteries.
I think people will be more impressed if they used a Suburban or Hummer.
Why can't they rate these vehicles in terms of kilowatt hours per mile? It 's about the only useful metric.
150 miles per gallon = 1.56809722 l/100km
ah... my (Dutch B-labelled) Subaru Justy 2007 drives like 5 l/100km = 47.0429167 miles per gallon...
so that is quite impressive, but "âoePowering our cars with algae-based fuel could be the next Apollo mission.â "... where to get that stuff?
You can get E85 (Ethanol) is already in a lot of places, why not focus on that?
You're way behind the times. Whale is old hat; snake is where it's at. I've heard it's used in planes and stuff.
I would also like to know the long term affects of running an algae based fuel would have on engine wear. Especially the hoses, gaskets and other seals.
My brain, fingers and eyes weren't coordinated at the time of posting.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
I said eom, dammit!
Everyone with all these wonderful plans to get the "Happy Motoring" era happy again with 100+ MPG vehicles is conveniently forgetting that it will take a HUGE amount of money to convert the VAST fleet of current BFACs (big f'ing American cars) to anything resembling a 100+ MPG fleet of vehicles.
This is money that we don't have. We have (you may recall) pissed away 3 trillion dollars on the PEW (permanent endles worthless war) so far and it's still at PEW status. We have bankrupted the middle-class on a bogus housing bubble to the point where half the houses built and sold in the past ten years are 'underwater'. We have maxed out our credit cards and destroyed the major banks to the point where they required two seperate 760 billion dollar 'bailouts' in a single year. We have no realistic health care system at a point where a 100 million people born between 1945 and 1970 are nearing retirement. Our totally corporately-owned corrupt government runs up a trillion dollars of deficit every fucking year. And the rest of the world is talking behind our backs about not continuing to buy our Ponzi Federal Reserve bonds.
Not only are we out of money, we are out of money with 100 million stupid and obese self-entitled citizens. And all this is happening when we face Peak Oil and global warming environmental transformation. And when the number of $1 a day people in the 'never-to-be-developing' world are increasing their population from 4 to 8 billion in 30 years.
There isn't going to be any great new 'Apollo' or 'Manhattan' project to deal with these problems. No one seems to realize this, ESPECIALLY here at Slashdot, but there is no more fucking money . Over the next ten years, critical systems for economic growth are continute to shut down, one by one. It's not going to be easy, or pretty, or fair. And as a member of the technological elite, it's going to really piss you off because you know that we could be doing so much, if only...
Start thinking like this and stop thinking about giant government projects and Mars Landing and all that other 20th century fantasy and you will be around to play with your grandchildren. And please don't mod me down to -1 because my rational discussions bum you out. If I bother you, reply here as to exactly why I'm wrong. Believe me, I do want to be wrong about all this. But I have this bad feeling...
Seems every week we have a new fuel to run our cars on that do 3x-5x better MPG than standard gasoline. Hmm...Seems this has been a long time coming and it will still be a long time coming because I do not see big oil stepping down anytime soon. These articles are a nice "pie in the sky" to think about how great it would be if we could really get 150 MPG and have to fill up once a month, but if you do the math, that means a gallon of whatever we run our cars on would be about $10 a gallon. Sure it's green, but green's gotta turn a profit too.
The truly exciting thing here is that it's yet another 'green' innovation brought to you by the private free market. Just like the Prius itself, this was the result of a business listening to its customers and responding to a demand. It was not brought about by government mandate or fiat. People roll their eyes when you talk about the wonder of the free market, unaware of its massive and beneficial daily impact on their lives. This is why you have to fight to keep it.
>> it will take a HUGE amount of money
>> there is no more fucking money
>> pissed away 3 trillion dollars
>> This is money that we don't have.
You seem obsessed with money.
If you feel the strain that bad, do what I do... Dye Sublimation printers have only gotten cheaper and cheaper.
http://prizedwriting.ucdavis.edu/past/2004-2005/how-to-counterfeit
And please don't mod me down to -1 because my rational discussions bum you out.
If I had mod points I would mod this either off-topic or troll. You make some good points, but they are buried under a lot of sensationalist garbage. And what does any of this have to do with the post that you replied to?
And what is the point of your post? Are you trying to say that we don't have enough money to invest in researching more fuel efficient vehicles? I hope not, because that is just ridiculous (think of how much more money it costs in the long run to NOT invest in this).
Two words:
Rocky Mountains
This might get 150 MPG in a lab but I've driven those mountains and unless a miracle happens, they're not getting anything close to their rated MPG going up them.
It is unfortunate that you put so much effort in this post, only to have as much credibility as Nostradamus. Oddly enough I do not think 100 million stupid and obese self-entitled citizens is a valid statistic.
Oddly enough I do not think 100 million stupid and obese self-entitled citizens is a valid statistic.
Yeah, I think the number is closer to 300 million these days.
Captcha: unrest
So fucking kill yourself, because your tiresome fucking whining is accomplishing fuck all.
Rational discussion? You blanket assumed all 100 million retirees are obese, just to name one blitering idiocy.
Every fucking generations thinks it's the last. Welcome to the "You're Nothing New Or Special" club.
You deserve every -1 Total And Complete Sack Of Shit Fuckhead mod you get, and a solid kick in the balls as well.
>>>3 trillion dollars on the PEW (permanent endles worthless war)
It's actually 0.9 trillion for the Iraw/Afghan War..... which is a heck of a lot smaller than the 3 trillion given-away to fat, rich CEOs in bailouts. and the estimated extra 8 trillion to be spent during Obama's eight year span. Yes we need to end the war but that's just a small 0.1 trillion per year expenditure and doesn't solve the extreme amount of spending happening right now for other projects.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>We have no realistic health care system at a point where a 100 million people born between 1945 and 1970 are nearing retirement.
What are you talking about? We have Medicare and Medicaid for these retirees so they will be covered by the government. We also have SCHIP for the children. In total there are only 8 million citizens without either private or government health insurancee. (Note I said citizens.) I wish people would stop exaggerating the health problem. It needs tweaking but it's not that bad overall.
>>>the rest of the world is talking behind our backs about not continuing to buy our Ponzi Federal Reserve bonds.
Now THIS is a serious problem. I've actually considered investing my wealth in Chinese stock since they have a manufacturing industry, and carry no debt. I'm thinking my wealth is safer in Chinese Index Fund rather than an S&P500 fund.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
67% is the figure for overweight or obese American adults. I don't know how many children live here, but let's assume 1 per household. 300 million total - 100 million kids == 200 * 0.67 == 134 million overweight or obese American adults.
37% is the figure for obese American adults. That's 74 million obese American adults.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
When it sounds too good to be true...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The BBC Top Gear team did a different experiment: worth having a look.
Having said that, there's no way my car will be any more economical than it is right now, regardsless of how gentle I drive - 4 wheel drive has its price. And at top speed is frankly gets embarrassing as that takes 5x as much fuel as a normal 70mph trip would - but I've only done that once out of curiosity :-)
Insert
I misread this as "First Algae Car Attempts To Cross to the US On 25 Gallons of Fuel"
As in "cross to" the US, from here (UK)... only three and a half thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean in between!
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Thank you. Could you also post sources?
My point is that there is big difference between researching more fuel efficient vehicles and actually making millions of these fuel efficient vehicles. Even if the research was successful and the prototype 100+ MPG vehicles were created, there still is no money to create the factories and the infrastructure needed to convert the entire fleet of present vehicles.
The idea that there is no problem creating a new infrastructure from new technologies is a 20th century economic concept that depended on the ability to create capital for investment from undeveloped or underdeveloped natural resources. In the 21st century, those natural resources such as huge pools of surface-level light-crude oil are no longer available. And, because of 50 years of huge government deficit spending, the capital resources are not available to us as they were in the years after World War II when the other major countries were destroyed but we weren't.
My point is that it doesn't matter if you have a great new technology or prototype engineering project if there isn't any money left to develop the technology for the millions of people that need access to it. My point is that there is no more fucking money! . Sooner or later everyone is going to get the point that I'm making here.
I suggest taking a few economics classes to complement your engineering degree.
My number comes from the book The Three Trillion Dollar War 2008 by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, both of whom are American economists not dependent on government funding for their research.
The point is there is a finite supply of money. Money spent on the war is money that not available to manufacture fuel-efficient vehicles. And since the money has already been spent on the war, there will be no development of American fuel-efficient vehicles on the scale needed to sustain American prosperity at 20th-century levels.
Talk is cheap.
Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP programs don't have the funding to sustain their levels of service for the numbers of people who be entering these programs the next twenty years. There is not enough capital resources available to invest in new infrastructures for 100+ MPG vehicles and to support health care systems based on diminished-returns on investment. And the government will be trying to finance these programs at the same time that all the deficits that have been building up since the Reagan administration become due. If the ever-increasing deficits can be refinanced, then there is no problem. If the US government bonds can't be refinanced, (if the interest due on past deficits is greater than the present tax revenues generated) then the entire Ponzi scheme collapses and the depression of 2020 makes the recession of 2008 look minor.
What that means is that someone is going to decide sometime around 2025 whether to build new high-tech factories and let the baby-boomers all die or to not kill the baby-boomers and accept a lower standard of living for the younger people.
Since the boomers have all the votes then they will choose to make you live poorly. This will happen in most advanced countries; the never-to-be-developed economies of what we now call the third world simply won't matter to anyone after 2020.
Nostradamus was a middle-ages French monk who wrote cryptic poetry that hundreds of years later people have claimed was prophecy. But actually reading it shows that it is nothing more than junk poetry commonly written by monks in the middle-ages driven mad by religious obsession and hunger.
What does this have to do with my economic theories of my post? My point is that infrastructure transformation doesn't happen simply by the development of new technologies.
The 20th century was characterized by the positive feedback loop of technology creating capital resources that enabled the creation of huge manufacturing enterprises that in turn led to development of the next cycle of technology development. This process will not continue in the 21st century because the capital resources are not being created at the same pace as technological development. We are seeing capital resources begin to self-destruct. Peak Oil, over-population, and environmental destruction will cause a positive feedback loop in the 21st century that will most likely destroy the gains of the 20th century. 2150 will look more like 1850 than it will resemble 2000.
You, gentle reader, appear to have taken too many engineering courses.
Yes, the bullet that has just been fired out the gun pointed at you actually weighs 9.5234234784895789 grams instead of 9.0 grams.
But the point is that in .047938756973837856 seconds from now it is going to blow your head off your shoulders.
Second: it's a plugin hybrid. Crossing the US with a plugin hybrid is no big deal. Heck, if you belive the Chevy Volt's "230MPG" number, you should be able to cross the US with about 12 gallons of fuel, right? Hell, I can drive across the US on almost no fuel, if you let me re-charge the batteries every 150 miles in a motel along the road!
I hate such gimmicks. Just tell the truth, dammit!
Actually this is exciting only for the auto industry because it allows them to continue their rape of the earth and bullying and killing us in our public streets all while calling themselves the eco green next new thing. People will buy new cars thinking they are "saving the earth." The reality is that most of the pollution from cars is due to the manufacture of the car and the roads - things which change 0% depending on the fuel in the tank. Solar 100% would be the same issue. A minority of our wasteful consumption is in the actual driving fuel. Just owning a car is destructive. Car fuel use is already quite efficient and it mostly serves to have people thing driving is sustainable and cheap so they buy more cars and drive more and build more roads for us to cross. Even though there are already lots and lots and lots.
As well, we now have quieter cars which will sneak up on and run over pedestrians and wildlife with just as much gore. And we have drivers staring at their fuel consumption gauge rather than watching the road. Seriously, people brag about driving this way now, I've heard it several times.
Stupidity is its own reward.
Isn't the tailpipe output of diesel always much dirtier with more particulates? Like busses?
Stupidity is its own reward.
I am sorry if I failed to clarify myself. What I was hoping is that you would cite your sources for which you base your conclusions, so that I may do further research on my own, spring boarding from where you already seem to have done much research in.
Money is an abstract concept. You're declaring that there is no more is , well, kind of silly In fact like saying there is no more hope..
What there is, or is not, is the collective will to "do something". Nations some times have the will, and some times they run out of it.
From your post, it is obvious that you don't have the will to do anything any more. Maybe you're just tired. Have a martini, get a good nights rest, and see if your outlook improves in the morning.
-
Warning, I brake for Chachalacas
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
One thing often forgotten when talking about greener technologies is that even if it would not cost you, it would still cost us. Several alternatives have appeared over the years which seem cheaper on a purely monetary (number-of-dollars-spent), but have ended up being worse for the environment (i.e. natural depletion for a scarce or highly toxic component in the pre-processing, or higher costs of properly disposing of a component after its useful life is over), and fortunately are usually ruled out before it is too late.
I have recently read interesting studies about public perception on water sustainability, particularly in the El Salvador society. People are aware of the costs of water, and are (at least, apparently) willing to pay for its consumption -- But defend the right to spend it if they are charged for it. Do you want to swipe the street with running water? As long as you pay for it, it should be allowed. That's the wrong mindset: Resources cost far more than just the money you are charged for them. Common, shared resources should be of guaranteed sustainability, and the State should prohibit one person, no matter how wealthy, to spend over their fair share of any given resource.
So you took your number from an antiwar-biased person whose mission in life is to stop war, even if that requires distorting the numbers to make his case. I took my number from Obama's government (0.9 trillion spent so far - or about 0.l trillion per year). I believe that number to be unbiased.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Dear Simonetta
Yes, you're right. But it's bad manners to say this out loud and scare all the "average Joes".
Lord_ffej