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US Pumps $175M Into Advanced Auto Fuel Research
coondoggie writes "In the wake of new fuel efficiency standards, the Energy Department this week spotted 40 new research projects $175 million to develop everything from light-weight building materials to electronics and advanced fuel. Last month, the U.S. set new fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, saying they must hit 54.5 miles per gallon by Model Year 2025. The projects awarded contracts should address some of the issues involved in making cars and trucks more fuel efficient. At least that's the idea."
Reminds me of this guy and his water+naptha stuff
http://inventors.about.com/od/wstartinventions/a/water_fuel.htm
http://www.epa.gov/etv/pubs/600r980035.pdf
I'm a little disappointed that they thing we'd even be using gasoline in that far-flung future. Aren't there a bunch of competing technologies just around the corner, if not ON that corner?
The problem with alternative car fuels is that they're a solution to the wrong problem: the real issue is that it's not sustainable for every person on the planet to transport himself and two tons of metal an average distance of sixteen miles one-way as part of a daily commute.
and move to a 4 day work week. That will cut down on the need for transport and put more people to work as well.
Did they consider we might be nearing the end of the road for pure gas efficiency? Just wondering if *any* science ever factors into these decisions. As if engineers can engineer anything given time!!
A Prius may do over 50mpg but that is only because it does not run on gas for a decent portion of it.
For those not in the US, Google says* that the target in TFA is equivalent to ~4.3 litres/100km.
That figure is very close to the' 'official' stated fuel consumption of the Toyota Prius. So it's a pretty ambitious target considering we are talking about light trucks here.
* (Google's unit conversion feature continues to surprise me with what it can do - in this case turning a distance per volume and turning it into a volume per multiple of a different distance. Nifty.)
Why is everyone neglecting aerodynamics?
http://www.aerocivic.com/ proved that just some simple changes made a huge difference.
The dimple test on Mythbusters was another relatively simple change that made a huge difference.
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-dimpled-car-minimyth.html
That would be thorium. 1 gram would cost you under 10 bucks.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
Make it hard to get a driver's license.
what about 4 days a week with 9-10 hours a day?
Does anyone know if the new fuel standards close the loophole that allow SUVs and trucks to be exempt from the standards?
It's around 0.0001 times what they gave to the banks for free.
How much do the oil companies get?
How much do the agribusinesses get to make ethanol?
It's laughable.
Deleted
According to Wiki, "light truck" means any vehicle capable of carrying less than 4,000 lbs. Your most popular minivans, SUVs and pickups will fit into that category.
But note that the proposed standard is an average of the entire fleet. So in 2025, for every subcompacts with 100mpg, there could be an SUV with mileage essentially unchanged from today. (This isn't quite true. Each category--cars, light trucks, etc.--has to meet certain improvements within the category.)
It's not a horrible approach. And the best approaches are probably politically unfeasible. If the US raised gas taxes to a level that would capture true costs of using that gas, the market would shit to higher mpg vehicles all on its own. But good luck getting a 100% or 150% federal tax on gasoline and diesel passed.
As one example, the shape of Toyota's redesign of the Yaris in 2007 was largely a function of work to maximize aerodynamic efficiency.
Sure, you'll find a few vehicles like the VW Bug that have atrocious designs that simply cannot be made aerodynamic. But for the most part all of the major manufacturers have been doing extensive windtunnel testing for at least the past ten years.
Or have you not noticed that fewer and fewer cars on the road have straight lines and pointy corners?
Methanol is the obvious solution (which is why everyone ignores it). We need to destroy the oil cartel that is looting our country--we can't do that when we only control a few percent of the fuel market.
But we have lots of coal and natural gas from which we can easily produce lots of methanol. Adapting new cars to run on any combination of gasoline and methanol is trivial, you just have to reprogram the ECU and make sure the fuel lines are up to snuff. And to be clear, a flex-fuel car can run on BOTH methanol and gasoline, you have a choice.
Methanol can also be made from any source of biomass, so it can be renewable and global-warming neutral too. Unfortunately, the car companies are owned by people who have even larger stakes in the oil industry, so they will never voluntarily make all their cars flex-fueled. Congress needs to mandate that all new cars sold in the U.S. be flex-fueled. It's as simple as that to get out of this mess. No "alternative fuel research" required.
Anything to spring us 15 years into the future so we can surprise the fusion researchers.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
This seems extremely low to me, cars already do that today. When the U.S reaches 54.5 mpg in 2025 other countries will be on 75-100 mpg.
I've got one ticket to Somalia for you to put your money where your mouth is. Are you up for it, spineless coward?
What an idiot.
"Alternative fuel research" means lots of money to big corporation so they can indefinitely "research" crap, and should they ever find out something AND find out how to gouge the "little people" for it, then they will reveal it.
Sorry, but that is just chump change. There is no serious alternative energy policy in the U.S.
Sure, as long as you give me a couple dozen of our largest FAE's and a company of Recon to clear out the local despots(a form of government.) and their fanatics first. Then I'll start Galt's Gulch. The idea that because some lines drawn on a map of the pisshole that is Africa no longer denote a single government entity means there is no government left is utterly fucking asinine.
The wiki snippet says the patent is from 1982. Even counting a few years of filling, by now the patent should be expired : we are 29 years afterward.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I see so many people driving cars with just themselves in it, burning fuel to haul empty seats with them. Why not build 2 stage detachable cars? A 2 seater for commuting to work that can be snapped to a back seat module for shopping, kids etc?
One thing I always hear when people talk about the uber small cars or the cars with very light materials is something along the lines of "what will happen to me if some gluttonous polluting selfish schmuck in an SUV or Minivan hits me?"
I think they have a valid point.
Cars are going to have to get lighter and less resilient to get gas mileage up. SUVS being on the road are a barrier.
THANK YOU! Those local despots are good free-market despots. If ravenshrike goes in and clears them out, he is the new government. Even if he leaves afterwards he's just making room for new despots who will effectively be the new government.
The admission from a libertarian that a non-government entity can effectively become a government is, in effect, a strong renunciation of the ideology, whether he realizes it or not.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
As long as ButaMax (IIRC actually BP and DuPont) is able to wield control over the process for making Butanol affordably even though the studies were conducted at public institutions with public money, I don't give one tenth of one fuck about what the government spends on fuel research, since I know it will only be used to fuck me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"