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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."
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.
They aren't the same thing. Your example is inefficient because it uses more labour to achieve the same result - a shorter working week would get less done but require less work to do it, which isn't less efficient.
I dont' understand why we still have 40 hour weeks. Surely with all the technical improvements over the past few decades we can still be wealthy enough without as much work.
Make it hard to get a driver's license.
I dont' understand why we still have 40 hour weeks. Surely with all the technical improvements over the past few decades we can still be wealthy enough without as much work.
Nobody's stopping you!
You can go ahead and start working a 32-hour week; most likely, you'll make roughly 80% of a 40-hour week's pay. Might be hard to arrange, as most jobs include benefits, hard to break those down to 80% but some minor negotiation should get you there. Most people would rather get 5-days pay per week than 4-days. Many folks work overtime, more hours for more compensation. But not everyone; there are "part-time" jobs out there, and self-employed folks can set their own weekly max-hours.
No, no one is thinking of any of these things. That's why we have these Slashdot peer reviews, so you unsung geniuses can poke obvious holes in the plans of professionals.
>>make full time 32 hours
>>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.
Oddly enough, when they tried this in South America, it didn't work out very well..
We have plenty of energy on this planet - talk of running out of fuel hundreds of years from now seems a bit premature. We *should* have fusion up and running by the time all our hydrocarbons and fissilables have run out.
Why only one day a week? If we gave some sort of incentive for companies to let their people work from home more often, then they save on office space and we save on transportation costs.
I used to be 100% remote for a large company, then they spend millions renovating 2 floors of office space and required everyone within 50 miles to be on site every day. Those who were more than 50 miles were let go shortly after. Now workers spend hours driving to work, only to be less productive because it's too damn noisy. The only answer I've ever gotten for this is "because they said so". I'm not sure who came up with the idea, how it got approved but I'm willing to put money on Power Point being used in it. Some of the worst decisions in business history have been made to look good with that damn program.
Do the math, I live an hour away. That's 10 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. That's 520 hours a year. 13 work weeks each year spend driving to and from a job that has been proven successful when done from home office. 20,000 miles at a cost of over 9,000 (at $0.45 per mile) each year.
Oh, and they already issue laptops and require employees to have high speed broadband for on call duty.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
The Prius and others are interesting experiments but it will only be a small percentage of cars sold for many years to come. We also have to look at what we can do with the rest of the fleet. 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 is an an extremely modest, if not pathetic, goal. My eight year old Citroën C5, considered a big car by European standards, is around 40 mpg. If I were to update to say a brand new Volvo V70 - also a big, comfortable and safe car - I'd do over 52 mpg (and less than 119 g/km CO2 emissions). Even a couple of years old V70 would do over 48 mpg! And we're still talking 'big' cars while the 54.4 miles per gallon by 2025 is for the average car fleet sold. Two or three years and modern cars will bloody BE at 54.4 mpg - and you will still wait for another ten years?! You might as well shut your motor industry down right now. No, the faster American motor industry gets up to modern standards the faster it gets more competitive! The Ford F-series, a dinosaur relic to be honest, is still the best selling car in the world - THAT IS F**NG AMAZING - but its more or less unsellable anywhere but in the U.S. for being so old-fashioned and having a mileage that wasn't ok even in the 70's. What will you do when if finally stops selling? The U.S. have a grand automotive heritage to defend and you are losing it. This goal is too little and too late. Where did the American confidence go? Why don't you set a goal to ASTONISH the world rather than one that makes you look pathetic. It makes me sad, I know you can do so much better than this. Fire your lawyers and get your engineers to work, you can do it if you want to!
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.
Exactly my point. Isn't "54.5 miles per gallon by 2025" a rather pathetic goal?
I almost wish agribusinesses would get fined for making ethanol, ethanol is truly laughable. It uses up valuable farm land to take 1 unit of "energy" and create 1.01 units of "energy". That 1 unit of energy that goes into making ethanol is almost always diesel, gasoline, or some other form of petroleum anyways. It is also only feasible because the corn industry is so heavily subsidized making corn damned close to free. The ethanol point aside, I actually agree that this would be a much better use of money than bailing out the banks or subsidizing oil companies. I would favor none of it but this is at least a better use than they often choose.
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.
This is supposedly a tech forum. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
Alcohol fuels must compete with food for arable land, and are not being made form "any source of biomass" because it isn't always cost-effective.
You are invited to do it yourself and get rich. Have at it.
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