Remember MIT's announcement early in 2006 about working on supercapacitors based on carbon nanotubes? That new technology could go a LONG way in making power generation by wind turbines and solar panels much more viable, and could make it possible for a truly practical electric car with long range and reasonable carrying capacity.
I think someone should put up a LOT of money to those MIT researchers that recently developed a supercapacitor using carbon nanotubes that store far more energy than previously possible to develop this technology further. That right there resolves two huge problems with electric cars, namely the size of the battery pack and the recharge time.
The EV-1 failed because frankly, who wants a car where most of the interior volume is taken up by the battery and recharge times can approach eight hours?
Hard metrification, which is redesigning everything to use standard metric sizes, is considerably more difficult and expensive.
Let's consider the food industry, for example. Hard metrification means we'll have to change over to measuring weight in grams and kilograms, liquids in millimeters and liters, oven and refrigerator temperatures in degrees Celsius, pressurized cooker measurements in kilopascals, and redo our cookbooks to all-metric measurements. The cost of conversion could run into many billions of US dollars to find metric replacements for the 12-ounce drink can, half-gallon and gallon milk container, one cup and two cup liquid measure cups, and on and on.
I would prefer a ten-year phased switchover to full metric.
The reason is simple: it spreads out conversion costs over a longer period, especially considering the conversion cost could run as high (in my humble opinion!) as US$1 trillion.
I mean just look at the food industry. Everything will have to be redone for measurements, from grams and kilograms for food weight, milliliters and liters for liquid measurements, degrees Celsius for oven and refrigerator temperatures, kilopascals for pressurized cooking units, and completely re-written cookbooks doing everything in metric. You can imagine how much THAT will cost.
I think people forget that the more financially well-off adult entertainment companies started to invest in high-definition cameras and editing equipment in the past 3-4 years. The cost of 1080i prosumer HD cameras rapidly dropped in price in the last 18 months, and desktop computers now run fast enough to edit 1080i videos and master HD-DVD discs on them, too.
With Ritek demonstrating multilayer HD-DVD discs that can store over 50 GB on a single disc at CES just a few days ago, that pretty much erased the biggest selling point of Blu-Ray discs, namely more storage capacity per disc. Expect HD-DVD adult videos to hit the marketplace by summer 2007.
Actually, there may be a better solution than having to waste massive amounts of arable farmload to grow corn or sugar cane for ethanol.
If you've read up on what GreenFuel Technologies is working on by growing oil-laden algae in vertical tanks fed by the exhaust gases of coal-fired/natural gas-fired powerplants, one nice thing is that the "waste" from the processing of the algae into diesel fuel/heating oil can be easily processed further into ethanol. This could make it possible to increase biodiesel and ethanol production to a scale that no one could imagine even now....
GreenFuel Technologies have been working on this idea of producing diesel fuel from oil-laden algae for a number of years by feeding them the exhaust from coal-burning plants. That could result in a huge leap upward in biodiesel fuel and heating oil production and likely far more ethanol production along the way, since the "waste" from extracting diesel fuel from that algae can easily be processed into ethanol. Also, the oil from that algae could be processed through a standard catalytic "cracker" found at oil refineries into kerosene for gas-turbine engines and even possibly gasoline for automobile engines!:-)
Great ideas, but you still need to find a practical, light portable source of electric power.
Enter the nanotube-based supercapacitor MIT is currently developing. Once it reaches practical production (probably by 2013), you can essentially reduce the size of the battery pack to essentially the same space occupied by the fuel tank of a car powered by an internal combustion engine. Supercapacitors offer one huge advantage over NiMH and Li-On batteries, namely needing only a few minutes to completely recharge the battery pack, and also can withstand vastly more recharge cycles than NiMH/Li-On batteries. Combine this battery breakthrough with the VFD electric motors you mentioned and regenerative braking and the potential of a four-passenger car about the size of a Honda Fit using a very small battery pack going up to 500 km (310 miles) on a single charge and recharging times under five minutes sounds no longer far-fetched.
I think what killed the EV-1 came down to the fact the car was just too impractical due to the 7-8 hour charge times and the very limited 60 to 80 range of the vehicle on a full charge.
However, with MIT working on nanotechnology-based supercapacitors, we could see a dramatic reduction in the size of the battery pack combined with extremely fast recharging times, which may finally make an all-electric car as a replacement for a car powered by an internal combustion engine truly practical. The potential by 2013 of an electric car about the size of a Honda Fit powered by a supercapacitor battery pack the same size as the gas tank that can go up to 500 km (310 miles) on a single charge and recharge the whole battery pack from an external source in under five minutes excites quite a lot of auto manufacturers.
Actually, nanotech-based supercapacitors offer the potential for tremendous amounts of electric power storage in a surprisingly small package, combined with the potential of charging the whole unit in a few minutes instead of 7-8 hours for a standard NiMH battery pack used by current pure-electric cars. This could lead to a true electric car with as much range as 310 miles that only needs 4-5 minutes to do a full recharge, obseleting internal combustion engines for passenger cars.
Laugh all you want, but the very fact that Windows 95 (even in its initial release) had a built-in SLIP/PPP functionality made it possible to easily set up dial-up and "always on" cable modem/DSL broadband Internet access. Before Windows 95, Windows 3.1x users had to install an add-on application to get SLIP/PPP Internet access from a true Internet Service Provider, something a lot of users didn't want to do.
The hardware currently isn't cool because physically, the Zune device needs to be 15% smaller. But given Microsoft's patience and financial resources, the second-generation Zune (which will probably arrive by November 2007) will likely include far more "user friendly" interface software and will look "cool," both of which will attract users.
1) Apple will not break 10% marketshare unless they can seriously ramp up production and gets a major state university system to highly recommend their systems.
2) The Zune may become more of a threat than people think, as Microsoft improves the software (possibly including Play For Sure downloads again) and designs the player to be physically smaller in size.
3) Unless Apple can get large supplies of the next-generation high-capacity flash memory, I don't expect Apple to release a flash memory based video iPod. The nano will up its capacity to 16 GB, though.
4) Apple's new phone will NOT be called the iPhone, since Cisco Systems has released telephony products under that name. But it will be available by May 2007 and will include 4 GB and 8 GB storage capacity for music downloads from the iTunes Music Store and storage from the built-in video camera on the phone. Being a GSM phone, only Cingular and T-mobile will offer this new Apple cellphone in the USA.
5) The set-top box--based on the Mac Mini but with much more storage capacity--will probably arrive in Spring 2007.
6) Apple will finally unveil a true video iPod, something about the size of the Samsung Q1 tablet PC. It will offer 80 to 120 GB of storage, a big enough screen to see even 16:9 aspect video clearly, and all controls will be via touchscreen. Cheap it won't be, though.
I do know that recent DLP rear-projection TV's use 14,400 rpm spinning color wheels, which does eliminate the rainbow effect blurring except for the fastest motion. The use of LED light sources on some new units has pretty much eliminated this issue.
By the way, by late 2007 you'll see rear-projection TV's where the DLP or LCoS element are illuminated by laser light; not only does this eliminate the rainbow effect problem but you also get a potential major improvement in brightness and contrast, too.
In fact, the system developed by GreenFuel Technologies diverts a small amount of the algae into powering the systems needed to operate the algae-processing plant in the first place.
You can irrigate it with sea water once. When the water evaporates leaving the salts behind, you are in a bit of a pickle.
And a lot of companies would love to take that remaining salt off your hands in no time flat. People forget that common table salt (sodium choride) has a huge number of industrial uses, and many companies want that salt.
I think GreenFuel Technologies' plan is the most viable for now. By diverting the exhaust gases from coal-fired and natural gas-fired powerplants to "feed" vertical tanks of oil-laden algae, you get these benefits:
1) You reduce CO2 and NOx output far below that required by the Kyoto Protocol.
2) Because oil-laden algae grows very fast when "eating" CO2 and NOx gases, you get the ability to harvest the algae multiple times per year.
3) The algae can be easily processed into biodiesel fuel (and probably processed through a catalytic cracker into make kerosene and possibly even gasoline).
4) The "waste" from the algae processing could be further processed into animal feed and/or ethanol for fuel.
In short, I could foresee within 20 years most internal combustion engines being fuelled by B80 diesel fuel (where 80% of the fuel comes from biodiesel sources), and the rest run off ethanol from this production process. Of course, I also see 20 years from now a large fraction of motor vehicles being pure electrics that use fast-charging supercapacitors made with nanotechology that could hold a large charge in a relatively small battery pack.
In fact, in much of the USA WiMAX may be the ONLY way to get broadband Internet access over the next decade.
The reason is simple: by "piggybacking" WiMAX transceivers on cellphone towers (which are already up in the majority of rural areas), you avoid the enormous expense of doing the so-called last mile connection to the residence or business using DSL, cable TV, or fiber optic lines. Europe, Japan and South Korea have far less of this problem because the sheer population density makes it possible to justify the enormous expense of hardwiring every home and business for landline-based broadband.
The biggest advantage of the iPod is the enormous amount of third-party hardware available for these players. From protective "skins" all the way up to clock radios with built-in iPod data connectors and car stereos with optional iPod data connectors, small wonder why the iPod commands 78% of the market for portable media players.
The best way to improve energy efficiency is to modify our tax laws to encourage energy efficiency. Everybody would be putting up thermopane windows, putting in more house insulation, and buying Energy Star-certified consumer electrical/electronic goods if the cost could be deducted from your income taxes. Likewise, imposing excise taxes based on engine displacement and physical size of vehicle would do much for automakers to make a lot more small, fuel-efficient vehicles (they're already doing that in Europe and Japan).
1) It drastically lowers the "bar" to get the more advanced Amateur radio licenses, which benefits everyone all around.
2) With more ham operators around, it means that in case of a major emergency (e.g., large-scale natural disaster or other calamity) communications will be faster since in a natural disaster just about all other means of communication--TV channels, commercial radio, land-line telephones and cellphones--will not work for some time. Indeed, during the 9/11 attacks in New York City a lot communication systems went down, and ham radio operators were pretty much among the only reasonable means of communication for days.
While the PRAM developed by a joint project of IBM, Macronix and Qimonda is very impressive, it's still a long, long way from production because no commercial fab can manufacture it on a large scale. But Samsung's PRAM is far closer to production, and by the fall of 2008 don't be surprised if Apple ships a video iPod that uses 80 to 100 GB of PRAM.
The reason why GM phased out the EV-1 project comes down to the fact the range of the EV-1 is somewhere between 40-70 miles on a single overnight charge, not to mention the very limited pax/cargo capacity of the vehicle due to the massive battery banks needed for each vehicle.
I'll wait for future electric cars that use nanotubed-based supercapacitors that fully recharge in only a few minutes and allow for the dramatic reduction in the size of the battery pack.
Ah, no thanks. Bicycles maybe, but motorcycles, mopeds and motor scooters I won't support because of potential serious safety issues (if you get involved in an accident with a moped, motor scooter or motorcycle you're going to be seriously hurt even if you wear a helmet).
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Remember MIT's announcement early in 2006 about working on supercapacitors based on carbon nanotubes? That new technology could go a LONG way in making power generation by wind turbines and solar panels much more viable, and could make it possible for a truly practical electric car with long range and reasonable carrying capacity.
I think someone should put up a LOT of money to those MIT researchers that recently developed a supercapacitor using carbon nanotubes that store far more energy than previously possible to develop this technology further. That right there resolves two huge problems with electric cars, namely the size of the battery pack and the recharge time.
The EV-1 failed because frankly, who wants a car where most of the interior volume is taken up by the battery and recharge times can approach eight hours?
Hard metrification, which is redesigning everything to use standard metric sizes, is considerably more difficult and expensive.
Let's consider the food industry, for example. Hard metrification means we'll have to change over to measuring weight in grams and kilograms, liquids in millimeters and liters, oven and refrigerator temperatures in degrees Celsius, pressurized cooker measurements in kilopascals, and redo our cookbooks to all-metric measurements. The cost of conversion could run into many billions of US dollars to find metric replacements for the 12-ounce drink can, half-gallon and gallon milk container, one cup and two cup liquid measure cups, and on and on.
I would prefer a ten-year phased switchover to full metric.
The reason is simple: it spreads out conversion costs over a longer period, especially considering the conversion cost could run as high (in my humble opinion!) as US$1 trillion.
I mean just look at the food industry. Everything will have to be redone for measurements, from grams and kilograms for food weight, milliliters and liters for liquid measurements, degrees Celsius for oven and refrigerator temperatures, kilopascals for pressurized cooking units, and completely re-written cookbooks doing everything in metric. You can imagine how much THAT will cost.
I think people forget that the more financially well-off adult entertainment companies started to invest in high-definition cameras and editing equipment in the past 3-4 years. The cost of 1080i prosumer HD cameras rapidly dropped in price in the last 18 months, and desktop computers now run fast enough to edit 1080i videos and master HD-DVD discs on them, too.
With Ritek demonstrating multilayer HD-DVD discs that can store over 50 GB on a single disc at CES just a few days ago, that pretty much erased the biggest selling point of Blu-Ray discs, namely more storage capacity per disc. Expect HD-DVD adult videos to hit the marketplace by summer 2007.
Actually, there may be a better solution than having to waste massive amounts of arable farmload to grow corn or sugar cane for ethanol.
If you've read up on what GreenFuel Technologies is working on by growing oil-laden algae in vertical tanks fed by the exhaust gases of coal-fired/natural gas-fired powerplants, one nice thing is that the "waste" from the processing of the algae into diesel fuel/heating oil can be easily processed further into ethanol. This could make it possible to increase biodiesel and ethanol production to a scale that no one could imagine even now....
GreenFuel Technologies have been working on this idea of producing diesel fuel from oil-laden algae for a number of years by feeding them the exhaust from coal-burning plants. That could result in a huge leap upward in biodiesel fuel and heating oil production and likely far more ethanol production along the way, since the "waste" from extracting diesel fuel from that algae can easily be processed into ethanol. Also, the oil from that algae could be processed through a standard catalytic "cracker" found at oil refineries into kerosene for gas-turbine engines and even possibly gasoline for automobile engines! :-)
Great ideas, but you still need to find a practical, light portable source of electric power.
Enter the nanotube-based supercapacitor MIT is currently developing. Once it reaches practical production (probably by 2013), you can essentially reduce the size of the battery pack to essentially the same space occupied by the fuel tank of a car powered by an internal combustion engine. Supercapacitors offer one huge advantage over NiMH and Li-On batteries, namely needing only a few minutes to completely recharge the battery pack, and also can withstand vastly more recharge cycles than NiMH/Li-On batteries. Combine this battery breakthrough with the VFD electric motors you mentioned and regenerative braking and the potential of a four-passenger car about the size of a Honda Fit using a very small battery pack going up to 500 km (310 miles) on a single charge and recharging times under five minutes sounds no longer far-fetched.
I think what killed the EV-1 came down to the fact the car was just too impractical due to the 7-8 hour charge times and the very limited 60 to 80 range of the vehicle on a full charge.
However, with MIT working on nanotechnology-based supercapacitors, we could see a dramatic reduction in the size of the battery pack combined with extremely fast recharging times, which may finally make an all-electric car as a replacement for a car powered by an internal combustion engine truly practical. The potential by 2013 of an electric car about the size of a Honda Fit powered by a supercapacitor battery pack the same size as the gas tank that can go up to 500 km (310 miles) on a single charge and recharge the whole battery pack from an external source in under five minutes excites quite a lot of auto manufacturers.
Actually, nanotech-based supercapacitors offer the potential for tremendous amounts of electric power storage in a surprisingly small package, combined with the potential of charging the whole unit in a few minutes instead of 7-8 hours for a standard NiMH battery pack used by current pure-electric cars. This could lead to a true electric car with as much range as 310 miles that only needs 4-5 minutes to do a full recharge, obseleting internal combustion engines for passenger cars.
Windows 95.
Laugh all you want, but the very fact that Windows 95 (even in its initial release) had a built-in SLIP/PPP functionality made it possible to easily set up dial-up and "always on" cable modem/DSL broadband Internet access. Before Windows 95, Windows 3.1x users had to install an add-on application to get SLIP/PPP Internet access from a true Internet Service Provider, something a lot of users didn't want to do.
The hardware currently isn't cool because physically, the Zune device needs to be 15% smaller. But given Microsoft's patience and financial resources, the second-generation Zune (which will probably arrive by November 2007) will likely include far more "user friendly" interface software and will look "cool," both of which will attract users.
Some comments:
1) Apple will not break 10% marketshare unless they can seriously ramp up production and gets a major state university system to highly recommend their systems.
2) The Zune may become more of a threat than people think, as Microsoft improves the software (possibly including Play For Sure downloads again) and designs the player to be physically smaller in size.
3) Unless Apple can get large supplies of the next-generation high-capacity flash memory, I don't expect Apple to release a flash memory based video iPod. The nano will up its capacity to 16 GB, though.
4) Apple's new phone will NOT be called the iPhone, since Cisco Systems has released telephony products under that name. But it will be available by May 2007 and will include 4 GB and 8 GB storage capacity for music downloads from the iTunes Music Store and storage from the built-in video camera on the phone. Being a GSM phone, only Cingular and T-mobile will offer this new Apple cellphone in the USA.
5) The set-top box--based on the Mac Mini but with much more storage capacity--will probably arrive in Spring 2007.
6) Apple will finally unveil a true video iPod, something about the size of the Samsung Q1 tablet PC. It will offer 80 to 120 GB of storage, a big enough screen to see even 16:9 aspect video clearly, and all controls will be via touchscreen. Cheap it won't be, though.
I do know that recent DLP rear-projection TV's use 14,400 rpm spinning color wheels, which does eliminate the rainbow effect blurring except for the fastest motion. The use of LED light sources on some new units has pretty much eliminated this issue.
By the way, by late 2007 you'll see rear-projection TV's where the DLP or LCoS element are illuminated by laser light; not only does this eliminate the rainbow effect problem but you also get a potential major improvement in brightness and contrast, too.
In fact, the system developed by GreenFuel Technologies diverts a small amount of the algae into powering the systems needed to operate the algae-processing plant in the first place.
You can irrigate it with sea water once. When the water evaporates leaving the salts behind, you are in a bit of a pickle.
And a lot of companies would love to take that remaining salt off your hands in no time flat. People forget that common table salt (sodium choride) has a huge number of industrial uses, and many companies want that salt.
I think GreenFuel Technologies' plan is the most viable for now. By diverting the exhaust gases from coal-fired and natural gas-fired powerplants to "feed" vertical tanks of oil-laden algae, you get these benefits:
1) You reduce CO2 and NOx output far below that required by the Kyoto Protocol.
2) Because oil-laden algae grows very fast when "eating" CO2 and NOx gases, you get the ability to harvest the algae multiple times per year.
3) The algae can be easily processed into biodiesel fuel (and probably processed through a catalytic cracker into make kerosene and possibly even gasoline).
4) The "waste" from the algae processing could be further processed into animal feed and/or ethanol for fuel.
In short, I could foresee within 20 years most internal combustion engines being fuelled by B80 diesel fuel (where 80% of the fuel comes from biodiesel sources), and the rest run off ethanol from this production process. Of course, I also see 20 years from now a large fraction of motor vehicles being pure electrics that use fast-charging supercapacitors made with nanotechology that could hold a large charge in a relatively small battery pack.
Hey, you might have unlocked much of the plot points of the final Hary Potter novel! :-)
In fact, in much of the USA WiMAX may be the ONLY way to get broadband Internet access over the next decade.
The reason is simple: by "piggybacking" WiMAX transceivers on cellphone towers (which are already up in the majority of rural areas), you avoid the enormous expense of doing the so-called last mile connection to the residence or business using DSL, cable TV, or fiber optic lines. Europe, Japan and South Korea have far less of this problem because the sheer population density makes it possible to justify the enormous expense of hardwiring every home and business for landline-based broadband.
The biggest advantage of the iPod is the enormous amount of third-party hardware available for these players. From protective "skins" all the way up to clock radios with built-in iPod data connectors and car stereos with optional iPod data connectors, small wonder why the iPod commands 78% of the market for portable media players.
The best way to improve energy efficiency is to modify our tax laws to encourage energy efficiency. Everybody would be putting up thermopane windows, putting in more house insulation, and buying Energy Star-certified consumer electrical/electronic goods if the cost could be deducted from your income taxes. Likewise, imposing excise taxes based on engine displacement and physical size of vehicle would do much for automakers to make a lot more small, fuel-efficient vehicles (they're already doing that in Europe and Japan).
1) It drastically lowers the "bar" to get the more advanced Amateur radio licenses, which benefits everyone all around.
2) With more ham operators around, it means that in case of a major emergency (e.g., large-scale natural disaster or other calamity) communications will be faster since in a natural disaster just about all other means of communication--TV channels, commercial radio, land-line telephones and cellphones--will not work for some time. Indeed, during the 9/11 attacks in New York City a lot communication systems went down, and ham radio operators were pretty much among the only reasonable means of communication for days.
While the PRAM developed by a joint project of IBM, Macronix and Qimonda is very impressive, it's still a long, long way from production because no commercial fab can manufacture it on a large scale. But Samsung's PRAM is far closer to production, and by the fall of 2008 don't be surprised if Apple ships a video iPod that uses 80 to 100 GB of PRAM.
The reason why GM phased out the EV-1 project comes down to the fact the range of the EV-1 is somewhere between 40-70 miles on a single overnight charge, not to mention the very limited pax/cargo capacity of the vehicle due to the massive battery banks needed for each vehicle.
I'll wait for future electric cars that use nanotubed-based supercapacitors that fully recharge in only a few minutes and allow for the dramatic reduction in the size of the battery pack.
Ah, no thanks. Bicycles maybe, but motorcycles, mopeds and motor scooters I won't support because of potential serious safety issues (if you get involved in an accident with a moped, motor scooter or motorcycle you're going to be seriously hurt even if you wear a helmet).