I just did a price check on a flight out to my sister's place for spring turkey hunting. The flight would cost about $350. At about 1700 miles round trip I'd figure the fuel would cost me about $350 for fuel to drive. So far I break even.
Now, if I were to fly I'd have to pay to park my truck at the airport for the duration of my trip, or pay for a cab to pick me up. If I'm lucky I can find a buddy willing to wake up early, and/or miss time from work, to take me to the airport. Even a favor from my buddies isn't free, I'd feel compelled to at least offer him some of the game I caught.
Since I can't take so much as an empty water bottle on the airplane I'd have to buy fast food on my trip. With my truck I can pack a lunch, pick up groceries on the way, or at a minimum break even with the plane ride with a meal at Burger King or something. If I pack more than what I can carry with me on the plane I have to pay extra for that. The cost in driving my truck is the same whether it is just me with the clothes on my back, or if I fill it with clothes, guns, and ammo. (Not that everyone carries guns and ammo while traveling but this is a hunting trip I'm planning.)
Then once I arrive at my destination there is a high probability that I'd have to rent a vehicle, incurring more cost. If I drove I'd have a vehicle at no additional cost to me.
Since the trip is mostly interstate highway I can make this distance in one day while the sun shines. Taking a plane the trip would be four, six, maybe eight hours, depending on how long I have to spend at the airport waiting for my connecting flight. That's assuming that there is no weather delays and only one stop is made. If I'm unlucky enough that the flights are full for a one stop flight I'll have to make two stops, that means travel time goes to 12 hours. Not only would a two stop flight take the same time as driving, and cost more, I'd be traveling on the airline schedule, not my own.
I'm fortunate to live near a major airport now. I wasn't always that fortunate. I remember waiting many hours for my connecting flight since I had to take an early flight out of that dinky little airport just so that I could be at the right place to get on the last flight of the day to another dinky little airport. To add insult to my injury I had to sit and watch a rainstorm blow through that grounded all the flights, all the while thinking how much closer I'd be to my destination during that time if I'd only have driven.
When I add up time, money, and convenience to compare flying and driving I find that flying almost never wins. If I can drive there then I will.
If you must ask why the answer is usually money. Let's assume a company thinks this is a good idea and investigates the possibility. First thing they'd have to do is decide on the specifications on the card. How big would this card have to be? How much power will it consume, and therefore how much heat will it produce? What frequencies will it operate?
Just looking at the frequency issue the RF connection could be a problem. Materials can act very differently at 800 MHz than it does at 2.3 GHz. A mismatch can mean problems with power consumed, frequency stability, out of band noise, and perhaps other things I missed. One could place the antenna on the card to avoid much of these issues but then it's no longer a card that is inserted in the phone but now the back half of the phone.
Just thinking of the logistics the phone designer would have to have one part for the UI half of the phone and a part for each frequency of operation for the RF half of the phone. That means tracking N+1 parts instead of N parts when N equals the frequencies of operation. Having talked to engineers that have to track parts they do everything they can to keep part counts down. Just adding another different kind of machine screw to the design can give them fits.
I suspect that there is already a high level of reuse in the designs on these phones. One chip drives the OS on a number of similar phones, one chip drives the RF on a number of similar phones, one chip drives the display on a number of similar phones. The phone designer can pick and choose from these already existing chips to build a new phone and choosing to design a new chip when there is a desire to add some new feature. To make this common connection standard idea work a phone company would have to convince the chip manufacturers to design a chip to their liking, or the cell phone manufacturers would have to design a board for these chips to sit on to do the translation for them. When dealing with GHz frequencies, and the constraints of a hand held device, this becomes difficult and therefore expensive.
People's tastes in cell phones shift rapidly, and therefore the designs must come to market quickly. Taking the time to come up with some connection standard, have it tested, and have it future proofed against changes in FCC rules, consumer tastes, and so on, while still allowing for a profit margin sounds quite difficult to me.
I don't believe you. It's also irrelevant. If solar thermal was so great we'd see more of it. Solar thermal is still experimental while nuclear power has decades of profitable operation to prove its viability.
Bullshit. How can some mirrors and the same high temperature molten salt plumbing as some nuclear plants use cost more than a reactor that has to be fuelled, run safely and then decommissioned and the site decontaminated over a period of 90 years?
Because nuclear power is profitable while solar thermal is not. Solar thermal is still experimental and has not shown nearly as much energy output per dollar put in as compared to nuclear.
In fact the situation is so bad that when our government tried to sell off its nuclear power plants in the 80s no-one would buy them. On the other hand companies are building solar thermal plants without any subsidy in Spain now.
I don't believe you. No subsidy at all? Not even a break on the property taxes? I've seen solar power projects go under in the USA because they could not afford the property taxes.
I find the fact that no one wanted to buy an existing power plant as irrelevant. The old power plants are not nearly as profitable as a new one. That's a lot of money to gamble with, and few corporations have that kind of money.
So you don't really know much about wind or solar, huh? Solar thermal is reliable and works 24/7. In fact it is one of the best technologies for dealing with peek demand because molten salt is about 95% efficient for energy storage. It needs less maintenance than nuclear too, so less down-time.
That's nice but nuclear power is cheaper. Solar power cannot replace nuclear until it reaches parity in cost and reliability. While there are advancements in solar thermal there are also advancements in nuclear power. Even then solar power can only replace nuclear where the sun shines. I doubt solar thermal will prove competitive in places like Alaska. Solar thermal might do well in the land of the midnight sun during the summer but the winter is going to get real cold and dark. Hydro won't work so well either when the rivers freeze.
Wind depends on location more than solar thermal, but there are places in the UK where it can be relied on 24/7 too. What you have to understand is that the blades can adjust to keep turning at a fairly constant rate even as the wind speed varies, and there are places where it never reaches zero. I don't know about the US but I imagine there are similar places. You have to pick the technology that works best in each area.
Sure, I can go with that. There's a lot of places on this planet where the rivers don't always flow, the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. Out here in the American plains is a good example. Lots of flat semi-arid land, with wind that likes to gust (gusts and windmills don't play together well), and not a whole lot of sun during the winter. We do have a lot of coal, oil, and uranium though.
You don't need huge dams. Anywhere water flows you can generate hydro power.
Perhaps you missed the part where I said we've dammed up all the rivers worth a dam. There is no growth in hydro power, we've maxed out already. We're going to need more power and I don't believe we're just going to discover a new river any time soon.
I guess Europe and Japan will have to show you how it's done. You have already missed the boat and ensured you won't be at the forefront of energy production technology in 10 years time.
We have no shortage of know-how. The problem lies in the government. The federal government has not allowed for new oil drilling in years, no new nuclear power plants in decades, and they are continuously flushing money down the ethanol toilet.
The USA is sitting on top of some of the largest reserves of oil, coal, uranium, thorium, natural gas, and arable land. In ten years we'll be exporting oil. That's assuming the federal government doesn't bankrupt us all first.
Nuclear is only cheap because it is heavily subsidized. In other words, it isn't cheap.
All energy sources in the USA gets subsidized by the government in some way. Even if we remove all the subsidies on all energy we'd still see solar costing double that of nuclear power. Even if we had the technology to make wind and solar cost half as much as nuclear there is still the problem that wind and solar are dependent on the weather. Because wind and solar is unreliable there must be a backup power source and/or means to store that energy for later.
Since wind and solar make up such a small percentage of the electric power produced in the USA we have not had to put much thought into backup power since the normal means of handling changes in the source and sink of energy is enough to handle the volatility of wind and solar. The most common means of handling the peaks is with inefficient natural gas turbines. Running these turbines has a cost on par with current wind and solar power costs. So, not only would wind and solar have to cost half that of nuclear to be viable so would the backup power source. Since for every megawatt in wind or solar a utility adds to the grid they need to have a backup natural gas turbine the only reason these utilities buy it is because the government pays them to do it, or simply mandates they invest in "alternative" energy under threat of fines.
When a nuclear power plant is built it's typical to get 85% of rated capacity averaged over a year. With wind and solar it's typical to see only 40% of rated capacity. To get the same realized output from wind and solar a utility would have to build up three times the rated capacity of the nuclear power plant. I'll be generous and assume that the same backup and/or storage would have to exist whether it be nuclear, wind, or solar even though I have my doubts.
The only reason wind and solar is as cheap as it is right now is because we have enough gas, coal, and nuclear capacity to back it up. If we remove the coal and nuclear backup there is just not enough gas and hydroelectric capacity to make up the loss. We'd have to build considerable backup capacity in electric power to avoid blackouts when the wind doesn't blow and the sun does not shine. Right now that means very expensive natural gas turbines.
Okay, hydro isn't an alternative then because it is already widely used, just not widely enough.
We've already dammed up all the rivers that are worth a dam in the USA. We ran out of places to dam long ago.
I see a place for wind and solar in the future of electricity generation. It will provide competition to keep prices down. We're just going to have to see some serious technological advances before wind and solar can be even close to how cheap nuclear power is now. We'll also need to see advancements in energy storage so that we can make use of the wind and solar power when we need it. One thing to remember is that any advancement in energy storage will prove equally beneficial to the price of coal and nuclear since coal and nuclear gets cheaper the closer to rated capacity they are run. Throttling back coal and nuclear is very expensive, with the ability to store the excess capacity for later means lower costs.
The more wind and solar capacity we add, as a percentage, the higher the costs of that power. A change in nuclear power capacity we have, as a percentage, does not meaningfully affect the price. We've seen this numerous times in other nations. I believe it was in the UK they saw that with more wind power the cost of coal power went up because the coal power plants had to idle when the wind blew. Wind and solar are going to have to get real cheap to make up for all the shortfalls it has in technology and physical realities.
I've always been a nuclear proponent, but you would have to build a nuclear fission plant every day for like 30 years to replace fossil fuels.
Then you contradict yourself with this:
The sun bathes the earth with a huge abundance of energy, far in excess of all our needs for the foreseeable future, as in for millennia. Building it out would be a huge project but at least it's feasible.
I fail to see how we (as a culture/species/nation/whatever) are capable of building large complex solar power collectors, using technology that has not yet been shown to be economically feasible, at a rate sufficient to replacing fossil fuels but are not capable of building nuclear power plants at a rate sufficient to replace fossil fuels, using technology that has been shown to be economically feasible for decades. If we can produce enough steel, concrete, etc. to build solar collectors to keep up with our energy demands then we can certainly do that with a proven and abundant energy source like nuclear.
I have heard something similar to what you stated, if we never build another coal fired power plant we'd have to build a new nuclear power plant every month to keep up with out dated coal plants closing. We'd have to build another nuclear power plant every month or so to keep up with the growth of our world energy needs. We've built gigawatt scale nuclear power plants before. We've not yet built a gigawatt scale solar collector array.
Solar power is clean and abundant but it is very expensive. With all the benefits of solar power it still cannot compete where it really counts, cost. Solar power right now costs around five times that of nuclear power. Given the physical limits of solar power I cannot foresee the costs coming down any time soon.
... They are well on their way to achieving this, it sounds like.
That's nice but nuclear power has already been proven viable. We don't need to store nuclear power since we can produce it on demand. We also already have the technology to turn nuclear power into fuels capable of powering our planes, train, and automobiles. We've had that technology for nearly a century now. The ability to turn solar power into gasoline has not been proven viable and may never prove to be viable.
There may come a time when solar power outshines every other energy source. In the mean time we'll need to invest in nuclear power. I'm not willing to bet the lives of the next generation on the viability of solar power before fossil fuels run out.
All of those energy source you gave are safe, require no new technology, and clean. The problem is that they are also very expensive. If nuclear power wasn't so cheap by comparison we would not even consider using it over the alternatives you listed.
I'm quite sure that physical realities are stacked against any existing energy source becoming cheaper than nuclear. We're already getting real close to the physical limitations of efficiency on gas, wind, solar, and hydro. On the other hand we're still learning ways to make nuclear power cheaper, safer, and cleaner.
If gas, wind, hydro, and solar we're as cheap and reliable as nuclear we would not call them alternative energy sources, we'd just call them energy sources. We would not call them "alternatives" because they'd then be the primary means of energy if they even got close to how cheap nuclear and coal are now.
I believe that the risk of nuclear proliferation is overblown. It is also going to be irrelevant eventually.
There is going to be a time when fossil fuels run out. Might be decades, might be centuries. When it does run out people will not willingly revert to a preindustrial society. They will crave things like artificial lighting and refrigeration. Wind, solar, and hydroelectric are too sparse to power a modern economy. Once the fossil fuels run out people will have to choose between nuclear power or a near caveman like existence. If you think these oil producing countries don't play well with the other children in the schoolyard right now just wait until the oil runs out and they are told they can't have nuclear power.
I guess there is another choice besides caveman lifestyle and nuclear power. That choice would be living off of the generosity of a nuclear powered nation. I don't believe that would go over very well either. Without the energy density that only nuclear and fossil fuels provide there would be no planes, trains, and automobiles. There would be no steel mills, aluminum refining, or concrete production.
There is going to be a time when, after the fossil fuels have been depleted, we will have to come to.terms with the reality that by denying a nation nuclear power we are dooming them to either freeze or starve to death.
Realistically, the only way I see enough solar collection happening to power the country is using plants to collect solar energy and converting them into biofuels.
If we use all of this arable land to produce fuel then what are we going to eat? Biomass fuels have been proven to be an economic and environmental disaster. If we don't abandon biofuels soon we are going to have some serious problems with our food supply. I can only hope people figure this out before we have a mass starvation.
Geothermal is (relatively) concentrated, consistent, and for all practical purposes as inexhaustible as solar (how long until the Earth's core cools down?).
From what I recall geothermal is not inexhaustible. The operational lifespan of a geothermal plant is on the order of decades. What happens is the local rock is cooled by the power plant to the point where it is no longer hot enough to economically run the plant. I assume that given enough time the rock will get warmed up enough to be economically feasible again but I also assume that this would take centuries.
Someone that cannot understand math at a fourth grade level is just plain going to find life in modern society difficult, not just studying a science/engineering major in college. Someone that cannot understand basic fractions, multiplication, a bit of geometry, is going to find things like driving a car (how much further can I go before I need to fill the tank again?) or getting groceries (will I need one or two boxes of this to feed the family supper tonight). Someone that can go through life and not be able to pass a fourth grade math test must have had someone to do much of the thinking for him/her. They must also be in a job that does not require much thought, like a school administrator.
I'll assume your 3 megawatt estimation is correct and play around with that number for a bit.
In the electric cars I've seen the battery packs are rated at somewhere around 100 volts. To get 3,000,000 watts from 100 volts one would need a conductor capable of carrying 30,000 amps. I tried to look up how big of a conductor that would have to be but the charts I have stop at 2000 amps.
Since the charts I have in reach stop at 2000 amps I'll use that for a maximum amperes. That means the car charger would have to provide 1500 volts. I'm not sure how big of a conductor the car charger would need to have but I'll guess it'd have to be ten time the size of the service wires to my house, which are rated at 200 amperes. That is huge.
Just for giggles here I'll take it one step further and say that instead of a five minute charge, which is about the time it takes to fill my truck's fuel tank, I'll allow for ten times more time. Instead of a five minute charge I'll give you a 50 minute charge. Nearly an hour to fill up your vehicle. That still means a 100 volt battery pack would have to be charged at a 3000 amp rate to get within one tenth of the energy stored in my truck's fuel tank.
Even though we've allowed for two orders of magnitude in lowering the power required to recharge an electric car's battery, as compared to a common gasoline powered vehicle, we're still seeing impractical requirements for conducting that electricity. Even if the infrastructure could be built to hold up to these electrical requirements there is the matter of finding a capacitor, battery, or whatever capable of holding up to this abuse and still be light enough, small enough, and safe enough to place in a passenger vehicle.
Barring some leap in technology the electrically charged car will remain forever in second place to those powered by hydrocarbons. That is why we're seeing research like this into hydrocarbon fuel cells.
I made no claim otherwise. I'm just recognizing that even if (or when) we run out of dead dinosaurs to burn we will still have hydrocarbons powering our economy.
"Significant" is one thing, "practical" is another. This technology is still going to have to compete with internal combustion engines for power output, longevity, cost, weight, safety, and so on. I believe we are still a long way from fuel cell powered cars.
Not to mention, it would mean biofuels go back on the table - the power source of choice for long-haul travel, if short-haul only needs batteries.
Not so fast. If these things can burn gasoline, fuel oil, propane, etc. then they can probably burn ethanol too. It will take legislation to change for the corn to end up on kitchen tables instead of fuel tanks. Ethanol has been a disaster on many levels. Burning food for fuel is how civilizations have fallen, we don't need to repeat history. The legislation will change just not because of fuel cells. It will change because people have become cold and hungry.
I share your belief that the end of fossil fuel dominance is coming. I also believe that hydrocarbons will be with us for a very long time. We've got military tanks, trucks, ships, jet fighters, bombers, transports, and so on that run on hydrocarbons. All of these have a useful lifespan measured in decades. Many of these military vehicles will have crew that have not even been born yet, for some of them their mothers have not even been born yet. I believe we will see a rise of synthesized fuels to replace our currently available fossil fuels. We are already halfway there with techniques like hydrocarbon cracking commonly in use. The infrastructure is already there, of course, for storage and transport. This is why fuel cells that can run off of gasoline is even being considered with all of their complications.
I recall reading somewhere that the hydrogen density in gasoline is higher than that of pure liquid hydrogen. The storage and transport of liquid hydrogen has its own problems. We already know we can handle gasoline safely. I believe the "hydrogen economy" will look a lot like the current economy. The hydrocarbons will still flow but instead of pumping it out of the ground we will create them in factories powered by nuclear fission and coal. The coal will run out too in time but by then we will have completed the transition to nuclear power.
I once did the math to figure out the rate of power transferred into my fuel tank whenever I gassed up my truck. Then I did the math to figure out some possible volt and ampere combinations that would create an equivalent power transfer rate. I then took a few of the more "practical" combinations and figured out about how big the electrical conductors would have to be to meet federal ampacity requirements and estimate the distance required between the conductors to prevent arcing. The math is not difficult but I don't wish to repeat it right now, I'll leave it for an exercise for the reader.
After I saw what it would take to transfer the same amount of energy as my five minute stop to pump gas I just knew that someone would come back with how much more efficient electric cars are than gasoline powered cars, that I did not need such a large vehicle to carry my skinny butt to my cubicle and back every weekday, and so on. The problem is that even if one can reduce the the amount of electrical energy needed to have equivalent range as a full tank of gasoline by 1/10 the electrical requirements needed for a rapid recharge are still impractical. Even if we found a means to build these charging stations the current battery storage technologies we have could not withstand such a rapid charging rate.
Another argument is that a vast majority of my driving, and most American's driving, is within a 30 mile range or something. That's very likely true but the problem remains that people do not wish to confine themselves to a 30 mile, or even 300 mile, radius. Electrically recharged vehicles will always remain within the niche of a second vehicle in a two car garage. Using electrically recharged trucking is laughable.
Go ahead and do the math to figure out the power that can be transferred in a common filling station fuel pump. Then figure out the electrical requirements to match even a fraction of that power transfer. Then figure out the size of the conductors needed to carry that much power. For extra points figure out how much those conductors would weigh and if you could even lift them to plug into your car.
If they cannot screen everyone then the screening is meaningless. Security only works if every threat is stopped. Think of it this way, would you buy an oven mitt that said on the label it will keep your hand from getting burned 90% of the time?
We cannot ever be efficient enough to not need to find more energy. Energy is still consumed with increased efficiency, just at a lower rate. That means that we will still run out of oil. Running out of oil means a need for a replacement energy source. The only energy source that can currently compete will fossil based fuels right now is nuclear power. The "alternative" energy sources right now remain alternative because they cost many times more. If they could compete with nuclear and fossil energy then they would not be called "alternative energy sources" but instead called "energy sources".
One huge problem with nuclear power is that it is not as portable as fossil fuels. We can't just pour nuclear energy into a tank on a lawn mower or chain saw. Nuclear power can be used to synthesize these portable fuels. These portable fuels might be direct analogs of gasoline, fuel oil, and jet fuel requiring no changes in infrastructure but they might also be things like liquid hydrogen, ammonia, or alcohols.
There is enough fossil fuels on this planet to last us decades or even centuries. With increases in efficiencies it may last much longer but it will run out. We might have some future technology to replace nuclear fission but until then we need to continue burning fossil fuels. We also need to realize the inevitable and act right now with the technology we have right now. That means nuclear fission.
I know a few current and former law enforcement officers. One of them talked about how a driver said to him that if he had a gun that he'd be dead by now walking up to the car like he did. He just smiled and agreed. What the driver did not know is that while his right hand was in his pocket he was holding on to a.38 special hammerless revolver. The uniform trousers at the time had a holster for the revolver sewn into the pocket. He did not even have to draw the gun but just point and shoot through the fabric. That is part of the reason why the visible revolver was a cross draw, so that it would not interfere with the operation of the concealed revolver.
The mention of revolvers gives some indication to the age of this story and of the officer. I don't know if today's officers do the same but since I see officers carry their pistol on the strong side I doubt they do. This change might have something to do with relative the cost and effectiveness of body armor from then to now.
Speaking of damaging the vehicle here's some "what ifs" for you. What if the person with the GPS tracker got into a messy collision? What if the sloppy installation of the tracking device was shown to have damaged a vital component of the vehicle? What if the GPS tracker prevented a safety device from working properly, like the air bag? What if the GPS tracker has shown the car had stopped in the middle of a river/lake/other body of water? Would the agency that installed the device be compelled to call for assistance? What kind of legal liability would the agency that placed the tracking device have?
Some day something like the "what ifs" I posed will happen and someone is going to look real stupid.
Remove the battery, antenna, SIM card, or something to temporarily disable it. Some phones, like an iPhone, might make this difficult. In that case a Faraday cage in the form of aluminum foil might just do the trick.
Considering that I drive a small SUV it'd be rather difficult for anyone to hide in the boot. I suppose someone might try to remove the spare tire under the frame and ride it it's place in "Cape Fear" style. Taking out the tire might make room for a small person and not be visibly obvious.
The "boot" is the part of the car opposite the bonnet of course. What's the matter, don't you speak English?
Re:Affordable replacement for something paid for
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The F-35 Story
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Something tells me that a whole lot of technology to do this has come from the F-35 project. That stealth technology you reference was most likely one of the technologies refined in the development of the F-35.
1-Even if it produces more pollution than gas at least you/your kids don't breath it. 2-It's easier to put pollution scrubbers on a stationary plant. 3-Power plants don't idle, they either run at full or are turned off.
1, 2, & 3- I'm talking about carbon output, not pollution.
4-You can switch that coal to solar/tidal/wind/nuclear without needing a new car.
Yes, yes you can. Problem is that until the electricity actually comes from solar/tidal/nuclear the electric car is creating more carbon in the atmosphere than the gasoline or diesel fuel powered car. If the goal is to reduce carbon output NOW, then one would not buy an electric car. They'd be better off with a natural gas car, public transportation, walking, biking, and so on.
Point is that by using an electric car while the primary source of electricity is from burning coal one is actually increasing their carbon footprint. Get the solar/tidal/nuclear electric production FIRST and then getting an electric car will reduce one's carbon footprint. Getting the electric car first means that one is going backwards.
I like the idea of kit cars, sounds like a fun thing to do and as a way to potentially save money over buying a new car. The Streetscooter looks like a cute little car that can handle stop and go, tight spaces, and other obstacles one would find in a common city commute. This kit car is also a good way for someone to experiment in automotive technologies without having to reverse engineer an entire vehicle, or take on the much bigger task of designing a whole car of their own. There are vehicles out there that have a large market for aftermarket parts that people can build an entire vehicle from parts (the Jeep CJ comes to mind) but it looks like this Streetscooter is a more modern design that could appeal to more people.
What people should not be doing is getting one of these to reduce their "carbon footprint". Electric cars are coal fired cars. So long as a majority of our electricity comes from burning coal the electricity it runs on, and the energy used in the manufacture of the car's batteries, will create more carbon over the life of the car than if one just got a similarly sized gasoline or diesel fuel powered car. Real reductions in carbon footprint for vehicles involves nuclear power, natural gas, and perhaps some other technologies that have yet to mature.
This looks like a neat little car. If I had the space to put one together, and I thought I could get my 6'5" body inside, I'd consider getting one. I'd still keep my 4x4 truck for when the weather demands it, long drives, and when I need to haul more than groceries. Looks like something that would be easier to parallel park than my current vehicle, reduce the need to stop for fuel (just plug it in every night after work), and perhaps even save some money in the long run.
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It's also often cheaper to drive.
I just did a price check on a flight out to my sister's place for spring turkey hunting. The flight would cost about $350. At about 1700 miles round trip I'd figure the fuel would cost me about $350 for fuel to drive. So far I break even.
Now, if I were to fly I'd have to pay to park my truck at the airport for the duration of my trip, or pay for a cab to pick me up. If I'm lucky I can find a buddy willing to wake up early, and/or miss time from work, to take me to the airport. Even a favor from my buddies isn't free, I'd feel compelled to at least offer him some of the game I caught.
Since I can't take so much as an empty water bottle on the airplane I'd have to buy fast food on my trip. With my truck I can pack a lunch, pick up groceries on the way, or at a minimum break even with the plane ride with a meal at Burger King or something. If I pack more than what I can carry with me on the plane I have to pay extra for that. The cost in driving my truck is the same whether it is just me with the clothes on my back, or if I fill it with clothes, guns, and ammo. (Not that everyone carries guns and ammo while traveling but this is a hunting trip I'm planning.)
Then once I arrive at my destination there is a high probability that I'd have to rent a vehicle, incurring more cost. If I drove I'd have a vehicle at no additional cost to me.
Since the trip is mostly interstate highway I can make this distance in one day while the sun shines. Taking a plane the trip would be four, six, maybe eight hours, depending on how long I have to spend at the airport waiting for my connecting flight. That's assuming that there is no weather delays and only one stop is made. If I'm unlucky enough that the flights are full for a one stop flight I'll have to make two stops, that means travel time goes to 12 hours. Not only would a two stop flight take the same time as driving, and cost more, I'd be traveling on the airline schedule, not my own.
I'm fortunate to live near a major airport now. I wasn't always that fortunate. I remember waiting many hours for my connecting flight since I had to take an early flight out of that dinky little airport just so that I could be at the right place to get on the last flight of the day to another dinky little airport. To add insult to my injury I had to sit and watch a rainstorm blow through that grounded all the flights, all the while thinking how much closer I'd be to my destination during that time if I'd only have driven.
When I add up time, money, and convenience to compare flying and driving I find that flying almost never wins. If I can drive there then I will.
Would those be robotic clockwork time traveling Victorian thugs?
If you must ask why the answer is usually money. Let's assume a company thinks this is a good idea and investigates the possibility. First thing they'd have to do is decide on the specifications on the card. How big would this card have to be? How much power will it consume, and therefore how much heat will it produce? What frequencies will it operate?
Just looking at the frequency issue the RF connection could be a problem. Materials can act very differently at 800 MHz than it does at 2.3 GHz. A mismatch can mean problems with power consumed, frequency stability, out of band noise, and perhaps other things I missed. One could place the antenna on the card to avoid much of these issues but then it's no longer a card that is inserted in the phone but now the back half of the phone.
Just thinking of the logistics the phone designer would have to have one part for the UI half of the phone and a part for each frequency of operation for the RF half of the phone. That means tracking N+1 parts instead of N parts when N equals the frequencies of operation. Having talked to engineers that have to track parts they do everything they can to keep part counts down. Just adding another different kind of machine screw to the design can give them fits.
I suspect that there is already a high level of reuse in the designs on these phones. One chip drives the OS on a number of similar phones, one chip drives the RF on a number of similar phones, one chip drives the display on a number of similar phones. The phone designer can pick and choose from these already existing chips to build a new phone and choosing to design a new chip when there is a desire to add some new feature. To make this common connection standard idea work a phone company would have to convince the chip manufacturers to design a chip to their liking, or the cell phone manufacturers would have to design a board for these chips to sit on to do the translation for them. When dealing with GHz frequencies, and the constraints of a hand held device, this becomes difficult and therefore expensive.
People's tastes in cell phones shift rapidly, and therefore the designs must come to market quickly. Taking the time to come up with some connection standard, have it tested, and have it future proofed against changes in FCC rules, consumer tastes, and so on, while still allowing for a profit margin sounds quite difficult to me.
Not so in the UK.
I don't believe you. It's also irrelevant. If solar thermal was so great we'd see more of it. Solar thermal is still experimental while nuclear power has decades of profitable operation to prove its viability.
Bullshit. How can some mirrors and the same high temperature molten salt plumbing as some nuclear plants use cost more than a reactor that has to be fuelled, run safely and then decommissioned and the site decontaminated over a period of 90 years?
Because nuclear power is profitable while solar thermal is not. Solar thermal is still experimental and has not shown nearly as much energy output per dollar put in as compared to nuclear.
In fact the situation is so bad that when our government tried to sell off its nuclear power plants in the 80s no-one would buy them. On the other hand companies are building solar thermal plants without any subsidy in Spain now.
I don't believe you. No subsidy at all? Not even a break on the property taxes? I've seen solar power projects go under in the USA because they could not afford the property taxes.
I find the fact that no one wanted to buy an existing power plant as irrelevant. The old power plants are not nearly as profitable as a new one. That's a lot of money to gamble with, and few corporations have that kind of money.
So you don't really know much about wind or solar, huh? Solar thermal is reliable and works 24/7. In fact it is one of the best technologies for dealing with peek demand because molten salt is about 95% efficient for energy storage. It needs less maintenance than nuclear too, so less down-time.
That's nice but nuclear power is cheaper. Solar power cannot replace nuclear until it reaches parity in cost and reliability. While there are advancements in solar thermal there are also advancements in nuclear power. Even then solar power can only replace nuclear where the sun shines. I doubt solar thermal will prove competitive in places like Alaska. Solar thermal might do well in the land of the midnight sun during the summer but the winter is going to get real cold and dark. Hydro won't work so well either when the rivers freeze.
Wind depends on location more than solar thermal, but there are places in the UK where it can be relied on 24/7 too. What you have to understand is that the blades can adjust to keep turning at a fairly constant rate even as the wind speed varies, and there are places where it never reaches zero. I don't know about the US but I imagine there are similar places. You have to pick the technology that works best in each area.
Sure, I can go with that. There's a lot of places on this planet where the rivers don't always flow, the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow. Out here in the American plains is a good example. Lots of flat semi-arid land, with wind that likes to gust (gusts and windmills don't play together well), and not a whole lot of sun during the winter. We do have a lot of coal, oil, and uranium though.
You don't need huge dams. Anywhere water flows you can generate hydro power.
Perhaps you missed the part where I said we've dammed up all the rivers worth a dam. There is no growth in hydro power, we've maxed out already. We're going to need more power and I don't believe we're just going to discover a new river any time soon.
I guess Europe and Japan will have to show you how it's done. You have already missed the boat and ensured you won't be at the forefront of energy production technology in 10 years time.
We have no shortage of know-how. The problem lies in the government. The federal government has not allowed for new oil drilling in years, no new nuclear power plants in decades, and they are continuously flushing money down the ethanol toilet.
The USA is sitting on top of some of the largest reserves of oil, coal, uranium, thorium, natural gas, and arable land. In ten years we'll be exporting oil. That's assuming the federal government doesn't bankrupt us all first.
Nuclear is only cheap because it is heavily subsidized. In other words, it isn't cheap.
All energy sources in the USA gets subsidized by the government in some way. Even if we remove all the subsidies on all energy we'd still see solar costing double that of nuclear power. Even if we had the technology to make wind and solar cost half as much as nuclear there is still the problem that wind and solar are dependent on the weather. Because wind and solar is unreliable there must be a backup power source and/or means to store that energy for later.
Since wind and solar make up such a small percentage of the electric power produced in the USA we have not had to put much thought into backup power since the normal means of handling changes in the source and sink of energy is enough to handle the volatility of wind and solar. The most common means of handling the peaks is with inefficient natural gas turbines. Running these turbines has a cost on par with current wind and solar power costs. So, not only would wind and solar have to cost half that of nuclear to be viable so would the backup power source. Since for every megawatt in wind or solar a utility adds to the grid they need to have a backup natural gas turbine the only reason these utilities buy it is because the government pays them to do it, or simply mandates they invest in "alternative" energy under threat of fines.
When a nuclear power plant is built it's typical to get 85% of rated capacity averaged over a year. With wind and solar it's typical to see only 40% of rated capacity. To get the same realized output from wind and solar a utility would have to build up three times the rated capacity of the nuclear power plant. I'll be generous and assume that the same backup and/or storage would have to exist whether it be nuclear, wind, or solar even though I have my doubts.
The only reason wind and solar is as cheap as it is right now is because we have enough gas, coal, and nuclear capacity to back it up. If we remove the coal and nuclear backup there is just not enough gas and hydroelectric capacity to make up the loss. We'd have to build considerable backup capacity in electric power to avoid blackouts when the wind doesn't blow and the sun does not shine. Right now that means very expensive natural gas turbines.
Okay, hydro isn't an alternative then because it is already widely used, just not widely enough.
We've already dammed up all the rivers that are worth a dam in the USA. We ran out of places to dam long ago.
I see a place for wind and solar in the future of electricity generation. It will provide competition to keep prices down. We're just going to have to see some serious technological advances before wind and solar can be even close to how cheap nuclear power is now. We'll also need to see advancements in energy storage so that we can make use of the wind and solar power when we need it. One thing to remember is that any advancement in energy storage will prove equally beneficial to the price of coal and nuclear since coal and nuclear gets cheaper the closer to rated capacity they are run. Throttling back coal and nuclear is very expensive, with the ability to store the excess capacity for later means lower costs.
The more wind and solar capacity we add, as a percentage, the higher the costs of that power. A change in nuclear power capacity we have, as a percentage, does not meaningfully affect the price. We've seen this numerous times in other nations. I believe it was in the UK they saw that with more wind power the cost of coal power went up because the coal power plants had to idle when the wind blew. Wind and solar are going to have to get real cheap to make up for all the shortfalls it has in technology and physical realities.
First you state this:
I've always been a nuclear proponent, but you would have to build a nuclear fission plant every day for like 30 years to replace fossil fuels.
Then you contradict yourself with this:
The sun bathes the earth with a huge abundance of energy, far in excess of all our needs for the foreseeable future, as in for millennia. Building it out would be a huge project but at least it's feasible.
I fail to see how we (as a culture/species/nation/whatever) are capable of building large complex solar power collectors, using technology that has not yet been shown to be economically feasible, at a rate sufficient to replacing fossil fuels but are not capable of building nuclear power plants at a rate sufficient to replace fossil fuels, using technology that has been shown to be economically feasible for decades. If we can produce enough steel, concrete, etc. to build solar collectors to keep up with our energy demands then we can certainly do that with a proven and abundant energy source like nuclear.
I have heard something similar to what you stated, if we never build another coal fired power plant we'd have to build a new nuclear power plant every month to keep up with out dated coal plants closing. We'd have to build another nuclear power plant every month or so to keep up with the growth of our world energy needs. We've built gigawatt scale nuclear power plants before. We've not yet built a gigawatt scale solar collector array.
Solar power is clean and abundant but it is very expensive. With all the benefits of solar power it still cannot compete where it really counts, cost. Solar power right now costs around five times that of nuclear power. Given the physical limits of solar power I cannot foresee the costs coming down any time soon.
... They are well on their way to achieving this, it sounds like.
That's nice but nuclear power has already been proven viable. We don't need to store nuclear power since we can produce it on demand. We also already have the technology to turn nuclear power into fuels capable of powering our planes, train, and automobiles. We've had that technology for nearly a century now. The ability to turn solar power into gasoline has not been proven viable and may never prove to be viable.
There may come a time when solar power outshines every other energy source. In the mean time we'll need to invest in nuclear power. I'm not willing to bet the lives of the next generation on the viability of solar power before fossil fuels run out.
All of those energy source you gave are safe, require no new technology, and clean. The problem is that they are also very expensive. If nuclear power wasn't so cheap by comparison we would not even consider using it over the alternatives you listed.
I'm quite sure that physical realities are stacked against any existing energy source becoming cheaper than nuclear. We're already getting real close to the physical limitations of efficiency on gas, wind, solar, and hydro. On the other hand we're still learning ways to make nuclear power cheaper, safer, and cleaner.
If gas, wind, hydro, and solar we're as cheap and reliable as nuclear we would not call them alternative energy sources, we'd just call them energy sources. We would not call them "alternatives" because they'd then be the primary means of energy if they even got close to how cheap nuclear and coal are now.
I believe that the risk of nuclear proliferation is overblown. It is also going to be irrelevant eventually.
There is going to be a time when fossil fuels run out. Might be decades, might be centuries. When it does run out people will not willingly revert to a preindustrial society. They will crave things like artificial lighting and refrigeration. Wind, solar, and hydroelectric are too sparse to power a modern economy. Once the fossil fuels run out people will have to choose between nuclear power or a near caveman like existence. If you think these oil producing countries don't play well with the other children in the schoolyard right now just wait until the oil runs out and they are told they can't have nuclear power.
I guess there is another choice besides caveman lifestyle and nuclear power. That choice would be living off of the generosity of a nuclear powered nation. I don't believe that would go over very well either. Without the energy density that only nuclear and fossil fuels provide there would be no planes, trains, and automobiles. There would be no steel mills, aluminum refining, or concrete production.
There is going to be a time when, after the fossil fuels have been depleted, we will have to come to.terms with the reality that by denying a nation nuclear power we are dooming them to either freeze or starve to death.
Realistically, the only way I see enough solar collection happening to power the country is using plants to collect solar energy and converting them into biofuels.
If we use all of this arable land to produce fuel then what are we going to eat? Biomass fuels have been proven to be an economic and environmental disaster. If we don't abandon biofuels soon we are going to have some serious problems with our food supply. I can only hope people figure this out before we have a mass starvation.
Geothermal is (relatively) concentrated, consistent, and for all practical purposes as inexhaustible as solar (how long until the Earth's core cools down?).
From what I recall geothermal is not inexhaustible. The operational lifespan of a geothermal plant is on the order of decades. What happens is the local rock is cooled by the power plant to the point where it is no longer hot enough to economically run the plant. I assume that given enough time the rock will get warmed up enough to be economically feasible again but I also assume that this would take centuries.
I could also be completely wrong, of course.
Exactly. I rarely see the answers presorted for me into four possibilities of which I know one must be correct.
Someone that cannot understand math at a fourth grade level is just plain going to find life in modern society difficult, not just studying a science/engineering major in college. Someone that cannot understand basic fractions, multiplication, a bit of geometry, is going to find things like driving a car (how much further can I go before I need to fill the tank again?) or getting groceries (will I need one or two boxes of this to feed the family supper tonight). Someone that can go through life and not be able to pass a fourth grade math test must have had someone to do much of the thinking for him/her. They must also be in a job that does not require much thought, like a school administrator.
I'll assume your 3 megawatt estimation is correct and play around with that number for a bit.
In the electric cars I've seen the battery packs are rated at somewhere around 100 volts. To get 3,000,000 watts from 100 volts one would need a conductor capable of carrying 30,000 amps. I tried to look up how big of a conductor that would have to be but the charts I have stop at 2000 amps.
Since the charts I have in reach stop at 2000 amps I'll use that for a maximum amperes. That means the car charger would have to provide 1500 volts. I'm not sure how big of a conductor the car charger would need to have but I'll guess it'd have to be ten time the size of the service wires to my house, which are rated at 200 amperes. That is huge.
Just for giggles here I'll take it one step further and say that instead of a five minute charge, which is about the time it takes to fill my truck's fuel tank, I'll allow for ten times more time. Instead of a five minute charge I'll give you a 50 minute charge. Nearly an hour to fill up your vehicle. That still means a 100 volt battery pack would have to be charged at a 3000 amp rate to get within one tenth of the energy stored in my truck's fuel tank.
Even though we've allowed for two orders of magnitude in lowering the power required to recharge an electric car's battery, as compared to a common gasoline powered vehicle, we're still seeing impractical requirements for conducting that electricity. Even if the infrastructure could be built to hold up to these electrical requirements there is the matter of finding a capacitor, battery, or whatever capable of holding up to this abuse and still be light enough, small enough, and safe enough to place in a passenger vehicle.
Barring some leap in technology the electrically charged car will remain forever in second place to those powered by hydrocarbons. That is why we're seeing research like this into hydrocarbon fuel cells.
This is still significant technology.
I made no claim otherwise. I'm just recognizing that even if (or when) we run out of dead dinosaurs to burn we will still have hydrocarbons powering our economy.
"Significant" is one thing, "practical" is another. This technology is still going to have to compete with internal combustion engines for power output, longevity, cost, weight, safety, and so on. I believe we are still a long way from fuel cell powered cars.
Not to mention, it would mean biofuels go back on the table - the power source of choice for long-haul travel, if short-haul only needs batteries.
Not so fast. If these things can burn gasoline, fuel oil, propane, etc. then they can probably burn ethanol too. It will take legislation to change for the corn to end up on kitchen tables instead of fuel tanks. Ethanol has been a disaster on many levels. Burning food for fuel is how civilizations have fallen, we don't need to repeat history. The legislation will change just not because of fuel cells. It will change because people have become cold and hungry.
I share your belief that the end of fossil fuel dominance is coming. I also believe that hydrocarbons will be with us for a very long time. We've got military tanks, trucks, ships, jet fighters, bombers, transports, and so on that run on hydrocarbons. All of these have a useful lifespan measured in decades. Many of these military vehicles will have crew that have not even been born yet, for some of them their mothers have not even been born yet. I believe we will see a rise of synthesized fuels to replace our currently available fossil fuels. We are already halfway there with techniques like hydrocarbon cracking commonly in use. The infrastructure is already there, of course, for storage and transport. This is why fuel cells that can run off of gasoline is even being considered with all of their complications.
I recall reading somewhere that the hydrogen density in gasoline is higher than that of pure liquid hydrogen. The storage and transport of liquid hydrogen has its own problems. We already know we can handle gasoline safely. I believe the "hydrogen economy" will look a lot like the current economy. The hydrocarbons will still flow but instead of pumping it out of the ground we will create them in factories powered by nuclear fission and coal. The coal will run out too in time but by then we will have completed the transition to nuclear power.
I once did the math to figure out the rate of power transferred into my fuel tank whenever I gassed up my truck. Then I did the math to figure out some possible volt and ampere combinations that would create an equivalent power transfer rate. I then took a few of the more "practical" combinations and figured out about how big the electrical conductors would have to be to meet federal ampacity requirements and estimate the distance required between the conductors to prevent arcing. The math is not difficult but I don't wish to repeat it right now, I'll leave it for an exercise for the reader.
After I saw what it would take to transfer the same amount of energy as my five minute stop to pump gas I just knew that someone would come back with how much more efficient electric cars are than gasoline powered cars, that I did not need such a large vehicle to carry my skinny butt to my cubicle and back every weekday, and so on. The problem is that even if one can reduce the the amount of electrical energy needed to have equivalent range as a full tank of gasoline by 1/10 the electrical requirements needed for a rapid recharge are still impractical. Even if we found a means to build these charging stations the current battery storage technologies we have could not withstand such a rapid charging rate.
Another argument is that a vast majority of my driving, and most American's driving, is within a 30 mile range or something. That's very likely true but the problem remains that people do not wish to confine themselves to a 30 mile, or even 300 mile, radius. Electrically recharged vehicles will always remain within the niche of a second vehicle in a two car garage. Using electrically recharged trucking is laughable.
Go ahead and do the math to figure out the power that can be transferred in a common filling station fuel pump. Then figure out the electrical requirements to match even a fraction of that power transfer. Then figure out the size of the conductors needed to carry that much power. For extra points figure out how much those conductors would weigh and if you could even lift them to plug into your car.
because you can't screen everyone
If they cannot screen everyone then the screening is meaningless. Security only works if every threat is stopped. Think of it this way, would you buy an oven mitt that said on the label it will keep your hand from getting burned 90% of the time?
We cannot ever be efficient enough to not need to find more energy. Energy is still consumed with increased efficiency, just at a lower rate. That means that we will still run out of oil. Running out of oil means a need for a replacement energy source. The only energy source that can currently compete will fossil based fuels right now is nuclear power. The "alternative" energy sources right now remain alternative because they cost many times more. If they could compete with nuclear and fossil energy then they would not be called "alternative energy sources" but instead called "energy sources".
One huge problem with nuclear power is that it is not as portable as fossil fuels. We can't just pour nuclear energy into a tank on a lawn mower or chain saw. Nuclear power can be used to synthesize these portable fuels. These portable fuels might be direct analogs of gasoline, fuel oil, and jet fuel requiring no changes in infrastructure but they might also be things like liquid hydrogen, ammonia, or alcohols.
There is enough fossil fuels on this planet to last us decades or even centuries. With increases in efficiencies it may last much longer but it will run out. We might have some future technology to replace nuclear fission but until then we need to continue burning fossil fuels. We also need to realize the inevitable and act right now with the technology we have right now. That means nuclear fission.
Energy efficiency cannot create more energy.
I know a few current and former law enforcement officers. One of them talked about how a driver said to him that if he had a gun that he'd be dead by now walking up to the car like he did. He just smiled and agreed. What the driver did not know is that while his right hand was in his pocket he was holding on to a .38 special hammerless revolver. The uniform trousers at the time had a holster for the revolver sewn into the pocket. He did not even have to draw the gun but just point and shoot through the fabric. That is part of the reason why the visible revolver was a cross draw, so that it would not interfere with the operation of the concealed revolver.
The mention of revolvers gives some indication to the age of this story and of the officer. I don't know if today's officers do the same but since I see officers carry their pistol on the strong side I doubt they do. This change might have something to do with relative the cost and effectiveness of body armor from then to now.
Speaking of damaging the vehicle here's some "what ifs" for you. What if the person with the GPS tracker got into a messy collision? What if the sloppy installation of the tracking device was shown to have damaged a vital component of the vehicle? What if the GPS tracker prevented a safety device from working properly, like the air bag? What if the GPS tracker has shown the car had stopped in the middle of a river/lake/other body of water? Would the agency that installed the device be compelled to call for assistance? What kind of legal liability would the agency that placed the tracking device have?
Some day something like the "what ifs" I posed will happen and someone is going to look real stupid.
Remove the battery, antenna, SIM card, or something to temporarily disable it. Some phones, like an iPhone, might make this difficult. In that case a Faraday cage in the form of aluminum foil might just do the trick.
Considering that I drive a small SUV it'd be rather difficult for anyone to hide in the boot. I suppose someone might try to remove the spare tire under the frame and ride it it's place in "Cape Fear" style. Taking out the tire might make room for a small person and not be visibly obvious.
The "boot" is the part of the car opposite the bonnet of course. What's the matter, don't you speak English?
Something tells me that a whole lot of technology to do this has come from the F-35 project. That stealth technology you reference was most likely one of the technologies refined in the development of the F-35.
1-Even if it produces more pollution than gas at least you/your kids don't breath it. 2-It's easier to put pollution scrubbers on a stationary plant. 3-Power plants don't idle, they either run at full or are turned off.
1, 2, & 3- I'm talking about carbon output, not pollution.
4-You can switch that coal to solar/tidal/wind/nuclear without needing a new car.
Yes, yes you can. Problem is that until the electricity actually comes from solar/tidal/nuclear the electric car is creating more carbon in the atmosphere than the gasoline or diesel fuel powered car. If the goal is to reduce carbon output NOW, then one would not buy an electric car. They'd be better off with a natural gas car, public transportation, walking, biking, and so on.
Point is that by using an electric car while the primary source of electricity is from burning coal one is actually increasing their carbon footprint. Get the solar/tidal/nuclear electric production FIRST and then getting an electric car will reduce one's carbon footprint. Getting the electric car first means that one is going backwards.
I like the idea of kit cars, sounds like a fun thing to do and as a way to potentially save money over buying a new car. The Streetscooter looks like a cute little car that can handle stop and go, tight spaces, and other obstacles one would find in a common city commute. This kit car is also a good way for someone to experiment in automotive technologies without having to reverse engineer an entire vehicle, or take on the much bigger task of designing a whole car of their own. There are vehicles out there that have a large market for aftermarket parts that people can build an entire vehicle from parts (the Jeep CJ comes to mind) but it looks like this Streetscooter is a more modern design that could appeal to more people.
What people should not be doing is getting one of these to reduce their "carbon footprint". Electric cars are coal fired cars. So long as a majority of our electricity comes from burning coal the electricity it runs on, and the energy used in the manufacture of the car's batteries, will create more carbon over the life of the car than if one just got a similarly sized gasoline or diesel fuel powered car. Real reductions in carbon footprint for vehicles involves nuclear power, natural gas, and perhaps some other technologies that have yet to mature.
This looks like a neat little car. If I had the space to put one together, and I thought I could get my 6'5" body inside, I'd consider getting one. I'd still keep my 4x4 truck for when the weather demands it, long drives, and when I need to haul more than groceries. Looks like something that would be easier to parallel park than my current vehicle, reduce the need to stop for fuel (just plug it in every night after work), and perhaps even save some money in the long run.