|
Sucutrule
|
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
How I am supposed to type will all this cheese laying around?
|
|
|
|
Kajet
|
Yeah but I bet somehow those things won't make it to the US, someone will bull a bullshit excuse out their ass and they'll be illegal or some such sporkery...
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Phoenix
|
Japan can already make full-production hydrogen fuel cell cars, but they're not mass producing those for sale in America. As long as people have to drive cars to work and the grocery store they'll buy gasoline, and as long as they buy gasoline those getting rich on oil will continue to raise the prices and become absurdly wealthy. That will continue so long as OPEC controls the oil, and so long as speculative investing in energy commodities continues.
I do wonder though... like the savings and loan, dot com, and now the housing markets which have all burst their bubbles over the last decade, what will happen should something dramatic affect the oil market. Say, a major political coup in Saudi Arabia or a war involving Iran. I'm not entirely clear on how it works, but speculative futures are like contracts purchased against a commodity, sort of like an "IOU". These contracts can in turn be bought and sold much as credit card and housing loans are bought and sold and traded. So what would happen to the world's economy if all of a sudden these futures that all these investors have their money tied up in suddenly became worthless...? Well every other market that's made a major bubble has done this so far so it seems reasonable to me that this could happen.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
  I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
|
|
|
|
MarneGator
|
The underlying emphasis for these designs is to be more environmentally friendly, but this particular path just doesn't do it for me. From what I can gather in some DARPA tests and investment reports, electric batteries will be the future. A few demonstrations have shown current technology capable of driving hundreds of miles, 10-15 minute charges at high wattage connections (can't remember the number) or six hours using a standard 110 outlet. Think about it: most miles driven are due to daily driving habits like commuting or shopping, not by trying to drive every mile of the US Interstate Highway System. Six hour charge at home? Perfect for charging overnight whilst you sleep. What about battery life? The batteries DARPA tests can hit ~25,000 charges. Charging every night would still yield you around 68 years of battery life, more than sufficient I would think.
Oil will continue to have a dominate role in transportation for some time to come, but practical realities will push us towards the batteries. The convenience of charging at your home at night, the fact that the electrical infrastructure required for rapid charging is present at gas stations (no more expensive to modify for electrical operation than to offer hydrogen methinks), and that it reduces the need for another fuel source (hydrogen). Hydrogen extraction is also not fully clean and while an improvement over all things petrol, is not quite the Holy Grail it could be; batteries will only be as dirty as its production and the source of electricity it utilizes, something that could rapidly change provided we get fusion power off the ground (come-on pulse fusion!). All years away to be sure, but the electric car is my bet for the future.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
-Veritas-
|
|
|
|
MarneGator
|
How coherent was that?! Let that be a lesson to you all: do not watch soccer - alas Germany! But congrats Spain! - to beer!
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
-Veritas-
|
|
|
|
Phoenix
|
Making hydrogen from petroleum is not clean. Making hydrogen from water is. All you need is electricity and you can separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen can be stored safely in what's called an ovonic storage module, which is safer than pressure tanks or batteries (batteries kind of suck in a collision) and less toxic than batteries as well. All you need is water, which is plentiful, and electricity, which is also plentiful, and you can easily make all the hydrogen you need. The electricity can come from a power station or from the sun. Think like this. Your car burns hydrogen with oxygen and the result is water. If you have an onboard separator and solar cells built into the car your car can refuel itself while it sits doing nothing. If garaged, plug it in. If you need a quick fill up, hydrogen can be pumped into an ovonic module at about the same rate it currently takes to refuel a car now. The nice thing about ovonic storage is it does not have the explosion risk of normal fuel tanks nor the chemical and electrical hazards of large battery banks, though they're not without their drawbacks as well. No system is 100% perfect.
Either way, there's more than one way to do this. Pure electric is possible, pure hydrogen is possible, and hydrogen-electric hybrids are possible. The problem isn't with the technology for either, it's with the willingness of the manufacturers to make it mass produced, and with the ability for people to pay for a new vehicle. With fuel prices causing rampant inflation, who has money for a new car? But if gasoline becomes affordable, where will the demand for a new hydrogen or electric car be? It's a catch-22. The manufacturers have to decide to push the technology forward and eat some profit margin in order to make this happen.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
|
|
|
|
Kajet
|
I'd hope that people wouldn't be so stupid to stay with gas if it became affordable again and had the choice...
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Thomas Mink
|
But.. people are stupid. It would be better to force them into switching from gas than leaving it up to them (if gas became affordable again in the future, of course).
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Phoenix
|
I look at automobiles and how they are designed and I find it appalling that nothing better than piston-driven engines that are of a design dating to the nineteenth century are still in use. What improvements have been made? The engines are more complex and harder to repair, more expensive to repair when they do malfunction. Other than adding extra valves and moving the camshaft around, the overall design has not changed. They experimented with turbines in the late 1960's but abandoned development in the 1970's when the fuel crisis hit. Engineering problems that could have been solved were not. What choice is there available to consumers other than a gasoline or diesel-powered internal combustion piston engine? Nothing, unless you count the Mazda RX-7 that is the sole Wankel-driven vehicle, if that's still even using that. Had they continued turbine development you'd already have cars on the road that would run off just about anything. Turbines aren't as finicky about what you feed them as pistons are.
People, as in consumers, do not need any more forcing at this point. The high gasoline prices are already hard at work in that department. The problem is that industry is an oligopoly and the industry has not been providing alternatives, nor has the infrastructure been friendly to alternatives. It's not like an upstart company can come in and start making alternatives easily either because so much has been done the same way for so long. You can buy a big vehicle, a small vehicle, but they all work the same and run on the same stuff. That is what needs to change. It would be best if the industry does it on its own, and hopefully these high gas prices and all those SUV's that are rusting on the dealership lots will provide a wake-up call to them. Any time government mandates some kind of solution it usually ends up being much worse than the original problem. If the automobile-oil link can be broken I think it could sort itself out, but GM or Ford or Toyota or some other large manufacturer needs to start putting something different on the road in large quantities one way or another. The one thing I see as a complete disaster is the push for ethanol as a solution. Burning food crops for fuel is not the answer when half the world is already starving as it is. Something better can and must be done.
|
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
|
|
|
|
~Va^^pyrA~
|
Sadly, our food crops aren't used very well as is. Most people seem to think that a huge hunk of protein is all that's needed for a meal, while scoffing at the idea of enjoy grains and rice.  |
|
|
|
|
Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
