Because Fossil fuels are only a limited resource, what do you think will power the cars of the future? I think it will be batteries/super capacitors. We can't really fit anymore hydrogen into a tank, and we are making strides ahead in batteries and capacitors all the time. Some new experimental batteries can be charged in seconds, provide long running time, and over 40,000 charge cycles. What do you think?
I think a true alternative is still years away from even being mainstream. There are some alternatives out there that do the job but, not are not powerful enough to go mainstream. Science, and time will tell when we go to an alternative for real. (aka - E85 + Batteries suck)
I would say zinc-air batteries
Or possibly aliminium-air, but thats hard to make
[QUOTE=Tobba;32430236]I would say zinc-air batteries
Or possibly aliminium-air, but thats hard to make[/QUOTE]
My biggest interest is the hydrogen fuel cell but, it'll never be commercial due to the dangers of H
Batteries are the way to go, but we need to be able to produce them cleanly. As it stands they can cause untold damage to the environment in which they are produced.
The benefits are massive though. Rather than having what is effectively a tiny generator under the hood, and all of the inefficiency that having a miniature internal combustion generator brings with it, you can rely on central full sized power sources.
So you can power a car using a nuclear reactor, solar, wind, or hydro and ultimately have very little impact on the environment as a whole. And then said power sources can be updated or retrofitted and provide massive benefits across the board, instead of only reducing the footprint of non-vehicles.
Hydrogen can only store so much energy in a given area.
Bio-fuels are great, but it takes massive amounts of land to produce even a small amount, and in doing so you are consuming food that is needed in other parts of the world.
So batteries, and their massive list of benefits, seem to be the way to go.
Electric cars only shift the problem. That energy still has to some from somewhere.
The power grid as it stands now cannot accommodate people using electric cars in the same quantities as people use petroleum cars currently. Any exodus towards electric cars must be met with a substantial overhaul of the electricity infrastructure.
I would agree with DainBramageeStudio. I actually don't believe we will have automobiles in the future, I think with any luck, we will be using trains for any kind of medium to long distance travel which cannot be covered by foot or bike. Cheap oil can be best explained as a "fluke". No form of energy that we know of can effectively take the place of the energy used by hundreds and thousands of cars, many of which power only one person from the home to necessities like school, work, grocery stores, etc. None of which should ever be built more than walking distance to the home. Of course the energy to run trains must come from somewhere. So I think more hydro-electric plants will be utilized, and much more efficiently. By powering all the things we use today (which will need to be down-scaled) in addition to the trains. All lasting towns and cities are built on rivers so it won't be difficult to get the water. My town actually has an old hydro-electric plant which was used to power all of the homes in the area, plus the downtown and the street-cars. The plant is still operational and only powers a majority of the downtown, but it is proven it can work.
The answer is extremely simple and involves exactly 0 radical changes to the car as we know it. It bases itself on three simple facts.
Fact 1: Spark ignition engines will run very happily on Hydrogen gas.
Fact 2: Diesel engines will run very happily on....pretty much anything. This includes plant oils.
Fact 3: Both fuels, plant oil and H2 gas, are easy to obtain. Plant oils...well, I don't need to explain that, and the hydrogen gas is produced by simple electrolysis.
So what you do is you simply replace the fuel system in gasoline powered cars with one compatible with H2 gas, something that could be done to any gasoline car on the road past, present or future, and as for diesels you need make no modifications at all provided the plant oils are sufficiently processed so as to not clog injection pumps. This will nicely shut up anyone bitching about a fuel crisis and carbon emissions, as they seem to (Mistakenly) assume gas powered cars are the source of the world's carbon woes and H2-fueled engines produce nothing but water vapor. The only CO2 coming out of their tailpipe got sucked in the air intake and pumped through. Both fuels are also renewable resources, the water split in the production of the H2 gas will be recreated when the fuel is burned in the engine, and the diesel substitute is plant based.
In short: Shut the fuck up about hybrids and fuel cells, just put a god damned Hydrogen tank in the back of the car!
[QUOTE=TestECull;32431846]The answer is extremely simple and involves exactly 0 radical changes to the car as we know it. It bases itself on three simple facts.
Fact 1: Spark ignition engines will run very happily on Hydrogen gas.
Fact 2: Diesel engines will run very happily on....pretty much anything. This includes plant oils.
Fact 3: Both fuels, plant oil and H2 gas, are easy to obtain. Plant oils...well, I don't need to explain that, and the hydrogen gas is produced by simple electrolysis.
So what you do is you simply replace the fuel system in gasoline powered cars with one compatible with H2 gas, something that could be done to any gasoline car on the road past, present or future, and as for diesels you need make no modifications at all provided the plant oils are sufficiently processed so as to not clog injection pumps. This will nicely shut up anyone bitching about a fuel crisis and carbon emissions, as they seem to (Mistakenly) assume gas powered cars are the source of the world's carbon woes and H2-fueled engines produce nothing but water vapor. The only CO2 coming out of their tailpipe got sucked in the air intake and pumped through. Both fuels are also renewable resources, the water split in the production of the H2 gas will be recreated when the fuel is burned in the engine, and the diesel substitute is plant based.
In short: Shut the fuck up about hybrids and fuel cells, just put a god damned Hydrogen tank in the back of the car![/QUOTE]
Hydrogen is one of the most powerful combustibles that we know of. This is why many prefer hydrogen fuel cells which are much less dangerous. Plus cars do a lot more harm to the human being than to the environment. Also, growing fuel would put pressure on the agriculture industry which is already a superpower business.
Electrolysis is not efficient.
[QUOTE=TestECull;32431846]The answer is extremely simple and involves exactly 0 radical changes to the car as we know it. It bases itself on three simple facts.
Fact 1: Spark ignition engines will run very happily on Hydrogen gas.
Fact 2: Diesel engines will run very happily on....pretty much anything. This includes plant oils.
Fact 3: Both fuels, plant oil and H2 gas, are easy to obtain. Plant oils...well, I don't need to explain that, and the hydrogen gas is produced by simple electrolysis.
So what you do is you simply replace the fuel system in gasoline powered cars with one compatible with H2 gas, something that could be done to any gasoline car on the road past, present or future, and as for diesels you need make no modifications at all provided the plant oils are sufficiently processed so as to not clog injection pumps. This will nicely shut up anyone bitching about a fuel crisis and carbon emissions, as they seem to (Mistakenly) assume gas powered cars are the source of the world's carbon woes and H2-fueled engines produce nothing but water vapor. The only CO2 coming out of their tailpipe got sucked in the air intake and pumped through. Both fuels are also renewable resources, the water split in the production of the H2 gas will be recreated when the fuel is burned in the engine, and the diesel substitute is plant based.
In short: Shut the fuck up about hybrids and fuel cells, just put a god damned Hydrogen tank in the back of the car![/QUOTE]
No.
The energy you get from burning the hydrogen isn't going to exceed the energy you put into electrolysing the water. You still need fuckloads of energy to mass produce your hydrogen in the first place.
As for biofuels, you need a lot of land to grow the plants needed for the fuels. Land that could be used to, oh I dunno, grow food to [b]feed people?[/b]
As the world's population increases it's going to put more strain on food supplies. There just isn't enough room to make biofuels viable on a global scale.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_vs._fuel[/url]
Electric cars are the solution, Hydrogen is a shitty middleman.
just keep with fossil fuels, and make more
[QUOTE=coilgunner;32431895]Hydrogen is one of the most powerful combustibles that we know of. This is why many prefer hydrogen fuel cells which are much less dangerous.[/quote] lol and hydrogen tanks are much muuuuuch smaller per storage volume than gasoline ones are. A cylinder a foot long by six inches ID will contain about 150 miles worth of fuel and can be nestled into a location within the car no surviveable crash would ever hope to hit. A second tank just opposite that will bump the range back up to the 300 miles or so most cars can do.
[quote]Plus cars do a lot more harm to the human being than to the environment.[/quote] And your point is? I, personally, don't give a shit about this. But maybe that's because I enjoy driving...
Honest to god, a world without sweet sounding V8s is a world I don't want to live in, and if keeping those sweet-sounding v8s means I ride around on a smaller scale Hindenburg then so be it. 'Tis the price to be paid for enjoying the comfort of not relying on notoriously unreliable public transit to get anywhere on a reasonable timetable, not to mention the thrill that comes from being pinned to your seat every time you sneeze at the throttle pedal.
[quote]Also, growing fuel would put pressure on the agriculture industry which is already a superpower business.[/QUOTE]
Currently, diesels fueled off of plant oils use the discarded waste oils from the resteraunt biz. I see no reason this cannot continue. Recycling and all that hippie shit.
[editline]22nd September 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=OogalaBoogal;32433819]Electric cars are the solution, Hydrogen is a shitty middleman.[/QUOTE] Oh god no. Just. No.
[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;32433153]
The energy you get from burning the hydrogen isn't going to exceed the energy you put into electrolysing the water.[/quote] Do kindly quote where I said you'd get back the same energy, because I didn't. I did say you'd get the water back, but I never said anything about getting the energy back.
[quote] You still need fuckloads of energy to mass produce your hydrogen in the first place.[/quote]
Hoover Dam is an example of one source. Three Mile Island is another. Electricity isn't hard to come by at all, and neither source throw carbon into the air so hippies can't bitch.
Batteries but hopefully the energy we get to charge those batteries will be better like coming from a combination of geothermal, solar, wind, tidal and nuclear power.
[QUOTE=TestECull;32434193]lol and hydrogen tanks are much muuuuuch smaller per storage volume than gasoline ones are. A cylinder a foot long by six inches ID will contain about 150 miles worth of fuel and can be nestled into a location within the car no surviveable crash would ever hope to hit. A second tank just opposite that will bump the range back up to the 300 miles or so most cars can do.[/QUOTE]
That's not right. Hydrogen has really, really low Watt hours per liter.
Also
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png/700px-Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png[/IMG]
[QUOTE=TestECull;32434193]
And your point is? I, personally, don't give a shit about this. But maybe that's because I enjoy driving...
Honest to god, a world without sweet sounding V8s is a world I don't want to live in, and if keeping those sweet-sounding v8s means I ride around on a smaller scale Hindenburg then so be it. 'Tis the price to be paid for enjoying the comfort of not relying on notoriously unreliable public transit to get anywhere on a reasonable timetable, not to mention the thrill that comes from being pinned to your seat every time you sneeze at the throttle pedal.[/QUOTE]
I enjoy driving too, I just accept that they way we have built our country means that cars have become the single most inefficient method of travel, in addition to the "greatest mis-allocation of resources in the history of the world". If we directed the road subsidy money into public transit instead of the never ending job of repairing and paving roadways, "notoriously unreliable public transit" would be a complete joke. Plus the public transit is only half of it, you should be able to get to anything necessary in a short 5 minute walk. I would rather do that than pay for gas, and spend 15 - 30 minutes just getting to a grocery store. Ok some people REALLY like driving, and would be perfectly willing to spend 3 hours every day commuting to work and back because they enjoy it. But lets face it, those people have never known anything else so they will obviously grow attached to it...
[url]http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/07/communities-designed-cars-unsustainable-deadly.php[/url] (screw the name of the website, I'm no hippie... it's a good article though)
I agree that hydro plants are a good way of getting energy consistently. Not too many other renewable resources seem quite as good as hydro-electric plants.
Just saw the Mass Debate thread for once. And, well (horrible knowledge in field, rant me if you choose) I've heard of people who run there cars by putting water in it. I have basic, unexplainible knowledge as to how the fuck they do it, but if that A: A H2 Fuel Cell or B: Impossible, tell me. Also, I've heard that our power usage is actually leveling off from all our energy effeciency, I mean, wow, of all the shit we do, its getting better. So if we can make things other the cars more efficient, and produce more means of effecient energy (Fusion Reactors powered by a quick trip to the Moon for HE3), we could, in my hazy mind, off-set usage of a mass switch from fossil fuel cars to battery powered cars. and remember, if I sound like a 7 year old in a political debate, feel free to correct me. *crack fingers from Carpal Tunnel*
Use Thorium reactors to bridge the gap between commercialized fusion reactors. Fusion is still 50+ years away from commercialization. But thorium reactors we could have within 10 years. Thorium is abundant and really doesn't give off very high levels of radiation even in a reactor. I read that a thorium reactor would produce mainly beta and alpha radiation.
Fusion/cold fusion, or thorium powered devices.
If in the future everyone had solar panels on their roofs, the dependency on non-renewable resources would go way down, because everyone would be able to efficiently charge their vehicles with the energy gathered from those. It's just getting this done on a massive scale that is the hard part.
[QUOTE=TestECull;32434193]
Honest to god, a world without sweet sounding V8s is a world I don't want to live in, and if keeping those sweet-sounding v8s means I ride around on a smaller scale Hindenburg then so be it. 'Tis the price to be paid for enjoying the comfort of not relying on notoriously unreliable public transit to get anywhere on a reasonable timetable, not to mention the thrill that comes from being pinned to your seat every time you sneeze at the throttle pedal.[/QUOTE]
You enjoy your V8.
I'll be the one who laughs at you on the freeway and then proceeds to burn rubber despite already going 60 in my electric car.
Hi, I'm electric engine, and I am better in every conceivable fashion to an internal combustion engine. I have almost no moving parts and my power curve is a straight line followed by a very mild descent that STARTS at the top and exceeds your abilities pretty much across the board. I am capable of generating so much torque that I can snap axels easily and require electronic controls to mitigate my acceleration down to a level sustainable by the frame of the vehicle. I am several orders of magnitude more efficient than an internal combustion engine and require almost no fluids to continue operating.
[QUOTE=TestECull;32434193]Do kindly quote where I said you'd get back the same energy, because I didn't. I did say you'd get the water back, but I never said anything about getting the energy back.
Hoover Dam is an example of one source. Three Mile Island is another. Electricity isn't hard to come by at all, and neither source throw carbon into the air so hippies can't bitch.[/QUOTE]
Do you not have any clue how thermodynamics works? What you're advocating is using electricity to split water apart into hydrogen and oxygen, then use energy to package that hydrogen up into cylinders, then energy to transport those cylinders around the world to be used in cars, which then burn the hydrogen to get less energy back per mole than was used to create it, rather than skipping the middleman and using the electricity to just power the fucking car.
Your system is less efficient however you spin it. It doesn't fucking matter that you get the water back - you use way more energy than is needed.
[editline]23rd September 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=OogalaBoogal;32434362]That's not right. Hydrogen has really, really low Watt hours per liter.
Also
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png/700px-Battery_EV_vs._Hydrogen_EV.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
As battery technology gets better, people will probably lose interest in hydrogen.
At the moment HFCs are less efficient than batteries, but they are so much more convenient (well, they would be if any infrastructure existed). Batteries are heavy, expensive and slow to charge. You can't just stop and top up your battery car, you have to get home and plug it in overnight.
I'm going to call it now, I think magnets will lead the way for alternative energy in some major shape or form.
Also, people figure that all these BEVs are good for the environment and will save them money on gas, but what about the pollution caused in the manufacturing of the batteries? What about the disposal of them? They all have very harmful chemicals in them, and those have an impact on the environment too. Then there's the load on the power grid, the means of producing that power, and the pollution caused in the general manufacturing and shipping of all the parts of the car to everywhere. Then for the cost point, the Chevy Volt costs bloody $30,000, I could buy 3 brand new Kias for that price, and then there's the cost in the future in 3-5 years of replacing all the batteries, which will be a few thousand to disassemble the car to get at all the batteries and then another few thousand to pay for the new ones. God knows how much that'd cost over the long run, but ultimately still far more than buying gas. That, and I heard (but have no source, so take the credibility of this statement as you will) that it takes about 13 years of use to save any money on a hybrid car versus a standard gas car. Seldom do you see people nowadays keep the same car for more than 8-10 years, yet you'd need to keep it for 13 to save any money.
Unless batteries get cheaper, cleaner, and easier to charge soon then it'll be a while before BEVs are popular, but I think some form of propulsion centred around magnets will be a major leap in renewable energy, and I think it'll happen sometime soon.
[QUOTE=DaCommie1;32443965]I'm going to call it now, I think magnets will lead the way for alternative energy in some major shape or form.
Also, people figure that all these BEVs are good for the environment and will save them money on gas, but what about the pollution caused in the manufacturing of the batteries? What about the disposal of them? They all have very harmful chemicals in them, and those have an impact on the environment too. Then there's the load on the power grid, the means of producing that power, and the pollution caused in the general manufacturing and shipping of all the parts of the car to everywhere. Then for the cost point, the Chevy Volt costs bloody $30,000, I could buy 3 brand new Kias for that price, and then there's the cost in the future in 3-5 years of replacing all the batteries, which will be a few thousand to disassemble the car to get at all the batteries and then another few thousand to pay for the new ones. God knows how much that'd cost over the long run, but ultimately still far more than buying gas. That, and I heard (but have no source, so take the credibility of this statement as you will) that it takes about 13 years of use to save any money on a hybrid car versus a standard gas car. Seldom do you see people nowadays keep the same car for more than 8-10 years, yet you'd need to keep it for 13 to save any money.
Unless batteries get cheaper, cleaner, and easier to charge soon then it'll be a while before BEVs are popular, but I think some form of propulsion centred around magnets will be a major leap in renewable energy, and I think it'll happen sometime soon.[/QUOTE]
Don't forget that the manufacture of the batteries is dependent on certain very rare elements, which China holds 98% of the market for.
They're already talking about limiting exports.
If alternative energies were allowed to compete openly with fossil fuels in a free market, alternative energies would win out.
Stop subsidizing energy.
I think we should have standard electric vehicles with much, much smaller batteries that take their power from the road in some way. I drew a design for this road-power-pickup system that could be easily retrofitted to existing road but it does need some refinements.
The small battery would keep the vehicle powered for short periods of disconnection.
Why carry around a heavy power supply when you can skip the whole inefficient Charge-Discharge step altogether and cut down the weight of the vehicle??
In my opinion, we need to look to the past to see the most ecofriendly and efficient method of running automobiles in the future.
[img]http://www.designsojourn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/flintstones-car.jpg[/img]
Turbine engines are the way to go if we're still using fossil fuels. They are a fuck ton more efficient, smaller, and more powerful than the piston engines we use today.
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