If you remove the electric motors the mechanical coupling will not work, so though it's technically correct to say the IC motor does drive the wheels under some circumstances, in reality it's way off to the EV side of the hybrid dividing line and the mechanism of coupling depends on the electric motors to work. The engineers were being characteristically precise and yet fairly uninformative to laypersons with their description (ever dealt with Microsoft engineers? Same thing) but that did not invalidate the accuracy of their statements.
The Volt does not need nor use the IC motor to accelerate to or cruise at highway speeds nor does it need the IC motor to hit speeds of 100mph, unlike the Prius which apparently requires the IC motor to go faster than 62mph. As the battery depletes the Volt's IC motor is brought on line to power both the electric motors and the wheels, but especially the electric motors since they're key to being able to get energy from the IC motor to the wheels.
Why people are attempting to politicize this and create such an uproar over what is essentially a semantic point about a specific technology I have no idea. What is it about EV that bring out so much hate from some people?
------------------ Bring back civility and decorum!
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What is it about EV that bring out so much hate from some people?
Take a minute to think. We're talking about an electric car on a forum for guys who are usually inclined on souping up whatever they can get their hands on, and looking for good speed and handling as a necessary prerequisite.
Take a minute to think. We're talking about an electric car on a forum for guys who are usually inclined on souping up whatever they can get their hands on, and looking for good speed and handling as a necessary prerequisite.
The Volt doesn't stand a chance on this forum
Arn
Nah, it's more than that. These guys follow EV discussion around the internet with the same behavior as here, attempting to poison and pre-bias others against EV.
I'm a car-guy, like my father before me and his father before him. It's part of my blood and bones, and integral part of who I am. Yet, I find EV technology incredibly interesting and its potential to be, well, spectacular. Peak torque at zero RPM. Pollution-free in comparison to IC technology (I remember the 1970s air that made your lungs burn and ate the paint off your car). Capable of being fueled from scalable sources that don't depend on appeasing religious extremists in third world countries. And did I say fast? Fast enough to be charged with felony reckless driving. White Zombie and KillAWatt are home-brew EVs that are faster than most things on the road, and they're home-brew garage-inventor machines. The EV-1 proved the concept well over a decade ago.
I like EV because of its potential as well as its actual performance and think it is the future if we're to have any future at all as an individually-mobile society. The IC car opened up America in the 1940's and 1950's, and IMHO the EV is the only viable long-term technology to keep that door open.
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04:42 PM
fierobear Member
Posts: 27079 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
Nah, it's more than that. These guys follow EV discussion around the internet with the same behavior as here, attempting to poison and pre-bias others against EV.
I'm a car-guy,
And so are we. We are discussing this on a forum dedicated to an IC-based car. OF COURSE there will be bias.
quote
I like EV because of its potential as well as its actual performance and think it is the future if we're to have any future at all as an individually-mobile society. The IC car opened up America in the 1940's and 1950's, and IMHO the EV is the only viable long-term technology to keep that door open.
Until there is a big leap in battery and charging technology, the EV will remain a small, niche market.
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07:53 PM
ghost187x Member
Posts: 1026 From: El Paso, TX Registered: Oct 2008
Interestingly, that whole "battery issue" - being expensive, etc - can be solved with hydrogen. Hydrogen acts as an energy storage medium and can be generated on demand at home... For the Tesla, their battery pack costs $46,000 to get 200 miles range. This kit costs $10,000 to get 350 miles range. Watch the video.
Unfortunately, the metal hydride chemicals are being held hostage by the CPSC, and I'm not sure these kits will make it to the public.
There's a bright lad! I wrote a similar paper for college. In 1978.
1978? Wow, that was 18 years before lithium battery technology was even invented.
Things have changed quite a bit since the original bell-bottom generation....
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08:55 AM
fierobear Member
Posts: 27079 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
Interestingly, that whole "battery issue" - being expensive, etc - can be solved with hydrogen. Hydrogen acts as an energy storage medium and can be generated on demand at home... For the Tesla, their battery pack costs $46,000 to get 200 miles range. This kit costs $10,000 to get 350 miles range. Watch the video.
I guess that answers JazzMan's doubts about the cost of the EV battery pack?
Anyway, about hydrogen, unless you have a reasonable way to extract the hydrogen, it's not energy-efficient. You also have to have the hydrogen under TREMENDOUS pressure, or have it cryogenic, to transport enough to power a car for any distance. Do you really want a tank of hydrogen under you at thousands of PSI?
Interestingly, that whole "battery issue" - being expensive, etc - can be solved with hydrogen. Hydrogen acts as an energy storage medium and can be generated on demand at home... For the Tesla, their battery pack costs $46,000 to get 200 miles range. This kit costs $10,000 to get 350 miles range. Watch the video.
Unfortunately, the metal hydride chemicals are being held hostage by the CPSC, and I'm not sure these kits will make it to the public.
Hydrogen is great on paper, but falls apart when you start looking at what it will take to make it in the quantities needed to replace gasoline as a transportation energy medium. For one, the only way to make large quantities of H now and in the foreseeable future is by cracking natural gas, a process that winds up losing half the original energy amount as waste heat by the time you get it to the mobile fuel storage system. Great, just what we need, an even less efficient way of consuming fossil fuel. You get more bang for the buck by bypassing the entire hydrogen part of the process and just burn the natural gas in the car directly, but even that wastes a tremendous amount of energy.
Using electrolysis to make H wastes even more of the initial energy content.
And dividing range into battery cost isn't a meaningful way to measure anything, especially since the battery isn't a disposable one-time use.
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09:03 AM
ryan.hess Member
Posts: 20784 From: Orlando, FL Registered: Dec 2002
Originally posted by fierobear: Anyway, about hydrogen, unless you have a reasonable way to extract the hydrogen, it's not energy-efficient. You also have to have the hydrogen under TREMENDOUS pressure, or have it cryogenic, to transport enough to power a car for any distance. Do you really want a tank of hydrogen under you at thousands of PSI?
It may not be energy efficient (50% for electrolysis, I believe), but it's still cheaper than gas. Also, metal hydrides require no pressure (100psi), and no cryogenic temperatures (room temperature). The tanks in the video can be cut apart, shot with high powered rifles, etc. That's why they're much safer. I dare you cut apart a battery or gas tank without it catching on fire or exploding.
quote
Originally posted by JazzMan: Hydrogen is great on paper, but falls apart when you start looking at what it will take to make it in the quantities needed to replace gasoline as a transportation energy medium. For one, the only way to make large quantities of H now and in the foreseeable future is by cracking natural gas, a process that winds up losing half the original energy amount as waste heat by the time you get it to the mobile fuel storage system. Great, just what we need, an even less efficient way of consuming fossil fuel. You get more bang for the buck by bypassing the entire hydrogen part of the process and just burn the natural gas in the car directly, but even that wastes a tremendous amount of energy.
This problem can be corrected by adjusting the power delivery infrastructure appropriately. If you slap a 4kw solar panel on every house, all of a sudden each house becomes self-sufficient. Then extra power from the grid can "recharge" the hydrogen cars at night through electrolysis. Congratulations, the US is now oil-independent! (and isn't that the point?)
quote
Originally posted by JazzMan: And dividing range into battery cost isn't a meaningful way to measure anything, especially since the battery isn't a disposable one-time use.
I don't understand your point? If I get 100,000 miles from a Lithium battery with a 200 mile range for $46,000 or if I get 100,000 miles from a Metal Hydride storage tank with a 350 mile range for $10,000 - why would I choose the more expensive lower range model?
If you want people to switch away from gasoline, it's going to have to be a cheaper alternative. Nothing makes people move like a wallet on fire.
[This message has been edited by ryan.hess (edited 03-15-2011).]
Or a major gas price increase in the U.S., so unlikely for quite some time.
Perhaps not, with Saudi troops in Bahrain putting down protests, a Libian civil war in progress, and whatever else crops up there in OPEC, it may not be that far in the future.
I guess that answers JazzMan's doubts about the cost of the EV battery pack?
A battery pack that will do 1,000 charge cycles at 200 miles range per charge, let's see, 1,000 x 200 = 200,000 miles. And the whole car costs about the same to purchase than a nice Mercedes or BMW, and will probably hold its resale value better, and costs less to operate on a daily basis than any IC car possibly could.
I never had any doubts about battery pack costs. The Prius pack costs less than $2,000 but never needs replacing unless damaged in a bad wreck. The EV-1's SLA pack would likely have cost less than $15,000 and likely not need replacement under normal operating circumstances, and the NiMH pack would likely cost today less than 20,000 and be expected to last the life of the car like the Prius pack has shown is typical.
It's not considered typical for car buyers to look at what the engine costs when making their buying decision. "Wow, that ZR-1 engine costs $33,000, I'm not buying that Corvette!" isn't what you normally hear on the sales lot.
quote
Originally posted by fierobear: Anyway, about hydrogen, unless you have a reasonable way to extract the hydrogen, it's not energy-efficient. You also have to have the hydrogen under TREMENDOUS pressure, or have it cryogenic, to transport enough to power a car for any distance. Do you really want a tank of hydrogen under you at thousands of PSI?
And on this we agree. Though hydrides offer a potentially useful way to store H in a non-cryo low-pressure manner, the generation of the H in the first place only leaves us more dependent on fossil fuels than before since the only way to generate viable quantities of H is by cracking it out of natural gas. A fuel cell is the most efficient way to convert hydrogen to electricity, and electric motors are the most efficient way to convert electricity to motion, but fuel cells have an inherent problem in that they are easily contaminated by compounds and elements mixed in with air, especially hydrocarbons. I talked to an engineering team fielding a demonstrator H/FC powered car in one of the solar car races. They said it was typical for a FC to lose half it's generating capacity in 12,000 miles or less, and the only way to prevent it would have been to use bottled oxygen to feed the FC along with the H. Not foreseeably practical in any sense.
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It's possible to understand someone's point of view without accepting it. It's possible to disagree with someone without being rude and nasty about it. Sure it's hard, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?
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09:24 AM
fierobear Member
Posts: 27079 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
For the price, yeah. Fierobear posted some excerpts from an article that seem to say the battery pack was obscenely expensive. I talked to one of the engineers in the EV-1 program back then about the battery pack design. It consisted of standard SLA cells from I think Panasonic, I think there were something like 26 of them because he mentioned a 312 V system, or something like that. If you figure the batteries were $100 back then (they're not even that, now) the base cost of the pack would have been less than $3,000. Even if the cells were $200 each ($336 in today's dollars!) the pack would still have only taken $6,000 worth of batteries. Where the other $17,000 to 27,000 of battery pack cost cited in that article could have come from I have no idea. The NiMH pack of the day would have been much more expensive as that was very new technology back then, but I doubt even it could have reached $30K.
ryan.hess posted this:
quote
For the Tesla, their battery pack costs $46,000 to get 200 miles range. This kit costs $10,000 to get 350 miles range.[/url]
So is it that difficult to believe the EV's battery pack cost a lot 15 years ago?
quote
Originally posted by JazzMan: And on this we agree. Though hydrides offer a potentially useful way to store H in a non-cryo low-pressure manner, the generation of the H in the first place only leaves us more dependent on fossil fuels than before since the only way to generate viable quantities of H is by cracking it out of natural gas. A fuel cell is the most efficient way to convert hydrogen to electricity, and electric motors are the most efficient way to convert electricity to motion, but fuel cells have an inherent problem in that they are easily contaminated by compounds and elements mixed in with air, especially hydrocarbons. I talked to an engineering team fielding a demonstrator H/FC powered car in one of the solar car races. They said it was typical for a FC to lose half it's generating capacity in 12,000 miles or less, and the only way to prevent it would have been to use bottled oxygen to feed the FC along with the H. Not foreseeably practical in any sense.
One possible way to get the hydrogen would be to use solar power for electrolysis from water or maybe for a stationary fuel cell, then compress it into the car's tank. I wasn't aware of the contamination issue, that's another hurdle to overcome.
I don't understand your point? If I get 100,000 miles from a Lithium battery with a 200 mile range for $46,000 or if I get 100,000 miles from a Metal Hydride storage tank with a 350 mile range for $10,000 - why would I choose the more expensive lower range model?
If you want people to switch away from gasoline, it's going to have to be a cheaper alternative. Nothing makes people move like a wallet on fire.
a 4kWh solar array is pretty expensive, and why not use that to charge the car directly? (though at 4kWh it would take probably a full day with perfect sun to charge a minimum EV.) It seems you're comparing things in a way that on the surface makes some kind of sense if you think of a battery as just a storage tank for electrons and nothing more. That's a valid way of looking at things but I honestly believe that it doesn't represent the entire picture. End to end cost is more relevant, but even that changes when you step back and look at long-term scenarios of infrastructure development.
To do what your supplied link describes, namely using home electrolysis to generate H to burn in an IC engine, means you lose 50% of your starting energy as waste heat, meaning that the potential energy of burning the H is only half what you started with at the breaker box. Storing it in hydride tanks incurs some energy loss to compress the H and move it into the tank because when you compress something you heat it and that heat represents waste energy. Let's put that at 1%, which is probably pretty low but we have to have something because it's not possible to be zero percent. Next we burn it in the IC motor to convert it to mechanical energy. Assuming you had an IC motor specifically designed to burn H, the likeliest highest efficiency you'll probably get to convert the chemical energy of H into mechanical motion is maybe 30%, which mean at least 70% of that 49% you got from the start is lost as exhaust and radiator heat. Then when you come to a stop that motion energy is converted into pure brake heat and is lost. Not counting brake heat, it looks like you will lose about 85% of your starting energy as waste heat just to get your butt moving. If you were burning the H in a gasoline-optimized engine the percentage lost will be even higher.
Now lets look at EV: Starting at the same place as above, the home's electrical service panel, you would lose between 5 and 25% of your energy by the time it was in the battery, or electron storage tank as it were. In reality it would be closer to 5-10% with the technologies that are coming on line today, but let's use worst-case numbers to defray criticism about overly-optimistic number usage. Once in the battery you'll still have 75% of your starting energy. A modern multiphase AC motor can be over 90% efficient pretty routinely, and in the mid 80's under lower output regimes, in terms of converting stored electrons into butt-movement. Let's take the worst-case scenario of 80%, and that's really, really pessimistic, and multiply that by the charging loss. It looks like you have only lost about 40% at this point as waste heat, and in reality it's not likely to be nearly that bad.
But wait, there's more. Put on the brakes to stop and you can use the EV motor to recover energy, something that can't be done with an IC motor since one of those can't generate chemical fuel when run backwards. Even if you only recover 25% via regeneration that offsets that 40% loss. Since both energy trains started at the home electrical service panel, it appears that the EV will cost less to operate on a per butt-mile basis by quite a large margin. Stepping back and looking at it from even further away it's possible to see that the full EV train's superior efficiency amplifies the efficiency gains of generating electricity using any other method, regardless of source.
The real issue is changing forms of energy. Every time you change from one type to another you lose some, usually a lot if you're using heat engines for the transformation. If you can eliminate form changes you end up carrying more energy from the starting point to the ending point, aka end to end efficiency (or lack thereof). This loss is inherent in the laws of the universe as we currently understand them, and that understanding is really, really good in the arena of physics that applies to us in the macro world. Skipping a step means a great savings, and in this case electrolysis is a good step to skip because of it's horrible lack of efficiency. Burning H is also a good step to skip, at least in a mobile IC engine, since that is also horribly inefficient.
Though the hydride concept looks good on paper, I suspect it will not be successful in the real world unless a heretofore unknown technology comes along that allows extremely cheap, nearly free, and almost limitless electricity generation to make inexpensive bulk H.
------------------ Bring back civility and decorum!
It's possible to understand someone's point of view without accepting it. It's possible to disagree with someone without being rude and nasty about it. Sure it's hard, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?
[This message has been edited by JazzMan (edited 03-15-2011).]
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10:26 AM
ryan.hess Member
Posts: 20784 From: Orlando, FL Registered: Dec 2002
One possible way to get the hydrogen would be to use solar power for electrolysis from water or maybe for a stationary fuel cell, then compress it into the car's tank. I wasn't aware of the contamination issue, that's another hurdle to overcome.
It's one of those hurdles inherent in the physics of the process., sadly. If we had a pure oxygen/inert gas atmosphere it wouldn't be an issue. Solar power is a good piece of the puzzle, but it's not the silver-bullet answer because of low power density. EVs are an excellent piece of the puzzle because they're one of the most efficient ways to convert power to butt-miles, which is what it's all about anyway. The VOLT's technology is a great second step in that direction IMHO.
I agree, though, that any technology that decreases our need to import energy is worth pursuing, and any technology that only makes us more dependent on others is worth not pursuing.
Originally posted by JazzMan: a 4kWh solar array is pretty expensive, and why not use that to charge the car directly? It seems you're comparing things in a way that on the surface makes some kind of sense if you think of a battery as just a storage tank for electrons and nothing more.
I agree with 100% of what you just said. Metal hydride/Hydrogen/Internal combustion engine is an inefficient system. I'm not saying it's perfect by any means. I think it's just the best way to move forward. Let me present my view:
The average American has 1 car. There's a 97% chance it runs on gasoline. Therefore, 97% of Americans would be able to switch to Hydrogen seamlessly*. This would give the average American basically an "electric car", for $10,000. (Chances are the cost would decrease by 25% with mass production - UN was planning on 1000 cars a year I believe) You simply cannot beat that cost with an electric car. I can buy a used 2004 Prius for $7500, but I guarantee you can't buy one for every American for that cost - not to mention they can only go 2 miles on electric. Hydrogen allows 350 miles on electric.
I've done a lot of research from a business standpoint (I want to make money selling green technologies!) and the cost of batteries (GOOD batteries - not SLA) makes it very difficult. The NiMH patent encumbrance also makes it difficult.
*Note: This does not take into account the large surge in electric demand. But that will be there whether you switch to H2 or electric, so I'm assuming power companies will step up their game to compete for added demand.
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10:42 AM
rogergarrison Member
Posts: 49601 From: A Western Caribbean Island/ Columbus, Ohio Registered: Apr 99
Nah, it's more than that. These guys follow EV discussion around the internet with the same behavior as here, attempting to poison and pre-bias others against EV.
I'm a car-guy, like my father before me and his father before him. It's part of my blood and bones, and integral part of who I am. Yet, I find EV technology incredibly interesting and its potential to be, well, spectacular. Peak torque at zero RPM. Pollution-free in comparison to IC technology (I remember the 1970s air that made your lungs burn and ate the paint off your car). Capable of being fueled from scalable sources that don't depend on appeasing religious extremists in third world countries. And did I say fast? Fast enough to be charged with felony reckless driving. White Zombie and KillAWatt are home-brew EVs that are faster than most things on the road, and they're home-brew garage-inventor machines. The EV-1 proved the concept well over a decade ago.
I like EV because of its potential as well as its actual performance and think it is the future if we're to have any future at all as an individually-mobile society. The IC car opened up America in the 1940's and 1950's, and IMHO the EV is the only viable long-term technology to keep that door open.
I agree with Bear and others, until battery performance or motors vastly improve, its a tiny ' do gooder ' niche and never work for the masses. Until gas gets to $10+ a gallon, I have no interest in even looking at electric/ hybrid vehicle. It does have potential.....after another 40 years of technology catches up. Like said a while back, turbine power had more potential...didnt require fossil fuel. The technology was already there and proven and just needed some tweaks. Chrysler had vehicles running from early 60s. They even had some that went cross country to demonstrate the whole program. The very ones now clammoring to get off gasoline vehicles were the ones that axed those.
I agree with Bear and others, until battery performance or motors vastly improve, its a tiny ' do gooder ' niche and never work for the masses. Until gas gets to $10+ a gallon, I have no interest in even looking at electric/ hybrid vehicle. It does have potential.....after another 40 years of technology catches up. Like said a while back, turbine power had more potential...didnt require fossil fuel. The technology was already there and proven and just needed some tweaks. Chrysler had vehicles running from early 60s. They even had some that went cross country to demonstrate the whole program. The very ones now clammoring to get off gasoline vehicles were the ones that axed those.
Nobody ever said that EV would be appropriate for everyone today. It would definitely not be appropriate for those who, for whatever reason, despise the mere concept, but EVs with right now existing technology would be appropriate for far more than a "tiny 'do gooder' nitche" as you say. As has been repeatedly shown, EVs would cover well over half, maybe even as much as 80%, of the commuter miles and would easily meet the needs of a very large segment of the driving population.
As to turbines, as Chrysler learned back then they are horribly inefficient and very high maintenance, have poor performance characteristics when run at less than 100% power output, and very, very expensive to manufacture. Nobody is clamoring to get off gasoline now that had something to do with then Chrysler deciding that the turbine was not economically viable.
And high-quality EV motor technology has been "here" for over a decade, as demonstrated by the EV-1, the Tesla products, the Volt, etc.
------------------ Bring back civility and decorum!
It's possible to understand someone's point of view without accepting it. It's possible to disagree with someone without being rude and nasty about it. Sure it's hard, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?
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02:14 PM
ryan.hess Member
Posts: 20784 From: Orlando, FL Registered: Dec 2002
Originally posted by JazzMan: As to turbines, as Chrysler learned back then they are horribly inefficient
Chrysler's turbine car got 13mpg. Typical V8 cars of the day got 20. Gas turbines have terrible brake specific fuel consumption. Most of the heat flows straight through it, doing no work. Diesel engines would be a better choice if you're stuck on liquid fuel.
Chrysler's turbine car got 13mpg. Typical V8 cars of the day got 20. Gas turbines have terrible brake specific fuel consumption. Most of the heat flows straight through it, doing no work. Diesel engines would be a better choice if you're stuck on liquid fuel.
The chief advantage that I see of turbines is power density. Where fuel efficiency isn't nearly as important as power and mass, such as air craft, they work well. They also aren't bad when used as steam turbines with external heat generation, and with extra features can be relatively efficient. Features add mass and volume so not so useful in a car.
I'd love to get a 300-600hp APU and use it with EV motors to make a really fast car with a really interesting sound...
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04:33 PM
rogergarrison Member
Posts: 49601 From: A Western Caribbean Island/ Columbus, Ohio Registered: Apr 99
I had dozens of cars from the 60s. Most of them got less than 10mpg. The best I ever got out of one was my 66 Coronet with 318 that did get like 17 on the highway and a couple of 59-60 Lincolns that actually did get better than 20 on the highway. I had Mopars and Chevys that got 5-8. ....of course gas was less than .25 @ gallon. If the Chrysler really did get 13, it could have been increased with more work before production. Look at the headaches elecs are having too. Even at 13 though, remember it ran on anything liquid that would burn from grain alcohol up. You could whip up a still and make your own fuel in the back yard. The only drawbacks I seen with them in person was it was a little doggy from start, just too many rpms to build up...redesigning trans could fix that. The other was exhaust heat compared to other cars. Of course now cars cataylitic converters get as hot. Ive had my parked car catch grass on fire before. The fed gov shut them down due to their percieved dangers. "we cant have kids out there running around in cars with jet engines ". They imposed so much restrictions and rules, Chrysler said to hell with it. Government had them even crush all but a couple because the body was built in Italy and they didnt pay import taxes.
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06:05 PM
ghost187x Member
Posts: 1026 From: El Paso, TX Registered: Oct 2008
I agree, though, that any technology that decreases our need to import energy is worth pursuing, and any technology that only makes us more dependent on others is worth not pursuing.
so how about ethanol? brazil is doing it.
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09:11 PM
fierobear Member
Posts: 27079 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
The chief advantage that I see of turbines is power density. Where fuel efficiency isn't nearly as important as power and mass, such as air craft, they work well. They also aren't bad when used as steam turbines with external heat generation, and with extra features can be relatively efficient. Features add mass and volume so not so useful in a car.
The other issue with turbines is that, like in jet aircraft engines, they are most efficient in the cold and thin air that airliners fly. Their fuel efficiency at sea level is awful. They need to fly above 30,000ft to be most efficient.
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09:12 PM
PFF
System Bot
fierobear Member
Posts: 27079 From: Safe in the Carolinas Registered: Aug 2000
The other issue with turbines is that, like in jet aircraft engines, they are most efficient in the cold and thin air that airliners fly. Their fuel efficiency at sea level is awful. They need to fly above 30,000ft to be most efficient.
true, but again if you can use dirt cheap fuel, who cars how much it uses. Im sure if turbines recieved the same research and development time and money spent on EVs, they could vastly improve that. Old RX7s using rotary engines is a loosely similar engine. One moving part to wear out. Reduced maintanence costs should help offset fuel costs.
Brazil has a large enough arable area relative to population size that farm land for ethanol doesn't compete with farmland for food. In this country there are far more people relative to farm land so there's not enough arable land available to grow enough feedstock for enough ethanol to meet existing fuel consumption and have anything left for food, at least using corn as feedstock. Sawgrass would work mostly since it doesn't require irrigation and will grow where regular food products won't. Brazil's population is 190-some odd million, we're at 310 million.
------------------ Bring back civility and decorum!
It's possible to understand someone's point of view without accepting it. It's possible to disagree with someone without being rude and nasty about it. Sure it's hard, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?
The fed gov shut them down due to their percieved dangers. "we cant have kids out there running around in cars with jet engines ". They imposed so much restrictions and rules, Chrysler said to hell with it. Government had them even crush all but a couple because the body was built in Italy and they didnt pay import taxes.
I'd like a cite for this, it sounds quite a bit different than the history I read about the cars so I'd like to correct my knowledge.
------------------ Bring back civility and decorum!
It's possible to understand someone's point of view without accepting it. It's possible to disagree with someone without being rude and nasty about it. Sure it's hard, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?
true, but again if you can use dirt cheap fuel, who cars how much it uses. Im sure if turbines recieved the same research and development time and money spent on EVs, they could vastly improve that. Old RX7s using rotary engines is a loosely similar engine. One moving part to wear out. Reduced maintanence costs should help offset fuel costs.
Turbines have received a significant amount of research and development over the years. They're some of the most advanced bits of machinery out there now, in the skies. The technology is extremely well understood and developed.
Rotary engine is completely unrelated to turbine engine concepts except both burn fuel. I've got a friend who's a real Rotary gearhead; his whole house is full of rotary-related collectible items and he has as many rotaries as I have Fieros (alot!). Very expensive engines to rebuild because the tooling is very expensive and hard to use. Probably why GM didn't pursue the rotary in the Corvette back then, that, and patent royalties would have to be paid to Mazda.
------------------ Bring back civility and decorum!
It's possible to understand someone's point of view without accepting it. It's possible to disagree with someone without being rude and nasty about it. Sure it's hard, but nothing worth doing is ever easy, is it?
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09:13 AM
Fiero STS Member
Posts: 2045 From: Wyoming, MN. usa Registered: Nov 2001
Everybody is saying the way to go is electric to get us off of oil dependance. The best way to go in my opinon is methanol from natural gas. We have enough natural gas to meet the demands and natural gas is a renewable resorce, it is not a fossil fuel. We already have the infrastructure in place the only thing we need to do is revamp the IC engine to be more efficent with methonal as a fuel sorce. Methonal also does not compete for valuable food sorce resorces.
