ray green

iTrader: (14)

"The point is, electric cars can also use electricity generated from clean energy sources like wind, solar, and yes, nuclear (which is relatively a very, very clean energy source). We are not tied to a specific energy source like foreign oil that will only keep getting more and more expensive as the easily accessible reserves run out. It also puts the burden of emissions control on the large plants, which is good for a variety of reasons. Electric motors are also far more efficient than any internal combustion engine, resulting in much less energy use overall. They also have an advantage of making peak torque from 0 RPM, making drivability generally better than small-displacement gasoline engines.

I suggest ethanol as a temporary solution due to its relative ease of production (and by that I don't mean corn) and compatibility (after a few modifications) with existing ICEs. But the future is in EVs and biodiesel for trucks."

Thanks Percent, that helps me understand why so many people think electric cars are the cat's pajama's. If as you say the overall efficiency and pollution advantages are greater then yes I can see it happening (but I sure will miss my internal combustion engine!).

But I still have an issue with the ethanol, like the issues with batteries you need to take everything into consideration. For example the stress our current ethanol policies are putting on the world food supply - another example of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And when the poor get poor enough, it starts to get ugly.

As it stands, ethanol in this country has caused more problems than it has solved and the farmers and big agriculture are whistling all the way to the bank.

Glazedham42

iTrader: (4)

Have any of you guys read up on HHO? I've been trying to decide what I think of it and I can't make my mind up. Basically you run electric current through water and then take advantage of the hydrogen gas that is a byproduct. Check it out on youtube. There are apparently some people who are claiming 10mpg increases just by doing this "water combustion" thing.

Jamie

grandgarson

There is some merit to that, but be careful if you buy a kit, there are a lot of scams out there claiming to work miracles.

ray green

iTrader: (14)

HHO = water. Come on guys, you aren't that stupid.

Water has essentially no usable potential energy in it. Ever see the water dripping out your tail pipe? Yep it's what's left over after you burn your hydrocarbon fuel and get out all the usable energy in the system. It's an energy depleted waste product.

Basically it works like this:

Hydrocarbon + O2 (oxygen) = CO2 + H2O + lot's of free energy released

The released free energy is what makes your car go. That's the energy that was previously stored in your increasingly precious hydrocarbon fuel, the energy that was captured by eons of plant life soaking up the sun and converting it to biomass that later got compressed to that luscious oil we crave.

In order to get energy out of water, you first need to put energy in - that's what putting the electric current through the water is all about - it's called electrolysis. Of course the electric current was created by, you guessed it, burning oil.

The energy in the electric current splits the water into H2 (hydrogen gas) and O2 (oxygen). This stores the energy from the electric current in the hydrogen gas, which you can burn and get back some of the electric energy (but not all) that you put in to make the hydrogen.

Anybody see a problem here?

Or, to put it in more simple terms, I challenge any of you to burn water and get out any energy. Come on guys get real, we use water to put the flames out.

Scientific illiteracy is one thing, legal scams to exploit scientific illiteracy is another. These HHO scammers need to be locked up.

BARF1

Oil company profits per dollar are absolutely mid-pack for fortune 500 companies, they're making their money on the volume of oil sold which is steadily increasing due to China and India buying all they can get their hands on. Attempting to put in place another windfall profits tax will do the same thing it did when Carter tried it, decrease US production and increase our reliance on OPEC nations. The capitalist system is the worst thing ever, right up until you compare it to every other system that has been tried and failed. Try and keep some perspective.

Vashner

They make money because of the volume with low profit margin.

Oil is not gas refining process cost a lot of money. Transport costs money and exporation and retrival costs money.

Taxes amount to a lot as well as California and other special forumulations cost money.

The reason it's so expensive is the demand.

India, China, Russia etc... every pimple faced teen in China wants a 4 banger.

India traffic?

Every day like so many cars and bikes are sold and each has a tank to fill.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM

PercentSevenC

Hydrogen is a terrible fuel.

axle

ray you have a very valid point creating hho for welding purposes is one thing (the navy has been doing this for a while in their ship yards but your car is not plugged into a wall socket your motor has to make the extra electricity and on an rx-7 we all know from experience that there is not much to spare the alternators are wimpy so there goes your fuel savings because of the extra draw on the charging system plus you have to reajust your carb or ecu or your idoling to fast so when you are first starting your car there would be less hho so would create a harder start problem and if you tried storing the hho it is highly explosive more so than gas so like the ford pinto you are driving a rolling bomb

notveryhappyjack

iTrader: (4)

paid $4.59 in Seattle today. plus $4.89 premix. DD a turbo fb is expencive. duh

grandgarson

This is all relative. Where I live most of the electricity is from hydroelectric, so that's not true. Also, there are other solutions. You could build a solar powered "gas pump". You could setup a few solar panels connected to enough storage to hold enough electricity to recharge your car. That way once you are done with the expense of building the car and the "electric gas pump" you are driving for free.

swbtm

iTrader: (2)

I would also say that Hydrogen is not a terrible fuel... it is the most abundant source of energy in the universe... look up at night and there's the proof... every star is an almost limitless amount of hydrogen (in our reference time scales)

If we can figure out how to control fusion (through gravity or strong magnetic fields) enough hydrogen plants would replace ALL sources of energy... and the by product of such a plan??? Helium!

Then if we were really hard pressed to find hydrogen we could fuse Helium into Li, Be, B, C.... and on down the line until Iron... then all we would need is a supernova to create heavier particles (keep in mind a supernova uses up energy in its process) Each successive step to a heavier particle ends up with less net positive energy. So we end up with iron.. but we would probably stop the process somewhere around Helium since Hydrogen is so abundant.

We bask in our own ignorance and attempt to create new power sources when we orbit the most efficient one ever in existence.... not completely true (main sequence stars are a little less efficient than white or brown dwarfs... ) any ways... hydrogen is good

the same fear mongering was said about gasoline when we were switching over from horse drawn carriages... this is just a resistance to change... change in mentality and infrastructure.

Fin

trochoid

iTrader: (6)

You know what's really sad. Coming back from Denver, I stopped at Julesberg CO, during a gas war shortly before the first gas crunch. Paid 19.9 cents/gal. Now the taxes are more than twice that. Then spent the next 20+ years driving 55 mph, that really sucked, lol.

Glazedham42

iTrader: (4)

That's what I'm feeling like right now Scott. Who knows how much longer this stuff is going to skyrocket up. I'm using what I can while I can still afford it. Hopefully I can get the 7 done in time to drive it a little bit while I have the funding....

ray green

iTrader: (14)

"You know what's really sad. Coming back from Denver, I stopped at Julesberg CO, during a gas war shortly before the first gas crunch. Paid 19.9 cents/gal"

You are getting old Scott, that 19.9 cents is worth $4.26 today.

I'm prepared for $10/gallon in the next 12 months, then I'm hoping Obama can talk some sense into the world.

axle

you can hope ray but governments are not that efficient just look at the road crews in your area 1 guy fills a pot hole one guy tells him how while he is doing it and a third guy supervises the second guys instructions this is our governments local state and Federal this is a good example of why it takes so long to change things they don't want to run things efficiently because than at least one third if not more people would be out of work i.e. instant depression with so many out of work on all three levels of government
sorry for the long post but gas prices are not going to get any better soon

twinkletoes

iTrader: (17)

I'm thinking of getting a scooter haha. I was looking at the Yamaha Zuma scooter. It's got a 1.5 gallon tank and gets an estimated 123 mpg. Thats like 184 miles to a tank(basically what my 7 gets with 13 gallons) and only cost around 5 bucks to fill up. I'd use that for going to work and other places, and make the 7 a weekend car.

ray green

iTrader: (14)

Now that scooter idea is intelligent TT!.

axle, good news here in Georgia. We don't have potholes!! Not sure why, but buy a GA car if you can.

On a more serious note, I think we should increase the gas tax so that we use less gas - gotta be good in the long run. We can use the extra money to fill the potholes.

axle

well up here were we have snow the roads are like tank traps at least here in Spokane six million dollars left in the city budget last year and what do they use it for red light cameras that they have tried before and they failed to make money for the city instead of fixing the roads thats smart government for you

Alex

j_tso

iTrader: (2)

Other countries can do it because they're not burning coal to make electricity. Doesn't make as much power (about half of the RX-8), but for commuter cars the hydrogen-RE can be promoted for its smooth, vibration free operation like in the old RX-2 adverts.

I don't think Mazda is promoting their H-RE enough, which is a true hybrid engine. I'm seeing huge talk about Honda's and BMW's engines, but they don't run on both petrol and hydrogen. It's a good bridge car while the infrastructure gets changed over.

j_tso

iTrader: (2)

Another rant I have (not directed to %7C) is all the people complaining about new tech/alt fuel vehicles, expecting them to be some magic bullet that gets a million mpg.

FirebirdSlayer666

iTrader: (3)

I plan on buying a bicycle here in the next week or so to commute to work and back on nice enough days. It'll save gas/miles/wear and tear on the SA and it'll get me out exercising again which is something I want to do. Another thing I find really interesting is 15 years ago we were seeing cars built that had the same mpg rating as some of these new hybrid vehicles out. We have the technology for cars to get 50+mpg in a mid sized sedan but you have to love big oil keeping technology down

Directfreak

iTrader: (2)

Exactly!! Not to mention Solar panels in your home, would further reduce the consumption by a huge factor.

Electric car technology exists already. It existed over 10 years ago.
The Oil & Car companies buy all the technology and squash it. Theres still
to much money to be made from oil to them.

If you have the time - please see the documentary
Who killed the electric car?
It is a wake up call, and very well made. I put a link
up to the whole vid on Google Video.

grandgarson

That sounds great in theory, but there are many cities that have added a tax to gas to do that, but somehow it just never ends up being spent on that. Just goes to bloat unnecessary budgets. It would be nice if the person writing the tax bill actually wanted the money to go to that, but that's very rarely the case, and is usually just a way for them to get people to vote for something that will give them more money.

grandgarson

Even more benefits of this. If you convert your home to solar power and leave it hooked up to the grid, in most places if you are producing more electricity than you are using your meter will run backwards and you will actually be selling electricity to the power company. Not all companies will work that way where they will be actually buying electricity from you, but most will at least give you a credit, so if you end up using more electricity than you produce in the winter but the other way around in the summer than chances are you would never pay a power bill again.

Also, electric cars have been around a lot longer than 10 years, it's just that in the last 10 years or so the technology has been developed enough to make it a viable option. And I don't think it's been so much that they have suppressed the technology as it has been that they've put a bad spin on electric cars so that everyone thinks of an electric car like the ones from the 70's & 80's where you had no power, no range, and took forever to recharge. And it's been easy for them to do, since most people hate change and don't want to believe that an electric car could possibly perform as well as they're gas car. Then guys couldn't stand around and talk about valves, pistons and head gaskets . . . oh, wait, we don't have to talk about those things with rotaries either. Isn't it great. lol

PercentSevenC

Some of the earliest cars (we're talking mid-19th century here) were electric.

Also, I feel I should mention that what I said about hydrogen sucking only applies to hydrogen ICEs, not hydrogen fuel cells, which are quite a neat technology that might well be worthwhile.