What we'll be driving in five years.
Comment: What a joke! America is getting screwed and no one is complaining. The only reason we do not have fuel cell cars, and other break through technology, coming at a fast pace is OIL is GOLD, Period! The middel East countries and American Big Oil Co's will, or are already, buying up any technology they can to sloooooooow down the replacement of oil in the world. It is about dollars! Wealth! Wake up America before it is too late.
Comment: It is not an "energy" issue. It is a transportation issue: Moving people and goods from one place to another.
Imported oil is used as fuel for the internal combustion engine.
Brazil took the hint from the Jimmy Carter speech of July 15, 1979 (google it) and is today totally independent of imported oil--using many flex fuel vehicles manufactured by Ford!
Alternative renewable fuel sources can be developed in many countries besides Brazil--if major commitments by the governments are made and persisted in as prices fluctuate and technologies are developed.
Persistance is the key word. Cheap imported oil got us hooked before. Cheap imported ethanol or hydrogen or whatever could get us hooked on imported fuels again.
The alternative renewable fuels must be developed and maintained at home to be successful in making us independent of TRANSPORTATION fuels.
We have adequate "energy". It is self sufficient fuels for the internal combusion engine that we need.
In the meantime, conservation is the one thing individuals can do. It worked during WWII. It is working to some extent now as working class Americans and businesses feel the pinch of $4 a gallon gasoline. It ha already decreased demand and prices at the pump (as well as crude on the futures market) are falling. But the mistake often made in the past is to go back to our old ways when the price drops temporarily--and remain "adicted" as the president said.
Comment: And Solar, solar, solar......................
Comment: Hydrogen, Hydrogen, Hydrogen, what more to say?
Comment: "...hydrogen???a renewable fuel that has nothing to do with fossilized dinosaurs..." These people obviously haven't done their homework. The fact is that 95% of all hydrogen we produce comes from NATURAL GAS. The remaining 5% comes from electrolysis, a process that uses electricity to split the hydrogen and oxygen in water. Electrolysis uses more energy than it produces... so where does that electricity come from? COAL All hydrogen produced today is derived from fossil fuel sources. There is some research being done to figure out other ways to produce hydrogen, but it doesn't look very promising.
Comment: Correction, as posted below: 48% from natural gas, 30% from oil, and 18% from coal; water electrolysis accounts for only 4%. Now, electrolysis powered by solar, wind, etc. would be a great renewable source. But I think storing the solar-electric energy in batteries and using it directly in an electric car would be far more efficient than producing hydrogen.
Comment: For a moment when I saw the heading "CAR OF THE FUTURE" I was looking for a FLINTSONE VERSION to pop up on the screen.
Comment: The car looks nice, would be nicer if the price was lower.
Comment: I like Nims comment. Why aren't we paying more attention to algae. From algae, we could get hydrogen and according to the October 2007 issue of National Geographic, we can distill algae into clean burning biofuel that can fit into the current fuel insfrastructure. We can also use exhausts from coal burning power plants to produce algae.
The last edition of Newsweek also contained an article on capturing carbon dioxide to produce fuel-producing bacteria. I might add that we desperately need to develop a way of capturing methane from the atmosphere. The methane content of the atmosphere is increasing and that's even more dangerous that carbon dioxide. Many buses in the La Metro fleet already run on natural gas, and natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel that coal or gasoline.
The bottom line is that we have alternatives to oil. We need to develop them. The country that will emerge as the dominant power in the 21st century (provided the planet survives.) will the the nation that de-carbonizes its economy. With responsible leadership, like a TeamObama, (with an emphasis on teammanship) I'd far sooner see America emerge as a dominant power than China, India or Russia - all three of these countries have proven to be far less responsible than the United States. We need to get our act together.
Comment: Readers, be informed, and beware! Sam Bodman, US Energy Secretary, is a Bush appointed Yes-man. Bodman states that insufficient production is making oil prices soar. Bush wants you to think that the OPEC countries are responsible for high oil prices, but the truth is, OPEC has been significantly increasing production over the past several months. Where is all that oil going? It's being stockpiled by US investment banks, who are creating a fake shortage to drive up the price. Congress has already started to investigate this criminal practice. Bush, who has deregulated the banking industry, tries to blame it on OPEC. By now you should be familiar with Bush's MO: he says you should be very afraid of Muslims. But who you should really be afraid of are investment bankers at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers. Check this out:
Michael Masters of Master Capital Management (a global investment manager) testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs a couple of weeks ago. Quotes from his testimony:
"Today, Index Speculators are pouring billions of dollars into the commodities futures markets, speculating that commodity prices will increase. In the popular press the explanation given for rising oil prices is the increased demand from China. According to the DOE, China's demand for petroleum has increased in the last five years from 1.88 billion barrels to 2.8 billion barrels, an increase of 920 billion barrels. Over the same five year period, Index Speculators' demand for petroleum futures has increased by 848 million barrels. THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM INDEX SPECULATORS IS ALMOST EQUAL TO THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM CHINA. Index Speculators have now stockpiled, via the futures market, the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of petroleum, effectively adding EIGHT TIMES as much oil to their own stockpile as the US Government has added to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last five years."
"The Senate has asked the question "Are Institutional Investors contributing to food and energy price inflation?" And my unequivocal answer is "YES." In this testimony I will explain that investment banks are one of, if not the primary, factors affecting commodities prices today. Clearly, there are many factors that contribute to price determination in the commodities markets; I am here to expose a fast-growing yet virtually unnoticed factor, and one that presents a problem that can be expediently corrected through legislative policy action..."
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. They're supposed to be protecting us from these kinds of abuses, but Bush allowed loopholes in the CFTC regulations that you can drive a truck through. An oil truck, that is.
Links to Masters' Senate testimony, and 2 articles:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
http://globalresearch.ca
Comment: "It can go 280 miles on a tank of hydrogen???a renewable fuel that has nothing to do with fossilized dinosaurs"
...Wrong. All the hydrogen sold today comes from reforming natural gas.
Using electricity to obtain hydrogen from water is many times more expensive.
A lot of energy is used in reforming the natural gas, and more is used to compress and chill the hydrogen.
It would be much cleaner and more efficient to simply burn the natural gas in a car engine than to go through the trouble to turn it into hydrogen to run a fuel cell.
Comment: Sorry, Mike, but you are misinformed. The hydrogen in hydrogen fuel cells is produced by blue green algae, not from natural gas. And the byproducts of a hydrogen fuel call are water and oxygen, which clean the air you breathe. Welcome to the 21st century.
Comment: No. Can you name one factory producing hydrogen from algae? Algal production of hydrogen is a science experiment, not a practical source of H2.
Wikipedia says:
Currently, global hydrogen production is 48% from natural gas, 30% from oil, and 18% from coal; water electrolysis accounts for only 4%.[8] The distribution of production reflects the effects of thermodynamic constraints on economic choices: of the four methods for obtaining hydrogen, partial combustion of natural gas in a NGCC (natural gas combined cycle) power plant offers the most efficient chemical pathway and the greatest off-take of usable heat energy.
Comment: Car enthusiasts should be thrilled. This is the most exciting variety of emerging auto technologies since a century ago, when people were first dabbling with gasoline, deisel, steam, and electric cars. Then the industry mostly collapsed down to gasoline engines (with diesel on the side). Fun stuff. My vote goes to the Chevy Volt. Grid electricity creates less pollution that a comparable amount of energy creatd by a million little hybrid engines. Plus, the off-the-line will crush a hybrid with a small battery and dual power train. You only have to fall back on the on-board engine once you've gone more than 40 miles, which most people do not do on an average day. Hey GM, why not make that recharging engine a natural gas or LP engine for even better emmissions quality?
Comment: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!
Hydrogen has to be made. You can't just take it out of the atmosphere without using energy. The machines that make hydrogen run on electricity and the vast majority of electricity production comes from the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, the vast majority of man-made pollution in the world comes from power plants which burn fossil fuels. So until we use nuclear, wind, solar and geothermal as our primary energy sources, all we're doing is sending the pollution up the production ladder.
Comment: There are similar technologies that are more readily available, including supplemental hydrogen. There are some fairly simple systems you can use that will significantly increase the effeciency of your engine. The best I have found is www.h2ofuelboost.com
Comment: Hydrogen a renewable fuel? How's that again? The author clearly hasn't done his homework. Hydrogen is a means of storing energy, not an actual energy source - to get hydrogen, we have to break down water, which consumes more energy than we get by burning the hydrogen later. If you've already got a clean energy source and you want to make it portable for use in cars, hydrogen is great. But if you don't, hydrogen won't help you.
Comment: Oh...and IT IS an energy source, not a means of storing energy.
Comment: Ummm... if you get the electricity to create the hydrogen from solar, wind, or hydro, and the water vapor emitted from tailpipes condenses and falls back as precipitation, then yes it is quite renewable. Whether or not it is a pure "source" of energy doesn't matter. Oil isn't a pure energy source either, since it was created by plants absorbing endless amounts of solar radiation for millions of years. It's just that the solar input isn't factored into today's energy balance. But you are right in one regard; it would be more energy efficient to use the grid electricity to directly charge an electric car than to create hydrogen as an intermediary. Especially since a fuel cell car is essentially an electric car anyway, just with the electricity being generated by a fuel cell rather than released from a battery. I say put all our eggs into battery technologies for now, with fuel efficient diesel or NG engines for on-board recharging (hello Chevy Volt).
Comment: Huge Volt fan, and can't wait. The goob in the article thinks electric/phev technology will be limited to the coasts, bah! I live in the South and can't wait for a plug in car.
Comment: You havent done YOUR homework. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in th universe...the simplest element of all. It's not just in water H2O. So by your argument, it also takes energy to pump the crude from the earth and energy to convert it to usable gasoline. Hydrogen is the way to go. With the only emission being water...it HAS to be the way to go for the sake of the earth.
Comment: Hydrogen is in fact the most abundant element in the universe. But unless we figure out a way of culling it from the UNIVERSE (summer job on Alpha Century, anyone?), that is irrelevant. Who cares how much hydrogen exists in the far, unreachable corners of the universe? What is relevant is what compounds are abundant on the face of the earth. And that would be water, which also happens to be very rich in hydrogen. Alas, water is the most practical souce of hydrogen for now.
Comment: LOL, boys will be boys now wont they?
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
Comment: Forget about hybrids all thoes gas and corn feed pigs and go electric and solar cars leave the fuel to the big rigs that haul 80,000 lbs down the road.
I feel we have the technology to do it within for all in 7 to 10 years at the most and keep the cost down, don't make it a fad just do it.
Comment: Big rigs have green fuel technology available to them right now, not 7 to 10 years from now. The problem is and has always been one of public awareness not availability. Bio-diesel, grown here, refined here sold here is the one technology on the ground that you hear so little about. School systems use it for busses, public transportation uses it, even the US Military which is slow to migrate to any new technology is moving at an excellerated pace toward it. The average family vehicle, if it is diesel, can also use this technology today. And.....it is no fad.
Comment: My fellow carpoolers and I have saved a lot of money since we traded in our car for a Radio Flyer. We're all getting in shape, too, as we take turns pulling it along our 20-mile commute!
Comment: Here, have a hanky - you seem to have sneezed on your crystal ball. The lastest technology puts upward of 90% of the battery energy in the wheels and accessories. That's 6 times a gasoline engine. About 40% of that wheel energy can be recaptured by regenerative braking, using fast-charge batteries and/or ultracapacitors (the other 60% is lost to hysteresis and drag). Plus, plug-in electricity is cheaper and 90% cleaner (point source vs. tailpipe emissions, with the potential to use wind or solar). And for all the muscle car maniacs, a Cooper Mini fitted with electric wheels can out-drag a porche. The bottom line is that electric vehicles will be a quantum leap, not a marginal improvement. The changeover will be much faster than you imagine.
Comment: unfourtunatly so does cost.. the less profit to be made the more expensive the car. Besides at my income i have time to see who, wha,t when, and where, before i can afford. So maybe a the kinks will be delt with by then.
Comment: Hell, rebuild the stanly steamer, put it in a 55 chevy body, or one of a million hot rod bodies, and use water 1gl per 1000 miles, in a 47 Ford Coup Chopped I WOULD BUT THIS IN A HEARTBEAT! Todays metals and our kids imagination would make a great parring! 63 chevy 3 piece window shortbed truck, that get 1000 miles per gl of water, ya buddy! let the good old day bodies see roads again, they were if any thing but sweet! Stock or Chopped! They did clock a steamer at 120mph! Tweek with todays tech and there you go. Now somebody with money, will do this, 5 years from now, and I'll say where is my cut? If it gives this planet another greneration or two, fair trade!
Comment: CORRECTION
I WOULD BUY THIS IN A HEARTBEAT!
Comment: What will i drive in 5 years,mmm lets see! Today I make 700 per month fixed, 5 years from now I will be making 760 per month! So what will I be driving?WHAT I CAN AFFORD!!! WITHOUT PMTS!! BECAUSE INS, IS LAW! Any more questions?
Comment: All known earthly reserves of petroleum are finite, but that doesn't mean we should totally surrender ourselves to the fact that it will be gone forever - while the main focus should be on renewable energy, why not try and find other ways to regenerate petroleum, for example, using algae or bacteria? Complete surrender is nothing but wasted opportunity.
Comment: The diesel-electric plug-in hybrid is surely the solution and the technology is nothing new. Look at what VW is coming out with (Golf diesel-electric) and Mercedes: diesel-electric SUV that actually has improved gas milage. Notice that gas-hybrid SUVs really don't offer much improvement at all. The diesel combines the torque and efficiency of a diesel engine with the torque and stop-and-go efficency of electric motors, with the pollution reducing technology of a plug-in. (even with coal-fired power plants the pollution is less). Also, consider the possbilities of using diesel engines to power an all-electric drive (like a locomotive or a modern military tank, or the old WWII submarines).
Comment: Do you know how many exceptions there will be? Do you think a hybrid will tow any real weight? What about the 18 wheelers, the Rvs, the largers boats, etc, etc.? I was considering a hybrid pickup truck. the towing capacity was less than 1000 pounds.
Comment: Bass: You don't have to sacrifice anything in regard to power.......you don't even have to change your current vehicle, if you own a diesel, to be totally green and tow whatever you want (I will come back to this point later). Deisel engines were originally designed (by Dr R Diesel in 1890) to run on unrefined vegetable oil. Today there are hundreds of US Companies that produce refined bio-diesel. This is only one technology that the pro-oil Powers That Be(companies, cartels, Vice Presidents et al) have hindered.
These are end to end technoligies and infrastructures that are in place, in use in our current public transportation systems, in use in other countries who would buy this US product and can be produced by American firms. How is that for taking the 5 years down the road for green vehicles and making it today?
Getting back to my earlier reference of towing (or hauling) whatever you want...let's talk about that 18 wheeler. Deisel right? Same as most military and other commercial vehicles. Just a note that the US Army is right now looking into placing bio-diesel refineries on Military installations. There are so many internet sources about where, who, how and the benefits of this particular technology it would take too much space to supply you with the links. Just do a search.
Comment: These changes can't happen soon enough. We should ALL be driving HYBRIDs and ELECTRICs by 2013 - the old school cars and trucks should be phased out. There should be more high-speed, ultra-modern trains to take us from city to city, from suburb to city, etc.
Petroleum is FINITE. It will run out some day. We have probably peaked out on oil production globally since 2006, but that's quite debatable... Some analysts say 2011. Read Matthew Simmons' book, "Twilight in the Desert" and other experts on peak oil (geologists, petroleum engineers - those actually in the business - say we will peak out pretty soon - meaning that supply gets increasingly more difficult and more expensive to produce....eventually, the reservoirs around the world will be depleted)...
We are starting to see the End of the Oil Era. There is no bubble - analysts and government officials are just trying to "break it to us gently" - our dependence on imported oil far outweighs our national production and even if we start drilling now on the shelf or in ANWR we are doomed to consume way more than we can ever hope to produce. Imports will slow up as the largest oil companies are owned by Countries like Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, Brazil, etc. and as their production gets tighter over the years, they will want to keep their oil for their own people rather than sell to the American guzzlers.
Get over oil - the sooner the better - and start conserving it dramatically today. We can't. Unfortunately. But we should start thinking about reducing a LOT MORE DRASTICALLY than we are.
Comment: If it doesn't pull my boat, forget it!
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