65 mpg improved engine of the future ?
Godfather.
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Godfather.
Posts: 12,504
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o.k. "mr. it'll never fly" as you wish.
Godfather.
haha ... i'm not saying it won't work ... all i'm saying is that if it uses gas ... it really isn't the engine of the future ...
In the future diverse sources of energy, including gas, will have to be used. I don't understand how ordinary people will be able to use EV's. If you live in the city (i.e. the best customer for EV's with lots of stop & go short distance driving) you probably can't park in a garage; you'd be in a street space a block away. So how the hell would you ever charge your car? :?
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Charging stations ... it's really advancements in battery technology right now that is limiting the viability of EV ... once they figure out how to charge faster ... it'll be no different than gas stations ... also, i am not totally writing off fuel cells ...
having said that ... in edmonton, because the winters are so cold ... many cars use block heaters that need to be plugged in ... and so, a lot of parking lots actually have plugs in them ...
wellllll I have to agree with you in the long term but for right now it's a shot in the right direction.
Godfather.
most cars would charge at night where load is generally not an issue ... obviously, the move to EV is a move towards a more sustainable energy framework ... you can't do that it isolation ... we currently waste a lot of energy and that has got to stop ...
Load wouldn't be an issue as far as building new plants, since you are right most of the demand would be at night. But unless you were getting your power from something like hydro-electric which is sort of "always on" you would still have issues with obtaining all that extra fuel to generate the extra power, and of course the byproducts. So sure if most of your power comes from dams, no problem, but if you are burning coal, or natural gas or whatever to generate your power, then you need to mine more coal, and have to deal with the additional pollution it creates. In the US something like 40 of all power is currently generated using coal. Until that issue is dealt with, then at least for the US, having to generate more electricity to power cars, seems like it would just move the pollution generated to another location.
Godfather.
ya ... what did i miss?
well ... that's the thing ... i haven't done the math but if we factored in the true cost of energy consumption ... i have to think oil is gotta be the most expensive ... even with existing infrastructure in place ...
germany is going to be powered 80% by renewables by 2030 which includes the phase out of nuclear power by 2020 ... obviously, that isn't vehicular energy consumption ... but just an indication that are belief that our mix has to include dirty fuels is not necessarily true ...
i think that this is short-term thinking ... something that plagues us in general ... gov'ts acting short term ... it's why environmental issues are always on the back burner ...
we don't need to be using gas ... the faster we wean ourselves from it the better ... there are obviously huge costs related to switching but i don't think we are necessarily factoring the costs to NOT change ...
I don't know who wouldn't be for this.
Exactly. You have to crawl before you can run. Sure, down the road eliminating gasoline might be a viable option, and sure there might be ways of doing so with current technology, but right now there's no way to do it on a mass scale. So if we have better options that can currently promote a more affordable switch to vehicles that use less gas with relative ease, then that is where the focus should be. As we utilize that technology, we can then continually work towards the eventual elimination of gas requirements. Doing anything else would be akin to the Wright Bros. building a rocket at Kitty Hawk, just because they flew a plane a few hundred yards. They weren't quite ready to go to the moon just yet, and focusing on anything other than airplanes would have been self-defeating.
I still would like to see projected numbers, not guesstimates, on how much additional load a nation full of EV's would create. Not everyone is going to be charging at night, not everyone works during the day, so I would imagine you would have serious issues on the grid which like I said is already taxed almost to it's limit. So we eliminate gas (to some extent, but big trucks, commercial shipping, and freight trains will still be burning fossil fuels) by using EV's we still have the problem of the additional load on the power grids that aren't hydroelectric or nuclear. Increasing that production, may in turn off-set gains we made by using EV's.
actually - it should be better than hybrids because the article said it would be using a hybrid drivetrain ... at least that's what i thought i read ... i might have misread ...
listen folks ... did i say i was opposed to it!? ... no, i just simply said it isn't the engine of the future ... if some engineer can figure out a way of making tires grip the road better but save fuel ... i'm all for it ... all i'm saying is that we need to move away from gas-powered cars ...
What Germany is doing is really cool, although I don't really see Canada or the US being able to do the same things, especially if electric cars were added to the mix. I mean Germany has a lot of things working in their favour. I mean germany has a population density of 229 people/km2, the US's is about 34 and Canada's is 3.4. That many people crammed in together means it is much to keep them warm, and keep streets lit and that sort of thing.
As far as transportation goes, with a population density like that it is so much easier to have a really good mass transit system (commuter trains and that sort of thing) since you don't have to travel very far to serve a lot of people. Plus my understanding is that a lot of the German transportation infrastructure was rebuild after WWII, so it is a lot more modern than what the US say might have.
And also with that population density, from talking to people I know you have lived in Europe, you don't have that same sort of idea that you see here where a ton of people have a goal, of being successful in their career, and moving out to the suburbs, so they can have a huge single family house with a big yard, and have to drive an hour each way to get to work, or 20 minutes to go get milk. If people live in cities (because there is no room for suburbs) and can walk or bike to everything they need, ther is a lot less demand for cars.
but that population density is taking into consideration the entire country ... when the reality is most of us live along the US border ... what is the density of our pop'l in the 15 largest cities and what % of our population would that cover?
for sure - culture plays a part ... they have high speed electric trains there ... no brainers as far as i'm concerned but we don't here in north america ... why? ... largely because we let big business (oil) dictate policy decisions and we are a more self-centred culture ...