Car Tech: What's your favorite alternative fuel?
- 4/24/07 5:45 PM
Hydrogen but...
by JeffDeWitt - 5/2/07 8:22 PM In reply to: Diesel is BOSS by jgilliam1955The long term answer is hydrogen. It can be made from natural gas, oil, electrolysis of water and a bunch of other things, it IS the most common element in the universe after all.
And it's closer than we think, Honda is going to be selling a fuel cell car to the public as soon as next year.
http://world.honda.com/fcx/
However, what we really need is more oil, and there is plenty of it we just need to get it. ANWAR and off the coasts for a start.
In the long term hydrogen will take the place of petroleum as transportation fuel but in the meantime there is no reasonable subsitute.
Also keep in mind the modern gasoline engine is a marvel, it is powerful, clean, efficient and lasts a very long time, as should be expected as we have had some of our best minds developing these marvelous machines for over a century!
Jeff DeWitt
Hydrogen, but only if you ignore price...
by albizzia - 5/7/07 7:00 PM In reply to: Hydrogen but... by JeffDeWittHonda will be leasing, not selling, the "FCX". Not suprising, there isn't much market for a quarter million dollar car with limited refill options and a 300 mile range. No, this is a publicity stunt.
There are many problems with H2 fuel, including storage and high costs, but the biggest problem for H2 proponents is to get the rest of us to ignore all the clean, cheaper and more efficient alternatives available.
Alternate Fuels
by RBUTCHER - 6/22/07 9:32 AM In reply to: Hydrogen, but only if you ignore price... by albizziaI'll solve the whole discussion on alternate fuels. Just get the politicians to heavily tax all Automobile companies for producing low efficiency vehicles. Then take that same money and give it to the auto companies and the buyers of efficient vehicles as rebates and tax incentives to buy the efficient vehicles. Once the average miliage minimum is at 100 mpg and rising there would be less of a problem. We wouldn't have to worry about any oil crisis anymore and the military could come home from the middle east because we wouldn't have to defend the petroleum industry anymore. After all isn't that the only reason people are fighting in the middle east. If you allow the automotive industry just to stage alternate vehicles for publicity we will never have high efficiency vehicles. Look at what happened to the CV1 (electric vehicle). GM crushed hundreds of brand new vehicles even when the people leasing them wanted to keep them. Just to hide the evidence that electric works. I for one will buy vehicles only from companies that don't play that shady game.
You are joking right?
by FredMars - 5/9/07 12:05 PM In reply to: Hydrogen but... by JeffDeWitt"The modern gasoline engine is amervel, ...powerful,...clean, efficient..." That's a joke right?
"We have had some of our best minds developing these marvelous machines for over a century" Which minds are you refering to? I cannot think of one that would agree that the belching coughing internal combustion engine is a marvel. To me it was a stop-gap measure that would have been used only until an elctric alternative was produced utilizing the science of Tesla and others who have demonstrated the "free energy" available.
Please read my post "It Started WIth Fire" and if you are not convinced, please read about Henry T. Moray, Nikola Tesla, and their discoveries regarding radiant energy.
air pressure
by mngmikes - 5/2/07 8:07 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
there is a lot of problems with all of the alternate fuels.
these "flex fuel" vehicles that use ethanol. problem is price. the test subjects i have read the mpg range shortens with ethanol by 8-12 mpg. in most cases you actually are paying more per year for ethanol than regular gas now because of those numbers.
hydrogen fuel cells are a bit better because as Norway has shown fuel cell stations can be put just about anywhere from the fact as long as there is an abundance of water and sun you can put a fuel cell station just about anywhere by using the solar panels to help produce the cell's fuel. problem so far is power of out put and leakage of water vapors...
electric has shown great potential in power but not in recharging, distance, and safety.
a car that runs on nothing but air pressure has been made over in europe and sounds like a great item. the only thing the gentleman that has invented these cars is trying to overcome in is power or speed of the vehicle. right now it runs at about 45 mph and it only travels for about 200miles. so he is coming up with a generator that would just remake airpressure and try to add to the out put of power. it sounds very interesting
Hydrogen
by teslaman - 5/2/07 8:49 PM In reply to: air pressure by mngmikesI like hydrogen for several reasons. One, it can be more mechanical and less electronic. I like that for the simple fact that electronics seem to keep getting cheaper and cheaper in quality. Use the quality of parts 20 years ago combined with the technology today of electric cars and EMF/EMP shielding and I will consider it. And also the engineering of 20+ years ago where parts can actually be replaced easily by anyone and don't intergrate the components so when one goes bad you can just pull the one part and not the entire system. Oh and also intergrate a computer diagnostic system so you can actually do the work yourself and not pay out the wazoo everytime something electrical dies. Second hydrogen can be produced at home from rain water if you wanted. Just clean it up with solar or wind power and filters then separate the hydrogen with electrolysis. http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/ has some great ideas, to bad they have hit alot of barriers with laws and junk recently. Their first prototype on a '94 corvette only needed 4 small tanks and it got 650 miles per fill.
significant inefficiency in compressing air
by impala - 5/3/07 3:58 PM In reply to: air pressure by mngmikeswhen you compress air, a LOT of energy is lost as waste heat. Same thing when you compress hydrogen. Both are impractical.
The IC engine compresses air/fuel mixture. The quicker you do this and the less time it spends compressed (the more adiabatic it becomes), the more efficient it becomes (in general, friction eventually negates this).
Your compressed air car is going to hold the compressed air a very long time. very unadiabatic.
Alternative Fuel Choices
by ronb42 - 5/2/07 8:08 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
I have been reading up on alternative fuel choices and while there does not appear to be any single choice that is going to replace fossil fuels, I am voting for cellulosic ethanol. http://e85.whipnet.net/ethanol.faq/cellulosic.ethanol.html
Corn-based Ethanol appears to be too expensive to be worthwhile but, sugar-cane based ethanol might be cheaper and it provides more power for the money.
Ethanol, good for more than just drinking
by umn - 5/2/07 8:10 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
I know there are plenty of downsides to E85, but it has a slight energy gain these days and could be very much a positive gain in the future. It also reduces some of it's own carbon cycle from hundreds of thousands of years to one year. It's a liquid fuel so it works with the existing infrastructure of cars and gas stations. And lastly, there's no reason to war over it (yet).
So until you can buy a plug-in hybrid powered by clean nuclear power, use E85 as a bridge fuel.
Favorite Alternative Fuel
by Dreaming Badger - 5/2/07 8:11 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
I have used propane for forklifts and such.
Why not for autos as well? I don't believe any one
fuel should have a monopoly as far as use goes. If
one type is used exclusively, then it will likely
become scarce or worse. In other words, there is
NO "unlimited" fuel of any kind.
135 MPG (equal) Electric Sports Car
by Rx_ - 5/2/07 8:19 PM In reply to: Favorite Alternative Fuel by Dreaming Badgerhttp://www.teslamotors.com
There is an excellent article about the "ecology footprint" on this web site. If the Honda uses up more energy in the manufacutre of the car than energy saved over its lifecycle, the net ecology effect is not gained.
The Electric car with Li-Po batteries (sand) is a sports car, goes up to 200 miles before re-charge, and has the CO2 footprint of 135 MPG. First maintenance is at 100,000 miles.
Regular car maintenance (oil, parts...) and the car lifecycle disposal are huge negative impacts on the environment.
The EPA has failed the consumer because it only looks at the immediate short term gas milage, not the total ecological impact.
Atomic Engines
by vijayaraghavank - 5/2/07 8:11 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Miniaturized to a very very small degree. Not enough to cause an explosion but enough to power a small vehicle. SUV's and Hummer's can run on gas because people who buy them are welcome to pay for them. I am sure if someone really wanted to, they could actually make this work 
Propane /CNG
by tbird635 - 5/2/07 8:12 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
Favorite fuel? Propane or CNG. Both home grown , plentiful, reduce co2 and hc emissions, cheap, and available now,.
most favorite: BIODIESEL
by impala - 5/2/07 8:14 PM In reply to: What's your favorite alternative fuel? by wcunning
PRO:
* Existing infrastructure easily converted to use it. I mean piplelines, filling stations, even refineries. It can even be mixed with the fossil fuel variety. Minimal new investment required.
* Existing Diesel vehicles can use it. DUH!
* variety of sources available (from corn to algae).
* Aggregate of above advantages: This can have the biggest impact much sooner than anything else.
CON:
They get better every year, but every diesel makes some soot and NOx. Sorry.
(NT) algae-made biopetroleum does not release NO2
by rdif-embedded - 5/3/07 2:31 AM In reply to: most favorite: BIODIESEL by impala
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