super high capacity battery + electric motor

OR

world is doomed

imo

quote:

Originally posted by blacknoizybox super high capacity battery + electric motor OR world is doomed imo

Where does the electricity for the battery come from?

The hole in the wall?

The hole in the wall is supplied by coal being burnt, which adds up to more emissions.

Nuclear power/hydro/wind or whatever needs to be bought up to scratch before batteries become a viable power source for cars. Nuclear power is extremely safe despite what activists would have you believe. Chernobyl was a result of human inexperience, as are a great many of our mistakes.

Also you need to consider that batteries have a relatively short life span, are expensive to produce, and use metals that are actually quite rare in some cases, which makes them hard to produce on a scale as large as the global car market.

In my opinion, fuel cells or ionised metal particle cannisters are the way of the future.

Hydrogen cars are unrealistic because hydrogen cannot be transported readily to service stations, meaning it would need to be piped in, which there is no infrastructure for.

Bio/ethanol is not really viable because there are not enough crops grown in the world, nor can there be, to support the earth's current fuel usage.

Yah, we're screwed.

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Last edited by Domesticated on Feb-10-2008 at 12:24

How about electric cars with SOLAR POWERED BATTERIES. Haven't you guys ever fucking thought of that??? Except you can't drive at night. But who drives at night anyway?

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quote:

Originally posted by Jake Benson How about electric cars with SOLAR POWERED BATTERIES. Haven't you guys ever fucking thought of that??? Except you can't drive at night. But who drives at night anyway?

We're going to need a replacement pretty soon, and solar panels are not worth a pinch of shit at the moment.

However, when you consider that it was only 150 years ago that we didn't have electricity, and 40 that we didn't have computers, I'm optimistic that in twenty years, or however long it takes for fossil fuels to run out, we will have found a good alternative that will hopefully be sustainable and affordable.

p.s we need a De Lorien powered by half a can of coke, a banana peel and a few eggshells.

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quote:

Originally posted by Beat Blog However, when you consider that it was only 150 years ago that we didn't have electricity, and 40 that we didn't have computers, I'm optimistic that in twenty years, or however long it takes for fossil fuels to run out, we will have found a good alternative that will hopefully be sustainable and affordable.

Then again, it was just 50 years ago that LA, for example, had a great public transportation system. Then they tore it all down to make way for more automotorgaycars. Looks like LA is going to just get worse.

Solution to cars = no cars. Trollys, trains, subways & monorails.

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quote:

Originally posted by Jake Benson Then again, it was just 50 years ago that LA, for example, had a great public transportation system. Then they tore it all down to make way for more automotorgaycars. Looks like LA is going to just get worse. Solution to cars = no cars. Trollys, trains, subways & monorails.

It's like communism...a great idea, but will never work in reality.

People like the flexibility and independence cars provide, or enjoy the act of driving itself.

People need to lug shit around, or they live out in the country where public transport will never reach satisfactorily.

Cars are needed.

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As with every problem known to mankind, cats are the solution:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1534821.html

quote:

Inventor turns dead cats into diesel A German inventor says he's found a way to make cheap diesel fuel out of dead cats. Dr Christian Koch, 55, from Kleinhartmannsdorf, said his method uses old tyres, weeds and animal cadavers. They are heated up to 300 Celsius to filter out hydrocarbon which is then turned into diesel by a catalytic converter. He said the resulting "high quality bio-diesel" costs just 15 pence per litre. Koch said the cadaver of a fully grown cat can produce 2.5 litres of fuel - meaning around 20 cats are needed for a full tank. He said: "I tank my car with my own diesel mixture and have driven it for 105,000 miles without any problems." Annelise Krauss of the Dresden Animal Protection Association blasted Koch's new diesel though, saying: "This is as bad as experimenting on animals."

Problem with public transport:

I need to go 4 kilometres to buy a tv at an electrical store.
Theres no bus/tram/train that goes from my place to there. I'd have to catch 2-3 buses just to get there. So far its cost me about 4 bucks in bus tickets to get there and home (8 kms), the price equivalent of ~30kms of car travel.
Then I have a 40 inch plasma I need to get home. On the bus? yeah good one.

Another example. I want to go into the city to a club at 11pm. In a car I can get there in 15 mins, on a bus ~20 and then maybe 10 mins walk from the bus stop to the club. At 4am I then need to get home somehow. Bus? Doesn't run at that time, even if it did it'd have to be infrequent (due to cost/staff limits) so it'd be hard to get home.

I have family in the country. Can't get there without a car.


Public transport works to an extent but it can't (no matter how good it is) replace cars.

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Regarding public transportation - it only works in countries that aren't as decentralized as the United States, the reason it will never work here is because we are a nation that embodies the idea of "sprawl", one of the very, very worst mentalities we could have insofar as we are concerned with trying to reduce our harm to the environment.

I'm not saying that makes it OK, but it's definitely why you will never see it happen in any meaningful sense unless by "Public Transportation" you mean "Public Teleportation."

As far as biofuels go I will say this much, the following paragraph sums up very nicely one of the massive logical fallacies of the biofuel push:

quote:

These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew. But even that equation proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions — for refining and transport, for example.

Unfortunately, lots of people (academics included) failed both utterly and completely to realize the above - simply put, that the "Grow More Plants + Use Fuel From Them = Carbon Neutrality" argument is absurd from the outset.

This, however, doesn't mean that biofuels are useless and that we should stop pursuing them - it simply means we need to be far more thoughtful about how we implement them. For example, someone above said that solar energy wasn't doing anything for us now, which is just not true at all - solar and wind energy have made massive strides in the past 15 years.

One possible avenue would be to use either hydroponic or hot houses to grow switch grass, corn, or whichever plant you're using for fuel and attempt to eliminate the use of fuels that create greenhouse gases in its growth and refinement.

This, coupled with more stringent rules regarding land development (i.e. fuck the suburbs, save the rainforest, etc.) is only one option, but I guess my point is really only this: there isn't going to be an environmental "silver bullet", as the Times puts it, that will come and save us - it's going to take a lot of work, and this idea the general public has that some new fuel is going to pop up and save us is one of the biggest problems stemming environmental progress worldwide, not just in the U.S.

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On the other hand if everyone used public transit it would be far more develloped. So far I've never had to drive a car. Trains, metros and busses take me anywhere I have to go provided the system is develloped there (so anywhere on the montreal island is fine). I just walk the extra distance and that works for me. Even if it's a 30 minute walk, it can be quite plesant at times. But then again, people are so lazy that they take their cars to the corner store when they're out of milk. The thought of walking even five minutes to get anywhere scares them.

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quote:

Originally posted by Project-K On the other hand if everyone used public transit it would be far more develloped.

I don't think it would be, at least not in the United States, and I also don't think it has to do necessarily with laziness.

The infrastructure that was developed in the past 100 years in the U.S. was certainly not built because a few folks were lazy, and if anything it is what has contributed to the increasingly sedentary lifestyle here, and not the other way around.

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