The cost of fuel

[Neomage]

Re: The cost of fuel

Electrical energy is by far the best source of energy for cars, because it is already in the form of energy, and doesn't need to be converted. Plus, energy as a whole is easier to come by then one source, like oil.

And ethanol, while acceptable, is not the best source of energy. Better then gasoline, maybe, but if we did convert out cars to electric, we could all be running them off of solar. Fun Fact: For less then half the cost of the Iraq War, we could convert the entire U.S. electricity needs from fossil fuel based plants to solar.

[DakAttack]

Re: The cost of fuel

Or it could be that gas used to be cheaper than piss, and electrics didn't have the power, range, or ability to have fuel distributors like gas did! Electrics have really gone from being a novelty to being a great option for a replacement in about the last decade or so.

Your optimism isn't as refreshing as optimism usually is.

[Raydeus]

Re: The cost of fuel

The reason why Ethanol is a preferred solution over electricity comes from the logistics of it all.

Ethanol is the friendlier mean to convert from gasoline to an alternative fuel, there's the convenience of you being able to fill the tank as fast as you do with gasoline and the infrastructure is pretty much the same. An example of the friendliness is ethanol cars in Brazil can also work with gasoline.

(Edit > The benefits of electricity also vary depending on charging times and the means you use to produce the electricity, if it was all produced with solar energy it would win by far, but if you need to burn some kind of fuel to get it the benefits fall drastically.)

Although that doesn't mean you have to pick one over the other, electricity requieres more changes but is also achievable. It would depend on making a proper study to analize pros cons and expenses both short and long term for the project. Sadly like always third party interests would get in the way of the true solution most likely.

[Kitalrez]

Re: The cost of fuel

A country like Brazil is already near oil independance using sugar cane ethanol.

True, but remember that Brazil can grow mass quantities of surplus sugar cane. We can't really do that here barring parts of FL. We tend to use the entire supply for baking, cooking, and confections, though. Closest we have is corn, and that still ends up costing more to make fuel than we'd save, even with gas prices this high. It'd almost be more economically viable to increase the gas subsidies than to make ethanol. Kind of like Sugar Beets or HFC sugar, good theories that don't work in practice.

Same deal with synthetic oil. Ignoring the 1980s example, in the 40's Nazi Germany figured out how to make synthetic fuel out of coal when the Allies cut their supply lines to the middle east. The problem was much the same as it is now, it's just not cheap to produce energy that way.

Oil companies themselves are probably not to blame. Yes, they're making record profits, but they aren't using any different economic formulas than they were when they weren't making these profits. For instance, Texaco is profitable in my region ATM. I know it's profitable because I talk to the regional manager on a regular basis. However, it's not profitable because it's selling gas. Right now, the most profitable part of Texaco is the inside portion selling gum, beer and hot dogs. You'll notice that these have gotten larger since the 1980's to the point where today they're bigger than most 7-11 convenience stores were in that decade. There's good reason for this. Every gas station in the country has a person who's working very hard to figure out ways to get you to come inside and buy stuff. The card readers at the pump were just a way to attract you to their station and away from the competition. They're ubiquitous now, but they're not a welcome and planned event, more of a necessary evil in the minds of these companies. They're also still skimming X% off the cost per barrel in profit that they always were, it's just that the cost per barrel has gone up such that X% is worth a lot more than it was.


Now, there are two problems that exist with electric. The first is production, which we all kind of grasp. You need somehow to produce large quantities of electricity, and do so in a way that you don't further exacerbate problems like global warming or acid rain. Assuming you find areas where you can put up vast solar farms or windmill operations, you naturally end up at problem #2, which is distribution. Once I can make all this power, how do I get it to people in a form they can use.

Distribution is the major stumbling block for a few reasons. Obviously, the first one is that our vehicles don't use it, or need to be converted over. The major stumbling block with this is batteries. We really do not have at present a cheap, reliable, quick-charge battery system. General Electric and other companies in the US, as well as most Japanese producers are racing each other to produce one of these. The high cost of fuel is increasing the amount of investments in these and making them more and more viable. If there's one area where a prolonged fuel crisis may actually help, this is it. Let's assume that this can be solved without any of us thinking about it, though and move on. You have this battery in existence now, and this demands that you have distribution points in existence. The easiest of these would be gas stations. The problem is that you don't have any reason for gas stations to distribute electricity, since most cars can't use it, and it's relatively cheap. To overcome this obstacle, you're going to need two subsidy programs, first to encourage owners to convert their engines over to hybrid or full electrics, and a second to put electric "socket" points in gas stations. Obviously, you can't do either until the whole battery issue is resolved, since you need to know what kind of battery you need to be able to service and install.

That leaves the major distribution issue unresolved, however. At present, the US does not have a good way to get lots of electricity to these gas station distribution points. Bottom line, no matter how good the battery or engine is, there's no way to get power to it in a way it can use right now.

You're probably reading this like I'm crazy, and I don't blame you. You've got a computer plugged into a wall, and it's always worked before and is working now. HAHA, you say, distribution point! No. Assume everyone in your area plugged one to three cars into their wall at the same time. Every night. Year round. If you live in a cold area, add in 6 months of engine block heaters. This is the problem, our electric grid was not designed for this sort of drain on the system. You remember the rolling blackouts and Enron crisis in the late 90's? Yeah, that exposed the problem. The US energy infrastructure is essentially the same as it was in the last century. In some places, it hasn't even changed since the 19th century. It can't handle the load. It's bulky, inefficient, and outdated. If energy wasn't relatively cheap, electric companies couldn't afford to lose nearly as much of it as they do transmitting it between any two points in the grid. When we deregulated the system, we removed any sort of incentives to keep the grid in top shape. Electricity is cheap, therefore there's not much incentive to spend major bucks keeping the system above and beyond the bare minimum you need. Mid-summer when everyone's air conditioning is on and you get a brown out, you'll see what I mean.

Upgrading the US infrastructure is the very first step to removing our dependence on oil. Technologies for doing this are already in use. For instance, there's a massive cable providing electricity to NYC that uses chains of superconductors housed in a massive coil of flowing liquid nitrogen. The power loss over the length of this cable is virtually non-existent when compared to the power loss transmitting electricity in those overhead powerlines for several city blocks. To get the power grid in condition that you can move power over vast distances, systems like this need to be everywhere. You have to get rid of the cheap, inefficient, near useless crap that we use now because it "gets the job done".

Politically, no matter how high gas gets, that is unfeasible right now. The reason is that we have a certain type of politician in office, liberals and conservatives. Conservatives at their very core are against government spending lots of money on projects. Liberals at their very core are protective of social programs. A conservative lawmaker does not like anything that might put a ceiling on how high an individual can rise in society. A liberal lawmaker fears anything that might remove the net if that individual should "fall" instead. When budgets get made in this country, conservatives work to keep the bottom line as lean as possible, and liberals fight like hell to keep social programs in place. This puts infrastructure and other issues on the back burner. You're really not going to see massive infrastructure overhauls until the majority of the US Congress is moderate. What keeps you out of crises like this is boring, everyday, mundane politics. The politics of potholes and stop signs. You won't see that because we don't elect those politicians anymore. We're concerned with abortion, war, constitutional amendments and supreme court appointments. As long as that's our focus, gas is going to be high. The last time we had a really significant moderate element in Congress was before the "1994 Contract with America revolution" on the right. Unfortunately, that element proved easy to overthrow.

[Jarre]

Re: The cost of fuel

Electrical energy is by far the best source of energy for cars, because it is already in the form of energy, and doesn't need to be converted. Plus, energy as a whole is easier to come by then one source, like oil.

And ethanol, while acceptable, is not the best source of energy. Better then gasoline, maybe, but if we did convert out cars to electric, we could all be running them off of solar. Fun Fact: For less then half the cost of the Iraq War, we could convert the entire U.S. electricity needs from fossil fuel based plants to solar.

My problem with ethanol in brazil is that they are cutitng mass areas of rainforest down to plant the crop to produce it, thus causing problems with the environment as their destroying 1000's of hectares just for this.

whilst they do have hybrid cars now (electric+petrol) the range of the electric is still only 120 miles, compared to a fuel car of 300 miles.

The elctric car when you plug it in takes 10 hours to charge from empty and it works out at 10KW power draw. Therefore at the rate were paying of £0.17 a KWH thats 10 x 10 = 100 x 0.17 = £17 which works out the cost to run at being £0.14 a mile compared to a car which costs £36/300 miles = £0.12. The problem is electricity prices are increasing here in my country extortionately every year at a higher percentage of fuel.

An average 3 bedroomed house is now costs £1200 a year ($2372) to be supplied with enough electricity and that is with people being carefull how they use it (i.e. turning appliances off when not using, using energy saving fittings etc etc.)

The problem with my country's transport system is our infrastructure still dates back to the begining of the 1900's. The railways are in need of a major overhaul, yet the government privatised it and wont allocate the money needed, private companies are charging extortionate fares meaning people are put off using it, of course the fares are taxed and as our government is cash strapped they are not going to do a thing about it. The roads can't cope with the traffic, the M25 (freeway that rings London) is known as the worlds biggest car park and what road works they are managing to do, they only do on major works and shelve the smaller ones. My city Lincoln has been needing an eastern bypass for the last 30 years and it has been delayed again for the 8th time due to "Lack of funding"

The other thing is you get all these excuses about they can;t afford this and that from teh government, but when you delve deep inside why, you find a mass of corruption and waste. My local council decided that a more corportate image would make them work better (yeah right!) so they paid £40k on consultation and design fees to change their logo and £220k to change all teh signs an vehicle logos. so thats £260k wasted for somethign that was not a necity of which they have cut the fire service and police budgets as well as school funding. In westminster the offices are decorated with £1300 rolls of wallpaper, MP's expenses are in teh thousands on top of their already exortionately high wages, corruption is common and tax payers money is always wasted. Yet the government denys everything.

The members of the public can't change to something they don't have, if we are to reduce our dependancy on oil the governements of teh world need to put money where they mouth is and fund projects to help acheive this. at the moment only china seems to be doing this with all new cars being electric or hybrid. Its a shame our western governments wont follow suit.

[Kittyneko]

Re: The cost of fuel

My Puch drives me around all week for about 5 Euro's.

That's about 7.5 US Dollars.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: The cost of fuel

Let's not forget that one of the largest contributors to Dead Zones, is run off from agricultural runoff, especially corn crops which are heavily fertilized. Last year's Dead Zone was the 3rd largest in recorded history. They expect subsequent ones to also be record breaking. The push for ethanol is the reason. Why do we want to kill off a large portions of our oceans in order to fuel our cars? This type of fuel is also not acceptable in my book.

[Raydeus]

Re: The cost of fuel

Corn is a poor choice for producing ethanol, they would be better off investing in solar and wind energy instead.

[Feba]

Re: The cost of fuel

Kitalrez, those problems aren't nearly as big a deal once more people start producing their own electricity. Solar panels and wind turbines are becoming more efficient and cheaper all the time. The only real thing I'd say the government should need do to support them that it hasn't already is to ban any sort of municipal, HOA, or other restrictions against having solar collectors and wind turbines on a person's property (outside matters of safety, like making sure a turbine wouldn't be able to fall on someone's house.)

Solar/wind collectors, batteries, and load balancing system in every home would be a huge help to the electrical grid, at a relatively low cost per person. Our electrical infrastructure of course needs upgrading too, but this is a good temporary measure, with plenty of other benefits both to individuals and communities.

conservatives work to keep the bottom line as lean as possible

I don't want to start a political debate, but oh man how I wish that were the case. I mean, there are the few of them, but sadly not the majority. I think most people agree that lower government spending = good thing, as long as what is spent is spent intelligently (for example, hiring better teachers, instead of spending millions of dollars on new computer labs and such).



Jarre, it's very unfair to compare a plug-in hybrid with a true electric vehicle. Adding in a gas tank, fuel, and an internal combustion engine adds a lot of complexity, weight, and cost to a vehicle. Last I checked, pure electric vehicles tend to get anywhere from 150 to 200+ MPG in terms of cost/distance compared to gas. There's also the fact that many governments will help with the cost of electric vehicles (along with other alternative fuels) either by giving some sort of rebate or tax break.


And yep, kittyneko, smaller vehicles like mopeds, scooters, and some motorcycles are also good ideas.

[eticket109]

Re: The cost of fuel

I agree that electric cars are a viable solution currently. Sadly though, that's merely just us pushing a reset button. Just as alternative fuels are slow to gain ground, so are alternative energy sources. We've at least seemed to make more progress, but it still comes down to us exploiting a non-renewable natural resource.

Solar/wind collectors, batteries, and load balancing system in every home would be a huge help to the electrical grid, at a relatively low cost per person. Our electrical infrastructure of course needs upgrading too, but this is a good temporary measure, with plenty of other benefits both to individuals and communities.

I agree, but sadly it's hardly cost effective enough yet to implement. Hopefully, though we'll be smarter this time around and actually push harder to continue to lower costs and increase efficiencies. On the upside, the power industry is light years ahead of the oil industry when it comes to shit like this.

[Feba]

Re: The cost of fuel

Well, the systems don't exactly have to be huge ones. I've even heard of people hooking up a few spare golf batteries to a used solar collector; gave them enough power to run their shack's lighting, TV, and I think fridge for a couple hundred dollars. Obviously you can't power an entire house like that, but every bit helps.

And I just want to state again, although you probably know, eticket, that as time goes on battery and charging technology HAS to get better. Even if it wasn't used for transportation, wireless electronic gadgets are becoming the norm. We all probably have at least three-- a game player (DS, PSP), a Cell Phone, and a DMP (mp3 player). There's also laptops, PDAs, UMPCs, and so on which are becoming more and more popular, prevalent, and powerful. All that extra computing power requires extra battery power to run; not to mention brighter screen backlighting, more powerful radios (WiFi, Bluetooth), and people generally wanting more functionality (means it's on more often) and longer battery life. That all means smaller, lighter, more powerful, and quicker charging batteries; and more energy efficient technologies to use them. We're getting to the point where electric cars are beating gas cars in races because of the improvements in batteries. The only major problem left is quick charging.


EDIT: although, come to think of it, that problem could be fixed pretty easily by implementing a system similar to propane fuel tanks. When you run it dry, you take it in, give them the empty, and they give you a full one for the cost of the fuel. They fill up the empty one, and the cycle repeats. This could potentially be even quicker than filling up a gas fuel tank, depending on the system they implement for removing the battery packs (for example, having them under a panel in the trunk would probably be quicker than having to have someone crawl under the car and remove them). This would also be kinda nice, as you'd be able to know exactly how much you're going to pay when you 'fill up'. Of course, on the downside, you'd lose money if your battery wasn't completely empty. The easiest way around that would be to have two battery systems; the 'main' battery which is not removed, and the 'secondary' which would be easily removed and replaced at gas stations and other stores (not having to deal with gas storage would make for more competition). Of course, then you have the problem of needing to fill up more often; but it's still a better temporary measure than anything else.

[DakAttack]

Re: The cost of fuel

Once I can make all this power, how do I get it to people in a form they can use.

Isn't it obvious? Tesla coils! And not the man-zapping towers from Command and Conquer. With back-up batteries for dead zones, people can drive around the country with electricity from the air!

[Feba]

Re: The cost of fuel

A working tesla tower would be pretty awesome.


I mean, it would probably make the area uninhabitable, but pretty awesome nonetheless.

[eticket109]

Re: The cost of fuel

A working tesla tower would be pretty awesome.


I mean, it would probably make the area uninhabitable, but pretty awesome nonetheless.

It would do a great job of finally keeping those damn kids off my lawn.

Plus, the ones that didn't move quickly enough could make for some decent fertilizer.

[Neomage]

Re: The cost of fuel

Politically, no matter how high gas gets, that is unfeasible right now. The reason is that we have a certain type of politician in office, liberals and conservatives. Conservatives at their very core are against government spending lots of money on projects. Liberals at their very core are protective of social programs. A conservative lawmaker does not like anything that might put a ceiling on how high an individual can rise in society. A liberal lawmaker fears anything that might remove the net if that individual should "fall" instead. When budgets get made in this country, conservatives work to keep the bottom line as lean as possible, and liberals fight like hell to keep social programs in place. This puts infrastructure and other issues on the back burner. You're really not going to see massive infrastructure overhauls until the majority of the US Congress is moderate. What keeps you out of crises like this is boring, everyday, mundane politics. The politics of potholes and stop signs. You won't see that because we don't elect those politicians anymore. We're concerned with abortion, war, constitutional amendments and supreme court appointments. As long as that's our focus, gas is going to be high. The last time we had a really significant moderate element in Congress was before the "1994 Contract with America revolution" on the right. Unfortunately, that element proved easy to overthrow.

To true. In fact, this leads me to one of my favorite quotes:

"If pro is the opposite of con, is progress the opposite of congress?"