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subego · Sep 24, 2006, 05:37 AM

I've been holding off on this since the idea came to me from talking to Abe, and I wanted to wait till he was back (which he seems to be under a different name).

I want this thread to be practical. If an idea presented here by me or anyone else has specific political barriers to its execution, then that's fine to bring up. Otherwise, make your own thread.

The main issue is the length of time required to effectively minimize our dependence. Abe threw out 20 years. I think we can cut that in half, maybe more. Ingenuity and capitalism are my favored methods of achieving these goals, but we can throw in a few government subsidies here and there.

So, herewith are my ideas. This doesn't even resemble a complete plan, just some puzzle pieces I know we will need.

What? This thread is only one post long and you expected the entire solution already?

1) Diesel: This can use current distribution channels (immensely important), and can be replaced with vegetable oil. Ahem... Is this thing on?

Can be replaced with vegetable oil.

Pumping vegetable oil through gas pipes would be no small engineering problem, but a whole big chunk of the United States is in close proximity to the source of production.

2) Hybrids: people need to be educated about this because the idea is just so damn excellent that more people would want it strictly because of it's awesomeness. Here's the rundown:

Hybrids have a regular motor and an electric motor, with a computer to decide the best balance between them. At its most basic, this allows the regular motor to run at a consistent RPM, which is better for fuel efficiency. Dull, dull, dull.

This is the cool part. Electric motors are two-way. Hook a battery up to them and they spin. Spin them and they'll charge up the battery. How does a hybrid spin the motor to charge up the battery? By using your own wheels when you hit the brakes! Effing brilliant. This is energy that most cars just throw away. It's like free money.

3) Batteries: for our hybrids, and to make sure the glow plugs in our diesels work. Batteries suck. This is one of the places we need some government intervention. It's a product (like light bulbs) where if you improve it too much you kill your profit margin.

4) Smart Cars: why the **** don't we have Smart cars?

5) Compressed air: okay, this is a bit fanciful, but cool nonetheless. There are prototypes that can get 200 miles on a charge and, if you have a honkin' enough compressor (like you could find at a filling station), can be quick charged in 3 minutes. The main problem has been solved by making the air tanks out of laminates, so they split instead of explode when they fail. Since the engine never gets hot, they can make it out of aluminum. IIRC the whole engine weighs about 100 pounds, and the top speed is like 80 mph.

red rocket · Sep 24, 2006, 05:54 AM

Re: 4) Smart Cars: why the **** don't we have Smart cars?

Because they're too small and therefore un-American.

Daimler to launch Smart car in U.S. in 2008

I smell a flop.

subego · Sep 24, 2006, 06:04 AM

Originally Posted by red rocket

Because they're too small and therefore un-American.

I'd say this is slowly changing.

They really need to push the fact that they're short enough to perpendicular park in a parallel parking space.

Nicko · Sep 24, 2006, 06:19 AM

Fuel isn't expensive enough for big change yet.

subego · Sep 24, 2006, 06:29 AM

Originally Posted by Nicko

Fuel isn't expensive enough for big change yet.

Hence the thread.

subego · Sep 25, 2006, 08:49 PM

I don't want to be all Mr. Wine Roses McTreehugger here either. There are some big hurdles.

One, which I heard Barney Frank expound upon is the 50 or so years of government encouragement to transfer from urban to suburban. Living far away from work has been (and still is) the de facto ideal for many.

subego · Sep 25, 2006, 09:15 PM

Moonbeam: 100mpg Homemade Car

Using two mopeds, $2000 and a little ingenuity, good Samaritan Jory Squibb built a cozy 2 or "1.5" passenger car that can get 100mpg highway and 85mpg city

The moral of the story comes from Squibb himself:

"Isn't it sad that such a simple vehicle, which could be mass produced for $5000 or so, which awaits no fancy fuel cells nor high-tech breakthroughs, isn't available to the public?"

Spliffdaddy · Sep 25, 2006, 11:14 PM

Compressed air takes energy to create. There is energy lost in the compression process. Then you have to store it in the vehicle. For its energy output, it's heavy. So it will have limited range. Heavy means the vehicle will have to built more substantially in order to pass crash-test regulations. Still, the air compressors would likely be electric powered - so it would lessen our dependence on oil.

Diesel engines aren't much better than gasoline engines. If we all switched to diesel vehicles tomorrow, the price of vegetable oil would skyrocket. I live in farm country, so I have a good idea of how crops are grown. It's expensive to operate a farm. The dirt is just a place to hold plants upright. Fertilizers are required - and this is where the problem lies. You can plant a seed in the ground and get a 'free' plant. But that doesn't work forever. Your free plant is taking nutrients from the soil. Nutrients+sunlight+water=plant. Fertilizers are typically not organic. They have to come from some rather limited source. If you think the answer is to use vegetable oil in diesel vehicles - you better check the price of a gallon of vegetable oil. The used oil won't be free if there's any kind of a demand for it. And the price of it will go way up if there's a demand for it. Heck, the government will levy a hefty tax on it, as well. The cost of vegetables will increase...due to the limited amount of farmland. The cost of milk and meats will rise, because cows and chickens eat vegetables, primarily.
I think ethanol blended gasoline is a better solution than vegetable oil in diesels. And even ethanol has issues. It absorbs water (humidity). Which presents driveability problems and storage problems.

Smart cars, like most non-North American-spec vehicles will not pass emission regulations nor crash-testing. We have the most stringent pollution laws in the world. And then there's California - which is doubly strict. All those wonderful European cars that get great fuel economy wouldn't be so wonderful or fuel efficient after they were re-designed to be legal here.

Hybrid vehicles are probably one of the best solutions. And they pose some problems, too. Mostly related to the batteries. Their weight is a factor - and the amount of limited-resources required to produce them. Then, there's the disposal problem.

I think the future lies in thin-film solar cells. We finally have a cost-effective means to produce electricity from the sun. These could be used as a paint finish on cars or buildings one day soon. Still, we'll need to store that electrcity....

black bear theory · Sep 26, 2006, 12:33 AM

i'm all for bio-diesel and have advocated it for a while. i think it would behoove the US to revitalize trains as an efficient means of transportation of goods. existing trucking rigs can use the stuff with little/no modification. it's economically our best bet.

electric/hydrogen fail because it does little to reduce our dependence. it adds one more step to the process, yet makes us feel good because we don't deal directly with gas. out of sight, out of mind. it adds one more layer of complexity and we need simple.

biofuel's source is, for all intents and purposes, infinite. and for all it's supposed inefficiency in creating a viable product, it is truly renewable. how much energy (and most importantly time) does it take to make, not just extract, a barrel of sweet crude? thousands of years of plants living under the sun, ideally buried, and if conditions are right, millions more years being buried and cooked at the proper depth under the earth.

properly done, the US could create a system where farmer's produce food one year, plants for a fuel another (crop rotation) to prevent soil depletion as much as possible. many people who make bio-fuels are getting the base for their fuel free-of-charge from used french fry oil. this system would not scale very well economically. i can't imagine the US eating more fries than they do already.

but what prices are we paying for our current dependance on foriegn oil? more domestic oil is not the answer. it would take, optimistically, 10-20 ANWR's and jack 2's producing yesterday to sustain the US economy for the next decade or two and fulfill the ideal of "oil independance". something needs to be done and quick.

subego · 04:13 AM