Focus Hybrid: Petrol/Electric version

The hydrogen powered car will never be here. It's 20 years off and always will be.

I haven't heard anything about a Focus hydrid. Here's hoping that they do come up with one in the near future.

I don't know why everyones so up on hydrogen power, it's a net energy loser. it takes more to make hydrogen then you will ever get back out of it.

*i'm not related to the site at all*

I'm not sure why people believe electric cars are non-poluting.

Well they are in the sense that they concentrate the pollution away from the car. (Unless you happen to be driving past a power station ;P)

LJ

I think you need to think a little more outside the normal consumer/economic envelope to get my question. As you can see its based on nuclear. Nuclear power has major amounts of bad press and public opinion is now against it. So the big hurdle is resetting public perception. Greenpeace are struggling with this already as they know its true, but their story for the past 20 years has been on the contrary. They will be in a lot of trouble with the world community...I'd say in the next 5 years or so. So

Nuclear power is safer than Fossil for the environment - net effect Nuclear power on a large scale creates the hydrogen from water Nuclear power means no or little CO2 Nuclear power is the only power source able to limit the global warming spike

The amount of usable nuclear material on our planet is limited, it might reach longer then gas/oil, but we'll have used it all one day. If you think of the perhaps about 2*10^9 people in India + China, it won't take that long, once they start using as much energy as people in western countries since decades.

Leaving us with the problem, how to ensure that we can safely store the hazardous garbage, for a few ten thousand years, we can't.

Questionable, our sun delivers much more energy to our planet on any day then we need, with a reliability beyond our imagination and looking at our lifetime we can safely assume it's endless available. With a solar constant of 1.35 kw/h per m^2, minus a little loss through our atmosphere.

Just a matter of using it where it's most effective (deserts) making hydrogen out of it and transport it (pipeline/ships) where people need it.

The only real problem global energy company face, this damn nuclear fusion reactor doesn't send any bills.;)

IMHO before we can get to this point we need firstly fix our completely broken financial system, based on interest/ compound interest. This can't work out, since we are trying to work against an exponential function and need permanent exponential grow to keep up. But there's no such thing as exponential grow in nature, only for short time, ending with death, sure you know which cancer is meant.

This is the problem with nuclear.

It isn't safe in the long run and who are we to create such a dangerous problem for civilization in the future? We are talking THOUSANDS of years. (I suppose the same argument can be made about global warming and such if you want to believe man is causing significant harm, but I think the scale of the problem is much larger with nuclear.)

Find a way to neutralize the waste, and I will support nuclear 100%.

Matt Focus owner

Why? It's been succesfully done for thousands of millions of years.

The naturally occuring Oklo breeder reactors ran for about one million years. The reactors created Plutonium and U-235. This sat in in porous rock with water flowing through it. After two billion years, we are able to see that most of it has been retained on site.

Main page for above is at:

"Remarkably, despite abundant groundwater, the plutonium and fission fragments drifted through the rock less than 10 meters over the next

1.7 billion years."

Yeah from nature, mankind doesn't seem to be this clever with the technique until now. Sure this is something we need to investigate further, energy savings is another great area. But sadly we'll go nowhere until we fix our broken monetary system.

[..]

I disagree but appreciate your comments. I believe most of them are the public perception I speak of, no offence intended:

Limited fissile material - true but I believe we have a few hundred years from currently known stock. By the way do you know where nearly all the energy that fuels plate techtonics and the heat in the earth comes from, yep its radioactive decay in the crust and mantle. So there is plenty of it somewhere

Storage - We can store it more safely than the public perception has been led to believe and we would get better if we did more of it. But the key here is the relative comparison of global warming effects with nuclear accidents/storage leaks. The latter will be limited and to a large extent under our control. Sea level will not. Nuclear waste issues will be "Tiny" compared to what global warming is expected to bring in terms of loss of environment, ecosystem and life of nearly all types

Solar energy - Granted I would prefer to use this too, but its too little, too late. tell me how we harness that 2Kg/s of suns pure energy falling on the earth. Technology does not exist yet, cheaply enough. Not the case with Nuclear. Ditto for wind. We could develop it but how long would that take.

I'd take a look here for some pretty compelling reading, its much easier than explaining

Rgds

consumer/economic

It may be a good idea to quantify the scale of danger between:

• nuclear waste

• polar ice cap melts(7-15m rise in MSL)

The latter will put 75% of the worlds major cities under water. Remember what that tiny Tsunami did not long ago! I guess we could move billions of people to higher ground if we have the time, resources and economy for it. Not sure the economy is even an issue under these circumstances though

This thread sounds like scare mongering...but there are some very credible scientists talking seriously about it, there are other opinions of course, I believe the nuclear soltution after having looked at the data. Fision technology may also give us enough time to develop efficient Fusion power too

rgds

Sorry, I'm not buying into the notion that man is significantly speeding up what is a natural occurance. The planet has been in a state of change since the beginning of time. When it comes to "global warming", we can't stop it. We just have to adjust for it.

But why add nuclear waste storage issues to the problems future generations?

Matt Focus owner

In alt.autos.ford.focus Matt Mead :

The problem, from measuring weather we just have usable data for

150 years or so, this isn't a reliable base.

Take a look at geologic available climate date, which is available for million of years, earth is in a permanent change.

There was a theory, that even if we would burn all oil/gas left on earth at once, we couldn't influence the system.

We are just lucky to live in a short suitable period between some ice-age.;-)

Curious why people don't buy into we could easily, without losing comfort, get most of our energy out of the sun, without there would be zero live on this planet and zero oil, which is nothing more then captured solar energy.

BTW If only I could get my hands on a circuit diagram, to try out reseting wiper-washer to acceptable mode.

In Sweden they sell a Focus Flexifuel for methanol and/or petrol in any mixed proportions:

has been on the market for some years now, and because of some tax reductions it has become quite popular.The engine drives exactly like the petrol cars. It was only available with the 1.6 litre engine, but the new model will have the 1.8 which is more powerful. Volvo is also planning to introduce the same Flexifuel engines in the S40/V50 series for Sweden./per

"Robin Smith" wrote in news:1108667444.466466@sj-nntpcache-3...

Sorry, Mike, but naive and poorly informed.

Solar remains far more expensive. More expensive means less resource which ultimately means lots of people die, far more, repeat, far more than any conceivable environmentalist scare-mongering scenario based on pollution or what-have-you.

I too love Star Trek and "The Day After" but don't get them confused with hard facts.

In alt.autos.ford.focus Atlas Bugged :

Sure, just that your "arguments" are so thin, you resort to cheap insulting.

[..]

Well, I *did* say I was sorry, and there *were* arguments, not thin, but overwhelming. I again apologize for your hurt feelings, but the bottom line on fossil fuels is that they cause undeniable net *gains* in human happiness and prosperity, and even lives.

Why did you think the world hasn't gone solar or wind? Because they're all stupid? Global corporate conspiracy?

It's infinitely more mundane. The cost of energy (including any cleanup necessitated by by-products such as pollution) pretty much sets the agenda for what type of stuff gets used.

The real issues surrounding pollution are actually "theft" issues, in the sense that the energy producer sells the product artificially cheap by getting others to unjustly do the cleanup, which should be part of the energy cost in the first place.

Of course, getting back on topic, we Focus owners have pretty efficient economical and clean-burning vehicles. And pretty fun to drive, too. A wonderful auto.

My sole concern/regret: I'm nearing 36K/3 years and I don't feel the confidence in future reliability that I used to have with former Hondas and Toyotas.

In alt.autos.ford.focus Atlas Bugged : [..]

Energy density of petrol is very high, it's pretty easy to store and has been cheap enough until now and perhaps a few more years.

In addition as mankind started with cars there had been lots of electric cars, but they weren't sold that much, men thought they couldn't impress women with them at all.;)

The real problem, oil/gas won't last forever, it's captured solar energy from million of years, we burn in only 100 years. Think about the 2*10^9 people in India + China, once they start wasting as much oil per habitant as we do today, it won't take very long and we'll have burned almost any oil.

So we have to research alternatives or walk one day....;)

[..]

efficient

Indeed

I don't have a crystal ball for you, but I'll tell you my experience. My 2001 is nearing 4 years with almost 91,000 miles on it. I have a number of issues in the first 36K that were taken careof under warrenty. After that, it's been pretty smooth sailing.