Right. People who advertise themselves as informed and educated insisted we'd be out of oil by 1970.
A certain politician in his 1992 book insisted that by 2015 there would be worldwide mass famines from global warming.
I'm with Yogi Berra, "It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future."
. You forgot to add the weight of an engine, transmission, fuel tank, exhau st system, cooling system, and other stuff needed for a gasoline engine whe n calculating the energy density of the system. In the electric car, most o f the weight/space is going to be for batteries. I suspect that what this m eans is that an electric car in the future will have a much farther range t han any gas/diesel vehicle that we have today.
future is going to be stopping fossil fuel use. If it ain't, it will be so oner or later. Fossil use will probably be only for folks without access to electricity.
It doesn't take a Miss Cleo to see what's been happening in automotive tech nology in the last 10 years and the direction we're moving in. It matters v ery little whether or not Americans believe in global warming. We have the luxury of not believing. The rest of the world does not. If you put 2 and 2 together, you'll always come up with 4.
There's a lot of research going on in battery and materials technology. I don't see it as being linear growth at all. I'm willing to wait and see though.
You only have ten years, per your wager. Not to worry: fusion power has been 30 years away for the last 50 years.
It's on then! :)
that's what every single person working on electric vehicles are assuming.
The future on energy production will not involve the burning of fossil fuels.
My guess it's going to be nuclear.
Well the race is on now to make nuclear plants extinct. The sucker bet of future cheap natural gas and wacko environmentalist have all but killed the future of coal and Nuclear generated energy. There shutting down a perfectly good clean energy nuke plant at fort Calhoun Nebraska because its no longer economical feasible? This is happening all over the country. Nuke plants shutting down or new projects put on indefinite hold. When all the coal mines are shut down and all the nuke plants gone, the cartel that controls natural gas will have a field day fleecing the public.
Long term effect of a all electric car ecosystem has not even been thought about. Where are you going to dispose of all of those toxic lithium ion batterys? How long they going to last?
bob
A good internal combustion cars engine can easily last 20 years of moderate use these days. Do you really think the battery's can last that long? 3 to 5 years and the packs need replacement. and the replacement cost is more than the car is worth. Just remember how long your computers laptop and cell phone batterys last. Even a good lead acid car battery is not good for much longer than that.
And worse yet, if we had a massive switch to all electric cars where is all the electricity going to come from to charge them? Does you house have 50 amp outlets in the garage or driveway for the fast charger? Will you houses electrical panel handle the additional load? does your local utility have enough wiring capacity in place to do it? You can put up a feel good windmill on every corner and still not come close to having enough juice.
If a electric car eco system is the future, it has more of a chance with a hybrid technology such as fuel cells.
flux capacitor would do it ;)
b
Actually, the nice thing about lithium is that it's a light metal with very low toxicity. Way less toxic in a dump than lead or cadmium. Now, it's pretty reactive, and it's pretty expensive, both of which would make recycling worth the trouble.
Right, so the key here is to make cells last longer and make cell replacement easier and cheaper. We've already got shops that specialize in replacing individual cells in Prius packs.
In the internal combustion world, people tend to get rid of cars with perfectly good engines.... the rest of the car falls apart before the engine does. It's not like it was in the sixties. So getting the battery pack to last as long as an IC engine isn't critical, we just need to get it to last as long as the rest of the car.
And that is why the previous poster suggested nuclear power, saying that the huge demand at appears all of a sudden will force construction of new electricity sources and distribution. I'm not sure that's true, but it could be interesting.
The problem with windmills and solar are the same as the problem with electric cars.... they produce a lot of power sometimes, and not any power at other times, so you need cheap high density batteries to store that power until you need it. Solve the battery problem and a lot of your distributed power source problems go away too.
IF someone can build a fuel cell that can operate on liquid fuel without getting poisoned in a relatively short time period, I'll buy that. But the distribution infrastructure for gasses just isn't there, and distributing hydrogen is a real pain since hydrogen likes to leak through metals, etc.
--scott
The only question that matters is whether or not we will continue to use fossil fuels. If the answer is "no" you can expect electric cars and nuke plants in the future. It's a very simple equation.
If the answer is "no" you can expect electric cars and nuke plants in the future. It's a very simple equation.
I remember in the 60's popular science saying we would be driving flying cars that are nuclear powered or such. It seems the internal combustion engine has long legs and continuous improvement. Can you imagine a car wreck with nuclear debris scattered all over the road?
If there was truly a move to getting rid of fossil fuels in the US, we would NOT be shutting down nuclear plants down that have life left in them and putting on hold the building of new ones. Thats a FACT! And the "clean" natural gas is technically a fossil fuel.
bob
e fossil fuels.
The rest of the world is embracing nuclear power plants. They pretty much h ave to. The US will be retarded in this area because we have so much cheap natural gas but sooner or later we'll have to come around to face reality. The rest of the world will demand it.
Electric cars mate well with wind and solar, assuming the electric car batteries are standardized for swapping. Since there would have to be at least 2 batteries per car, they would provide a good "energy sink" for solar and wind generators.
Some people who have farms also have piles of manure. Methane gas for their cars and trucks and farm equipment.
In my locale, one trucking company converted their fleet to CNG. The metro buses also run on CNG. And a coal mine is shutting down because the power station buys less coal due to the high take-up of solar electricity generation.
The Chicken poop powered car. In 1971 a guy in England rigged up his old car to run on Chicken poop.
I'm sure that's the car the Crispy Harlan Sanders would drive!
bob
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