how close are we to the next form of fuel

Basically one is left with one of two, let the market decide:

Battery Powered: requires a clean powergrid to be really effective. Won't do much good if the juice comes from coal plants.

Fuelcell: Got a real problem with distribution. And again, making the stuff is not entirely energy cheap.

Either way, it boils down to an effective manner to produce enviromentally clean energy. If that is hooking up cars to the mains or making hydrogen, is not really the question. The question is making clean electricity to provide for whatever energy is needed to keep transport going. And in the long run, we all know hydrocarbons is not it. Neither long run or clean.

 

Right now, I think we are as far away as the gas companies want us to be

Ive met a few engineers that worked for car companies developing new tech some of which sounds promising...only to have Exxon offer a shit ton of $ for the rights to it. Then they dig a big hole and throw it in there.

when ppl really start bitching it will happen, its like when somebody decides they need to lose weight but isnt committed to the work to make it happen. They realize its a health risk being obese but its just so damn hard to get up and excercize...
Thats where we are, we know gas isnt great, but theres no immediate need to change, so we will start makin smaller cars and hyrbrids. And once the doc says we are going to die if we dont start dieting, we will start a new automotive revolution

 

I think we got another... but nobody want to persue it. Use a traditional internal combustion engine but bur hydrogen gas in a near pure o2 environment. Think about it. Partcularly us Americans are addicted to hp and the sound of the engine with power. a fuel cell or electric car makes my skin crawl cause I like the brute power and sound that a gas engine makes as are most. But h2 would do that pretty well too. Natural gas vehicles have been around for a long long time so and gasoline is vaporized anyway in the cylinder so we are always burning GASes. If you put a highly compressed bottle of h2 in a car...its gonna pack a BIG punch. Especially if you match it pur o2. They burn, and you get distilled water as exhaust. Now; if you put stator on each wheel to produce electrical power (like hybrids do) you could use the electrical power produced by the stators to electrolosize water and split it into its constituent... h2 and o2. That get compressed back into the tank for more use. You get all the plusses but none of the negatives. You would still have to stop and fill up cause I personally can't see how you would ever make a loss-less loop of energy/fuel, but it would be clean and prolly a lot cheaper to produce because you only need small quantities of both o2 and h2 to do it.

 

Solar

and not the terrestrial pussy bullshit.

 

Sounds like a really interesting idea. Don't think we'd have the technology to do it really efficently though.

 

Oh ya we do. And actually it doesn't even have to be very efficient. The water vapor from the exausht can be saved they same way we distill alcohol... by running the vapor through a condenser. H2 is the most abundant element in the univers too, so its not like there's not enough of it. lol. And we CAN produce it in mass quantities... remeber the hindenburgh disaster? The reason it happened is cause they h2 (which combusts) rather than helium (which doesn't) because hydrogen gave them more lift. If they could make that much pur hydrogen in the 20's they can make enough to drive my civic a couple hundred miles... lol. The biggest problem I see is finding ulta high-temp alloys for the engine parts. H2 is such a reactive nd pure substance its going to produce a lot of heat with the enrgy it produces. The wast from gasoline and the unused gasoling molecules carry the heat with it... the water vapro would take much heat away with it...

 

Hydrogen and electric are the next big things. Mazda has a hydrogen rx8 roaming the streets of japan, Honda has a hydrogen car on the streets too. check out the rx8 here. I guess on these you can flip a switch to go from gas to hydrogen.

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/02/15/mazda-begins-leasing-the-rotary-hydrogen-rx-8-in-japan/

 

that's pretty bad ass. But the technology defintly needs refining. Did you see that the hydrogen tank is 110 Liters but can only give 100 km or 66 miles or cruising range? ouch!

 

but if it is funded properly those kinks could be ironed out easily, but too many of the people in control lose money if they switch to alternate fuels. basically its what mhughes said

 

If you put liquid oxygen and ditto hydrogen in cars, those hollywood explosions of cars fender-bending will become an everyday occurence.

H and O do make a bang when mixed, but it is very, very volatile. The slightest leak, and you'll go out with a boom. Every car would be a bomb.

Back in physics class, we actually called it boom-gas. Great fun. Not something I'd want my car running on...

The new Tesla Roadster is looking hot though. Faster than a Porsche, and would you believe it, around here cheaper than one too. No taxes on zero-emission cars Oh, and they're about to make a more "normal" family car soon too. Now that is the kind of company your government should be throwing money at. Future industrial tech. Not wall street gamblers.

 

Wind, Ocean waves, Solar, nuclear, algae, hydrogen, etc... are all the wave of the future of energy. Seeing as if we continue using oil at the pace we are on, we will run out in 50-75 years.

Some want the market to decide which energy we use and when...and that is fine when the market works efficiently. However, for the market to work efficiently three assumptions must be met 1) Perfect information 2) equilibrium and 3) No externalities. In this case (energy and specifically finite fossil fuels) there are extreme negative externalities that are building up from our reliance on oil (foreign reliance, excess CO2 output, global warming, drilling into the earth itself, etc..). I believe if the United States doesn't voluntarily ween "itself" off of oil within the next 25 years, government will have to intervene i.e. During WWII when all the auto factories were "instantly" turned into almost soley military output.

 

hemp oil used to be used as a power source for light machenary. and hemp fibers use to be used for all cloathing.. hemp is an amazing plant with multiple uses, but the law forces it to remain an un used and destroyed natural resource.

 

there are some cool ideas out there, like a machaince that harvest electricity by the swells of the ocean, a dance club thats self powered by human movement, as mentioned before the tesla car, all kinds of crazy stuff. the 11th hour talks about a ton of alternative ideas being propesed at the end of it.

 

I had a thought one day so check this out guys. Some say that everything has its purpose right, right I do to. So here is my thoughts on oil. The earths core is mega hot, molten hot, sometimes mother nature shows us this in her fury through a volcano. What if and I mean if that there oil we are pulling out of the ground is meant to cool the heat from the core before it reached the earths crust, hence melting of ice's and supposed global warming. My thought on alternative fuel are already there. I use E85 in my hot rod. I could go on and on especially right now sooooo stoned.

 

I think you will find that the heat from the earths molten core dissipates rather well in areas that do not contain oil. Solid rock and water function as great heatsinks for our planets internal heat.

The earth core is cooling, albeit slowly (thankfully). Global heating is (much) due to burning of hydro-carbons, not pumping it up by itself. The burning of oil, coal and natural gas release CO2 from ancient life-remains much faster than current plant and algea life can absorb it. If we'd let the carbon from ancient life alone, we'd not have an increase of CO2 in our atmosphere. And no escalating greenhouse effect from it.

 

I'd like to see power production shift toward local and personal generation. With these advances in solar research we seem to see every week, I believe that coupled with super efficient battery systems, there's no reason to think that we could not get all the energy we need (in most places) from materials embedded into the construction material of our buildings and into the fabric of our clothing. When you don't have to transport the energy, much of it is saved and can be concentrated only where it's needed.

Then once we can create new products using computer code and the molecules in the air right from our own home, we can do away with the energy, manufacturing and retail infrastructure that clogs the landscape.

One can always dream

 

I don't think it is all that far away. Distributed energy production might be closer than you think. As accumulating and storing renewable energy becomes cheaper, it will sooner rather than later become a viable investment even for individual households able to put next-gen solar-panels on their roof and some high yield energy storage facility in their basement or garage.

Like file sharing have exploded to the mainstream, energy sharing is on the horizon to do the same. Pioneers already supply electricity from small-time hydro-electric plants running off of small streams. I'm sure todays (fossil and nuclear burning) electrical suppliers won't like the development one bit. No matter, they will still control and rent out the grid. Not to mention keeping large suppliers of clean energy running, like say major dams, solar and wind plants. Fossil and nuclear alternatives will soon loose favour as homebrewed clean energy come online en-masse.

Give it some five to ten years. And before anyone comments on it, yes, I am essentially an optimist. I got great trust in the ingenuity of mankind, it is afterall what got us this far, and I see no end in our immidiate future.

Hurdles are there to be conquered. The difficult is routine, the impossible just take some more time to accomplish

 

I like turtles.