35mpg danger

[Aren Jay]

..........

[Wires]

Both. No doubt.

I don't like the idea of government telling us what cars have to be made or purchased. If I can afford a car that gets 3 mpg and am willing to pay for it, I should be able to do it.

If Gas gets to be 10 dollars a gallon, then I won't be able (forget willing) to pay for it, and I'll have to adjust.

My wife works 16 miles from home, and my work is on the way, so we carpool. In the MM we burn two gallons of gas a day, assuming 16 MPG. (close enough)

An "environmentally responsible" couple may drive two hybrids 50 miles each way to work. That's four gallons, twice as much fuel than I burn in my "evil, anti-environment" marauder.

No one will get mad about someone living 50, 75 or even more miles away from their place of employment, but people throw stones at folks for driving something larger than a death trap.

Where's the "corporate average employee distance law?"

[BirchMarauder]

I think the auto makers have the knowledge (technology) to make a muscle car get high mileage. they just don't want to. everyone is in bed with big oil. the mandate for higher fuel mileage vehicles are here and coming which screws with the oil companies. But have you noticed the cost of fuel is going up. hmmm. sounds like they are trying to keep pace.

[MrBluGruv]

I get a more than little disappointed when manufacturers advertise a vehicle as being an economy choice, then it costs over 16K and barely breaks 30mpg. There were cars over a decade ago that did far better.

However, I don't believe too much that the auto industry is sharing the bed with the oil companies. I think the oil prices go up because the government and stock market regulatory groups turn a blind on to the fact that oil is being bought on speculation...

[CBT]

Rent "Who killed the electric car?"

[Wires]

No one killed the electric car.

Gasoline has an energy density 46 times that of the best batteries we have. That means for every pound of gasoline, we need 46 pounds of batteries.

Not to mention, the power system of the US (called the "power grid") does not have the capacity to power our automobiles in addition to the already overwhelming (in many places) loads.

Pure electric cars will not be practical in any of our lifetimes.

We now have a government that owns a car company, and now we have a law giving people 3500-4500 dollars for buying a new car.

One used to be able to get a used crown vic for 2000-3000 dollars. Now, they are all worth 4500 if you buy a new car from Government Motors. No more cheap, reliable transportation.

How will we get parts for our 1984-present vehicles when they are all crushed by our government? What about those who want to drive a steel car that isn't a small death-trap that has no power?


The government has no business owning a car company. Even if you grant that this is an emergency situation, the government has no business passing a law to help car companies when we own one.

We are now the USSA. United Soviet States of Amerika. I hope this isn't the tip of the iceberg.

Now

[CBT]

Allow myself to quote...myself.

Rent "Who killed the electric car?"

[Wires]

I've seen it. It's pure feces and untrue.

Allow myself to paraphrase myself:

Batteries have too low of an energy density to replace gasoline as a power source for automobiles. The cars we can make using them are impractical.

Even if we had the perfect battery, our power grid does not have the capacity to power every automobile in the US. It will be expensive, and more importantly, TIME CONSUMING to increase our electric generating and transmitting capacity to the extent needed to power everyone's vehicles.

The grid in California can't even power our present demand. Remember the rolling blackouts? Now you want to add the load of charging millions of cars?

What about toxic chemical disposal? Batteries don't last forever. What about expense? The best batteries we have would make the cars cost 40 grand or more. GM lost money on the EV because of the battery cost. Smaller hybrid batteries are 5-10 grand.

Electric cars are not practical now, and won't be in our lifetime.

All the hoping and wishing won't make it so.

http://fuelconsumption.blogspot.com/2006/07/who-really-killed-electric-car.html


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[Wires]

CBT - you have to be pulling my leg. You own a Corvette and a Marauder and you don't share my dismay at the inability of the American Consumer to buy something more than a plastic, anemic death trap?

No Corvette enthusiast or Marauder enthusiast would be happy with an electric "car." No Marauder or Corvette enthusiast would be happy our government is taking donor cars off the road or crushing cars that people might chose to drive instead of an anemic 4-cylinder wheeze mobile.

Obvious troll is obvious. You got me. Very well done.

I'll keep my 92 crown vic on the road even if our govt. offers me 1 million dollars to have it crushed. It's wrong for our government to pay someone 4 grand to crush a car worth 2 grand if they buy a new car, but since we own a car company, it's good business. That conflict of interest scares me. Our government shouldn't be passing laws to benefit the car company it owns.

[CBT]

CBT - you have to be pulling my leg. You own a Corvette and a Marauder and you don't share my dismay at the inability of the American Consumer to buy something more than a plastic, anemic death trap?

Obvious troll is obvious. My mistake for falling for it.

First off, I'm all for saving the planet, no matter what vehicles I own. There are electric cars and motorcycles that can anihilate gas burners at the track, some have so much power tires cannot stay on the rims. The technology is there, don't kid yourself. Did you not watch the part of the movie where the old man who holds like 90 patents on battery technology told how he screwed up and offered public stock in his company, and the sneaky oil companies bought the majority of shares, just to shut down the company? The power problem for grids and everything else could easily be solved: more nuclear reactors, wind turbines, and wave turbines. We don't have efficient electric cars because of Big Oil, CARB, and government officials who are in bed with the first two. Toyota caught wind of the EV and started making hybrids. We were years ahead of them in battery technology. Now look, the government owns the car companies, and as long as big oil lobbyists keep making campaign contributions, there won't be any all electric cars, and people like you will still be skeptical and critical of it's feasability.

[Wires]

Well, it looks like neither one of us is going to change the other's mind.

Save the planet? Electric cars won't do that, until we use more nuclear power. As of now, we use too much coal, which at least is a US resource. Electric cars aren't "Zero Emissions Vehicles" unless they are powered by a nuclear plant, and then, some would argue that the nuclear waste is a worse emission than the CO2. For most of the country, an electric car is a coal burner, with DISPLACED emissions.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=50070

Are you speaking of electric drag vehicles? A 1/4 or 1/8 mile pass can be done quickly, and doesn't use as much energy as a start and stop filled 30 mile commute to work. Plus, there are not as many of them.

I believe that we don't have the technology for any better batteries than we are producing. Laptop batteries would last all day instead of a couple of hours. (There's not really a 100 mpg carburetor, either)

If the oil companies were holding patents to technology for the perfect battery, it would not be in their economic interest to sit on it. They could make as much or more money off of batteries than they do now off of oil.

Gasoline stores a lot of energy - the best batteries just can't. The laws of physics and chemistry tell us that it's not possible right now to do much better than 1/50th or so of the energy density of gasoline. Plus, they use rare, exotic materials that are very cost prohibitive when you consider the power requirements of a vehicle.

A full gas tank (20 gallons) weighs, about 120 pounds or so. The equivalent battery weight is 6000 pounds. Even considering that gasoline engines are at best about 50 percent efficient, that's 3000 pounds of batteries to be equivalent to a 20 gallon gasoline tank.

F=ma. There's no way around that. With that much extra weight, a pure electric is at a huge disadvantage. Not to mention the other disadvantages I mentioned previously.

Our power system can not be easily upgraded. Nuclear plants are very expensive, and take many years to build. We can't double or triple our electrical power generating and transmitting capacity very quickly. New wires would have to be run, new substations built, etc. That's a lot of copper - very expensive. That's a lot of labor - also very expensive.

It won't happen in our lifetime. I agree that oil will run out, and we probably will have to go to electric cars powered by nuclear reactors. My SWAG is that it will take 50-100 years to do this.

Hybrids are the answer here. Why? My Marauder makes 300 HP (stock). Most of the time, I only use 50-100 HP of that to cruise down the road. Why do I like the 300 HP engine? TORQUE. We need TORQUE to get that car moving at anything greater than a snail's pace. A gas engine has a lousy torque to HP ratio.

A hybrid uses a high torque electric motor to provide torque, so the engine can be smaller and still provide the driving feel we like.

This electric car thing is a side point. My main point is that I don't like the government mandated fuel economy laws, or the cash payout for crushing cars that could be better used by people who don't drive much.

Instead of the environmental impact of scrapping all old cars and then building new ones, we should be allowing people to chose to drive these old cars (well maintained) if they don't drive much. Those who do drive a lot should buy the newer, lower fuel consumption cars. The net environmental impact is less.

The free market should decide what cars car companies (that aren't owned by the govt.) build. If gas goes to 10 dollars a gallon, the big v8 cars will be crushed due to people selling them off - no government action needed.

In the meantime, we're left with the consequences of cars worth 1500-2000 dollars now being worth 3500-4500 dollars.

Before this law, I can get a used crown vic for 2 grand that's a great car. Now, it will cost 4 grand. What's the guy going to do that can't afford that? He can't afford 20 grand for a new one.

[Wires]

It seems we do agree that the govermnent owning car companies is wrong and has negative effects.

I agree with you that government lobbyists buying our congress is a bad thing - I just disagree slightly about the feasibility of electric cars - mostly the time table.

I think we also both agree that we will run out of oil. Maybe in our lifetime and we should do something about it.

I'll mention ethanol, even though no one has brought it up. Right now, we use too much petroleum fertilizer and tractor fuel growing corn for ethanol. I'll have to look up the exact figures, but we use more petroleum energy than we get from the ethanol.

What about burning soybean oil in diesels? That and hybrids may hold us over until we can increase our power grid and generating capacity to accommodating battery powered cars.

Batteries are impractical for trains and trucks (transportation of goods) but diesel electric hybrid technology is proven everyday.