2012 Elections in 3-D!

[Twitch Boy]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

And yet, people are still finding excuses to not buy hybrid cars. I think, in the long run, high gas prices will be better because they will lead to people making mroe environmentally sound decisions.

All I know is a Prius gets 0 MPG when it's spun off an icy road into a 6 foot snowdrift, can't tow a trailer, can't hold furniture, and is about as fun and interesting to drive as an appendectomy.

Show me a 4-seater Ford F-150 alternative fuel/hybrid/electric that gets 30 city. NOW we're talking. Still a couple years away from that.

/or just release the diesel Wrangler in the US already

 

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

All I know is a Prius gets 0 MPG when it's spun into a 6 foot snowdrift

It's impossible to drive a Prius in Minnesota anyway. They require electricity.

 

[Priceless]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

All I know is a Prius gets 0 MPG when it's spun off an icy road into a 6 foot snowdrift

Whereas an SUV that rolls over gets how many MPG?

Maybe climate prevents people in northern climes from driving a Prius...no reason people down south can't drive them. The things you refer to - towing a trailer, carrying furniture etc - are conveniences Americans have taken for granted for the past 50 years. People used to go for a nice aimless drive for entertainment (Sunday drivers) but don't do that anymore because the price of gas has exploded. Americans are going to have to accept that the family car isn't intended to haul half the grocery store up Kilimanjaro. You don't need an SUV to drive around town. We can be much more intelligent with how we use fossil fuels...or we can keep using them like we are now until one day they're all gone...then we can go back to using horse and buggy.

 

[huskyfan]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

oil ... its organic!

 

[BassAle]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

All I know is a Prius gets 0 MPG when it's spun off an icy road into a 6 foot snowdrift, can't tow a trailer, can't hold furniture, and is about as fun and interesting to drive as an appendectomy.

Show me a 4-seater Ford F-150 alternative fuel/hybrid/electric that gets 30 city. NOW we're talking. Still a couple years away from that.

/or just release the diesel Wrangler in the US already

I see plenty of Prii in Maine, especially near the coast. They seem to do OK with the snow.

Its pretty ridiculous that people need a big *** truck for a daily driver so they can haul a camper or move some furniture a _couple_ times a year. I split my time telecommuting and riding public transportation so I don't feel too bad that I don't drive a Prius but I still tried to chose a vehicle that balanced all of my needs. I have a small truck -- canyon crew cab. I can put a car seat in the back seat for my son, plus I speed weekends in the summer at a cabin on a remote lake that requires driving on logging roads to get to, and I own a home I've been renovating myself. If I had a longer commute or a camper I'd probably have an extra vehicle (in addition to my wife's) a daily driver and a beater work vehicle. Occasionally it is too small (it only has a 5-foot bed) so I borrow a full size truck from somewhere else, or I can pay someone to deliver something for me. I know people with big *** trucks for daily drivers and there isn't a scratch in the bed because they _never_ haul anything.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

I thought about going the hybrid route . . . but then chose a "hot hatch."

I live *too* far South. Hypermiling is nice. Having a slightly oversized engine, 6-speed manual, and chassis that clings to the road like a cat on a curtain is . . . nicer.

Sure, combined mileage is only in the 20s, but I can dart around the swarms of Medicare sleds that plague South Florida in the winter. (yeah, I'm that guy. So what?)

 

[geezer]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

What environmentalists never are able to grasp about the cure-all magic of "hybrid vehicles" is that electricity has to come from somewhere. Guess where? Fossil fuels! Think about that.

Now think about the inefficiencies of getting you those fossil fuels through a power plant and a bunch of wires, when you "could" be dumping the gas straight in your car to make it go! Suddenly gasoline looks like the environmentally friendly choice.
But no, common sense is too much to ask. We'll be hearing about the wonders of electric cars until Obama or the "next Obama" manages to outlaw normal cars.

edit: I do understand we could do a lot more with nuclear power, but one guess who is blocking those projects... and sorry, but wind isn't going to come anywhere close to making a dent.

 

[amherstblackbear]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

Sure, some enviros act as if electric cars run on magic.

But just because they don't -- doesn't mean they're just as pollution intensive as internal combustion engines. Even with the inefficiencies of transmitting electricity through an aging power grid.

Take the annual emissions of a power plant. Divide by the total power generated (minus losses to transmission) to get pollution per kilowatt hour. Look at the storage capacity of an electric car in kwh . . . divide by driving range . . . you'll end up with a rough equivalent to the emissions per mile figures you see on the window sticker of a regular car.

I don't have the energy to do an example, but it shouldn't be too hard...

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

I have my own "Al Gore buying carbon offset" story,

It's pretty well known in some circles that the most effective way to fight global warming on an individual level is to plant trees. I've read somewhere that if each person planted ten trees and each of them grew to maturity, they'd remove their carbon footprint from the atmosphere by transforming atmospheric CO[SUB]2[/SUB] into those complex carbohydrates known as "wood."

We had an Explorer from when we lived in Wyoming (our county had more dirt roads than paved roads; during spring thaw you needed both the high wheel base and the four-wheel drive unless you lived in town and ran all your errands in town). We later moved to more "civilized" environs and kept the SUV. Where we live now, we have a lot of brush that needs to be pruned / removed each year, and until cash for clunkers came along (what a farce that was!) we used it to haul brush to the transfer station. the CO[SUB]2[/SUB] in the brush being turned to compost being our own private 'carbon offset' made possible by having the SUV to haul the brush.....hence the Gore analogy.....

Okay, so that was a meandering aside....the biggest problem with current electric car technology is that it relies on batteries. there are hosts of environmental side effects there. meanwhile, the internal combustion engine can be very very efficient. the problem with gasoline-powered automobiles is NOT the fact that it burns gasoline, it is that it burns gasoline AT VARYING SPEEDS!

Were you to tune an engine so that it ran at a constant speed, you could get very low emissions relative to the fuel used, especially as compared to the way most electric utilities would have to generate the power needed to recharge the batteries. I'm amazed at how long and how well those model airplane engines can run when you have everything cleaned and lubed and tuned perfectly, for example.

My preferred solution would be to use a constant speed internal combustion motor to power an electric generator and then use that generator to power the car. Prototypes have been built that get something like 110 mpg.

The government is peddling the wrong technology (again). "Why am I not surprised?" *


* I know that some character says that in some show all the time, I just cannot remember who.

 

[huskyfan]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

some of us live in areas where there is no public transportation and we need trucks to plow or haul wood or an SUV to get to a hockey game. me, for instance.
I couldn't even make hockey on one Volt charge.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

What environmentalists never are able to grasp about the cure-all magic of "hybrid vehicles" is that electricity has to come from somewhere. Guess where? Fossil fuels! Think about that.

The advantage is greater flexibility in source and greater feasibility of carbon capture.

For the first, yes, it's fossil fuels <em>now</em>, but it need not be in the future (though a lot of the environmental wackos are as virulently anti-nuclear as they are anti-anything else).

For the second, it may be feasible to capture CO2 on a power plant scale. It almost certainly won't be feasible to capture it on an individual vehicle scale.

 

[Foxton]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

some of us live in areas where there is no public transportation and we need trucks to plow or haul wood or an SUV to get to a hockey game. me, for instance.
I couldn't even make hockey on one Volt charge.

I thought you were down in florida making sure that all the gas stations were over 5$?

Also "I need more out of a vehicle" stories completely miss the point. For the vast majority of people they DO NOT need some big F350 4-wheel drive monstrosity to commute 3 hours everyday on a clear freeway, or an H1 to run errands around a town/cart 1 kid to soccer. And no, if you think you need an suv to get to a hockey game in houghton, you may want to learn how to drive. I got along just fine with one of these pieces of ****. And if you look at the other cars there you'll see that there are plenty of 2 wheel drives just big enough to make a dent in your bumper.

 

[LynahFan]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

My preferred solution would be to use a constant speed internal combustion motor to power an electric generator and then use that generator to power the car. Prototypes have been built that get something like 110 mpg.

What do you think is under the hood of a Prius? Squirrels?

 

[bronconick]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

What do you think is under the hood of a Prius? Squirrels?

 

[geezer]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2012-02-22/gas-prices-average/53229358/1
Now that bastion of conservatism and common sense, USA Today, is in on the act. They must have been misled somehow, since gas is actually getting cheaper all the time right?

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

What environmentalists never are able to grasp about the cure-all magic of "hybrid vehicles" is that electricity has to come from somewhere. Guess where? Fossil fuels! Think about that.

Now think about the inefficiencies of getting you those fossil fuels through a power plant and a bunch of wires, when you "could" be dumping the gas straight in your car to make it go! Suddenly gasoline looks like the environmentally friendly choice.
But no, common sense is too much to ask. We'll be hearing about the wonders of electric cars until Obama or the "next Obama" manages to outlaw normal cars.

edit: I do understand we could do a lot more with nuclear power, but one guess who is blocking those projects... and sorry, but wind isn't going to come anywhere close to making a dent.

You do realize that getting electricity to your house and into a car is far, FAR more efficient than an internal combustion engine, right? Some of the best car engines are something like 20-30 percent efficient. Even a sh*ty turbine you throw sand in could probably hit 20%.

That said, you need something with four-wheel drive in Minnesota. I've come to that conclusion. Hence, I am budgeting a new truck as my next vehicle.

 

[Kepler]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

What environmentalists never are able to grasp about the cure-all magic of "hybrid vehicles" is that electricity has to come from somewhere. Guess where? Fossil fuels! Think about that.

Man on the street enviros may be like that, in the same way that man on the street anybody are eejits when it comes to science. But the serious scientists who aren't either enviro or anti-enviro, but just empirically truthful, understand energy production and distribution a lot better than anyone here, and it's worth quite a lot that the vast majority of them seem to draw "enviro" conclusions more often than not.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

it may be feasible to capture CO2 on a power plant scale. It almost certainly won't be feasible to capture it on an individual vehicle scale.

We already have CO[SUB]2[/SUB] capture widely available. They are called "trees" and "bushes." They remove CO[SUB]2[/SUB] from the atmosphere and turn it into a material called "wood."

 

[FreshFish]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

You do realize that getting electricity to your house and into a car is far, FAR more efficient than an internal combustion engine, right? Some of the best car engines are something like 20-30 percent efficient. Even a sh*ty turbine you throw sand in could probably hit 20%.

The internal combustion engine can be tuned to efficiency of around 65% or so, I think (using memory not research), as long as it runs at a constant speed. The problem with car engines is that they run at variable speeds and so cannot possibly be tuned for nearly as much efficiency. A finely-tuned constant-speed internal combustion engine running a generator is probably a better model than a battery-powered car.

Our problem is too much centralization. A much better power grid would have individual houses each generating their own solar power, for example, rather than try to have any centralized green energy generation source feed into the grid.

 

[BassAle]

Re: 2012 Elections in 3-D!

What environmentalists never are able to grasp about the cure-all magic of "hybrid vehicles" is that electricity has to come from somewhere. Guess where? Fossil fuels! Think about that.

Now think about the inefficiencies of getting you those fossil fuels through a power plant and a bunch of wires, when you "could" be dumping the gas straight in your car to make it go! Suddenly gasoline looks like the environmentally friendly choice.
But no, common sense is too much to ask. We'll be hearing about the wonders of electric cars until Obama or the "next Obama" manages to outlaw normal cars.

edit: I do understand we could do a lot more with nuclear power, but one guess who is blocking those projects... and sorry, but wind isn't going to come anywhere close to making a dent.

large powerplants are more efficient at generating energy than millions of small IC engines (which are pretty inefficient).