"Hybrid" Cars

[Wilber]

Other than efficiency diesels are still using a petroleum based fuel until bio-diesel becomes more available. If it has an alternate fuel advantage it is that they will run on almost any kind of oil that burns. How about a turbo diesel plug in hybrid running on canola oil.

It looks like ethanol production is having an effect on feed grain prices. Burning the stuff may be better for the environment but it will cost you more to eat.

[rrabbit]

Well actually no! My standard of living is not dependent on automobiles and trucks. That just another myth the corporate industrial interests has sold you. I'm aboriginal and old enough to remember a different way of life on the small family farm that didn't depend on the transportation industry. We grew grains only to feed livestock which we ate, chickens, pigs and cows with milk, eggs and butter made right on the farm. We grew massive gardens with water pumped by hand from a well. The surplus was used to feed horses which were used for the limited transportation needs. All of Saskatchewan lived like this only a few short decades ago. It was a higher standard of living than many in the inner city now have with a quality of nutrition and healthy level of exercise you'd be hard pressed to find in any urban settings now. and most importantly of all it was CLEAN! There was not an industrial chemical or fossil fuel to be found on the old style farms.

Ask yourself, if biofuels are so great, why do they need to forced on consumers with legislated ratios of ethanol in gasoline and massive subsidies to the industry? Its all still the oil companies lobbyists having their way with policy makers in a "disguise" as environmental industrialists. Ethanol increases the amount of gasoline than can be made from barrel crude and it takes nearly as many joules of natural gas to distill a given amount of joules into ethanol. More joules of natural gas are burned to make a given amount of joules in ethanol if you have a less than perfect heat recovery system at the distillery.

Like I said, drunks living in denial and looking to switch to far more toxic Lysol and aftershave because the booze is running out!

By the way, I'm not a tree hug'in arts major. I do have a five year hard sciences degree in environmental systems engineering. As well I've worked at a refinery and in the engineering end of the fossil fuel industry. I've been studying all these things with this background for about a decade and half now. There's only one remarkably simple system which seems viable in meeting our energy needs and curbing the production of greenhouse gases, the burning of agricultural waste.

It would require setting up a lot of small regional power plants similiar to the ones we now use to make electricity from coal. All agricultural waste in the region, stubble (which gets burned for nothing now anyway), chaffes and seed husks, all waste streams from food and feed processing, etc, would get collected at a local power plant. Even waste with a high water content will burn if the fire is hot enough and mechanically fanned with steam driven blowers. The waste would be burned in a boiler to make high pressure steam. The steam would be used in a condenser supplemented turbine (high efficiency) to turn an electric generator. Not a single grain of human consumable food or single litre of natural gas would be needed with the system. Its all technology from the 19th century that can be made super efficient with modern digital controls. There would be little need for preprocessing of the fuel other than maybe minimal shredding and mixing. The "problem" is the the requirement of small scale local power plants that make such a system economically efficient, completely cuts the existing energy conglomerates and corporate interests out of the picture. The power plants would be owned and operated by the municipalities. The farmers would get an entirely new revenue stream from selling their waste products to the municipalities while their traditional outputs would remain completely untouched. It would be on demand power production like coal fired plants and not dependent on the whims of sun and wind. And not a single gram of "new" greenhouse gases would be produced. The other problem for the "substance abusers" is the system wouldn't produce energy in the form required for driving to the mountains to go skiing or jet trips to the Caribbean. It would however, light our homes and businesses and drive our appliances like these computers we're sitting at now. There'd be oodles of waste heat from the power plants to heat small towns. We'd have a higher cleaner standard of living, minus a few unneccesary extravagances and the potential for the peasants to aspire to being millionaire kings would be somewhat diminished! The right wing peasant wanna be kings also have a "problem" with this kind of energy system!

[rrabbit]

I forgot the add on the topic if hybrid cars, there's a rule about machines that goes something like this.

The required maintenance and repair for a machine is proportional to the square of its complexity.

A lot of new hybrid car owners will re-learn this rather nasty rule about machines in a few short years in increased repair and maintenance costs that will likely offset the savings in money spent on gasoline. Hybrid cars will be pipeline and landfill fodder a lot sooner than traditional automobiles and they'll be more toxic landfill as well!

Oh hell, somebody pass me a can of Lysol so I can ignore how stupid the rest of the junkies are!

[Wilber]

We are talking about the transportation of goods and people, not stationary power plants.

[Canuck E Stan]

I forgot the add on the topic if hybrid cars, there's a rule about machines that goes something like this.

The required maintenance and repair for a machine is proportional to the square of its complexity.

A lot of new hybrid car owners will re-learn this rather nasty rule about machines in a few short years in increased repair and maintenance costs that will likely offset the savings in money spent on gasoline. Hybrid cars will be pipeline and landfill fodder a lot sooner than traditional automobiles and they'll be more toxic landfill as well!

This is exactly why I wouldn't touch one.

The complexity of today's cars are such that even the dealers don't repair anymore, they just replace.

Bumped wheel on a curb isn't just a replacement of rim and tire, it's the whole front suspension,time doesn't permit proper evaluation,replacement,is faster and of course more profiteable.

And in many cases they have you convinced to replace the vehicle rather than repair.

Manufacturers are short cutting and computerizing the whole car with sensors, which cause the failure of other sensors from reading the information properly and in turn prevent the operation of the car.What ever happened to simple A to B transportation?

New is not always better, and Hybrid I don't think is the answer, just another environmental problem.

[Wilber]

The complexity of todays cars is what makes them so good. They do everything better than cars of 20 years ago, get better fuel economy, pollute only a small fraction of what they used to and are more reliable. In the days of carburetted engines 1 HP per cu inch displacement was a hot motor. Now there isn't an econobox built that doesn't do far better than that. Unfortunately they are too complex for the average Joe to do much more than simple servicing without special tools.

They will continue to become more complex and new technologies will have teething problems but they will also continue to get better.

[Canuck E Stan]

The complexity of todays cars is what makes them so good. They do everything better than cars of 20 years ago, get better fuel economy, pollute only a small fraction of what they used to and are more reliable. In the days of carburetted engines 1 HP per cu inch displacement was a hot motor. Now there isn't an econobox built that doesn't do far better than that. Unfortunately they are too complex for the average Joe to do much more than simple servicing without special tools.

They will continue to become more complex and new technologies will have teething problems but they will also continue to get better.

Better? Just more complex and more expensive.

China will cure that once their cars start coming to North America.

They will be cheaper and become real throw away vehicles, much like TV's,cameras,and anything electronic.

Cars will have a very short life span and become useless when no longer worthy of driving or to expensive to repair.

[Wilber]

China will cure that once their cars start coming to North America.

They will be cheaper and become real throw away vehicles, much like TV's,cameras,and anything electronic.

Cars will have a very short life span and become useless when no longer worthy of driving or to expensive to repair.

They used to say that about Japanese and Korean cars.

[ScottSA]

The complexity of todays cars is what makes them so good. They do everything better than cars of 20 years ago, get better fuel economy, pollute only a small fraction of what they used to and are more reliable. In the days of carburetted engines 1 HP per cu inch displacement was a hot motor. Now there isn't an econobox built that doesn't do far better than that. Unfortunately they are too complex for the average Joe to do much more than simple servicing without special tools.

They will continue to become more complex and new technologies will have teething problems but they will also continue to get better.

Better? Just more complex and more expensive.

China will cure that once their cars start coming to North America.

They will be cheaper and become real throw away vehicles, much like TV's,cameras,and anything electronic.

Cars will have a very short life span and become useless when no longer worthy of driving or to expensive to repair.

I wouldn't bet on that. Back around 2000 there were a number of US firms trying to break into the Chinese market with cheap, high emmission car models based on affordability and ease of construction. If anything the trend will be toward mobility in China itself before they start flooding our market. Once they have attained that level of technological sophistication, though, it's unlikely that the labour there will be so cheap. And it's unlikely to EVER catch up to the Asian Tigers in technological capability, so it's not going to start exporting high tech transportation anytime soon. China is really a bit of a paper tiger economically. It has a current advantage because of wage pricing, but that isn't sunk in stone by any means.

[Canuck E Stan]

If anything the trend will be toward mobility in China itself before they start flooding our market. Once they have attained that level of technological sophistication, though, it's unlikely that the labour there will be so cheap. And it's unlikely to EVER catch up to the Asian Tigers in technological capability, so it's not going to start exporting high tech transportation anytime soon. China is really a bit of a paper tiger economically. It has a current advantage because of wage pricing, but that isn't sunk in stone by any means.

China is going to do both,mobility in China and flood our market. Chrysler is already going to start bringing over the Chery automobile and others will follow. Our cost are too high to produce a profiteable car for the auto makers, hence, they go elsewhere to build.

China has a population that can do it all. Look at computers,cameras,TV's, all of them have shifted poduction from North America to Japan to China. And the end result has been cheaper computers,cameras and TV's after each move. The automobile will follow suit. And when that Chinese car breaks, we won't repair it,we'll replace it. And that day is just around the corner.

[Wilber]

The Chinese will eventually become a big player but people are looking for quality not cheap when it comes to cars even when it comes to basic transportation. That is why the Japanese have been so successful. They don't dominate the market on price, they do it on their reputation for quality.

[stevoh]

Addressing the point about hybrid car batteries being bad for the environment:

The carmakers are waiting in the wings. Toyota and Honda place decals with a toll-free number on their hybrid battery packs. Toyota offers a $200 bounty to ensure that every battery comes back to the company. In a press release, Toyota states, "Every part of the battery, from the precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is recycled." Honda arranges for the collection of the battery and transfers it to a preferred recycler to follow their prescribed process: disassembling and sorting the materials; shredding the plastic material; recovering and processing the metal; and neutralizing the alkaline material before sending it to a landfill.