Facts
last year the oil market went negative 35 dollars a barrel.
this year a hacker group got ransomware into the billing dept of a pipeline company, resulting in that company shutting down 45% of the east coast fuel supply.
Opinion/guesstimate
Let me just toss out an idea, maybe hydrogen fuel cell, or electric cars might be the only predictable future car, as steam needs fuel too, but electric cars can be charged off a solar grid or hydro electric generator.
that problem there is that batteries aren't perfected yet, they're still time or cycle limited, and made of rare metals. Well, the good ones are. The lead-acid ones aren't very good for commuting long term.
So, I'll take a guess and speculate that the best choice for the vehicle of the future is a micro car that's either electric or hydrogen, or a motorcycle that's either electric or hydrogen
Just a thought
Wise words....
ReplyDeleteIf you live in a first world country, in a large city, yes. Even better, use public transport. But if you are the other 99% of the world population, petrol cars still the better option.
ReplyDeleteMy point was that petrol seems to be having BIG problems. Public transport is still subject to those problems, and few people can actually be served by it to commute to work, far less to get groceries and do errands.
Deletetesla are correct with batteries for cars, but commercial vehicles should be hydrogen.
ReplyDeleteAlcohol. Look into it.
ReplyDeleteNo time. If there's a case to be made for it, use your keyboard and type something up that proves how it's going to happen.
DeleteRemember, that no matter what your opinion, only the decision that the big car makers choose will actually be the wave of the future, Honda, VW, GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota. If they ignore alcohol, and stick with electric or Hydrogen, then that will be all there is to it.
A little too early to throw in the towel, Jesse. Country dwellers can make all they need themselves. Henry Ford stated that he couldn't expect farmers to buy from him if he didn't buy from them, so all of his early products like the Model T were dual fuel. After he died, all the research disappeared from his archives. Anything you can make from oil you can make from alcohol. Let's put the oil companies on notice.
DeleteThose corporations you mentioned are woke followers. They probably took that stand in hopes of receiving millions/billions in government subsidies. Let's start new companies, smaller ones. Local ones. Screw the multinationals and their CEOs. Electric cars are deadnuts impractical. You can't sell them without a tax credit. Ranges in the hundreds of miles?
Who's going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a grocery getter?
If you really have to have electric, look into Neil Young's Lincvolt project. A smaller version of the railroad diesel-electric setup, which some engineers say is the most efficient means of locomotion.
Do you want to talk about where all this power will come from? Especially you, a former yooper(if such a thing exists), now living in SoCal. You've shut down your nukes and your coal. You don't like gas. Solar and wind? Good luck with that. You'll have as much success with your power generation as you've had with water management.
No time? Plenty of time. We all have the rest of our lives. No will. As a nation, we're too lazy and soft. We've been letting other do our work. I could go on forever, but I'll stop now.
No time. I work 45 hours a week, THEN I spend time putting content on this blog. So far, 15 years, 47000 posts.
DeleteI do not fuck around with the words I choose.
You said "alcohol, look into it" and I replied "no time"
Country people might be able to, if they can grow enough corn to make alcohol/ethanol
But that only goes for the people who own enough viable fields with enough manure/fertilizer, to make a tremendous amount of fuel. Just for the tractors.
Again, I'm looking at this post in the way that it defines the parameters of the future of oil/gas production being unstable, as there have been the two history making events in 12 months.
Back in the mid seventies, there was the OPEC issue.
So, history proves oil based fuel is not stable, and has quadrupled in the past 20 years. In 1999 gas here in San Diego was 1 dollar, and in 2015, went over 4 dollars.
Henry only made the model T with an engine that was able to work off 6 different fuels, I posted about it in 2007.
SO, lets not think he made any other engines that could, and certainly, none are around in use as daily drivers.
Some exists as weekend show cars, museum pieces, and parade cars.
No, not "all of his early products" just the Model T, not the A, not the V8
Sure, you go ahead and start a company.
I ain't got time for that, and I can't think of anything I'd make anyone wants to buy.
No one wants to pay for a subscription to a newspaper anymore for pete's sake.
No, I'm not going to look into Neil Youngs Lincoln, I saw it at SEMA about 10 years ago. I think he burnt down his garage/barn after that, as he never drove the car as a commuter, it was just an attention getter/virtue signal/show car.
College students have done better in their battery converted cars, and Solar Challenge.
Yes, the locomotive is is the most efficient, but ONLY on steel rails, on a flat grade. Not viable as commuter power, with hills, frequent stops, frequent acceleration.
Only good for perfect conditions on very flat railroads.
BUT I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT TRAINS
I'm talking about commuters in the future, near future, that need a daily driver to get around town, and to work.
I'm not a former anything. I'm a yooper, born, raised, trapped, hunted, fished, made wood heating a daily chore, used an outhouse, tip ups, snow shoes, drank from springs, lakes, rivers, creeks, streams, and ate from berry bushes, apple trees, cranberry bogs, and blackberry and raspberry brambles.
You don't know shit about yoopers, or your concept is limited to what you've heard from those who believe yoopers are people who move to and live in the yoop for awhile.
Like most of what you've discussed, I find your knowledge limited at all of it.
As for where will power come from? Well, maybe you've heard opf hydroelectric damns, they were quite widely known about a long time age, maybe you've heard of the TVA, and Hoover Damn? Among many others, those did get a lot of press.
But I also find that solar is untapped, as few have panels on the roofs, and here in so cal, we get a ridiculous number of sunny days, and very little rain, and we have a lot of useless desert between the west coast and the plains states. So, lots of solar power not getting tapped into.
DeleteI didn't shut down a damn thing, I crewed on 2 nuke powered subs.
Maybe you could talk with a little more care about me, and what you don't know about.
As for the people that DID shut down reactors, like the one here in the county, worse than shutting them down, they haven't built any to get some easy power to replace coal and oil. Tell them what idiots they are, as I'm a firm believer in reactors, and lived next to a couple, aboard the 717 and the 759, for about 6 years.
Also, you're a moron if you don't recognize that I like gas.
I'm the fucking car guy that has put 47000 posts on this blog for 15 years about gas powered cool stuff, and my 69 R/T is in my garage.
Who the fuck are YOU thinking you're talking to?
Water management? I've never been in water management. You must have me confused with some politician. Why the hell are you confusing me with a poltician?
I post about cool stuff with wheels. Not politics.
As a nation.. well, you're talking about something I again, don't think you know enough about.... or you simply have a very very different perspective.
I've lived in the north east, north west, midwest north on the canadian border, now I live in the southwest on the mexican border, and I lived in the southeast in Florida, in Orlando. Pretty much the border, but on the other coast. And I lived for a summer in San Antonio, and even visited the Alamo.
Plus, I lived in Oahu, at Pearl Harbor for about 5 years, when not out to sea.
So, Except for Alaska, I've lived in every quadrant of this country. It's not a nation in any way that makes sense other than we all pay the IRS, and had ancestors defeat the Nazis and the Japanese Emperor.
"WE"? YOu must be mistaking me for someone else, someone that has a fucking thing to do with running a corporation that offshores it's production, and it's finances.
Lazy? Soft? Fuck you. You won't find that soft, or lazy.
Maybe you like my blog, enough to read along and comment on my little opinion piece about what might be a couple indicators that the oil/gas supply isn't going to be smooth sailing and trustworthy, but I don't think we'd get along very well, as you're irritating me.
No matter, I still hope you have a good weekend.
Not having a damn thing in common but the language we speak, and the country we pay taxes to, doesn't mean we can't part ways with courtesy, and not launch a fucking war on each other like Israel, liberals, democrats, or racist morons.
Just take a step to think out what you're going to tell me I am if you write back.
You seriously have me all wrong, and it's irritating me. Don't do that. I don't like that.
Oh, and I forgot to add, that whole "as a nation" thing? No.
DeleteThe Mennonites, Amish, Native Americans, Guamanians, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, and probably 5 other groups, like the Mormans, probably don't consider themselves part of the nation if they consider their religion to be something that prevents them from national defense, or their racial culture to be something transcendent and so remarkable that they don't pay taxes, as churches do not pay taxes, for example, or that they are exempt for the laws that prevent anyone else from opening a casino.
Also, the US GOVT doesn't consider the Chinese immigrant nor the Japanese immigrant, to be part of this nation. Exhibit A, all the laws on the federal books against the Chinese immigrant, exhibit B, the president condemning the Japanese immigrants, and their descendants, to not have the same constitutional rights, and imprisoning them during WW2, or exhibit C, the American citizens that the US GOVT is imprisoning in Gitmo, in order to prevent them from getting legal representation, and trials, aka, constitutional rights of due process, and search and seizure.
There are many other people that either exempt themselves, or that the US GOVT exempts, and with all that going on, I've had a lifetime of about 5 decades of living all over these 49 states (not yet Alaska) among these many peoples, and I haven't yet remembered to bring up the illegal aliens from south of the Mexico/USA border, that are coming over the border, chilling out in cages, or being flown to Tennessee, or being bussed into California. What "as a nation" do you hand them a flag to? As they sure as fuck aren't lazy, they walked the fucking length of Mexico to get over the border. Harder working people I've never seen except for farmers and cattlemen.
Maybe you're being myopic, or have no damn experience among the many varieties of peoples in these lower 49.
The US Govt sure as hell treats them all different.
Butanol is a drop-in substitute for gasoline (it's even 87 octane, naturally) and can be made of the same stuff that ethanol is, and is better because it has more carbon chains AND it can be sent via pipelines which ethanol cannot. Then there is also diesel and heating oil made from sewage, offal and garbage - it's called thermal conversion and pilot operations have been going for decades.https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/anything-into-oil-03
ReplyDeleteOk, take a moment, breath, then tell me what about what I wrote gave you the idea that I was debating this or that substitutes that aren't going to be made by the average Joe? PaigeK had the idea that alcohol was a viable alternative (it isn't) and hell, Paige might as well have said Nitro meth, nitrous oxide, or whatever the hell butanol is.
DeleteWould you agree that what I said was lead off by the facts? Last year, oil bottomed out. This year, a pipeline was shut down.
BIG events, both with oil/gas fuel supply for us commuters.
I didn't mention pig shit or cow farts.
BECAUSE the 300 million cars currently on the road can't run off the substitutes that you and PaigeK have brought up
There are not ENOUGH pigs, cows, tree alcohol, garbage methanol reclamation, or whatever else college students are playing around with to push cars around a test track, to POWER week in and week out, year after year, decade after decade, the number of cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc that currently exist, and I haven't even bought up all the ones that WILL be made and sold, around the world, to billions of Chinese and Indians.
Now, diesel, heating oil, or whatever - not going to fuel cars in future.
We already know that. Sure, deep fry grease can power diesels, but not new diesel cars and trucks. Not they way the situation currently is, and there isn't enough supply to replace all the current commuters, trucking fleets, etc.
BUT, battery power seems viable for Teslas, and the Nissan electric car, and the other electric cars.
Fisker, them too
So, my little comment was not asking for what other pilot operations, and 1970s popular Mechanics articles had to offer for making a propane conversion... I was speaking to the MASS need for a solution that would replace all the gasoline that seems to have had momentous events recently, that prove how rapidly the oil and gas supply can fail to be counted on.
Can you see what I'm saying now?
Okay the big picture. We've got enough coal in the US to fuel the nation in every way, for over 400 years and that's just what we've discovered now. SASOL in South Africa - right now - produces motor fuel (including gasoline) from coal, dug from their own country. It's a known, viable process. It can be clean. We could us it in big scale and retain much of our current (gasoline and diesel) infrastructure (and butanol - to not waste the current ethanol production factories, while still being able to send the butanol through pipelines). This would mean not relying upon imported battery raw materials from China, until we could get moving on getting our own rare earths (which we have under our feet in this country). All of this would mean stepping back, using thought - not emotion, not greed (which means it's likely to never happen). We could built EVs as we are now, without mandating them - once their benefits are seen, people will buy them but if they don't do what people need why force it on anyone? Right now EVs make up under 2% of the new cars sold, so moving to 30% within 12-15 years is possible - but it's likely to leave a good portion of the public priced out of the new car market - even more than now. -Glenn the Carcierge.
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