I disagree. Baby Steps don't get us anywhere. Baby steps take too long and waste too much when you can just take one big leap and get a much better solution.OutThere said:
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What do you think is the best alternative fuel?
- Thread starter quagmire
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Might I just say, Hydrogen fuel is not and never will be a major energy source. It does not only require copious amounts of energy to creat (seperate the oxygen from the hydrogen in water), but once it is obtained, it is near impossible to contain. Think about it at the atomic level. Hydrogen is really small. It can slip through the smallest spaces. Now try to contain enough hydrogen (enough to blow up a house), inside say, a car. Firstly, the fuel tank will be massive. Secondly, the hydrogen is going to escape within a few days at best.
Now solar, that is a good energy source. Think about how much energy is hitting the Earth every second. Now obviously we cant harness all of that, but just a fraction would suffice. Now we need to figure out a reliable and efficient way to start really capturing it....
Now solar, that is a good energy source. Think about how much energy is hitting the Earth every second. Now obviously we cant harness all of that, but just a fraction would suffice. Now we need to figure out a reliable and efficient way to start really capturing it....
CanadaRAM said:
Doesn't matter if the vehicle is heavy as there'd be no shortage of power. Hell, forget 4x4's and SUV's we could all drive around in a domestic version of an M1 tank. They'd be pretty safe as a collision wouldn't do much damage to either vehicle.
My Physics teacher back in High School mentioned Hydrogen being the future but he wasn't sure what effects it would have on the ozone layer. He was trying to tell the class that we needed the ozone layer and without it every living organism would die...crazy Physics teacher always good for a laugh 
Glad there's someone who knows what an SUV is for.Timepass said:
Now I wouldn't mind SUVs as much if most people used them for their proper purpose, which is things like you mentioned. I think all cars can go off-road to some extent as cars are designed with safety factor in mind. But I can understand why people wouldn't want to do that with a normal car.
The thing that really pisses me off about SUVs are vehicles like Hummers, which can't even off-road decently and get really poor gas mileage, and the large majority of people who buy an SUV that will spend its whole life never leaving pavement.
There's also those trucks now that have been SUVized and can carry 5 people + a decent load. Quad cab? Extended cab? Forget the name, but they exist.
And back to the topic of this thread:
How about hemp oil? Hemp has a ton of uses besides oil, and can grow where other plants can't.
OutThere said:
Yeah, and can nobody give a downside to using biodiesel? I really don't get why it isn't used now.
I first heard of it from this board, actually, and now that I've read about it and did some research, it really seems like the answer today.
I think electricity, generally, is the way to go. Generating it, however, is another kettle of fish. Be it by wind, water, sunshine or forcing inmates to pedal on dynamos all day long - it's all fine by me.
Hey, if I could use the same charger to charge my car and my laptop that'd be even cooler.
Hey, if I could use the same charger to charge my car and my laptop that'd be even cooler.
I think this information may help you out
Have you ever heard of HHO fuel that has got to be the best way to save on gas prices? Imagine the savings. It will cost you about $160, or two tanks of gas to install an HHO conversion kit
Hydrogen Car Kit - Save Money and Improve MPG Massively
Hydrogen car kit empowers your car to run on water and avoid oil as fuel. A vehicle however will not be able to run on water alone. There needs to be a mixture of gasoline and water to enable it to run smoothly.
Even the Water Fuel Conversion Kits - How Using Water As Fuel Helps Cut Your Gas Consumption Recently,there is increased awareness among many drivers of a technology that uses plain water tosupplement the cars' gasoline consumption. Called a water fuel conversion kit, it is a simpleadd-on to your current car engine that uses your car battery to carry out an
electrolysis on water to produce Hydroxy gas (HHO). This Hydroxy gas is used to supplement the burning ofgasoline in the car's engine.
Hydrogen generator kit for car can be better than gasoline or oil additives to raise gas mileage. When you make or do it on your own, you can save money on gas but will save lots of dollars on the kit and reproduce the system for other automobiles on your own.
saving money should be what everyonr thinks off and I have done this by using all ideas from
my sites - http://carwaterguide.blogspot.com
I purchased the available eBooks that teach you how to run your car on water and installed one on my "chevy 350 small block," it's pretty easy.
The only time you can extract power from the motion of the car is when you slow the car. Hybrids today use regenerative brakes.
ANy time you remove energy from the car you will slow it. That's just simple physics
The down side is easy. You have to make the bio-fuel by first growing crops and this takes energy for the tractors, harvesters and so on and to make and transport the fertilizer. Then you have to tie up some expensive land for many months. So there is a cost involved. Yes it "grows on trees" so to speak but the trees are not free.
On the other hand fossil fuels are already in the ground and all you need to do is pump it to the surface. This costs money too. But right now it only costs $110 a barrel for the crude oil. Have you ever bought cooking oil? it cost s LOT more than $110 a barrel.
That is the problem with almost all alternative fuels, they cost more than crude oil. Only when the government substizes the price to they become cost effective. But wait. wait a few more years and oil will be $200 a barrel.
Don't get my wrong. I prefer electric power and think this is what we will all use in the end. The diesel electric car will be a stop gap until fuel cells are mature and cheap. But the real solution will take a generation. Today we live far from work because when we bought the house fuels was cheap. Are cities are designed for cars and require cars because fuel is cheap. With no cheap fuel cities will be rebuilt. But the process is very slow and can take 50 to 100 years.
I think ultimately, electricity is the answer. Electric motors are already more efficient and powerful than gasoline engines. Look at the Tesla roadster. The thing goes like 0-60 in 5 seconds, all from an electric motor the size of a watermelon that two men can carry around. Its top end speed isn't as high as a gasoline engine but the top end is still way above the legal speed limit in any state (want to say the top speed is somewhere around 100mph). They also have fewer moving parts, are more reliable, need little if any lubrication, and so forth.
The ONLY problem with electric vehicles right now is batteries. Ranges have gotten better, the Tesla Roadster can go around 225 miles on a charge, but they still aren't great. Further, to me, the main problem is that you can't just stop and "fill 'er up." Charging an electric vehicle generally takes several hours. So even if the range increased to, say, 350 miles, the car would still be useless for things like long distance road trips. Where you'd stop at a gas station for 5 minutes with a gasoline car, you'd have to stop overnight for an electric.
How to get around this is the question. I've heard capacitors mentioned. A "swappable" battery system could be developed, whereby every car uses the same battery and you would roll into a station, back up, and a machine would swap it out. You'd get a fresh battery and yours would go on a charger for someone else to get later. Or, we could begin to have overhead electric lines of the type many buses run on today.
The other problem, is right now, you need a house to own an electric car, as most people living in condos or apartments don't have a place to plug their car in. So, oddly enough, in the area where current limited-range electric vehicles would be most useful, namely, urban areas, they are largely unusable.
DEspite these challenges, I really think electric is the future. The advantage is the technology of the motor itself is highly developed and highly efficient. The other advantage is there are any number of ways to generate electricity. Personally, I see us using nuclear as a stop-gap until solar, wind, and others become more viable.
The ONLY problem with electric vehicles right now is batteries. Ranges have gotten better, the Tesla Roadster can go around 225 miles on a charge, but they still aren't great. Further, to me, the main problem is that you can't just stop and "fill 'er up." Charging an electric vehicle generally takes several hours. So even if the range increased to, say, 350 miles, the car would still be useless for things like long distance road trips. Where you'd stop at a gas station for 5 minutes with a gasoline car, you'd have to stop overnight for an electric.
How to get around this is the question. I've heard capacitors mentioned. A "swappable" battery system could be developed, whereby every car uses the same battery and you would roll into a station, back up, and a machine would swap it out. You'd get a fresh battery and yours would go on a charger for someone else to get later. Or, we could begin to have overhead electric lines of the type many buses run on today.
The other problem, is right now, you need a house to own an electric car, as most people living in condos or apartments don't have a place to plug their car in. So, oddly enough, in the area where current limited-range electric vehicles would be most useful, namely, urban areas, they are largely unusable.
DEspite these challenges, I really think electric is the future. The advantage is the technology of the motor itself is highly developed and highly efficient. The other advantage is there are any number of ways to generate electricity. Personally, I see us using nuclear as a stop-gap until solar, wind, and others become more viable.