Hybrid Cars Are a Swindle

Hybrid Cars Are a Swindle

Advertised at 55 mpg, you'll be lucky to get half that. Whatever you save
on gasoline you will spend ten times that on battery replacements..

If Hybrids were so good, why can't they stand on their own merits? Why
does it take a $3000 Government substidy on each and every one of them to
make them saleable? Try to answer those questions and you will quickly
find yourself in agreement that hybrids are a fraud.

Why is the Government a party to a swindle? Every substidy is a tax on
every taxpaying citizen who is forced to pay for a part of some elses' car.
Does that sound fair to you?

The Government needs to get out of the car selling business. You can see
what happens when they do: They artificially prop up a new technology
which is questionable at best. Come to think about it, Government doesn't
do art well, either. They won't allow nudity which is the basis of all
early Church art. And they don't do religion well, either. Go into a
Goverment Church on a Military Base and you are hard pressed to find a
Bible -- what you will see is an interdemoniational prayer book with all
good stuff like the witch burning, slave master rules, and the like
removed. Now since I've proved that Government can't do art and religion,
that proves they can't do automotive eniggerneering as well; thus, the
proof that hybrid cars are a sure loser.

The free market must decide on the merits of the hybrid car, not
politicians who know nothing other than how to schmooz.

What bugs me is why doesn't the Government promote a real good proven
economy engine like the diesel? They should mandate it be a gear driven
camshaft so if the timing belt breaks, the piston domes and valve heads
don't kiss each other to death. And they should mandate that it be an all
mechanical design without all the wires and solenoids, CPUs and more
electronic junk that make the newer diesels no better on reliability than
gas models. If a Briggs and Stratton powered lawn mower can work without a
battery, then so should your car. I bet half the stranded cars are due to
exhausted batteries. The rest are due to broken or skipped timing belts,
blown head gaskets, ruptured hoses, and fagged out fuel pumps, all of which
should be addressed by mandatory government engineering standards. I left
out a few items of lesser importance, but requiring a little more thinking
effort, which is beyond the current Government capabilities.

 

| Hybrid Cars Are a Swindle
|
| Advertised at 55 mpg, you'll be lucky to get half that. Whatever you save
| on gasoline you will spend ten times that on battery replacements..
|
| If Hybrids were so good, why can't they stand on their own merits? Why
| does it take a $3000 Government substidy on each and every one of them to
| make them saleable? Try to answer those questions and you will quickly
| find yourself in agreement that hybrids are a fraud.
|
| Why is the Government a party to a swindle? Every substidy is a tax on
| every taxpaying citizen who is forced to pay for a part of some elses' car.
| Does that sound fair to you?
|
| The Government needs to get out of the car selling business. You can see
| what happens when they do: They artificially prop up a new technology
| which is questionable at best. Come to think about it, Government doesn't
| do art well, either. They won't allow nudity which is the basis of all
| early Church art. And they don't do religion well, either. Go into a
| Goverment Church on a Military Base and you are hard pressed to find a
| Bible -- what you will see is an interdemoniational prayer book with all
| good stuff like the witch burning, slave master rules, and the like
| removed. Now since I've proved that Government can't do art and religion,
| that proves they can't do automotive eniggerneering as well; thus, the
| proof that hybrid cars are a sure loser.
|
| The free market must decide on the merits of the hybrid car, not
| politicians who know nothing other than how to schmooz.
|
| What bugs me is why doesn't the Government promote a real good proven
| economy engine like the diesel? They should mandate it be a gear driven
| camshaft so if the timing belt breaks, the piston domes and valve heads
| don't kiss each other to death. And they should mandate that it be an all
| mechanical design without all the wires and solenoids, CPUs and more
| electronic junk that make the newer diesels no better on reliability than
| gas models. If a Briggs and Stratton powered lawn mower can work without a
| battery, then so should your car. I bet half the stranded cars are due to
| exhausted batteries. The rest are due to broken or skipped timing belts,
| blown head gaskets, ruptured hoses, and fagged out fuel pumps, all of which
| should be addressed by mandatory government engineering standards. I left
| out a few items of lesser importance, but requiring a little more thinking
| effort, which is beyond the current Government capabilities.
|

Wow, something worthwhile in this post!

 

Settle down, Nomen. Perhaps during your lifetime, you will notice this
world has run out of a non-renewable resource (fossil fuel) and you will be
very pleased to know that years before, the governments decided to
experiment in alternate sources of power for vehicles. Then, you'll look
back and say 'Man, I wish I could get that post back I wrote to the
newsgroup about hybrid cars'.

Live long and prosper.
Arthur

 

Although most of Nomen's post is a pile of crap, Hybrid cars make very
little difference in the rate of consumption of fossil fuels. For highway
use, their gas mileage compared to standard economy cars is almost
the same. Take for example the much-vaunted Toyota Prius, compared
to the Toyota Echo:

Echo: 41MPG with a 1500cc 100Hp engine,
Prius: 51Mpg with a 76Hp 1500 cc engine.

It's pretty obvious that the primary reason the Prius gets better gas
mileage is
that the engine has LESS HORSEPOWER. So it burns less fuel. If you
knocked 25 HP off the Echo engine it would probably get the same mileage
rating.
And that's not even assuming the Echo weight was lightened up to that of the
Prius's.

If you were to buy an Echo and drive it highway, like an old grandma, gentle
accelleration and not put your foot in it, the mileage of the Echo would
probably
be the same as the Prius. And do you know why? It's because most of the
gas savings of a hybrid are due to the energy of braking being put back into
the
batteries, then used later.

And let's look at the math, shall we?

The Echo lists at $10K, the Prius lists at $20K. Assume the longevity of
the cars are the same - 150,000 miles. Assume gasoline is $2.00 a gallon.
That gives fuel costs for the Echo at 4.8 cents a mile highway miles, for
the Prius it's 3.9 cents a mile highway miles.

Thus, for an Echo to reach it's service life on highway miles will cost you
$7,200 in fuel. For a Prius to reach it's service life will cost you $5,850
in fuel costs. That's a difference of $1,350

So, in summary, assuming repair costs are equivalent and both cars are
used for highway commuting, your going to spend $10,000 extra for the
Prius in order to save $1300 in fuel costs, over the lifespan of the car.

Pretty stupid.

It's clear that hybrid technology is really a waste of money for small
economy
cars. Where it makes the most sense is if your going to be using massive,
heavy,
SUV's and such for city driving, because in that situation, due to the
weight,
the amount of energy lost to braking is enormous compared to a lightweight
economy car. But I challenge anyone to do the math - the savings aren't
what
you think they are going to be.

There is also the question of the fossil fuel used in the manufacture of the
vehicle,
and of the parts used by the vehicle during it's service life. Remember,
all batteries
self-discharge over time, and as a result, they gradually degrade. Battery
pack replacements for the Prius, far from the manufacturers optimistic
assumptions,
are going to be time-based. It is unlikely that the number of
charge/discharge
cycles are going to have anything to do with it. The Prius uses battery
packs that
store a huge amount and the amount of energy scavenged from braking and
fed out again is only a small percentage of the capacity of the battery, as
a result
the battery hardly notices it. A typical NiMH battery is rated for at least
1000
charge-dischage cycles, but that rating assumes a complete discharge and a
recharge from ground zero. In a hybrid car that is used 4-6 days a week,
the battery
pack isn't ever going to go below 80% capacity, it's not going to approach
the
rated number of charge/discharge cycles in 200,000 miles. Instead, what
your
going to see is that every year the battery will get weaker and weaker, and
the
car's computer will compensate for this so the upshot is that the only thing
you
will notice is that your gas mileage gets lower and lower. By the time you
realize
the battery is shot, it's going to be past the 7 year mark on the warranty
and
your going to be paying for a new battery pack. If you are driving that
150,000
miles in 7 years time, then great - your going to have the car beat to shit
by the
time the battery pack is shot. But if your like everyone else and you do
your
150-200 miles over a decade or longer, then your going to have to assume
that
your going to have to do at least 1 battery pack replacement during that
time.
And I have to ask, how much fossil fuel is going to be consumed making a
new battery pack and recycling the old one?

If you really want to break the fossil fuel dependency for vehicle fuel, the
only
way to do it is to switch to a renewable fuel source. Alcohol isn't it. If
every
car in the United States ran on pure alcolhol, our entire food crop would be
going into making alcohol and we would starve. And the food crop that makes
it depends on fertillizer - which is produced from ammonia which comes
from -
you guessed it - fossil fuels (natural gas and air) - and from mining. So
once
again, you are dependent on non-renewable resources.

hydrogen also isn't it either. Hydrogen comes from the decomposition of
water
and that is done either by fossil fuels, or by electricity - which has to
come from
somewhere. To manufacture enough hydrogen to support motor vehicles in this
country we would have to burn an enormous amount fossil fuel, we couldn't
get
it from solar cells.

Consider that every time you manufacture a fuel from the burning of another
fuel,
you have a huge efficiency loss.

The only real solution to breaking the dependency on fossil fuels is the
electric
car. Electrics make the most sense as we already have a power distribution
network that at night is running at a very low capacity. Vehicles can
easily
be charged at night and used during the day, the power grid can easily
support
it. Of course, you still have the question of where does the extra
electricity come
from - but nuclear energy is the obvious choice here, that is why France has
a
big breeder reactor program. It is probably likely that we will develop a
usable fusion reactor in the next 100 years. Even wind power if we put
enough
wind farms in, could probably generate enough electricity for motor vehicle
travel in the world. There has also been some ideas for generating power
from
the temperature difference in the water in the ocean, the higher layers of
water
are warmer and the lower layers are cooler, and it is possible to build a
generator
that makes use of this.

And additionally, all of this is completely ignoring the issue of what about
air
travel? The problem here is that only a liquid fuel like jet fuel has the
amount
of power in the lightweight mass that makes air travel a commercial
possibility.
That is why nobody has built an electric plane. We are going to see fossil
fuels
become far more valuable as aviation fuels than as land vehicle fuels, long
before
we actually run out of oil.

Ted

 

Although most of Nomen's post is a pile of crap, Hybrid cars make very
little difference in the rate of consumption of fossil fuels. For highway
use, their gas mileage compared to standard economy cars is almost
the same. Take for example the much-vaunted Toyota Prius, compared
to the Toyota Echo:

Echo: 41MPG with a 1500cc 100Hp engine,
Prius: 51Mpg with a 76Hp 1500 cc engine.

It's pretty obvious that the primary reason the Prius gets better gas
mileage is
that the engine has LESS HORSEPOWER. So it burns less fuel. If you
knocked 25 HP off the Echo engine it would probably get the same mileage
rating.
And that's not even assuming the Echo weight was lightened up to that of the
Prius's.

If you were to buy an Echo and drive it highway, like an old grandma, gentle
accelleration and not put your foot in it, the mileage of the Echo would
probably
be the same as the Prius. And do you know why? It's because most of the
gas savings of a hybrid are due to the energy of braking being put back into
the
batteries, then used later.

And let's look at the math, shall we?

The Echo lists at $10K, the Prius lists at $20K. Assume the longevity of
the cars are the same - 150,000 miles. Assume gasoline is $2.00 a gallon.
That gives fuel costs for the Echo at 4.8 cents a mile highway miles, for
the Prius it's 3.9 cents a mile highway miles.

Thus, for an Echo to reach it's service life on highway miles will cost you
$7,200 in fuel. For a Prius to reach it's service life will cost you $5,850
in fuel costs. That's a difference of $1,350

So, in summary, assuming repair costs are equivalent and both cars are
used for highway commuting, your going to spend $10,000 extra for the
Prius in order to save $1300 in fuel costs, over the lifespan of the car.

Pretty stupid.

It's clear that hybrid technology is really a waste of money for small
economy
cars. Where it makes the most sense is if your going to be using massive,
heavy,
SUV's and such for city driving, because in that situation, due to the
weight,
the amount of energy lost to braking is enormous compared to a lightweight
economy car. But I challenge anyone to do the math - the savings aren't
what
you think they are going to be.

There is also the question of the fossil fuel used in the manufacture of the
vehicle,
and of the parts used by the vehicle during it's service life. Remember,
all batteries
self-discharge over time, and as a result, they gradually degrade. Battery
pack replacements for the Prius, far from the manufacturers optimistic
assumptions,
are going to be time-based. It is unlikely that the number of
charge/discharge
cycles are going to have anything to do with it. The Prius uses battery
packs that
store a huge amount and the amount of energy scavenged from braking and
fed out again is only a small percentage of the capacity of the battery, as
a result
the battery hardly notices it. A typical NiMH battery is rated for at least
1000
charge-dischage cycles, but that rating assumes a complete discharge and a
recharge from ground zero. In a hybrid car that is used 4-6 days a week,
the battery
pack isn't ever going to go below 80% capacity, it's not going to approach
the
rated number of charge/discharge cycles in 200,000 miles. Instead, what
your
going to see is that every year the battery will get weaker and weaker, and
the
car's computer will compensate for this so the upshot is that the only thing
you
will notice is that your gas mileage gets lower and lower. By the time you
realize
the battery is shot, it's going to be past the 7 year mark on the warranty
and
your going to be paying for a new battery pack. If you are driving that
150,000
miles in 7 years time, then great - your going to have the car beat to shit
by the
time the battery pack is shot. But if your like everyone else and you do
your
150-200 miles over a decade or longer, then your going to have to assume
that
your going to have to do at least 1 battery pack replacement during that
time.
And I have to ask, how much fossil fuel is going to be consumed making a
new battery pack and recycling the old one?

If you really want to break the fossil fuel dependency for vehicle fuel, the
only
way to do it is to switch to a renewable fuel source. Alcohol isn't it. If
every
car in the United States ran on pure alcolhol, our entire food crop would be
going into making alcohol and we would starve. And the food crop that makes
it depends on fertillizer - which is produced from ammonia which comes
from -
you guessed it - fossil fuels (natural gas and air) - and from mining. So
once
again, you are dependent on non-renewable resources.

hydrogen also isn't it either. Hydrogen comes from the decomposition of
water
and that is done either by fossil fuels, or by electricity - which has to
come from
somewhere. To manufacture enough hydrogen to support motor vehicles in this
country we would have to burn an enormous amount fossil fuel, we couldn't
get
it from solar cells.

Consider that every time you manufacture a fuel from the burning of another
fuel,
you have a huge efficiency loss.

The only real solution to breaking the dependency on fossil fuels is the
electric
car. Electrics make the most sense as we already have a power distribution
network that at night is running at a very low capacity. Vehicles can
easily
be charged at night and used during the day, the power grid can easily
support
it. Of course, you still have the question of where does the extra
electricity come
from - but nuclear energy is the obvious choice here, that is why France has
a
big breeder reactor program. It is probably likely that we will develop a
usable fusion reactor in the next 100 years. Even wind power if we put
enough
wind farms in, could probably generate enough electricity for motor vehicle
travel in the world. There has also been some ideas for generating power
from
the temperature difference in the water in the ocean, the higher layers of
water
are warmer and the lower layers are cooler, and it is possible to build a
generator
that makes use of this.

And additionally, all of this is completely ignoring the issue of what about
air
travel? The problem here is that only a liquid fuel like jet fuel has the
amount
of power in the lightweight mass that makes air travel a commercial
possibility.
That is why nobody has built an electric plane. We are going to see fossil
fuels
become far more valuable as aviation fuels than as land vehicle fuels, long
before
we actually run out of oil.

Ted

 

You forgot to add the 67 hp from the electric motor. What is the
performance differential between the two cars? Wouldn't that be a more
important statistic that how much horsepower the engine has?

No. It doesn't run the engine while you are at a stop sign, stop light,
etc. That's why it gets better city MPG numbers.

So it burns less fuel. If you

The Prius is a much nicer car than the Echo. The Ford Escape hybrid is
about $3000 more than the standard version and are claiming a serious
improvement in fuel economy over the standard model.

Most people don't drive on the highway everyday. A better comparison
would be city driving. How much "highway" driving are you doing while
bumper to bumper on the highway in LA?

If people can argue about a 0.03 MPG reduction by the use of daytime
running lights, saving $1,350 in fuel doesn't seem unreasonable.

Then I guess Toyota, Ford, GM, etc have it all wrong. They must like
throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars.

And just what are the resources that are used and in what quantity? If
you're really concerned about resources used in construction, wouldn't
it make the most sense just to build less cars?

It is unlikely that the number of

Why not? These batteries don't have a memory like NiCads do. Battery
technology is rapidly improving. In 5 years we will have smaller,
lighter batteries with higher capacity.

And you know this how?

By the time you

Everyone else? I live in the motor city. Hardly anyone drives a 10
year old car around here. Where do you think all these new cars they
are making go?

How much? Maybe a lot, maybe a little. You don't know.

<snip>

 

$3000 subsidy? can you provide a source for this information?

I only am aware of an individual US income tax deduction of $1500 for
a purchase of a Honda Insight, Honda Civic Hybrid, or a Toyota Prius
in calendar/tax year 2004. Depending on your income tax bracket, that
equates to maybe $150-$525 off of your income taxes for that year.
See IRS Publication 535, chapter 12, for information on the
Clean-Fueled Vehicle tax deduction. or:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/block/2004-01-13-ym_x.htm

I know that Toyota has stated that they are making a profit on each
Prius, and there is typically a several-month waiting list at dealers
for a new Prius, which sells at MSRP or at some places with an
"availability surcharge" of several thousand over MSRP.

Oh, and at least try to compare similar cars... A manual-transmission
Echo, which is an LEV and is only a Compact sedan, really shouldn't be
compared to an eCVT Prius, which is an AT-PZEV and a Midsize liftback.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/19678.shtml
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/19813.shtml

 

You probably won't make many friends by advocating nuclear power, but it is
a proven, efficient, reliable and (mostly) non-polluting source of energy.
It still relies on non-renewables--even with breeders or with
fusion--although the limits far exceed the available fossil fuels. Getting
people in the US to accept nuclear power as the primary source of
energy--and it makes a lot of sense to go that route--is going to be as
difficult, though, as getting them to give up horsepower, which is a big
selling point in most car ads today and always has been.

The simple fact is that electric cars will have to depend on batteries,
which just don't have the energy concentration per unit of time over a long
time period that internal combustion engines do. In other words, they may
be able to provide 300 horsepower or more, but only for a few minutes. Then
you'll have to recharge them. That was the problem with the diesel-electric
submarines that could crawl around, submerged, for 24-48 hours on battery
power but couldn't maintain high speeds for more than a few hours before
being forced to surface to recharge their depleted batteries.

Getting back to nuclear power, I have an old physics book from the '50s
with a picture of a scientist standing next to a reactor built for the
home. It stands about 10 feet tall and about 7 feet wide and, in the
wide-eyed optimism of that era, was actually proposed as a viable
individual power source for the everyday homeowner. Although quite possible
and even reasonable--given the times--it never got to market, for some
reason. ;^>

Anyway, you make some very cogent points in your post, most of which will
probably not be very popular. But those points have to be made if we're
ever to wean ourselves from our appetite for fossil fuels as energy
sources, which we will eventually have to do. Oil is simply too precious to
be burned.

 

"If a Briggs and Stratton powered lawn mower can work without a battery,
then so should your car."
Really? And you want to buy a car that you have to start with a
pull-rope???
~ Paul
aka "Tha Driver"

Giggle Cream - it makes dessert *funny*!

 

The electric motor is driven from power generated from the gas engine,
and yes you are correct it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

heh. The entire example was on highway mileage, not city mileage. Yes
the Prius gets better city mileage - if you make a whole bunch of
assumptions
about city driving, the primary one being that your spending a huge amount
of time at stop signs and lights. This may be true of LA but not all
cities.

And even in how you drive in a city matters. If you have a one way grid
with synchronized lights (as in many cities) and the lights are synched at
25Mph,
and you drive either a prius or a gas car at 25Mph through them, the fuel
used will be the same. If you however stamp on the gas and drive 50Mph
for a block then slam on the brakes, wait a few seconds for the light to
change,
then stamp on the gas and slam on the brakes through the next block, and
you keep doing this through the 20 or so blocks you are traveling through,
why then the Prius will use far less fuel.

That is an extreme example of course but the point is that driver habits in
city driving account for a great deal of the lost gas mileage in city
driving.

I get this logic though - it's in the same family as "save $100 on the
new TV set
(that normally costs $500)" when our existing TV set is perfectly good. So
I spend $400 to save $100.

I do understand that the majority of the US population has bought off on
this
poop argument, though.

Ah, the old argument of "well the automakers are spending a lot of money on
hybrids so they must know something we don't" Well, yes, they do.

What the automakers know is that sooner or later they will be forced to
remove SUV's from the light truck classification and put them in the
passenger
car classification, which is where they should have been years ago. Then
CAFE will come down like a ton of bricks.

Hybrid technology is really aimed at the larger SUV's and such, for one
thing
with a larger and heavier car the benefits are increased over pure gasoline,
and
for another the price difference isn't as great, and economically it makes
more sense. Detroit's game is to fight any demand to raise CAFE and once
they get all their SUV's hybrid, then they will be ready for a
reclassification of
the SUV, and it won't shut down production.

But none of this means hybrid vehicles are anything more than a bridge
technology.

Yes, it would make perfect sense. If everyone did as I do and simply
maintained
their vehicles for 20 years/250,000 miles minimum, instead of towing them to
the wrecking yard at 175,000 miles because they need a new engine, we would
save a whole lot more energy.

The wrecking yards (at least here) are full of vehicle bodies that have
blown
transmissions, blown engines, and paint falling off, but the interiors are
still good
and are stright, having never been in an accident.

You can go to a yard and buy one of those for $400, tow it to a tech
and have the engine and trans replaced with rebuilt units for about $5000,
and
then drive it to a body shop and have it repainted for $3000, add tires
for $500 and misc suspension and other misc bullshit parts for another
$1000,
and for a grand total of $10,000 you can have the equivalent of a new
vehicle.
And you can do this with just about any body style, size, make you want, and
have it done in any color you want, they are all represented.

If people did this we would reduce a huge amount of energy consumption,
we would also greatly enhance our own local economies because that money
would be dumped into local instead of being sent to an oveseas automaker
for a new car.

Commercial have been doing this for years, you don't see wreckers littered
with semitrucks, do you?

But your dealing with people's perceptions. Most people that are buying
cars
don't understand how they work. So they won't do this, even though it would
save them money and get a better car.

Which simply builds the case for going all electric and dispensing with
hybrids
alltogether.

Part of my job is dealing with a lot of equipment that uses many different
batteries.
This is stuff that I have to know for that, and what I have observed as
well. And
it is all information that is readily available on the Internet if you just
look for it.
There ain't any big secrets here.

Sure, maybe the new Lithium Ion batteries are going to turn out to be the
miracle
batteries we have all been waiting for. But as for NiMH, forget it. It's
not that
much better than lead acid. And the worst of it is that each new battery
chemistry
that comes down the pike is more and more picky about how it's recharged.
Gone are the days of just hooking a transformer and diode to a timer and
plugging
it into the battery.

The Rust Belt. But Detroit has a fixation that the rest of the country
consumes
cars at the same rate that the Rust Belt does.

Why do you think the salaries on the East Coast are higher anywhere else
than
perhaps California? Outside the Rust Belt and CA, the rest of the country
doesen't have
the economy for everyone to buy a new car every 7 years. Don't forget that
while salaries and expenses in LA are higher than many other places, a new
car
sells for the same dollar amount there that it does in those other places.
So,
if your in LA or in New York it costs you less of a percentage of your total
income
to buy a new car, than it does for someone in someplace like Boise, ID for
example.

Neither does Toyota, or anyone else. Nobody I have seen has done any kind
of
detailed analysis of this type. Everyone seems to assume that the only way
to
reduce dependency on foreign oil is to increase gas mileage of vehicles.
Nobody
wants to look at things like mandating smaller vehicles, reducing the number
of
miles the average person drives, (doubling or tripling fuel prices would do
this, as
Europe has discovered) decreasing the volume of used cars going into the
waste
stream, etc.

Ted

 

Energy, yes, but not liquid fuel - unless your willing to accept the
terrible
conversion losses of decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen then
burning it again in a vehicle. Of course with nuclear, you have so much
extra energy that you can probably tolerate that.

There isn't going to be a choice. Once the Saudi fields are pumped dry
- which will happen ultimately, as the oil reserves there are not infinite -
your going to see gasoline in the $10/gallon (in todays dollars) range.
Petroleum products will become more valuable for their lubricating qualities
than for fuel.

When that happens, we will switch over our oil-fired power generators
to our coal reserves, as polluting as they are, to take care of the electric
power generation problem. And heavy freight movement - ie: rail - will
probably end up going
back to use of coal, after all, they all originally were coal burners in the
beginning.
Most likely the environmentalists will screech at this one, because you
won't be
able to fit a full set of scrubbers on a train engine, but they won't have
much
choice.

And as for air travel, that's probably going to end up splitting into 2
factions
- hydrogen burners that don't carry an oxydizer and
use atmosphere, and are prop-driven planes, that is where the business
travel, and individual travel will end up. It will be slower, yes, but it
will
be affordable. And hydro burner jets that carry an oxydizer, that will be
the only way to get enough power for a jet. There may be a few specialized
ground-to-orbital planes that carry one-shot solid propellants, and such
but that will be niche. And this is also where biodiesel might come into
play,
if it could be refined into jet fuel. Air travel is really going to be a
big
question mark when petroleum runs out.

But as for car and truck vehicle travel, that is a different story. The US
population will then be given 2 choices:

1) Nuclear power plants that create enough power to generate the
huge quantities of liquid hydrogen, that will serve as motor vehicle fuel.
That can easily do all vehicle and truck traffic - but if you have a serious
accident on a freeway and someone's liquid hydrogen tank gets compromised,
it's going to explode and take out all vehicles in a 1000 yard radius,
totally
incinerate them. Also, all gas stations will have to be retrofitted, it is
likely also that self-serve fueling will be gone, as the chances of a spark
in the vicinity of a hydrogen refuel will be too serious to allow the
general
public to touch it. I could go on, but suffice it to say that there are
some
serious issues with hydrogen powered vehicles.

2) Wind plants that pour enough power into the grid so that we can go to all
electric vehicles. You will see curtailment of large semitrucks for
interstate traffic, a lot of that freight is going to end up going to rail.
There will probably be a big increase in short hopper electric
railroads, as well as commuter railroads and subways. bus service
will probably be curtailed as governments try forcing people into
rail and subways. And on a personal note, your going to see extremely
serious attention given to vehicle parking spots. Gone will be the
days where some irresponsible bozo can pop up a 50 unit apartment
complex that has no assigned parking, and tell people to stick it out
on the street parking.

And if battery technology hasn't quite made it yet, people will have to
do some serious planning of trips, this will force everyone to be more
regimented about driving.

Given a choice between the personal freedom of owning a car, or being
dependent on mass transit, people will take a car even if the only way they
can take it is to accept that they simply cannot drive more than 200
miles without a 6 hour recharge.

Battery technology isn't as bad as you think. The GM EV-1 with the NiMH
battery pack was rated at 75-130 miles per charge. And recharge time was
6-8 hours at 220 volts. They could have easily designed it so that you
could
put in a secondary battery pack to double the range, if you gave up your
trunk
space. And by increasing the charger to 12 kilowatt they could have kept
the 6-8 hour recharge time even for the secondary battery pack.

Granted, this was a 2 seater. But you can see that even a minivan the size
of
a Grand Caravan could be done up as an electric vehicle with todays battery
technology, if it's intended use was purely in-city driving.

And it's finite. There is really no point in continuing the fossil-fuel
infrastructure
for vehicle traffic once we found out that it isn't sustainable over the
long haul.
There's a very great number of people in the rest of the world that are not
anywhere
near the level of vehicle usage that the United States is. The longer we
put off
switching away from fossil fuel dependency, the more of them are going to be
like
us, using the same fossil fuels, and the quicker that those fuels are going
to be
pumped and dug out.

It really would have been far better for all concerned if the amount of
recoverable oil
in the world was far, far less than what it is. If we had pumped the US
reserves
to a trickle back in 1925, and the rest of the world had run nearly dry then
as well, one
could possibly argue that Nazi Germany would never have been able to develop
the industrial base that enabled them to trigger WWII, and the world would
not have
had the fuel to power such a war anyway, the US would never have developed
the
network of road infrastructure that it did, and that we would all be riding
across the
country on bullet trains. Additionally, fertillizer production would have
been far less,
as a result global food production would have been far less, and it might be
that the world's population would still be at 1950 levels.

Ted

 

While I agree with your sentiment, this just isn't true. A car has many
components beyond the drivetrain and suspension. My 1996 GV is still on
its original drivetrain and most of its suspension pieces, although I
just replaced the sway bar bushings and one ball joint at 154,000 miles.
However, the rear washer is inop due to a dead output on the body
control computer, the cassette player doesn't work, the dash is now
developing a few squeaks and rattles, and I have to make at least a
couple of repairs a year now on various accessories (wiper motor just a
couple of months ago), etc.

I drove OTR trucks many years ago and, yes, the major components are
rebuilt and the trucks run for 20+ years and well over 1,000,000 miles.
However, I also spent 4-8 hours EVERY Saturday working on little
things on the truck to get it through the next week. Lights, switches,
wiring, hoses, door handles, etc. Something needed work every weekend
in addition to the normal maintenance we performed on the weekend.

I believe in running cars until they virtually collapse, and it is
cheaper dollar-wise to do so, but at some point my time becomes the more
important factor. The reality is that a 10 year-old car takes more time
to keep on the road than a new car, unless you get a real lemon. And a
20 year-old car takes even more time, on average.


Matt

 

Based on my experience in big cities (Baltimore-Washington DC,
Minneapolis and Detroit) it's a logical assumption that you are sitting
around a lot. This is obviously not true if you live in a rural area.

Only if you're not also constrained by the 800 cars in front of you.

Possibly. But it's my opinion the "bridge" solution is better than
nothing at all.

This is exactly what my grandfather did with his last car. It's what I
did with my first car. It's a lot of work.

The big problem I see with this is that you have to deal with a repair
shop. Most people have a hard enough time getting one thing fixed right
on their car. Now imagine what is going to happen when they need the
whole car rebuilt. Who do they go to when something goes wrong?

But a semi costs a lot more than a new car, hence there is more
incentive to repair/maintain what you have.

<snip>

I know that after about 10 years, I'm ready for a new car. Sure, I
could replace the drivetrain, but I'm still stuck with a 10 year old
car. It still has 10 year old rattles, 10 year old smells etc.

<snip>

 

After 10 years I'm about ready for a new car too. Only in my case it
will have 18 year old smells and rattles

My current van had 275,000km on it when I bought it and replaced the
engine, and shortly after, the transmission. It is a 1996 model, and
by 3013 I'll definitely be ready for something different.

My wife's last car was six years old when we bought it ten years ago.
New cyl heads and transmission over the years, but it's still in
pretty good shape. With any luck someone will get another 5 or more
years out of it.
It won't be me or my wife. Bought an 8 year old car to replace it.
Should keep the missus happy for another 5-10 years.

 

The prices I was waving around was for getting someone else to do the
work, not you. It certainly wouldn't cost me $5000 to replace an engine
and trans with a rebuilt as I would be doing the labor. But to get someone
else to do it, what work is that? What - spending a couple hours driving
from one shop to another is a lot of work?

If resale values of cars like in Kelly Blue Book were based on the true
condition of the vehicle rather than straight depreciation over time, things
would be a lot different. Blue Book and the used car industry prefers to
base used
vehicle values on the age, mileage, and initial sale value of the car, with
a
small amount of the value controlled by different options that are present.
Run the KBB website for a couple hours and input a lot of vehicles and
different ages and you will see this. The used car industry does this for
a particulary obvious reason - if they get in a 5 year old used car that has
low mileage, but those miles were all driven on gravel roads with huge
potholes,
and owned by a person that thought an oil change is when you wash your
hair, the used car industry wants to do a minimal cosmetic cleanup job
on the vehicle then sell it for high dollars as-is. Used vehicle purchasers
are finally beginning to understand this, but still far too few of them pay
for
pre-inspections.

But if it was standard practice for used vehicles to carry their service
history
with them (in the computer) and for all of them to be preinspected, then
prices would be more set on the true condition of the used vehicle, rather
than
the cosmetics and the age. It would make it possible to develop an
industry of auto reclaimers who buy used-up vehicles for a song, replace the
engines/powertrains with new ones, repaint them and then sell them. Since
the
car's value would be high, because it would have a long service life in
front of it, it would make it possible for businesses to exist that would do
this
for other than just niche market cars (like muscle cars)
Then it would be no more work for an individual to buy a "renewed" car than
to buy a new car.

And yes I know that with the current ignorance state of the majority of car
buyers, this is impossible. But the question was - how do we reduce energy
consumption. recycling vehicles in this manner would save a hell of a lot
of energy.

Once more this is a symptom of the piss-poor job we have been doing
educating people in the last 100 years.

Educational cirriculum these days still focuses on stuff like biology,
physics
and chemistry, the so-called cores. None of this stuff is used by most
people.
Instead, stuff like critical thinking, and application stuff like how does a
computer work, how does a car work, how does an electrical power
distribution
network work, and so on, is all ignored.

People today do not know how their communication networks work but they
used them all the time. They do not understand how electric power is
generated
and gotten to them but they use it every day. They do not understand how
water is collected and piped to them, how sewer is piped away from them,
how fuel is refined, and so on and so on. These are all things that are
vital to
existence in modern life but people know nothing about them. But, they
certainly do know all about the names of the latest P.Diddly album, they can
go on Jeopardy and name the last 10 names of the last 10 famous movie
actors, etc. etc. etc. And the schools are still churning out plenty of
philosophy
majors that have no understanding of application, plenty of art majors that
go into vehicle styling but have never held a wrench.

So it is no wonder that so many mechanics that are turned out are crap. It
is no
wonder that so many applicance repair techs are crap. It is no wonder that
so
many computer techs are crap.

There's a giant need for skilled techs to keep all the modern devices in our
modern
society running. And the sad part of it is that manufacturers have found
that most
of the techs fumble-fingering their products out there couldn't repair their
way out
of a paper bag. So the manufacturers have had to defend themselves by
simply
designing products that are either throwaway and dropping prices, or
designing
products that are self-repairing, or designing products that are modular
enough that
you can throw away entire modules rather than troubleshooting them.

We are turning into a society of little children in a great, technically
complex
machine that is far beyond most of us's abilities to control. There's a few
of
us that have figured things out, these are the wizards, and some of that
crowd
are also the embezzlers and credit card criminals. But the rest of us are
babes
and we are helpless.

And this is something to strive for? Very very sad.

Every year it seems to me that new car prices go higher and higher and the
loans to buy them go longer and longer. How high do you think new car
prices
are going to have to get before they cross that threshhold where people have
an incentive to maintain them?

If you have the money to afford this and your not going to shortchange your
future, then go for it. Nothing wrong with that. In the industry of
reclamation
of vehicles I laid out, someone has to create the supply of used vehicles to
reclaim. That person is you. By the time the reclaimers get done with your
10 year old vehicle, while you may be sick of the style, it's going to be
new
for someone else.

Where the energy savings would come from is in reusing the old cars by
repairing
them. Not in reusing them by smashing them flat then melting them then
making
new ones. Obviously your going to have a supply of vehicles that your going
to
be doing this with - crash results, rust buckets, etc. What I'm saying
though is
that a certain percentage of vehicles that are going into the
smash-them-flat
bin today, could be recycled a few more times before ending up in that
smash-them-flat
bin. That is where the energy savings comes from - from that percentage.

Ted

 

I have a 1995 T&C which as you know is very close to your GV. I know
what your referring to - in ours, we just had the passenger electric lock
start getting intermittent. No doubt pulling apart the door and greasing
everything up would fix it. It's got 102,000 miles on it.

But you have to keep in perspective that if you read through the new car
complaints that tons of new car owners have the same kinds of minor
complaints too. These accessories just simply are much more unreliable
on their lifespan. The only difference between you and them is that they
are under warranty so the minor problems are someone elses's problems,
not yours.

Ted

 

Well, I've owned about an equal number of cars bought new and kept a
long time and cars bought used and kept a long time. Without exception,
my cars have given me more nuisance problems as they age. From a purely
economic perspective, the older cars are cheaper to operate. However,
as someone with precious little spare time, spending time working on my
cars or getting them into a dealer for nuisance item repairs is simply
.... a nuisance. There comes a point, typically at about the 10 year age
that it just isn't worth it for me anymore. So, I pass my cars along to
someone with more time and less money and they can probably get another
10 years out of them (my father-in-law is still driving my 1985 Jeep
Comanche). But he's retired and has time to fiddle with it and doesn't
mind that the AC doesn't work, etc., etc.


Matt

 

Well, there ya go, that's the heart of it. Either you regard a car as
purely a
box to take you from point A to point B, for the cheapest price you can get,
or you regard it as something more - I guess you might say you regard it as
both transportation and entertainment/pleasure/whatever. The latter view of
a vehicle is what sells $50K sports cars, and is where the so-called
"american
love affair with the automobile" comes from.

I think that as long as fuel costs are as cheap for the US public as they
are,
that people have the choice of looking at a car from the second perspective.

I would guess that when the oil runs out eventually and fuel prices
skyrocket,
that only the rich will be able to afford to not view a car as purely a box
to move
from point A to point B. This is how it is today for air travel. Most air
passengers care only about how cheap they can get the ticket for.

A/C I regard as a non-nuisance repair. During the summer here, a
non-A/C
vehicle is a safety hazard, the driver is in danger of fainting.

Ted

 

I'm somewhere in between, but closer to the point A to point B
transportation as inexpensively as practical. However, to me the time
spent dealing with nuisance problems isn't worth it at some point. I'll
pay money to save my time. It has nothing to do with considering a car
as entertainment, etc.

Well, here in PA, there are only a few days a year where AC is REALLY
important for driver comfort. It's main use is to make the
defroster/defogger more effective, especially with all of the rain we've
had this year.


Matt