Take up the 1 litre 100 km challenge and be prepared for peak oil
Posted by Luis de Sousa on October 11, 2010 - 10:35am in The Oil Drum: Europe
This is a guest post by Jean-Luc Wingert from ASPO-France. Jean-Luc is a sustainability consultant and author of the book "La vie après le pétrole". He is presently the president of the Association Challenge 1 litre 100km.
Anyone interested in “peak oil” or oil future scarcity knows that transportation is soon going to be a difficult issue. This is one of the main motivations for launching the Challenge 1 litre 100 kilometer contest. It is a car race where participants will have only 1 litre of petrol to travel 100 kilometers. Of course, trying to take up the challenge with your regular car doesn’t make sense. It will be necessary to build a vehicle especially for this contest.
The Challenge 1 litre 100 km is open to students aged 18 or above from any country of the world. The small car they are required to build must have two seats and space for luggage. We would like this vehicle to herald an efficient mobility option for the near future. Therefore we encourage interdisciplinary entries, with the involvement of graphic designers and innovative materials. The idea is not to have a vehicle built for “engineers only”--rather a nice car-of-the-future-after-oil. We have chosen a race circuit that is quite demanding in braking and acceleration, but the requirements should leave room for engineering creativity, notably around hybrid technology. If we do encourage creativity, for safety reasons, we are setting up some boundaries in the Challenge’s official rules.
A recently-published confidential report by a German military think-tank very seriously considers the possibility that peak oil will be around 2010. The permanent supply crisis they describe and its consequences seem quite dramatic. The people who have followed ASPO’s (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and gas) work for many years will not be surprised. The idea of the Challenge 1 litre 100 km is to address a serious issue with a touch of fun. If the challenge is ambitious and departs from old ways of doing things, it’s also because the situation demands it.
There is probably an important market for these two seat-cars. First, for economic reasons, the crisis is unfortunately here to last. Without this crisis, oil prices would be skyrocketing as production limits close in. We are now seeing the first electric cars being introduced, but they are quite expensive. For the young middle-class couple that chose to have their house built 35 km away from the city (where land price is affordable), the problem is knowing what type of vehicle to buy and use. Available public transport is likely to be poor because of a low population density. The evolution of transportation will probably be in the direction of specialisation by usage. Having the same car to drive alone to work all year around and twice a year with your entire family on holidays is not the best for energy efficiency. The solution will be to rent a vehicle for extraordinary use, so renting a big car twice a year and owning a small one seems to be a good option. Of course, reality is more complex, but the idea is that we need vehicles that fit the needs they satisfy on an everyday basis. In the future mobility landscape, public transport is likely to play an important role, but it requires infrastructure that takes a long time to build. So does the setting up of supply systems for electric cars on a large scale.
The Challenge 1 litre 100 km is a platform for stimulating innovation in the field of extremely energy efficient vehicles. The challenge of finding new solutions to old problems is an opportunity to invent new mechanisms with 21st century technology, and to register new patents. For example, the motorcycle maker Piaggio patented more than 20 inventions to develop the MP3, its new three wheel vehicle. The technical rules of the challenge give room for technical creativity: the vehicle’s weight must be between 225 kg and 275 kg and its length between 2.2m and 3.5m. It is reasonable to imagine most teams will use fibreglass for the main body to produce attractive shapes. This will be the best way to win one of the 3 design prizes : (1) Design Prize to the car with best outside design, (2) Inside Design Prize and (3) Last Coating Prize. Teams can also aim for the Eco Design Prize or the Special Prize given by the jury for the vehicle best combining race performance and outside design. And of course, the main prize will go to the first car that completes the 100 Km distance, including the celebration lap, podium and everything.
These small cars can be expected to be more than simply transition vehicles to manage peak oil, while waiting for electric cars and their costly energy supply infrastructure to be finished. For the long term, these very efficient vehicles should be able to operate with other types of liquid fuels, such as bio-fuels, methanol or synthetic fuels derived from other fossil fuels. All of these fuels may eventually be substitutes for oil products, but will certainly be in much reduced supply. Under this scenario efficiency will be capital.
In terms of time-frame, peak oil is virtually "around the corner," and when it takes place, we will need to react very quickly. Having students build their future now seems to be one approach to the road to sustainability. These cars will only emit 27 grams of CO2 per km, because of their very low fuel requirements. Their average speed will be the surprise. For the first round of the contest, we are expecting teams to use existing motorcycle engines, since they are probably the cheapest and most reasonable option. The first race will take place in June 2011 in the North East area of France. We chose this area because it’s close to the German border, from where we are expecting good teams. Within a distance of 500 kms from the track, there are nine countries, so it will be exciting to see the results.
Will you participate in the Challenge as a student, journalist, teacher, spectator or sponsor ?
For more Internet information: www.1litre100km.com . Interested teams are welcome to pre-register at this website.
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Vital Trivia
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There are several interesting aspects to this Challenge:
. minimum frontal area;
. minimum weight;
. minimum number of seats;
. minimum cargo volume;
prompting the production of down-to-earth vehicles, easily translatable into practical mass production units.
I invite all TheOilDrum readers and friends to promote the challenge to all Faculties or schools that may have the means to participate.
For more details, the Rules are now available for download on the site of the challenge http://www.1litre100km.com
Interesting rules, seems it will be a lottery.
They are not ranking by Fuel Efficiency, instead simply racing on a track.
The first vehicle to complete the 100km of the race is declared winner if no race rule has been breached during the event.
To be qualified to start the race a vehicle must have at least one qualifying round attempt at an average speed superior to 25 km/h.
and this strange one
Only one battery involved in propulsion is allowed, it must be empty at the start of the race.
Not many batteries like being empty, or do they mean fully discharged ?
with this
In addition to the driver, a maximum of two people per team (with ID badges) may be present at the finish line for measurements of energy left in the battery (or the two batteries for hybrid vehicles).
That's a lot of variables, and scope for 'battery creep'
Your right, maybe a language problem there.
It seems to me that all these super efficient fossil fueled ICE powered vehicles will only accelerate the coming collision with 'Jevon'.
IF I HAD A
HAMMERCARwords and music by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, with apologies from me!
If I had a
hammercarI'd
hammerdrive it in the morningI'd
hammerdrive it in the eveningAll over this land
I'd
hammerdrive out dangerI'd
hammerdrive out a warningI'd
hammerdrive out love between my brothers and my sistersAll over this land
If all one has is a
hammercar, everything starts to look like anailhighway!I'm sure the day will come when even Americans will be forced to accept reality... I doubt I will still be around by then.
I vote for more bikes and trains!
You could call your submission the 'Hummer Hammer' ??
LOL!
If this is to be the main vehicle "For the young middle-class couple that chose to have their house built 35 km away from the city", wouldn't the minimum be a 2+2 with room in the second row to have two child seats? Plus enough space in the trunk for some groceries?
Better off with two smaller, cheaper, 2 seater cars IMO. Husband and wife are likely to work at different jobs. 1+1 seating allows for lower frontal area.
How do you meet the side impact crash test requirements in a narrow 1+1?
In a peak oil world, "Revisions" will be made to standards and specifications.....or better yet simply ignored.
As what Dmitry Orlov described in the collapse of the USSR, rules and regulations have a tendency to get tossed out the window in a collapsing society.
In a US collapse to the extent of that in the USSR, the US is likely to also split into several regions.
Even worse, US metro areas will likely break up into ethnic enclaves with intervening "no-go" zones.
It will be a challenge for mass transport advocates to plan systems that will work in a Sarajevo or Beirut type situation scaled up to the size of LA.
A regular 4 seater doesn't have much space between the driver's seat and the outside of the door panel. You could build the side impact structure just as heavily in either vehicle. Either way it's more protection than a bicycle or a motorscooter.
How do you meet them on a bicycle? Chances are you don't so what are you going to do? Build a steel cage around your bicycle? Not ride it? Or admit your rules just don't apply in the new paradigm. I say start by making 5000 lb SUVs illegal and the slowly start phasing out all private vehicles that weigh more than a thousand pounds and eventually phase out all that weigh more than 500 lbs...
Welcome to a new and much saner world.
A nice diversion that is amusing and, most certainly, creates hope for the seemingly endless supply of "we're going to get through this just fine" crowd. In the US, we'd be far, far more productive to work on educating the public in an effort to get them to accept reality. Not going to happen, of course. Just did 600 miles on my old motorcycle and I can assure you Americans don't have a clue. But then they don't want a clue either. Doing the speed limit or slightly under I was passed by everything-3/4 ton trucks pulling massive fifth wheels, semis, motor homes, streames of 4x4s pulling, relatively, small boats, etc. I guess if you're headed towards a disaster, may as well do it fast.
If I understand physics, the above experiment is impossible and if it is possible, only in some highly specialized car that does little more than pull itself down the road let alone four people with a trunk full of groceries. Am I a cynic or a realist, that is the question.
I would agree with you on your overall assumption that 100 mph is not a good long term solution and which will only be good for short trips further in the future.
It will make motoring possible for more people for the next 20 years to keep the illusion alive.
There is no NG gas for home heating anywhere in the area that I live, nor will it be brought in. People used to heat extensively with coal, but no one has coal furnaces any more. I helped a person remove a coal furnace that was their only source of heat at the time, about 2 years ago. They only use oil and electricity now.
No one is preparing, so in a few years they will learn peak oil the hard way.
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One liter per 100 kilometers comes to about 237 miles per gallon.
That house 35 miles from the city includes infrastructure to deliver water and electricity, and remove sewage. The energy needed to replace this infrastructure and the dwelling could make commuting a viable alternative for a few more years.
The only way to "educate the public" would be to put a $3 / gallon tax on gas, which is what many Europeans pay, including the French and Norwegians.
Unless the price is put up, Americans will continue to waste energy. Any other kind of "education" is just feel good rhetoric.
Educating the public is a very long term job-one that unfortunately will not be accomplished fast enough in respect to our energy problems in my estimation.
But such contests as this one can stir up a lot of interest and create a lot of awareness among the part of the population that is deeply involved with the car culture.
The simple fact that the contest is happening is good for public awareness and if it succeeds in attracting a lot of msm coverage it will be a success for that reason alone.
If this gets on Speed channel or Spike, and not just on Discovery or other science/green channels, I'll believe you.
Start rationing gasoline and diesel and all those big SUV drivers will pay through the nose to get a 50+ mpg car. They will become serious about car pooling and plan trips to accomplish multiple tasks. They will drive only as far as the nearest bus stop or train station and walk a lot more. Those who can afford to will buy rations from those willing to sell part or all of their share on e-bay.
To really lower fuel consumption someone ought to offer a prize for the first 18-wheeler to get 20 mpg with a 10 ton payload.
Yair...I don't know what you mean by an "eighteen wheeler" but in the early sixties I was moonlighting on a twin steer bogie drive Foden pulling a three axle dog trailer.
We used to put twenty five tons of used railway line (to build cattle yards) on the truck and the same on the trailer. Hauling fifty tons on dirt roads the straight eight Gardiner consistantly did six miles per gallon.
It was slow though...32 mph diffs. The thing is though modern trucks pulling road trains at the same weight and speed (due to the roads) get less than half that.
Here in the US an eighteen wheeler consists of a road tractor with three axles-two wheels for steering on the front, and four drive wheels on each of the two rear axles.
This tractor is hooked to the cargo trailer which has no wheels of its own in the front end, which is supported by the tractor;it has two axles in the rear, which have four wheels each.
Hence there are eighteen wheels altogether;this is the most common US heavy truck configuration but there are variations of course.
Michigan seems to allow a lot of trailers with another 8 to 12 wheels. These are not just on construction trucks, which need more flotation off the pavement. These heavy trucks can't be good for their highways.
As I understand it, the more wheels, the better the load distribution on the pavement, for a given total wieght of vehicle of course, so that the pavement is not overstressed.
So adding more wheels allows a truck to haul more while not doing any more damage -in proportion to the size of the truck-than a smaller truck.
This is cheaper for the trucking company and it is the only way some extra heavy loads can be transported legally-or at all in some cases.
"The only way to "educate the public" would be to put a $3 / gallon tax on gas, which is what many Europeans pay, including the French and Norwegians."
Exactly, the low level of fuel tax in the US compared to other OECD countries is really astounding, and it is obvious that with a higher level for 10 years cars would be different today in the US.
And it is also key that this tax be based on volume, and not on price, (which is the case in France with TIPP and most countries I guess), as this also has the added benefit of "smoothing" end product price variations compared to oil barrel price variations.
Is it too late ? In an imminent collapse scenario maybe, otherwise it's never too late.
It is probably too late. High tax countries were importers of oil when the high tax structures were put in place to limit the outflow of money from their economies to buy oil.
When the US changed from being a net exporter to importer, we should have started to raise the tax at about a dime a year. After 30 years we would be up to $3 / gallon and we would have avoided the disastrous foreign exchange situation that we now find ourselves in.
Apart from the imminent collapse scenario, it is really never too late.
Right now the SUV market is going back up in the US from what I understand, a fossile fuel tax must be seen as an accelerator of change.
Basically if there is a solution out of this mess, it pushes towards it, but without defining it, and this "solution agnosticism" aspect is essential.
The point is to influence the investments decisions on the "durable" infrastructure (in a broad sense, vehicule being part of it), by accelerating the coming changes on the associated operational costs. (two rooms at 20°C it is the same thing, but one can be well insulated and consume a little, whereas the other is not and consumes a lot, this lot has to be made bigger in terms of cost, so as to shorten the insulation return on investment duration, that is all)
And part of it can be directly redistributed, as proposed by James Hansen.
Really the US doing nothing on its gas tax level is just showing that it has "given up".
Zeke,
I'm with you. I think Americans are not only clueless but want to remain that way. I don't ride a motorcycle but I do live near a major highway and it remains full of trucks, RVs, SUVs, and an assortment of towed toys, including ORVs, boats, and Skidoos. Gas remains cheap, even with crude at $82/barrel, so most Americans see no problem. Unless there is a sudden jolt to people in this happy motoring paradise, few here are going to do more than laugh at little cars like those suggested in this post. As Mark Twain once said, "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
I am amazed how many people are driving 1-2 miles to the grocery to pick up less than 50 lbs of groceries. One store I bike to does not even have a bike rack. I need to ask the owner why not encourage biking and put up a rack. Good grief. We are doomed.
Why are you amazed? The incremental cost (these people already have the car, so that's the cost that counts) of driving 2-4 miles roundtrip will be practically nothing - probably less than, say, the minimum bus or tram fare in places that charge by distance, and far less than the fare in places that charge a flat rate. Plus, if the load of groceries approaches 50 pounds, one may well need to futz with a bike trailer (a bulky item that has to be stored somewhere, which may be an issue in a small apartment) to get them home in decent condition. The cost of a short drive would simply be way too low to make any futzing at all worth the trouble, even at European gasoline/diesel prices.
(Nor need one be amazed that people travel to buy groceries, since the small corner shops price-gouge shamelessly, and can't help doing so owing to the severe diseconomies of their too-small scale.)
If you already own a car, the incremental fuel cost of a short trip is negligible. While I don't begrudge anyone for driving the car to pick up 50 pounds of stuff, we'll need some other kind of social or financial incentives to discourage those short wasteful trips.
-Peer pressure to make people feel stupid and lazy for driving such a short trip?
-Make parking inconvenient?
-People don't like paying for parking, but give discounts to customers who don't park?
and maybe most important of all
-Building a pleasant neighborhood for people to walk to and from the store.
Delivery vans? Even dare I say it... electric ones!
Now that is an issue I want to take up with the manager at the local Walmart. They have 2 spaces for bicycle parking with signs but nowhere to rack or lock bikes. Anyone any suggestions for the best and simplest types of racks (spaces are about standard car size)?
NAOM
n-shaped metal tubing. http://www.anninaluck.com/featured.htm
Thanks, I'll look into this as I am switching to peddle power. Took the bike out for its first runs, today, after a big re-build. Next, shopping at Walmart.
NAOM
Of course, there's always the thought of shopping elsewhere.. but that's a different discussion.
I shop in quite a few places,getting the bike going will help that. One problem is that the supermarkets here are a bit different. In the UK you can go into 1 of the main brands and pretty much pick up what you want, it is all there. Here I may want flour and the shelf at Walmart is empty so I need to go on to Soriana. None of them are very good at holding a full range all the time. Works both ways around and sometimes I can end up in 3 or 4 to complete a list.
Stores here generally don't order at a re-order stock level. They either order when the run out or when someone asks for something, if the computer shows it in stock but it is not you can have a long wait before a new batch arrives. Also UK supermarkets shelf fill at night so that all is ready to go when they open. Here they shelf fill during the day so if you are out of step with the fillers, too bad.
Local shops are useful but things like fruit and veg can be very poor quality after sitting in 32C heat for a few days and I don't trust the local butchers. Going bike will help with scooting around 2 or 3 local shops to see what is about as well. Oh, my corner shop gets used too but is limited, tend to be the smallest sizes and fresh goods can be good or bad.
NAOM
Zeke-
I was next to a WOMAN in a F350 (dually/diesel) pulling a huge camper. She was texting with her eyes clearly looking at her cellphone screen (i was next to her on the interstate)... At least China has a heck of a high speed rail system coming together.
1 liter 100KM??? Who cares... The answer isn't using less, its using none :)
Actually, the first answer is to use half as much.
If you increase mileage from 17 to 34 miles per gallon, you save half of the fuel being consumed. You would have to increase mileage to 78 mpg to save another one fourth.
So the answer is to get the low mileage vehicles off the road through some combination of regulation and taxation. Technical innovation is not required. Something like a F350 dually should be available only for commercial licensing by bona fide businesses.
"Something like a F350 dually should be available only for commercial licensing by bona fide businesses."
Yeah, sure, bring on the Licence Raj, it works so well for India. Imagine an army of bureaucrats trying to tell us which are the "bona fide" businesses, and which are, let's say, hobby farms too hobby-ish to qualify. And an army of consultants to calculate ways around whatever rulings said bureaucrats pull out of their hats, since at the extensive fuzzy margins, their rulings will inevitably reflect pure personal whim and favoritism.
If it is not being depreciated on a business tax return, or if the lease payments are not expensed on a business tax return, it is not a commercial vehicle - simple enough?
Locally, for tax purposes, if your farm doesn't have $500 revenue per year, it is not a farm.
We already have more lawyers than most other countries.
(My recollection is that duallys are not allowed on some eastern states parkways because vehicles with dual wheels are considered to be commercial vehicles. More roads should be built with low bridges.)
Maybe it's simple enough on paper, but the key is keeping it that way. You can bet fairly safely that enough people would consider such a reg to be unfair and intrusive that it wouldn't stay simple for very long. Kinda like the mess that was created with respect to defining SUVs, vs. cars, minivans, and trucks.
Trucks over 6000 lbs gross vehicle weight are already banned on many residential streets. It's never been enforced on pickups and SUVs, though.
http://www.slate.com/id/2104755/
There is a very simple solution to this one. You have an annual road tax that is based on the vehicle weight and/or engine capacity. It need not matter whether it is commercially registered or not.
For Joe the plumber, he can then decide whether he really needs an f-350, or maybe a Ranger will do. All his competitors are in the same boat.
For the soccer mom, same deal - does she really need the heavy minivan?
Having different rates for priv/comm will just lead to system gaming, with dummy companies being set up, or companies buying/leasing cars for their employees.
Most Euro countries have progressive road tax based on weight/engine size.
By far the most successful example of just how well this sort of policy can work is Japan, with the Kei Car.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car
This is a class of mini cars, that have a specified maximum size,(11'2"L x 4"10" W and engine capacity (660cc) and power (63hp). These cars get substantially reduced taxes, congestion charges etc etc.
They introduced the class after WW2 to make small cars, using motorbike engines, affordable. It is still working 60 years later. The best selling vehicle in Japan last year is the Suzuki R Wagon, a Kei car (it is the most "mini" minivan you will ever see)
They make sedans, sportscars, vans and work trucks to meet this class. The work trucks can come with dual range 4wd and a tipping tray, they make better utility vehicles than any ATV .
Good examples of kei cars at www.japanoid.com.
And did I mention, that almost all of them get better mpg than a Prius?
They are, by far, the cheapest cars to buy, insure and run
This does not mean everyone owns/drives them, but a lot of people do. It has saved Japan a lot of oil over the years.
So, set clear tax rates for vehicles based on size/weight/engine and/or mpg, NO exemptions, make sure the base class is very small, light, and low/zero tax, and then let the automakers game that system - it has worked very well for Japan.
The same tax rate for personal and business use makes sense. The tax deduction reduces the hit somewhat, but how would that work? The Vehicle License Fee, part of the registration, is fully deductible on income taxes regardless of business or personal use.
I knew about Kei cars. Thanks for the reminder. This person had some thoughts about whether Kei cars have a place in the US. It was posted on a car forum and got a mixed reaction. Better than being roundly dismissed, which is the usual reaction when you bring up efficiency around motorsports people.
http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f32/do-kei-cars-have-place-3-00-per-g...
Sometimes the plain old conservative message of less govt regulation of day to life really does apply.
If it weren't for the liberal safety nannies having a little fling with the conservative big biz bau boys who don't wanty any competition that can possibly be avoided by getting a few more rules passed, ....
Well, you would be able to buy one of these cars TODAY, right of the lot of your friendly local dealer.
Maybe, but would it sell?
The 2000 Honda Insight got 60MPG, and was reasonably priced.
But, it was a 2-seater, and no one bought it, even when gas prices rose...
I bought it, and still have it, though I'm taking the bus to work these days.
That was a great idea.
I have an electric scooter, and take an electric train to work. I've insulated to the point where no heat is needed down to freezing.
Sadly, we're in the minority.
The Insight's biggest problem was timing - it was about eight years too early. It was off the market by the time gas prices hit $4. If they had the original insight on the market today, with updated components (e.g lithium batteries) it would sell. Mind you, so would the EV-1.
Mini Cooper
Smart Car
Somehow, I don't think it's the regulations keeping them out, though I do expect that corporations that want to maintain marketing cache will blame regulations whenever they are asked about why they don't sell low profit-margin products in the US (or why they leave advertised features out).
Fortunately, here in Canada, you can buy these cars today, from a local dealer. Canadian rules are that you can import any car 15yrs or older, even RHD, so there is a great business bring these over from Japan. Vancouver ad Toronoto dwellers love the little cars. The Smart is kei car compliant (and is the worst selling Kei car in Japan), but it doesn;t have the character of this;
(nissan Figaro, 1990, as owned by Eric Clapton, Jay Leno etc, does 60+mpg)
And for those kei pickup trucks, people do things like this;
Not bad for a 660 cc engine, eh? These are getting very popular in northern Canada as they can travel on ice roads much earlier and later in the season than wheeled vehicles, or even regular PU's on the track conversions. And when gas is $7/gal up there, an efficient vehicle pays off fast.
These cars can be built safe, and they can be built cheap. When one of these gets the same mileage as a Prius but at a $15k discount, then you have an affordable fuel saving solution.
A mate of mine back Australia who was a building contractor had one of those little 4wd pick-up trucks, and it did anything, anywhere, while using a fraction of the cost fuel, tires, brakes, etc. To satisfy his macho instincts he had a muscle car, that he drove probably all of 5000 mi a year - his total fuel consumption would be far less than if he just had an F-150 to satisfy both his work and macho needs.
Yes, this is far smarter, and can even be done with production vehicles.
It is clear the landing from the finite fuel tail effects, will vary widely around the world.
The answer is electrified rail, walking shoes and bicycles... The gasoline auto is dead. Keep diesel around for construction, farming and trucking. People don't need to be driving to their mailboxes. I'm looking 30+ years out here.
In the US, we'd be far, far more productive to work on educating the public in an effort to get them to accept reality.
Isn't that what creating more efficient transportation does?
100 km / 1 L
Quick math gives me 238 mpg. Hasn't Volkswagen done this already?
http://www.automobile.com/volkswagen-debuts-240-mpg-marvel.html
And there is "semitruck" math 80,000 lbs and 6 mpg
So if you build a car with 1,000 lb total vehicle weight you "theoretically" could get 480 MPG using semituck technology.
"If I understand physics, the above experiment is impossible...."
Maybe you don't
Yup, VW already built this as a concept car. Highway speeds, climate control to some extent, and all that other junk too. In terms of efficiency, technically someone could see 480mpg using semi proportions in a half ton vehicle, but people are more willing to just get 240mpg and sit upright than they are to lay down down in order to get 480mpg.
This advertises as a 92 miles per US gallon vehicle.
I would consider it to be way over powered,
as they are saying it is 180 horsepower.
I would actually think that 92 would
only be on highway driving, but this should be
much better with a smaller engine.
http://www.fuelvaporcar.com/
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So, the web site info looks quite dated. ~2008?
Wonder how their licensing is going, and how close they are to the mass production in 2012 ?
Edit: Looks like they morphed
http://www.futurevehicletechnologies.com/
and their X-Prize result, a rather disappointing :
Failure to complete the required Emissions Test
Still, the idea looks good, and many would short-list something like this.
Competitions are good, but the boring stuff like crash testing, (and the weight that dictates) should not be ignored.
and a comparison:
http://gas2.org/2009/09/14/volkswagens-diesel-hybrid-1l-concept-gets-170...
Three wheeled cars are not allowed in the contest so none of them would qualify. I'm not sure why the organisers have insisted on 4 wheels but it's their competition so i guess they ahve their reasons.
It could be because 3 wheelers are often licensed as motorcycles, and the regulations require no safety equipment beyond lights and mirrors. You could build them with safety features like the Aptera, but it's all voluntary.
To a certain extent any solution that sustains unneccessary travel can be viewed as a retrograde one. Why should a young couple live 35 miles from work? Better by far to look at solutions that remove the need to travel. What if the ingenuity required to tackle this challenge was adopted by CEOs to reduce the commute of their workforce by say 80%. Seems to me it's a challenge that seeks an engineering solution to a behavioural problem.
Interestingly, such a vehicle could enable those who are transitioning to a more rural ag-centered lifestyle to continue to commute to the city job in the meantime.
The size constraints are rather interesting (why have minimum heights, widths, lengths?). I'm not sure some of the xPrize entrants would qualify (even winners like the X-Tracer).
This 'challenge' looks like a trick question.
The challenge looks impossible at 236 mpg (62.5 x 3.78)unless your two seat car doesn't run on ANY gasoline or unless you mean 236 mpg per vehicle (and you have a lot of passengers). By the later definition a bus with 17 filled seats getting 15 mpg would qualify.
To me, this challenge looks feasible. I drive a standard transmission Toyota Yaris that weighs 1038 kg with a 106 HP engine and rated at 6.3 L/100 km (37 mpg) combined highway/city milage. I routinely get 4.9 L/100 km (50 mpg) with this vehicle in a heavily congested city. My better than average milage is due to two things: (1) overinflated tires (40 psi), and (2) hypermiling driving techniques, the latter which causes universal irritation to the surrounding drivers who don't understand what I'm doing. It's safe to say that I use only a fraction of the available horsepower, rarely reving the engine above 2000 rpm.
The vehicle in this competition would have to get about 5 times the milage that I'm getting but it would only weigh 1/4 of my Yaris, and presumably have an engine with less than 1/4 of horsepower. I would say that this challenge is within the realm of possibility.
Optical fiber transmission research was driven by "hero experiments" that were reported annually at the Optical Fiber Conference. The winner was the company that achieved the highest bandwidth distance product on a single optical fiber as expressed in Gigabit-kilometers/second.
Is there a similar metric that could be used to compare vehicle performance, such as passenger plus cargo kilogram-kilometers/joule for some acceleration profile?
The focus on vehicle weight seems misguided, since it is the passengers and cargo that are the things to be carried. Vehicle weight should be just a minimum requirement based on the minimum needed to meet vehicle safety and crash resistance requirements.
You also need some minimum weight so the vehicle isn't tossed around the moment the wind kicks up, and it isn't blown into the ditch by the first passing 18-wheeler. OTOH I don't know which hat the numbers were pulled out of; maybe the detailed technical docs give some rationale.
1) Presumably this is the weight without passengers, fuel or cargo?
2) What is the minimum amount of cargo it must be able to carry ; dimension & weight?
3) Is there a minimum passenger weight for the challenge?
4) Must it have a minimum cruising speed?
5) It there a maximum cruising speed?
There seems to lack a lot of detail/criteria for this challenge!
Marco.
I couldn't get the technical rules pdf to download.
Another question is whether batteries are allowed and what their state of charge is limited to.
A better challenge focused on energy efficiency would be one which challenges students to develop a motor generator pair that delivers the most kilowat hours to as standard battery pack from a liter of gas.
How the energy is consumed by the drive motors, auxiliary systems like air conditioning, friction, air resistance, or returned by regenerative braking are all secondary considerations that complicate the design of cars without dealing with fundamental conversion efficiency.
The motor would, of course, have to meet auto air polution requirements.
The rules are now available for download :
1) Weight without pilot
2) Only dimensions for cargo
3) The minimum weight for the pilot is 75kg. If he/she is lighter ballast will be used.
4) Yes 25km/h
5) No max speed
In the past decades the efficiency of the Otto motor has been improved steadily. But with every improvement in gasoline consumption the 'horsepower' has been increased. In 1961 my Volkswagen Beetle had 24HP and used 8 liter/100km. Nowadays one does not find any car under 100HP also using 8 liter/100km. But, in terms of gasoline consumption there is no saving.
What the point!
VW built one about 10 years ago if memory serves me right.
Any fuel saved will only be burnt buy the Chinese or some body else.
When the oil runs low proper and peak oil cant be denied it will be to late. Unless all goverments act together soon with some thing like what Colin Campbell proposed with his Oil depletion protocol you are just giving at oppsition more resorces .
In the mean time Tax it to the hilt and people will use less. Return the tax as a credit elswere to lesssen the pain
By the way my Peuoget hdi returs 55-60mpg imp so I am doing a little bit, be it small.
"What the point!
VW built one about 10 years ago if memory serves me right."
Yes, they did. 1 liter diesel:
http://gas2.org/2008/03/12/the-worlds-most-fuel-efficient-car-285-mpg-no...
2009 update:
http://gas2.org/2009/09/14/volkswagens-diesel-hybrid-1l-concept-gets-170...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_L1#2009_Model
good find! The first model in black actually looks somewhat like a normal car. First one I've ever seen that looked like it might actually fit in on the road design wise. However, the newest version looks like its ready for some serious space travel of sorts. I know aerodynamics are very important on cars as efficient as these but most of the designs are quite silly looking if you ask me.
This is quite impressive, but the model in the top picture is obviously a one seater car. Perhaps a small person could sit behind the driver or you could put your small packages there. Not much market for such a car in the US. This has a little more versatility than a motorcycle.
Back in 1980 at the U of Missouri engineering school we designed a car that would comfortably seat six people, climb an 8% grade and have a top speed of 80 mph. This car was to use a three cylinder air cooled diesel engine (German design), infinitely variable transmission, 50 hp electric motor with hybrid drive and would have weighed nearly 6000 lbs., largely due to having a 2000 lb battery pack. The highway mpg was calculated at 58 mpg and in the city 38 mpg, IIRC. Such a car would have had large appeal to the typical American driver. But our design class was never able to get any funding to build it.
I think that using today's technology the same type car could be built and get close to 70 mpg highway, and weigh a lot less with Li-I batteries. Once you get over 50 or 60 mpg the incremental improvements in mpg give very little annual fuel savings. The biggest effect is to go from 20 mpg to 60 where 67% of the fuel is saved. To get the next 67% you need to reach 180 mpg, but you are only saving half as much as you save in the first improvement.
If you realy want to save fuel (oil), get people to ride electric powered trains.
I could have done virtually all of my driving last year in one of these (VW L-1) using less than 60 gals of biodiesel. The nearest rail line is 30 miles from our home (freight only).
Sign me up!
Actually, it is a two-seater, in tandem - one passenger behind the driver.
You car was built, by GM, in the late 90's - the GM Precept.
It used a small diesel engine, and was a series hybrid, and got 80mpg.
Some goo info here;
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthread.php/gm-precept-makes-volt-look-tam...
Never went into production as they didn't think there was market for it!
GM Precept here:
Very similar styling, quite a different drive system:
http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/gmprecept.html
All cars pictured have four wheels. Despite the reported mileage discrepencies, The VW L-1 seems to get over twice the MPG/KPL that the Precept does.
I find the ongoing debate over public/mass transportation vs private/personal transportation very city-centric. Millions of folks live where there is, and won't be, any form of effective mass transportation.
The mid-point of my commute:
While I understand that my current situation will change in coming years, many folks will continue to rely on some form of non-mass transportation in areas that will never have access to cost effective trains/pods/busses/etc. Small, efficient vehicles, whether they be electric/hybrid/biofuel, will be built, even if we have to build them ourselves.
Nice commute Ghung! Now, just imagine how much FASTER your commute would be without all those trees in the way!
I don;t know if people will make the cars themselves in the future, but maybe they will make new engines for existing cars - has been done before;
You just hope the "engine" doesn't "backfire" too much!
This engine doubles as a self-fueling, mobile biogas reactor ;-)
BTW, there is a road down there somewhere, and I can coast about half of my commute. Here's to regen braking!
The second phot shows a car with waht appears to be two rear wheels but teh body shape indicates only a sigle rear wheel. Am I missing something?
Owwww - bad math! (should be 235 mpg).
1 liter = 0.264172 US gallons
100 km = 62.1 statute miles
62.1 miles / 0.264172 gallon = 235.07 miles/gallon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litre#Non-metric_conversions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilometre#Equivalence_to_other_units_of_length
n.b. the Mac OS calculator has unit conversions.
The Unix program units(1) will provide conversion factors,
and since they're a little longer than the wiki ones I used, and bc(1) does real decimal arithmetic (n.b. the Mac OS calculator uses floating point, so answers are not always exact! - why was this done when dc(1) and Java's decimal arithmetic facilities are already there???),
the answer is closer to 235.215 mpg.
But in any case, it is NOT 285 (?author misread the 3 for an 8 ? - bad fax, small/smudged screen, ???).
1 litre for 100 km is 235 MPG in the US and 282 MPG in UK. Different gallons ;-)
Let's say this project does in fact produce a marketable four seater family capable car that gets the high mileage they're looking for (which is highly unlikely). Or heck, why stop there? Let's say someone develops a car that's powered by the driver's thoughts. No gasoline required!
That would almost solve our fuel supply problems, if we ignore the fact that maintaining roads suitable for any vehicle travelling over 10mph is still going to require enormous quantities of fuel that we won't have. In the future I see coming, a horse will be much more useful than a car that gets 1000mpg.
Speaking of road maintenance, a vehicle optimized for 1L/100km might have some trouble on rough roads. Ever ridden a narrow-tired road bicycle? It doesn't mean every vehicle will have to be an offroad 4x4, but you will need high ground clearance and heavy duty suspension.
Hi davidveale,
I agree with your POV. Fuel economy is just one part of the problem. Besides road maintenance (which includes lots of snow plowing in the northlands) we have all the resource extraction and manufacturing processes that constitute the "embodied energy" factor. Then we have all the parking lots and parking structures that use lots of energy (mostly FF) to create. There are also the resources tied up in private garages and driveways. Of course, private vehicles that can travel long distances encourages sprawl.
In addition, there are some "soft" values to consider when we try to preserve the personal vehicle paradigm. The isolation, road rage, teenage issues, and other associated anti-social behavior issues that go hand-in-hand with the "car culture".
It is totally beyond my comprehension as to why anyone dealing with rush hour traffic on a freeway is sucked in by the typical Cadillac TV commercial. Delusion is a powerful religion.
Dave,
I think you're greatly overestimating the oil needed for infrastructure.
Have you seen any actual numbers for it?
I'm not so excited about cars either (I mostly take electric trains), but by far the most important and fastest way to reduce oil and coal consumption is to go to EVs.
Nick there are small communities, however, all over the US that are increasingly unable to perform the maintenance needed to keep their highways and streets kept up. This is a beast that will expose some of the harshest of truths about our roadways.. and I fear that this will show up in ugly surprises, as Munis and States are abruptly forced to realise that they have to set a lower bar than they'd once thought acceptable.
I'm pro EV, but it's still constrained by the ability to keep up many of our roads. I expect there will be a culling out of many 'lesser' back highways and sidestreets, reverting to, what, gravel?
there are small communities, however, all over the US that are increasingly unable to perform the maintenance needed to keep their highways and streets kept up.
There's no question that local governments have generally seen revenues decline sharply due to the recession. Unfortunately, many are choosing not to raise taxes in order to properly fund operations (even though most could, and should), due to the current anti-government mood sponsored by right-wing/corporate manipulation. That means they have to cut expenses, and some are doing so by cutting road maintenance.
I haven't seen good statistics - I suspect that the % of roadways that will be lost won't be large. Have you seen any stats?
And finally, labor is by far the big component cost of road maintenance; road maintenance vehicles could certainly be electrified; and highway departments can certainly outbid personal transportation for fuel (assuming local government doesn't get starved for political reasons, as discussed above), so this isn't really related to PO problems.
One would guess a fuel cell with an electric drive would be the only solution to achieve such efficiency.
I would also assume this trip is not climbing 3000 m of elevation as well ;-)
Automobiles are about to finish sucking away the last of the planet's petroleum.
Let's invent news cars!
Jesus palomino!
Everything we do sucks away the planet's resources. There's no getting around the fact that humans are bad for the planet.
So all forms of resource use are equivalent then?
Poppycock.
This 'idea' is a distraction. And a tedious one at that for all those who don't give a **** about cars. Cars, cars, cars. Efficient or not this is not the future. Too many boys obsess about this sort of stuff. Get over it and invent something useful. PUBLIC TRANSPORT. Jeez.
Public transport is no solution unless at least the following two problems are solved:
1. People do not want to come into close contact with other people. The rush hour Newark to World Trade PATH trains are packed so that you are in contact with multiple other people and possibly jammed against the door. Even under less dense situation, sharing space with drunk, drugged, dirty and crazy people is very unpleasant. Note also that in a powered down world, hygiene is likely to deteriorate and people's clothing may once more be habitat for lice, fleas, bedbugs, and other vermin.
So public transport needs to supply individual spaces or compartments, rather than having people jammed together.
2. Strikes by transit workers result in multi-day outages of service. People are generally unwilling to depend on public transport for their commute, since they place their jobs in jeopardy if they are unable to get to work.
So public transport needs to be available 365 days of the year, every year.
This is ironic ... no? If not you are a sociopath in need of help. If you believe that "people" are going to have a great deal of choice about such matters when PO really gets going I think you are sadly mistaken. What we might wish for and what reality may present us with are, imo, rather different things.
Not ironic. Mass transport has practical problems (it doesn't go from where people are to where they want to go, doesn't work well for moving groceries and other items, etc) and it has economic problems (a trip costs car owners marginal costs while mass transport fares have to cover fully allocated costs).
However, mass transport also has real problems in that it doesn't provide a quality of service that people really want. For example, European systems have multiple classes of service, which provides some differentiation to satisfy more demanding customers, but I don't know of any first class US mass transit.
Availability is a real problem. Mass transit strikes are tolerated now because there is always the motor vehicle alternative for most people. Low income folks who don't have an alternative can always get another low paying job after the strike is over, and they don't have political power anyway. However, strikes will have to be outlawed and broken in order to make mass transport the main commuting system.
The notion that we can easily convert everyone to riding some vastly expanded version of current rail, light rail, and bus mass transport systems and all will be well is truely optimistic.
"Mass transit strikes are tolerated now because there is always the motor vehicle alternative for most people. Low income folks who don't have an alternative can always get another low paying job after the strike is over, and they don't have political power anyway. However, strikes will have to be outlawed and broken in order to make mass transport the main commuting system."
You seem to think that this is a problem. Could you please detail the mass transit strikes that lasted more than one day on any US transit system in the last 10 years, because I think your arguement is BS.
Our city, St. Louis, has not had a transit strike in over 20 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_York_City_transit_strike was 3 days in 2005. Previously there was an 11 day strike in '80 and a 12 day strike in '66.
Given the financial mess that states, cities and transportation authorities are in, I'd expect more strikes in the future, especially over givebacks in pensions and benefits.
"I'd expect more strikes in the future, especially over givebacks in pensions and benefits."
I do believe public sectors workers are very cognizant of the employment situation and would be very reluctant to risk their own positions.
One has to wonder how much pain people will endure before realizing their predicament and take the necessary steps to address it.
So, over the last 35 years NYC transit has had 3 strikes that totalled 26 days, or .8 days lost service per year, or 99.8% availability.
How many cars have that availabiliity? Now you must count days in the repair shop, lost hours that account for flat tires, hours wasted getting safety & emission inspections (required in most large cities).
Bottom line is NYC Transit is far more AVAILABLE than most people's cars. My last vehicle, a Dodge 1500 pickup had at least one and a half days per year for repairs, maintenance and inspections, so over 9 years that was 99.5% availability. Over that time our Metrolink system had only two days it did not operate during extreme winter weather (same days I could not get my two wheel drive pickup on snow packed streets). MetroLink had 99.9% availability in those 9 years, or five times better than my vehicle.
So for most people transit is more reliable than their owns cars. Your arguement of strikes being reason for avoiding transit does not pass exam.
The failure of individual cars is much less of a problem than the failure of the entire mass transport system. When an individual car is out, you can bum a ride, rent a car, take mass transit, etc., and they are likely available options because only a tiny percentage of cars are out of action simultaneously.
When everyone in a metro area is dependent on some future mass transit system, an outage of the system will completely stop the economy.
The failure of individual cars is much less of a problem than the failure of the entire mass transport system. When an individual car is out, you can bum a ride, rent a car, take mass transit, etc., and they are likely available options because only a tiny percentage of cars are out of action simultaneously.
When everyone in a metro area is dependent on some future mass transit system, an outage of the system will completely stop the economy.
The failure of individual cars is much less of a problem than the failure of the entire mass transport system. When an individual car is out, you can bum a ride, rent a car, take mass transit, etc., and they are likely available options because only a tiny percentage of cars are out of action simultaneously.
When everyone in a metro area is dependent on some future mass transit system, an outage of the system will completely stop the economy.
Yup. Clearly a redundancy problem.
1. People do not want to come into close contact with other people. The rush hour Newark to World Trade PATH trains are packed so that you are in contact with multiple other people and possibly jammed against the door.
This is a cross between the panglossian denialism of;
Narcissistic Subtypes:
Rigid Cheney-ism: “The American Way of Life is non-negotiable.”
The belief that any undesirable change can be avoided by a sheer act of will.
Religious Subtypes:
Nascarian Features: “People love their automobiles. A solution
will have to be found to keep us driving.”
Do You Have a Panglossian Disorder? or Economic and Planetary Collapse: Is it a Therapeutic Issue? - PeaOilBlues.com, clinical psychologist
Perhaps this armchair psychologizing is correct, or more likely it is b---s---. Doesn't matter, though - either way, if the political support isn't there, the transit projects simply won't get built, and thinking otherwise may simply be yet another from of panglossian denial. Consider, as a prime example, the rail tunnel under the Hudson, which would fill a strong local need, but which the locals would accept only on the condition that someone else who has no stake whatever in the matter should foot the bill. This endless search for someone elses, i.e. for chumps, will no doubt entertain us indefinitely; break out the popcorn and watch the show.
The real issue in the ARC tunnel is who foots the inevitable cost overruns. NJ is on the hook for all the cost overruns above the $6 billion committments from the Federal Government and PATH, and NY State and NY City are contributing nothing. Unlike his predecessor, Christie is from NJ and not from IL by way of NYC. Nor is he beholden to the construction trades unions.
Either the deal will be renegotiated or it won't go forward. Probably even money odds at the moment.
More players were against the current plan than the neocons like Christie.
One of the objections to the project was that the tunnels would have tracks that dead end in an underground station (190 feet below ground) and isolated from Penn Station by two blocks. This ARC tunnel would not have been accessible to Amtrak trains nor any train going to Penn or Grand Central stations.
An early alternative (called alt. G) to the ARC project that was cancelled had the tunnels leading to a new portion of Penn station which would have six new station tracks and allowing the through tracks to continue east to Grand Central. This earlier plan G would have allowed LI trains to enter NJ besides commuter trains from CT and upper NY to continue to NJ points - would have permitted a through ride across NY with no transfers. The plan G would have had more partners involved to support funding, beside costin less than the final cancelled ARC plan. Many supporters of G turned into detractors of ARC. Now plan G may be revived and built at same or lower cost than ARC and have widespread support that ARC did not have.
For more info go here http://nationalcorridors.org/df2/df10112010.shtml
Yes thats an often overlooked advantage of a car, ie its your own personal space where you can listen to your own music, cough, sneeze, burp, fart, scratch an itch - all without offending anyone else
Hi Merrill,
I view your objections as valid challenges that need to be adequately addressed. I agree that overcrowded trains are a real impediment to widespread acceptance. I was too chicken to ride the trains in India for this very reason - but they can bring "crowding" to a level almost never see in the West. OTOH, in Ireland the seating is very spacious and I never experienced crowding - groceries of other excess baggage is not a problem. A bicycle loaded with panniers is not a problem - super easy on-off with a bike.
I favor an extended version of the Irish rail system - no high speed, no frills. Just low cost basic transport. The reason I say "extended" is because the Irish suffer from the same problem as the US - abandoned lines as governments subsidized motor vehicles by building roads, parking lots, etc.
In most places in the US, we don't allow most utilities and public safety services to be affected by labor strikes. We use arbitration and such - this is hardly an insurmountable problem if we actually want to embrace a more rational transportation system.
Public transport as a "solution" is not the problem. The problem is that few people understand that we have a problem that needs this solution. Happy motoring and all you can eat.
Let's see that's ~1 quart/~60 miles or ~1 gal/240 miles. There roughly 33kw/gal or 137 watts per mile. Bawahahahaha...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent
I've been preparing my family for Peak Oil for 4 years now and made some short videos to show people things they can do. I attached one of them here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHmXhgBhtWk
MrEnergyCzar
Whats the point ... is has already been done ... but the economy won't support it
http://www.xprize.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHs-l4W2e8w&feature=channel
http://mechanicaldesign101.com/2010/05/30/2010-uci-energy-invitational-i...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pEB9sSommU&feature=player_embedded
We run a high tech business, and also work on our (non-residential)smallholding.
Our travelling is limited to roughly a 6 mile area - no long commutes for us.
We have 2 Shogun/Pajero SUVs as we carry a lot of sacks of feed, sheep, wood etc both on-road and off-road.
At UK fuel rates we are spending around £120 per week - over $190 a week - just on fuel for these short but repeated journeys in over-sized but useful vehicles.
Yes, we are urgently looking at alternatives ...
Micro-cars with a tow hook and a lightweight trailer?
Highly expensive brand new (slightly) more fuel efficient SUVs?
Sell the house and live on the land? (Generally illegal in the UK)
In reality the solution is not obvious to us ... and and I doubt that the mass of the UK population will have any idea what to do when THEY hit their fuel budget limits.
(Many must be close to these limits already)
You are already paying high taxes -- about $3 / US gallon if I recall correctly.
This is in contrast to the US, where the average taxes are $.39 / gallon. The US should raise its taxes to the same level as most other OECD countries.
Hi Merril,
No quarrel with your "solution", but why would the general public support this idea? What is the point of offering solutions to problems that most people feel are non-existent?
why would the general public support this idea?
Because it's a good idea, and beneficial for almost everyone.
What is the point of offering solutions to problems that most people feel are non-existent?
It's important to identify the best public policy separate from other concerns, such as possible implementation strategies or political compromises.
Hi Nick,
While I agree that it is important to have an arsenal of potential solutions, I really do disagree with your basic premise (as it seems to me) that good ideas can stand on their own merits.
I have said before that I think you are a talented guy with great ideas. I wish you would put more of that talent and energy into ideas for how to convince the general public that we actually have problems with PO/GW/etc.
Here in Wisconsin we are probably going to lose a Senate seat to a right wing conservative who does not agree that these are significant issues. His POV is for less government regulation, less government advocacy of environmental initiatives, more corporate freedom, more military, more support for BAU jobs, etc. The majority of WI voters apparently agree that energy and environmental issues are not important.
I saw a macho pickup today with three bumper stickers:
Save the Rain Forest - Burn a Liberal
I Guess I was Wrong - He is Worse than Carter
Your Life is Not My Problem - My Life is Not Your Business
These are the folks that will elect our next Senator.
your basic premise (as it seems to me) that good ideas can stand on their own merits.
I don't think that. Nevertheless, I think it's not a good idea to short circuit a discussion about public policy by rushing to deal with right wing obstructionism.
These are the folks that will elect our next Senator.
I think we need to look at the folks behind these folks. For instance:
"What has Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California incensed is the fact that two Texas oil companies with two refineries each in California are financing a campaign to roll back California’s landmark laws to slow global warming and promote clean energy innovation, because it would require the refiners to install new emission-control tools. "
“It is very clear that the oil companies from outside the state that are trying to take out A.B. 32, and trying to take out our environmental laws, have no interest in suspending it, but just to get rid of it,” Governor Schwarzenegger said at an energy forum ... They’re not interested in our environment; they are only interested in greed and filling their pockets with more money.
“And they are very deceptive when they say they want to go and create more jobs in California,” the governor added. “Since when has [an] oil company ever been interested in jobs? Let’s be honest. If they really are interested in jobs, they would want to protect A.B. 32, because actually it’s green technology that is creating the most jobs right now in California, 10 times more than any other sector.”
No, this is not about jobs. As ThinkProgress.org, a progressive research center, reported: Two Texas oil companies, Valero and Tesoro, “have led the charge against the landmark climate law, along with Koch Industries, the giant oil conglomerate owned by right-wing megafunders Charles and David Koch. Koch recently donated $1 million to the effort and has been supporting front groups involved in the campaign.”
source
---------------------------------------------------------
And,
"The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are waging a war against Obama. He and his brother are lifelong libertarians and have quietly given more than a hundred million dollars to right-wing causes."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer?curren...
-----------------------------------------------------------
and,
"A dark ideology is driving those who deny climate change. Funded by corporations and conservative foundations, these outfits exist to fight any form of state intervention or regulation of US citizens. Thus they fought, and delayed, smoking curbs in the '70s even though medical science had made it clear the habit was a major cancer risk. And they have been battling ever since, blocking or holding back laws aimed at curbing acid rain, ozone-layer depletion, and – mostly recently – global warming.
In each case the tactics are identical: discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, and promote doubt. As the authors state: "Small numbers of people can have large, negative impacts, especially if they are organised, determined and have access to power."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/01/climate-change-robin...
---------------------------------------------------------
Now, what do we do about this? I do have a few ideas:
First, we give money to the politicians we like. Have you donated $50 to your senator?
2nd,
We educate other people about the sources of our problems, which include the kind of manipulation I posted above; corporate ownership of media; and private financing of elections.
Hi Nick,
Yes, I was aware of the news items you referenced. And yes, I agree that "we need to look at the folks behind these folks". However, it never ceases to amaze me how people can be manipulated to vote against their own best interests.
I also agree with your suggestions. Actually, just last week, I sent (another) $50 to the Feingold campaign http://feingold.senate.gov/. And, I sometimes write "letters to the editor" about current issues. It is interesting to note that I've had this conversation with Greenish a couple of times and he sees minor value in these actions.
I apologize if I misrepresented your attitude about solutions. But, I still think that we have a fairly different view of what needs to be done. You may recall that Aniya and I have been promoting a petition http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Understanding-Peak-Oil/ to get the NAS involved in this issue (with little success). It is our position that the first priority is to get the most credible folks possible to raise awareness of this issue. I believe than many of your ideas would have much easier acceptance if the problems were better understood.
As for rushing to deal with right wing folks - it is just so hard to ignore them when I am surrounded by them every day!
it never ceases to amaze me how people can be manipulated to vote against their own best interests.
Me too. Fundamentally, I think we knock the independent thinking out of kids when they're very young. Some of us retain some shreds of independence, and others regain some of it as we get older...
I've had this conversation with Greenish a couple of times and he sees minor value in these actions.
What does he think people should do?
Aniya and I have been promoting a petition
That's certainly a good idea. OTOH, I think the basic ideas are out there, and our biggest problem is fighting corporate resistance.
The biggest problem with PO is that supply isn't matched perfectly with demand. Here's a thought experiment: what would PO be like if everyone had a small oil well in their backyard, and it was now plateauing like world oil supply, and showing signs of declining in the future? Well, it would be no big deal. Each household might use oil a bit more efficiently: a few more consolidated trips, a slightly more efficient car, etc. As supply fell, these things could be done more aggressively, eventually moving to a Prius, then a Volt, then a Leaf. Just not a big deal.
So, the problem is the geographic distribution of oil not matching with supply - IOW, trade deficits and supply shocks due to things outside our borders. IOW, security of supply.
Well, you've seen the John Stewart video: every president since Nixon has been aware of this problem, and making speeches about it. So, we know about this problem.
So, what's the holdup? Well, it's Exxon-Mobil, it's GM/Ford/Chrysler working through political contributions, media influence, etc. It's Rupert Murdoch creating endless disinformation.
So, what do we do about excessive corporate influence?? Beyond giving money to good candidates, informing other people, and giving money to Common Cause (to promote campaign contribution reform), I'm not sure.
Yes they can.
And part of the manipulation is to delude them into thinking they cannot be manipulated.
Well, that is just a subset of the larger proposition that people can be, and are manipulated.
Naturally, the manipulator(s) will be doing so for their best interest and not those of the manipulatees.
Kids are not born with independent thinking.
Quite the opposite. They are born with a natural urge to mimic those around them (i.e. their parents). Independent thinking has to be specifically taught and daily reinforced lest it fall back to the much more normal state of herd mentality.
They are born with a natural urge to mimic those around them
I agree. And, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem comes in when the kids start to grow beyond what they've absorbed by imitation, and start asking questions and thinking for themselves. Every child that hasn't already been smothered starts asking lots of questions, and questioning things that don't make sense.
In my observation, kids naturally start thinking for themselves, and have to be taught not to, mostly through subtle and not so subtle forms of fear and violence. This is almost entirely unconscious on the part of parents and other older people in the kids environment.
You can see a hint of this with the whole phenomena of Santa Claus: every kid questions it at some point, and gets various forms of misinformation by their parents. We see the very odd sight of crying kids being forced onto the lap of strangers in malls wearing a Santa Claus suit (kids who otherwise are terrorized by the threat of "stranger-danger").
Have you ever tried telling a parent not to deceive their child about Santa Claus? The parents can become angry to the point of violence - that tells you something about the strength of the unconscious emotions at play here. Santa Claus isn't a core belief system, so every child is allowed to eventually credit their own powers of observation and reason (or learn it from someone else), and see that Santa Claus isn't real - the same doesn't happen with other things.
Santa Claus - fascinating example, really.
There is a guy who solved the problem of transport in a post oil world, doesn't even need batteries, wheels or any such complexity!
AND he can get around the world in 24 hrs - something even jets can;t do.
He should be an inspiration to us all - I want his vehicle for Xmas (but not the driver's suit - attracts too much attention, and too easy to identify in line-up)
I like that.
And he seems to have created an extremely high-tech, high-volume just-in-time manufacturing operation without any supply chain at all!
Very impressive...
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I personally think that all too often the focus is on vehicle fuel efficiency and not building efficiency. The cost of buying a super fuel efficient car is not a one time cost, over ones life many cars need to be bought. The amount of fuel saved is limited with the purchase of a car because eventually the car will breakdown for good. A house on the other hand can be easily improved upon through the process of weatherization. The efficiency improvements made to a house are for the most part, permanent.
IMO it's just because cars are sexy and people want to flaunt their efficiency upgrade. Whereas air-sealing your attic floor and insulating it to R-60 isn't something that impresses the neighbors. Energy efficiency is still just another status symbol and all the focus on efficient cars, solar panels, and replacement windows goes to show that, not all, but most people aren't willing to spend money on saving energy unless there is something shiny to show for it.
A recently-published confidential report by a German military think-tank
It wasn't published, it was leaked. It may eventually be confidential, but at the moment it's just a preliminary draft, not published because it wasn't worthy of being published.
It wasn't a study, it was a preliminary literature search, using sources like TOD.
Peak Oil is a serious thing, and we need to replace oil ASAP. But, we need to explain it with quality stuff.
Hi Nick,
Totally agree. In my experience, really effective solutions to complicated problems are always preceded by a solid understanding of the problem - supported by solid factual data.
Well, OTOH, I guess I can recall some "solutions" that did not fit this model - nuclear warfare, genocide, etc.
Yes, there are solutions which are improvements, and there are "resolutions" of the problem...
This is what, about 190 mpg?
Should really not be hard to achieve. But it will be super lightweight and electric, and very low-profile to get that drag coefficient down.
Wait, the input is a liquid fuel? ... okay, might be too hard to achieve.
Why this assumption that we HAVE to have private cars?
In fact with a population density much lower than todays in the 1920's
until the 1950's when they had been destroyed by the Trolley conspiracy, there were trolleys and rails all over the US.
The US Federal Highway Administration who is unlikely to bend the numbers,
says that 79% of Americans live in urban or suburban areas.
The US already has 233,000 miles of rail, mostly sitting unused, all over
the country.
Furthermore the problem with personal cars is not just a matter of energy,
although that is a major problem with peak oil. It is also a problem
of the safe traveling distance between personal vehicles which means they can never match trains in how many cars can carry people in the same land area. There are also accidents, ambulances to deal with the accidents, traffic courts,traffic cops - the whole highway/road ancillary infrastructure is huge and hugely expensive.
Instead of wasting all these prizes and efforts for normal sized electric cars, small electric cars, Google's automated electric cars,
pods and all these dodges our time is better spent in improving public
transit combined with walking and biking.
First off run the trains, make them more efficient but also add things
which could make them more palatable like semi-private rooms or seating spaces, online snacks (Bar cars which existed for years!)
Make the whole public transit experience more fun, glamorous and exciting.
Install slot machines on buses and trains and kill two birds with one stone.
Also, make the ticket to get on a lottery ticket with at least one winner paid out every day.
Agree about public transport - where I live in the UK there is a very good light rail system (http://www.nexus.org.uk/metro) which I use every day, but neither that nor my bike completely obviate the 'need' for a small car, so I applaud this challenge. When I researched this a while back I remember concluding that diesel serial hybrid was the best compromise between peformance and energy density (diesel ICE charges battery, battery spins wheels) so the rules must specify initial charge state. One problem though is safety. Would you want to be driving your 200kg Prius lite when it's hit by a Merc?
The key to "feeling safer" is to first get yourself used to riding bicycle along a 70mph highway (I've yet to be blown over by any full-speed semis --but I do have a good shoulder). Once you've adjusted your attitude to more of the "every day is a gift" vein of thought and realized that the first oblivious driver who veers at just the wrong time for you -- will be the likely death of you; THEN --yes, you will be psychologically primed to feel safe[r] while driving any small car.
Give a man a raise, and all the "extra" income goes into savings, right? (Not so.) Give a guy a more efficient car and all the savings go into reducing his carbon footprint (i.e. he won't drive *one bit* more than he did before) --right? Unfortunately both of those premises get the same answer. Our society will go kicking and screaming... but go, we will.
Exactly. My question is then why are we bothering with making cars more efficient. Household efficiency is where the real energy savings are. Old and modern buildings are far too often built with many flaws in their thermal envelope. There is no need for groundbreaking technology here, the knowledge is already in place and ready to make existing buildings far more efficient, i.e. blower doors, combustion analyzers, infrared cameras, modeling software, and pressure diagnostics. If energy audits and weatherization were mandatory for all buildings then we would see some real savings in energy use. Not just oil but electricity and natural gas too. When it comes down to choosing between driving a car and heating your home, people are going to spend the money on the heat (at least in the north). Cars are too easily replaced with bikes and walking for expensive hybrid efficient type cars to ever take off.
Oh, and I agree with ya about feeling safer biking on the road once you get used to it, but a 70mph highway seems a bit much for me. I ride on the road a lot but cars passing me at 50mph is my limit for comfort.
Prep, this is your 2nd posting about household efficiency, but unless said household is using heating oil, how, exactly will any improvement in household energy efficiency help with Peak Oil? Where I live all electric comes from hydrop, and I heat with wood. My house could be more efficient (it is not passive haus standard for example) but even if it was, it is already consuming zero oil.
Making houses more efficient will reduce CO2, for those who think that is important, but it does not save one drop of oil.
It is location specific.. but here in the Northeast, we still have a LOT of oil-heated homes, including my house and my apartment bldg. I'm one among 80% of Mainers who are still on the Crude-Bosom for our lifeline.. but I'm trying to wean!
Jokuhl,
You are correct, and there are even some oil heated places where I live in British Columbia. But the oil saving is gained by changing the fuel source. The new electric heat pumps are way, way efficient, and will be cheaper to operate than oil, even at NE prices. Given that the best of them (the ductless mini-splits) you can get 4kWh of heat for every 1kWh in, and they work down to -20C, that makes electric heat quite affordable, and much more efficient, even if the oil was used to produce the electricity.
I think heating oil is the lowest hanging fruit there is for oil, but the answer is to stop using it, not use it more efficiently. This is one case where I think the best thing the gov could do is give the systems to people replacing oil, instead of just the $1500 tax credit.
Well, that makes sense if you're really simply focusing on oil consumption alone, but from where I stand, the two goals are not at all exclusive, and that vastly improving your home efficiency is simply a parallel piece of very Available Low-Fruit, and one that is considerably more important to me, since I'm not keen to have my house spilling out heat that I've paid for, regardless of the source, even a truly clean one.
I'd love to have a heat pump in each building, but I'll size (and pay for) them when I have buildings that reflect a more reasonable need.
In as much as they are relevant to Peak Oil, I'm fairly sanguine to the notion that only Petroleum fuel consumption matters. When that gets tight, the demand for other energies will have to balloon, no?.. and similar relationships will help reveal how 'fungible' all energy sources are, once the King of the Hill has tumbled off his little plateau.
the demand for other energies will have to balloon, no?..
Not as much as you might think, because electric transportation is so much more efficient.
US drivers drive about 3B miles per year. At .25kWh per mile, that's 750MWhs, or 86GW average generation.
86GW is only 19% of US average generation @450GW. The US could grow electrical production by 1% per year for 19 years (and use wind power to do it) pretty easily.
Sorry, Nick, I don't buy it. The point is that once a clearly declining oil supply is upon us, that there will quite likely be a scramble for converting any number of energy needs towards these other sources.. not only will demand-driven prices become erratic and unpredictable, but the reliability and consistency of these supply-lines could also be quickly upset.
You're extrapolating from today's averages, and EV standards that are hardly clear yet, which I don't expect will bear any resemblance to an upset in our energy fortunes.
As far as my home is concerned, economy is job one, mainly because no matter where the calories are coming from, reducing the amount of energy these houses require will ease my situation.
Bob
once a clearly declining oil supply is upon us, that there will quite likely be a scramble for converting any number of energy needs towards these other sources
You're thinking of CTL and GTL, and figuring that new demand for coal for CTL and NG for GTL will dramatically raise prices for both coal and NG?
Well, you have to keep in mind that both have very strong enconomies of scale, so they're generally built in very large projects: $5B-10B.
From the FutureCoalFuels.org FAQ:
"How long would it take to construct a CTL plant? What is the cost?
CTL plants are costly to construct, about $1 billion dollars for a 10,000 barrel/day facility, and up to $6.5 billion or more for a world-scale 80,000 barrel/day plant with a five-seven year lead time."
http://www.futurecoalfuels.org/faq.asp#9
Such projects are very risky, and won't go forward without strong, consistent, long-term government support: that's not going to happen outside China.
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not only will demand-driven prices become erratic and unpredictable, but the reliability and consistency of these supply-lines could also be quickly upset.
In the US? 22% of power comes from nuclear and wind, which absolutely stable price-wise once it's built. 50% of power comes from coal, which is sold for fixed prices in long-term contracts (unlike oil). NG prices could fluctuate, but not over $11/MM, at which price there would be a lot of shale gas.
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EV standards that are hardly clear yet
What do you mean? We have the Leaf and the Volt: future EVs will only get more efficient.
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As far as my home is concerned, economy is job one
I agree. That's a great idea. I've insulated to the point where no heat is needed down to freezing. It's the way to go.
Nash,
Oil is the primary heating fuel hear in VT, not sure on the exact stats, but as oil runs out other resources will be in even higher demand. Thus, efficiency measures regarding electricity and natural gas are part of the short term solution to weaning off of oil. Electric cars for example would put a huge drain on the grid and the cheapest electricity is that which is not already used.
Good to hear you heat with wood, one day soon I hope to make the switch to wood too.
Prep,
We are quite some way form where electric will put a strain on the grid, as long as people resists the "fast charging stations" in the day, and charge at night, then it is fine.
While elec heat pumps are a great way to go, another option, not used much here, is wood pellet furnaces. Very popular in Europe, the advantages of wood without having to handle firewood and stoke a fire. I know of some shcools, hospitals etc in the BC interior that have gone this route, very successfully. But the market here is not very big, so I get to watch as, each year, over one million tons, and growing, of wood pellets, are shipped from BC to Europe via the Panama Canal! It actually takes about 20gallons of fuel oil to ship that ton there, and all this while people here are heating with (imported) fuel oil, that took 10gallons per ton to get here!
Modern trade may be "economically efficient" but it certainly is not always energy efficient!
A strain on the grid could easily come from something as simple as households switching from heating with oil to using electric space heaters when oil spikes up in price. Electric cars don't seem to be capable of putting any immediate strain on the electric grid because their just aren't that many of them out there or the capability to produce many in a short amount of time. Space heaters though are everywhere and they use a hefty amount of electricity, 1500 watts. Some of my clients electric bills will show huge spikes in the winter months from these heaters. If a lot of people used them at the same time then we would be likely have a problem. So any efficiency measures to a home would help reduce that strain on the grid.
And yes pellet stoves are a good move for efficiency and ease of use, but they don't work without electricity and are tied to a fuel that is highly processed and not fully in your control. Wood stove and a close proximity to a large woodlot are an absolute necessity if you plan make it in a cold environment in the post peak future. Whether its a necessity in 5, 10, or 50 years doesn't really matter to me. It's really just around the corner any way you look at it.
A gallon of fuel oil would have to cost about $4 to be as expensive as $.10/kWh electricity, right?
It seems like people would be wasting their money to use space heaters...
A gallon of oil is 36kWh, so $3.60 is $0.10/kWh.
But, your furnace is only 85% efficient, at best, so actually you need to be paying $3.06 to be on par.
But, I don;t advocate straight resistance heating at all, which is what most space heaters are. That is why you use the heat pumps, and then your effective price is about $0.025/kW. Heating oil has to be at $0.77/gal to compete with that.
A 1.5kWheat pump is putting out 6kW of heat, it really is quite a lot, and no more load than an electric kettle. If two such systems are not enough for your house, your house is too big or too inefficient.
And you can set up the systems to do night heat storage, so you use off peak electricity, and it slowly releases the heat during the day. If the utility has an off peak rate option, this is the way to go.
I lived in a house in New Zealand in 1994 that had the nights store heaters (admittedly, just resistance type) but with off peak at 1.5c and peak at 4c, they were the way to go.
Given that the new england area is building new NG plants to handle peak loads, the utilities should be doing everything they can to shift the peak load, with aggressive time of use rates.
I don;t suggest you do this, but, I know of a mountain lodge (off grid) that used to use heating oil, for heating. The owner bought an old style diesel genset (1970's) and a brand new high efficiency heat pump. Runs the diesel on heating oil, uses the radiator coolant loop to heat the hot water, air exchanges the exhaust for air heating and uses the generator to then run the heat pump.
So per gallon of oil, he gets about 50% of a gallon worth of heat, and the remaining 35%, that goes to electricity, he gets 140%, for a total of 190% of heat compared to 85% from the oil fired furnace, and he can control the heat much better.
Not worth doing this at a house scale, but does show just how inefficient burning oil (or electricity) just for heat really is.
That all makes perfect sense.
One detail: doesn't fuel oil/diesel contain 10% more BTU/kWhs?
Already in there Nick. I use 125,000btu's/gal for heating oil (or diesel), and 115,000 for gasoline, though I obviously did not use gasoline here.
Good comparison of heating fuels here;
http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/techline/fuel-value-calculator.pdf
One thing I did not mention, is that you can make oil from wood, "pyrolysis oil" and you can use that in oil burning furnaces with minimal modification. You can't use it in a diesel engine, but that's a whole different story. So, much of the NE could keep their oil appliances and use wood oil, though the heat pumps are a more elegant solution.
One thing about pyrolysis oil is that it is more corrosive and does degrade over a period of six months - you would need to empty the tank in the spring and leave it like that for the summer.
It is better still to burn the wood in an efficient electrical facility and then go heat pump than to use the wood or wood oil directly. Having said that, since I am surrounded by trees that fall over all the time, I am better off to use the wood directly, since I don;t have access to a wood fired electrical generating facility (yet).
This underlines the mirage of claiming rail is a complete solution
Rail: 374977km
Road: 6,430,351km
Yes, Rail is under 6% of the road network, and even less on a local-reach basis.
Hybrid / Dual fuel buses are more realistic, as they can actually use existing infrastructure, and in a highly focused manner.
Buses or jitneys with automated drivers should eliminate the driver labor costs that make buses expensive today.
I am a long time reader of this forum. I just want to express my amazement at the numbers above (road vs rail networks).
Given that rail is 10X more efficient and easier to build, it is incredible that we spent all this money building roads and will continue to do so for as long as we can.
I wonder if (in an ideal world) we could have built a rail network just as extensive as the roads and use mini trains (or trolleys, light rail) to access every place that is now accessible by car?
On this kind of extensive network, even private "trains" would not be out of the question (just small cars on rails if you will).
Thanks,
TD
One of the efficiencies of rail is its *long*, straight node to node travel with relatively few stops or in between. By its very nature it can't wind around to every hamlet and doorstop that we try to make roads do now. If it did it would become a hopelessly inefficient snarl. Short of "personal scooter" transportation (like in the movie Wally) we will never have "doorway to doorway" transportation. Bicycles or feet have to come into play sometime, though if we Americans had our way (and infinite energy subsidy) we would probably do the scooter way if we could. Would somebody wheel me over to my intravenous pizza drip?
--Merv
"By its very nature it can't wind around to every hamlet and doorstop that we try to make roads do now....we will never have "doorway to doorway" transportation."
I really don't see your point. Will it have the convenience of the automobile? No. But it will have the advantage of letting us live within our ecological means, which the auto doesn't.
My point is that trains are efficient for precisely the reasons that would no longer apply if they were "individualized". Bicyclists know the significance of drafting. Now imagine the advantage bestowed on the 99 train cars following the lead engine. You can't get a better mass-to-front-area ratio. Add to that that it travels at mostly unchanged speeds through countryside and town. Both of these advantages would sacrificed when you try to privatize it, leaving you with something probably not much more efficient than the car. I guess I'm being a wet blanket here --sorry. I do like rail and prefer to travel on it myself. But my reason for liking trains is that they are ... well ... trains.
I'll plead guilty to fantasies of my own though -- dedicated bike paths connecting various points. (Maybe that's what roads could/will become when oil prices do their thing.) Bikes don't need much compared with autos --even no pavement at all. Rails to trails comes to mind. But when we've switched our bicycling from recreational to serious transport, then there will be some progress to celebrate.
--Merv
The real advantage for trains is not the aerodynamics (for commuter trains) it is;
-steel wheel on steel rail for rolling resistance 1/10th of rubber tires
-very low gradients
-smooth curves
-low power to mass ratio
-design is optimised to operating speed - most cars are designed for almost 2x operating speed
For urban trains, where you can electrify them , you also get regenerative braking for free, and on a heavy train that is a BIG bonus
Mind you, you don;t even need to electrify to get the braking, you can add it in.
This "train" carries up to 60 people and is powered by the diesel engine from a Ford Fiesta. It has a flywheel energy recovery system (similar to what F1 racecars are about to use) and gets 12mpg - or 720 passenger mpg when full!
Aerodynamics are not a factor here.
That's an unnecessary exclusion, Paul.
The form of a Commuter train still has a considerable advantage of length over Frontal area, and particularly with the higher speed trains where Air-Resistance 'would' be a much higher obstacle if it were divided into few hundred separate vehicles, as opposed to one long narrow one. (To be akin to Autos..)
Surely the Rolling Resistance and Rigidity of the Rails are also a leading advantage, as is the momentum of trains running a straight-levelled route with few stops.. but I have a hard time believing that air-resistance is insignificant.
Air resistance is not a significant factor until you are going over 30-40mph, and for urban trains, you do not need to go faster than this.
I will add that this train does come in double/quadruple units.
The difference in drag coefficient between a short cylinder and a long cylinder is 1.15 to 0.82.
But the long cylinder has linearly increasing skin friction, which becomes a big deal at higher speeds
In an urban setting, having long trains means less frequent services. Much more useful to have twice as many trains/hour of half the size.
But we are splitting hairs - the real point is that trains, of any sort (except high speed ones) are very energy efficient compared to cars. Electric trains are better still, but where not practical a regen type like the Parry (www.parrypeoplemovers.com) is the next best thing.
Trying to optimise beyond that you are into diminishing marginal returns, for increasing marginal cost.
Inter-urban trains are different, of course, as long as you don;t go too fast (over 100mph)
As pointed out in the excellent book "Suburban Nation" by Andres Duany,
Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck, one of the great mistakes of
suburban sprawl versus traditional Town square/Main Street is the
ridiculous cul-de-sacs, circular roads, and deliberately curved
roads in suburbia vs the traditional urban grid.
Due to the need for connector roads to connect all the faux rural cul-de-sacs this design is guaranteed to make everything more circuitous
and increase traffic. You cannot simply walk reasonably point to point
like in an urban grid unless you cross cul-de-sac backyards, nor can you
drive point to point without going around in circles.
Then the cul-de-sac empties into one connector road which becomes the
bottleneck for all traffic. In the urban grid there are parallel streets
heading the same direction - just head 1 block over and you have another
route. The trolleys which ran in every town until they were systematically put out of business ran very well on this urban grid
layout.
Where I live in New Jersey, more densely populated than China, we have
a number of major roads with as many as 8 lanes at intersections for
these connector roads. Turn 1 or 2 of those lanes over to light rail
along the existing right of way and you achieve roads to rails.
In the long run it will also be cheaper than continuing the massive
maintenance with oil-based asphalt for the every-expanding roads.
So the current road mileage is not an argument against converting as
much as possible to rail in various forms.
The point of cul-de-sacs is to limit vehicle traffic. What's wrong with that? Just include bike/walkway channels between them and we're all good.
I can't see needing bus or trolley traffic for the last block or two -- personally I'd rather have a park-and-ride a half mile away than a bus-able street in front of my house.
People would deal with smaller lots and higher localized densities if there were more/better common areas nearby -- parks, playgrounds, garden areas, ball-fields, schools, etc. Cul-de-sacs are the de-facto neighborhood park for many teens -- where you skate and play basketball with your friends. This is a valuable need to serve, as you'd much rather have your kid playing ball with his friends right in front of your house than in the unmonitored park court a mile or two away.
Most people see particular solutions to specific problems, but society is the way it is, including suburbia, because it has evolved to solve many simultaneous needs to optimize trade-offs for many values. It's a "local minima" in the solution topology. There may well be even better "global" solutions, but you have to get to those from here, and if you don't erode the mountains that separate the values society will have a hard time making the transitions.
In the end, each locale will either figure out locally applicable strategies that work "well enough" or they will decay. Obviously inner cities did not address key needs well enough in the latter half of the 20th century, else people would not have invested the effort and money to build suburbia. Most of those issues are complex social problems - like what to do with the mentally ill, criminally-compromised, unemployable, unmanageable, and other fringe elements of society.
People move to suburbs for better schools (that exclude the undesirable elements based on property values, and thereby focus the value on "kids like mine"), perceived safety (no loiterers, pan-handlers, or itinerants), and convenience (24 hour marts with no bars on the windows). We say we're all about diversity and that it's a great thing, but really we're about holing up in small groups with people just like us. I don't see that changing -- when we shift to a more urban existence, it is likely that we'll end up with "walled zones" with economic, physical, and social walls separating the unlike elements. I bet Detroit has all of these in play today, even in the urban areas.
"I wonder if (in an ideal world) we could have built a rail network just as extensive as the roads and use mini trains (or trolleys, light rail) to access every place that is now accessible by car?"
Either this has to be implemented or the whole concept of the car has to be radically re-thought so it can achieve fuel economy on the order of 70 mpg or higher. Anything less and we won't be able to survive as a species.
It would take a long time, a lot of money and a lot of materials to build out a US passenger railway system that was as extensive as the one we had at the end of WWII.
In the short term, how about introducing "bus trains" on the interstate highways for intercity travel? Maybe three or four coach/trailers pulled by one tractor, with a total passenger capacity of 100 or so. About the same number of people as a small airliner. With a driver and co-driver, plus dedicated lanes, such a vehicle could be safe enough. Eventually, thousands of miles of interstate medians could be converted into railbeds for 'high-speed' trains.
Meanwhile, how about rehabilitating the existing national passenger rail network at least to the point that our remaining 'normal-speed' trains run as often and as punctually as they did in 1940?
Seventy years ago.
how about this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-articulated_bus
Exactly. Or perhaps even longer, like the 'road trains' of Australia.
Because half the peak oilers like to think they're smarter than the rest of society, since you know, they are PO aware.
but
What is the difference between:
1) A person who is ignorant of peak oil and thus believes business will go on as usual.
2) A PO aware person who thinks technology WILL advance to continue to provide the comfortable lifestyle.
BOTH groups have an ideology of self entitlement where the believer thinks humans are somehow special and thus the good times MUST continue to roll.
I think this is pointless. Stop wasting time with liquid fuel for light-duty transport and switch to electrics. Electrics are more expensive but they are not hugely more expensive and you get a big savings in fuel & maintenance costs. The cars that will be developed for this will be small, lightweight, and aerodynamic. Well stick an electric motor in that car and the battery you will need won't be very big, so again, just go electric.
Save the liquid fuels for aviation, heavy equipment, heavy-duty transport, petro chemicals, etc.
That is where you and most are completely and utterly delusional.
We are now down to but one option and that is fading fast.
We must leave the damn hydrocarbons in the ground and unburnt for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.
Everything we do and to the largest extent DON'T do, must lead to the prevention of burning carbon and sending co2 into the atmosphere and oceans.
If what we do, does not amount to sequestering or preventing combustion then we might as well give it all up and party til' the end. (That is about what this thread amounts to, engineering to extend the burning)
Hey man, I know AGW is real. But you are utterly delusional if you think we are going to stop using hydrocarbons. That just is not going to happen. The political will just is not there. The people refuse to do it. Humans make stupid mistakes and you just have to roll with it. Look back at our history with genocides and world wars. I think it would be great if we made a serious issue of addressing AGW. But I'm realistic to know that is not in the cards.
Delusional is the right description. Many who post on TOD revere people who promote (actively, with sponsored speaking) wind farms, hybrid personal transport, electric rail, conversion to electric etc without acknowledging that their promotions do nothing to prevent the burning of FF's or population growth. These are the people who hold their own and a perceived by others the moral high ground of doing something (being positive).
Doing nothing which further enables the prolonged burning of carbon is also positive. People who promote and those that build the alternative energy machines and generators must be actively questioned as to what they expect to achieve and how. If they deny AGW and the dangers of over population then we understand their motives. If they accept AGW, questions need to be asked.
By blithely accepting that windmills, hydro, solar and nuclear do not burn fossil fuels and therefore must be helping the environment is just ignorance. These people think they can preserve a semblance of BAU with alternative energy. They could be right to a degree but ultimately, at what cost?
We go cold turkey on fossil fuels and suffer the consequences immediately and maybe some get through, or we burn it all and nobody gets through. I know I won't get through and probably all my extended family. It's not like we have to jump into the freezing water and die immediately, we can ride it down for as long as possible, we just have to hope the end is not as painful as is possible.
After all that is said.......
It's extremely difficult for me not to accept that as well. I don't yet want to get truthful with myself I guess.
We can start doing something by demanding that all future and to some extent present renewable energy devises actually prevent the equivalent amount of FF's from ever being burnt. That means sequestration or cordoning off forever the FF's which are still in the ground.
Power down leave it in the ground.
We can start doing something by demanding that all future and to some extent present renewable energy devises actually prevent the equivalent amount of FF's from ever being burnt
I agree that we need to stop burning FFs very quickly.
Actually, every kWh that comes from renewable energy devices does that: The US used 9% less coal in 2009 - that was partly due to a reduction in consumption, but it was partly due to an increase in wind power.
I'm not as stupid as you look Nick.
Do you think deepwater drilling, arctic exploration, tar sands conversion, shale fracking, kerogen burning and so on is just for practice and the USA is not the whole world.
Have you heard of peak oil? Do you have an inkling that there may be a mighty economic recession upon us and a depression coming. Did that happen because we chose to use renewable energy or because we reached peak burn? We are using less oil because we have no damn choice, we'd be burnin' the shit out of it if we could find and pump it fast enough.
Renewables are simply a hedge, they give the illusion of being able to continue BAU or a semblance of it.
I know you like to proclaim that renewable are used so we can reduce carbon burning and and save the planet but the evidence to the contrary is staring you in the face. We had renewable energy for a century, it has not prevented one iota of fossil fuel being burnt, the opposite is in fact the truth.
If we found a new Amazon forest, or Ghawar of another New World tomorrow, we would start exploiting and populating them immediately and renewables would be shoved onto back burner, that's reality and human nature.
And we are going to burn until we can't anymore, unless something happens to forcibly prevent us form doing so and renewables aint it.
The only reason the world is building wind and solar is to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
Again, the US burned 9% less coal in 2009, and wind power was a substantial part of the reason.
Well golly gee Nick "the world" has failed miserably at that, we reached peak oil, attained peak BTU burn for coal in the nineties and now fracking shale to get the last of the gas. We would have "reduced the use of fossil fuels" without the help of renewables, it happened as a matter of course. And mountain tops are still being removed.
You maybe should define your use of the word "reduce".
Now if we could say "The only reason the world is building wind and solar is to restrict the use of fossil fuels" we would have something to be happy about.
attained peak BTU burn for coal in the nineties
Do you have a source for that? Is "we" the US?
If so, are you suggesting that was because of inadequate supplies? That's not the case - the US has enormous amounts of coal, especially high-sulfur coal in the Illinois Basin that has been neglected because Powder River coal was slightly cheaper to burn.
You have to read more Nick. Try Blackout by Heinberg for a start.
There is enough info on coal out there to frighten normal people but active deniers like you appear to be immune.
"We are very much concerned, and it's getting worse," said Tim Light, senior vice president for AEP.
(8 June 2009)
Suggested by EB contributer westexas, who comments:
This WSJ article discusses David Rutledge's work and talks about "Peak Coal." And of course, I would anticipate that net coal exports, which the EIA calculates in terms of BTU's, will show a long term accelerating decline rate. Here are the combined net coal exports from the US and China versus Australia, from 1998 to 2007 (EIA, quadrillion BTU's):
China & US:
1998: 2.8
2007: 1.1
Down -1.7
Australia:
1998: 4.3
2007: 6.2
Up: +1.9
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5256
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr08/peak-coal.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TCbl3bpPvY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3BYPihyRFE
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/052504_coal_peak.html
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1045109/coal_futures_by_matt_simmons_peak_...
Try Blackout by Heinberg for a start.
I've read it - it's consistent with what I'm saying. Heinberg assumes that environmental problems will prevent the use of most of our coal reserves - see Blackout, on the bottom of page 47 and the top of page 48. I think he's right, but that wouldn't happen if coal were actually needed to keep the lights on. I don't think it will be, but if it were....
Let me assure you: I've followed all of this material for quite some time. In fact, I've discussed it with David Rutledge, and he agrees with me: there are enormous amounts of coal out there that are unlikely to be used.
For instance, Alaska has 2-5 trillion tons of coal, and very likely has at least 200 billion which are "technically recoverable" (a 200 year supply for the US). And, yet, it's not being used at all right now, because it's significantly more expensive than lower-48 coal. Here's where David Rutledge agrees: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6700/674664
Here's what Heinberg has to say: "if Montana and Illinois can resolve their production blockages, or the nation becomes so desperate for energy supplies that environmental concerns are simply swept away, then the peak will come somewhat later, while the decline will be longer, slower, and probably far dirtier.". The Montana "production blockages" he talks about are relatively trivial, and Illinois doesn't really have them. The pollution he refers to is CO2 and sulfur - the sulfur costs about 2 cents/KWH to scrub, and the CO2 might cost out at $80/ton of CO2, which IIRC would add about $30/ton of coal, should we choose to internalize this cost.
Illinois coal simply couldn't compete with Powder River coal with a 2 cent premium for sulfur scrubbing - it's as simple as that. UK and German coal became a bit more expensive, and they couldn't compete with cheap oil.
The same general rule applies to US, UK and European coal: only under Business As Usual is coal declining - people who say otherwise are misinterpreting the data. I discussed this at length with David Rutledge, and we came reasonably close to some kind of agreement on this. If there are serious energy shortages, the old reserve numbers will apply, for better or worse.
See Gail the Actuary's commment on the TOD article that you linked:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5256/491419
I agree with the previous comment.
We are now seeing the first electric cars being introduced, but they are quite expensive.
This is unrealistic. The Nissan Leaf is only $25K (after the rebate), which is $3K less than the average new car. In California it's $20K, which is dirt cheap.
When you consider that a Leaf will save about $18K in gas costs over 10 years, it's incredibly cheap.
Your calculations fail to include the cost of leasing the battery which will be $150 / month
$150 * 12 * 10 = $18,000 for 10 years
source
That idea has been dropped - the battery is included in the cost of the car.
In fact, the lease (for the whole car) is only $350/month, and that doesn't include the California rebate. When you throw in $150/month gasoline savings, it's dirt cheap.
hmm lets do some math here
$350 * 12 * 10 = $42,000 Total cost for 10 years
oops
lets not forget the taxpayers had to pitch in that $7,500 rebate
therefore
TRUE total cost for 10 years = $42,000 + 7,500 = $49,500
so
why are people getting excited over a $50k car that has a 100 mile range?
//
my mistake I forgot to mention the lease option requires a $1,999 down payment
so 49.5 + 2 = $51,500
The $350 is for the 1st 3 years: you'd need to compare it with a 3 year lease of a comparable car, perhaps a Civic or Corolla. You'll find it extremely competitive when you include the $150/mo gas savings.
the taxpayers had to pitch in that $7,500 rebate
Sure, but then you're not talking out of pocket market price, you're talking true cost, and you have to include the true cost of oil, which adds perhaps another $3/gallon for oil wars, security, pollution, etc.
Any way you slice it, the Leaf is dirt cheap.
Any way you slice it, the Leaf is dirt cheap.
Nick, you have made this statement many times, but I am yet to see you provide any real backup for it. Can you provide a side by side 10 yr life cycle cost, comparing to a similar sized ICE vehicle, or provide a link to somewhere that does?
When you include the financing, and insurance on the 2x upfront cost, your ownership cost advantages dissappear.
Give it up Paul, everybody here knows that Nick is never going to give us a link.
BTW
Don't Li-ion batteries in EV cars have a Cycle durability of 500. So if a battery pack gives you a 100 mile range on a single charge,
therefore the life of the battery is
100 miles X 500 (charge / discharge)cycles = 50,000 miles
yikes
who has the $$$ to replace a battery pack every 50,000 miles?
Yes, a more staunch supporter of the Leaf I have never seen!
There actually some types of LI batteries that get thousands of life cycles.
http://evcomponents.com/cscart/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_...
So I won;t argue on that point.
But one thing that the Nick's of the world seem to overlook with the Leaf is that you can;t drive it very far-you can;t take it on a road trip, unless you are prepared for some very long breaks while recharging every 100 miles.
The moment you have to rent a car for the road trip, or make a one day trip a 2 day split, with hotel etc, there goes more money.
The electrics are good, but they are not a slam dunk, they are being given a free throw (at our expense) but that's it.
Yes, of course, a pure EV has a range limitation. For some people that won't be a problem. In fact, some small countries, like Israel, don't think that's a problem at all. For other people, an EREV like the Volt will be more appropriate.
OTOH, I think it's clear that the Original Post isn't trying to duplicate your average US car...
You aren't going to see 500 cycles from an EV unless you get into a time machine and head backs to the 1990s. These days even AA/AAA rechargeable batteries can do 1k cycles. A managed battery pack will almost certainly do at least ~2k cycles before it hits 70% of it's original capacity. Low end lithium cells from China can do ~5k cycles to 70% capacity at low discharge rates these days so something from a manufacturer should be close to that. They might decide to trade a bit in the lifespan for more power, but packs that aren't defective should last more than 100k miles. My guess is the average lifespan will be ~150k miles give or take.
do you have a link?
//
The Tesla roadster uses Li-ion batteries (same type as in your laptop) which have a cycle life of 500.
What makes you think the Nissan leaf (a cheaper car) is using more advanced batteries?
quote: "A lithium-ion battery provides 300-500 discharge/charge cycles."
source
Of course there are batteries with a cycle life greater than 500 but how do you know that's what is being used in the Nissan Leaf?
//
more dirt on the Leaf
Nissan Leaf Has No Active Thermal Management, “Overpromises” Range Numbers
In 2007 Toshiba announced the creation of the SCiB, and unveiled the prototype the next year. It lasts 5,000 to 6,000 cycles as opposed to the 500 for standard lithium-ion batteries, and charges to 90 percent of capacity within five minutes.
Graphs here :
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_b5hcKABPlGI/TFDicrY5kaI/AAAAAAAAhm8/Q7ByEHNtQz...
and they've just added more capacity : (sic)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-29/toshiba-completes-second-plant-...
A lot has changed since that article was copywritten (2003-2005) w/ sources from 2002 and earlier.
Small format (AA/AAA) cells are at ~1k cycles
http://www.eneloop.info/fileadmin/EDITORS/ENELOOP/ARTICLES/Teraoka_Artic...
Someone linked a data sheet for large format lithium cells at ~5k cycles, and small format lithium cells can perform in a similar fashion.
http://www.a123systems.com/cms/product/pdf/1/_ANR26650M1A.pdf
Course, a manufacturer isn't going to spend an extra ~$8k on a pack that will last ~300k miles instead of ~150k miles, but the Lithium cells of today aren't the same as the Lithium cells of a decade ago.
The author of the last article is correct in terms of the Leaf's range. The LA4 cycles is optimistic, real world range will probably be closer to ~75 miles, however unless that have inside information on the Leaf's batteries they can't really say much about how they will perform w/o thermal management so that part is BS. What's really surprising is mentioning the battery pack blowing up w/o thermal management, which is pure fear mongering. The problem w/ flammable laptop batteries was due to excessively thin separators to save weight on top of pushing performance. No automaker is going to risk 600lbs of flaming batteries to save 10 or so pounds of weight.
The Tesla Roadster is built upon old out-dated battery technology. It was the best available on the market at the time and it does have great energy density but the lifetime sucks. All of the newer automotive Li-Ions last much longer and are much safer.
a side by side 10 yr life cycle cost, comparing to a similar sized ICE vehicle.
Here's a Leaf price comparison:
First, you have to decide whether you're looking at out of pocket costs, or trying to look at underlying "real" costs. If we look at market prices paid by buyers, we have to include the credit. If we want to look at actual system-wide costs, we have to include external costs like pollution, supply security, etc. For our purposes today, let's look at out of pocket prices.
2nd, you have to decide what vehicle to compare it to. Here's what Wired magazine says:
"A nicely appointed five-door, five-passenger compact—equivalent to, say, a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla. But it’s electric, so it’s fairly torquey—the measly 107-horsepower motor hustles like it’s got double the ponies up to 40 mph. The ride is soft but surprisingly sure-footed thanks to a 600-pound air-cooled battery under the floorboard."
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/ff_electriccars/all/1
So, a comparable vehicle would be a Corolla at minimum. Other useful analyses might be: comparison with a Prius, which Consumer Reports tells us is cost competitive with a comparable car; and overall affordability, which might need a comparison with the average US vehicle.
3rd, you have to do your cost calculations.
Now, the average driver drives about 13,000 miles per year in the US. Total Vehicle Miles Traveled is 2,982,532,000 http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/tvtpage.cfm and total number of vehicles is 238,314,692 http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/... for an average of 12,515 miles per year. The current price is before taxes is $2.29 - with taxes, that's about $2.80 http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/PET_PRI_ALLMG_A_EPM0_PTC_CPGAL_A.htm . The Corolla gets about 30 MPG per http://www.toyota.com/corolla/trims-prices.html , so the Corolla costs about $1,168 per year for fuel.
The Leaf should use about .25kWh per mile, and night time power should cost about $.055/kWh, for an annual cost of $172.
Other factors: less maintenance, due to a much simpler drive train and the elimination of many support systems, fluids, belts, etc, etc. An important example: brake costs will be much lower, due to regenerative braking. Insurance costs? The Prius might be a guide: anyone seen a good source?
A Corolla, financed over 10 years, would cost $23,991 ($16,850 XLE, 7% interest) + 11,680 gas costs for $35,671.
A Leaf, financed over 10 years, would cost $35,993 ($32,780 minus $7,500 rebate, 7% interest) + 1,720 gas costs for $35,714.
So, a conservative comparison gives out of pocket costs which are almost identical. Other comparisons would look even better: including state rebates (CA-$5K, TN-$2K, GA-$5k?); comparing to a more expensive Corolla; to the average US vehicle; to a Prius; or using real costs (eliminating the rebate and including the external cost of oil).
If you lease a car aren't you limited to 12,000 miles per year. Isn't there a financial penalty for going over that amount?
I wouldn't know for sure since I've never leased a car before but you might want to add that into the cost of car ownership.
The analysis above assumed a straight purchase, not a lease. OTOH, Nissan is including 15,000 miles in the lease.
The Leaf should use about .25kWh per mile, and night time power should cost about $.055/kWh, for an annual cost of $172
To base all the recharging on night time power at $0.055 is a very optimistic assumption - based on two promotional EV rates in San Francisco and LA. In NYC your off peak rate is 9c and in Vermont it is 13c. Off peak power is not even an option for residential customers in many parts of the country yet.
So, to cherry pick the lowest available rates, and then compare to the average gas rates, is hardly "very conservative". And, of course, it ignores the fact that the ev is not paying any road tax on its "fuel" I think to expect that tax holiday to last for the 10 years is highly optimisitic.
As for the insurance costs, well, we can presume they are based on the cars' value, so the Leaf has to be substantially more.
And, you can;t drive this car "average" miles, because you can;t do long trips.
So, in the best case scenario you will just break even, and if all the stars are not aligned, you won't.
But's lets be realistic - hardly anyone who buys the Leaf is doing it to save money - they are doing it to feel good and/or promote themselves etc. nothing wrong with that, the buyer of a Tesla or a Ferrari or a Smart is doing that too.
But for low cost motoring, the leaf is not a step forward. I hope future EV's will be, though I think they need a significant downsizing to do that.
With the leaf you are just carrying around too many expensive batteries, in a car that is bigger than needed for commuting. It can fit the whole family, but unless you know there is going to be a charging station at the other end ( a beach, picnic ground, the stadium?), then you can;t do family trips of more than 50 miles each way.
It is too big for its weekday use and can;t go far enough for many weekend uses - so unless they are a two car family, they will be very limited.
And if the Leaf is parked on the weekends,while the family car gets used, then it would have been more efficient to make a smaller two seater commuter, using half the batteries etc, and then it would be a low cost option.
The coasts have more expensive power. California, in particular, is much more expensive than than almost anywhere else in the country, and has correspondingly much higher gas places (and a $5k rebate). The NE, including NYC, is also much more expensive than the average.
The average retail rate for power in the US is $.11, and night time rates should be about 50% of that (often it is much lower, occasionally even negative).
Off peak power is not even an option for residential customers in many parts of the country yet.
Actually, the US Energy act of 2005 mandated that all utilities offer them. Of course, with some utilities it's well hidden. I've shown several people that their utility offered this, to their great surprise.
I think to expect that tax holiday to last for the 10 years is highly optimisitic.
Not really: it is at least as likely that carbon taxes will widen the fuel price differential.
As for the insurance costs, well, we can presume they are based on the cars' value, so the Leaf has to be substantially more.
Insurance costs are based on many things, including theft rates, collision rates, repair costs, anti-theft system and owner behavior. A taxi owner I just interviewed told me that a Prius would cost him 40% more than the usual Crown Vic-type workhorse, but that insurance would cost no more. BTW, the extra cost of the Prius is paid for in 10 months by the fuel savings...
Further, the reduced cost of maintenance is likely to more than pay for any increase in insurance costs.
But for low cost motoring, the leaf is not a step forward.
1st, keep in mind, a Corolla is low cost motoring: it's $10k cheaper than the average new car, and gets 40% better MPG.
2nd, why would we insist they be cheaper?? Especially when we aren't figuring in external costs of oil wars, pollution, PO, AGW, security, etc, etc.
With the leaf you are just carrying around too many expensive batteries, in a car that is bigger than needed for commuting.
Not for the US, or for countries like Israel or Denmark, where this will be a 1st car, supported by Better Place.
Nick, the wholesale price may go negtaive but you won't see the retail price doing that. I did not know that they all had to offer TOU rates, that is interesting, and they do keep it well hidden (except in California). The EV off peak rates in SF and LA are way cheaper than the normal residential off peak rates, so the EV's are geting special treatment. The buyer can and should take advantage of that, but anywhere that the EV is getting special treatment, you can't rely on that forever.
As for the cheaper, part, I'm not saying the leaf has to be cheaper - you said it was cheaper from any angle - I don;t think it is, and I don;t think Leaf buyers care, either.
You are right that a Corolla or any similar car is cheap motoring, and that's the problem for the electrics - they are likely to displace drivers from cars that are already fairly efficient - it is the SUv's and PU's that need to go. If everyone drove Corollas etc we wouldn;t have half the problem we now have.
We'll see how far Better Place gets in the US. I would not be buying a Leaf and be betting on them succeeding.
Which is too bad, and a car industry standardised battery pack would be just the ticket. It works for propane cylinders. Would also make electrics very cheap to buy, as you don;t buy the battery, but it needs to be across an entire city. I wish them well, but they have the job ahead of them here.
Well, I think we've come pretty much to agreement on the Leaf.
Regarding "it is the SUv's and PU's that need to go": I agree. Ideally the US would raise CAFE and fuel taxes dramatically, and speed up a transition.
Minor clarifications: I didn't say it was "cheaper from any angle": we've seen that the Leaf may not actually go lower than the cheapest conventional choice. I said "incredibly cheap" and "dirt cheap", which I think is fair, given the overall value proposition.
Regarding Better Place: I was referring to Israel and Denmark: I don't expect Better Place to have a big impact on the US soon. OTOH, it's worth noting that: they are trying, in places like San Francisco; many places (e.g., Tennessee!) are installing charging stations on critical paths, and that a relatively small number can make a disproportionate difference; and the Leaf has a clever built-in app that finds efficient routes and charging stations.
OK, we'll park the Leaf - it will be more economical than larger cars, and competitive with similar sized, and the most economical currently will beat it out, on economics. But it is the only car not using any oil.
The SUV's and PU are the crack cocaine of American motorists - given the chance/money that is what most people buy, and they are starting to buy them again.
One of the problems with the cafe standards is that they are a fleet average - so they can go on selling big inefficient ones, as long as they sell enough small efficient ones. It actually discourages specialisation. If company X wanted to do nothing but trucks,and efficient ones at that, it would have to do much better than company Y which can "subsidise" the trucks by selling efficient small cars. This is gaming the system, and the system should not allow this. Each vehicle should have to be efficient in its own right.
To that end, what i think needs to happen is to set a standard based on vehicle weight, not vehicle "type", and be aggressive. For heavier vehicles, the standards should be such that only a diesel, or advanced hybrid (or diesel hybrid) can meet them.
Then relax the rules on diesel emissions (or stop increasing them) and make the emissions on NOx per km. A small, slightly less "clean" diesel produces much less than a 6x larger, but slightly cleaner one.
These two factors alone would make these vehicles more efficient, but also more expensive, and turn many soccer moms off them (most hate big diesel). So then, these would end up mostly being used as real work trucks, which is what they are meant for in the first place.
Then, the commuters and soccer moms are left looking at normal mid size and smaller vehicles, including the good old station wagon (I grew up in them, and have owned four over the years), or the "crossover" as it is being called now.
And, you will then have the electrics, which will have to find their place in the market - I think it is for smaller than Leaf sized, but I may be proven wrong, and that's OK.
BUt truly, more oil is gained by getting people out of big vehicles, whether the ones they get in to are electric or not.
The deck just needs to be stacked in favour of small - something the US government is loathe to do, as it is seen as an admission that the Euros got it right and America did not.
As for the Volt, I am a big fan of the series hybrid layout for several reasons;
1. You can have a much smaller battery pack
2. You can have a much smaller engine
3. The car can have unlimited range, so it is more likely to be the primary or only vehicle for its driver
4. It does not need a proliferation of charging stations, which are expensive and will add daytime load to the grid
It would be possible to make the vehicle "modular, where you can plug in a larger battery pack, if your daily commute warrants it. It would also be possible, as shown by the truck, to have the engine as a removable module, though I don't think that many people would do this. The smaller the car, the smaller and easier to handle the module becomes, but the less important it is too, so is probably best to just make it permanent.
What gets me about the Volt is that it will not be an efficient vehicle in engine powered mode. The gasoline engine is larger, and less efficient than it needs to be, and the car is bigger and faster than it needs to be. Chevy is building what they hope will be a home run with middle america and I am not convinced it will be, and it will not save as much oil as it otherwise could.
What I see in the future is for larger vehicles to be diesel, and smaller ones to be electric. Hybrids will eventually claim the middle ground, mostly being gasoline, at least for here - in Europe, the diesel is king.
One of the problems with the cafe standards is that they are a fleet average - so they can go on selling big inefficient ones, as long as they sell enough small efficient ones. It actually discourages specialisation.
That's a very interesting point. OTOH, I think the most recent version of the CAFE regs have changed in the direction you're suggesting, towards weight-based categories.
Keep in mind that the CAFE regs don't work on the basis of MPG: they use gallons per mile. So, they really do weight small and large vehicles fairly (for instance, 1 SUV @10MPG must be balanced by 5 Priuses @50MPG to achieve a CAFE of 30MPG).
I think the simplest thing is to dramatically raise the CAFE (combined with doubling fuel prices through taxes, sufficiently rebated to make it progressive). I think something above 60MPG is good, above 75MPG would be better. We'd see very few pure ICE vehicles in the mix.
I agree on the value of the Volt. I think you're worrying too much about efficiency: it only takes about $1,500 of capital expenditure on wind power to provide a lifetime of power for an EV of the efficiency of the Volt. Cutting consumption would require substantial compromises in vehicle form, to save a very small amount of power.
It would, of of course, be MUCH better if they joined the rest of the world and used L/100km!
The worst example of gaming is the flex fuel vehicles - that gives the automakers an exemption from CAFE - that is why all the flex fuels are medium/large vehicles - they get the most CAFE credit, even if the vehicle never actually drives on ethanol!
My beef on Volt efficiency is about the gasoline side - that could be made more efficient with a diesel. The electric side will, naturally, be very efficient.
I think the goal for CAFE should be like this;
over 6000lbs - 30mpg combined
4000-6000 35mpg
3000-4000 40mpg
2000-3000 45mpg
<2000 50mpg
The mileage in the heavier categories is harder to achieve, so the vehicles are more expensive. The contractor might decide he does not need a super duty truck after all, and buy a compact PU instead (<4000lbs, 40mpg). His truck is cheaper and so is his fuel bill - his business will be more successful.. The fleet operators will only buy big when they need to, this will get away from the current situation where they buy all F-150's even though only 10% of them need to be.
To meet these, almost every vehicle would need to be hybrid, so the parts would be standardised and mass produced fairly quickly. It would be possible to integrate a hydraulic hybrid into an automatic transmission - Eaton is working on this.
I think thee standards are challenging but achievable.
Electrics, are of course, exempt, but they will be efficient anyway.
For PHEV's their hwy cycle mileage can be used to meet the criteria, as that is when they use the engine.
These CAFE standards would take some time to meet, so announce them now, for model year 2016, plenty of time for mfs to meet them.
Re: the Volt - the ICE will only be used for about 20% of miles travelled, so there's a question of diminishing returns. GM used a bigger engine because it was off the shelf, so it was cheaper and didn't distract from the core electric engineering effort. They're going to work on specialized, more efficient engines in the future when they have more time.
Regarding the CAFE goals: that makes sense, but I would make them much higher. Individual consumers may not take external costs and PO into account, but a national regulation certainly should.
I guess we'll have to see how the volt does in the real world for the % of engine time. I think it will be more, as it should become the car of choice for trips, for the owner.
" They're going to work on specialized, more efficient engines in the future when they have more time."
Ha! GM has been saying that for years, every time the CAFE question comes up. They could have sourced a small engine from Suzuki, but then people will have "power anxiety".
I think my Cafe ranges are Ok. Remember the best value is in making the big vehicles go twice as far, or making their drivers switch to smaller vehicles. That is why the limits for smaller vehicles are not that aggressive - it will make them cheaper to make and thus even more attractive compared to expensive hybrid large vehicles. The makers can still offer much high milage ones if they want to, of course.
Remember, we need the makers to game the system too. They game it to big vehicles 'cos thats where the money is (or was) . now we want to make the small vehicles where the money is.
Remember, we need the makers to game the system too
Yes, that makes sense. I'd just increase the MPG for each weight class by 50%, and reduce fuel consumption by 1/3. I think that would have a good $-ROI, even without considering external costs. If you include the external costs, the case would be very clear.
Nick, those are good calculations. However, I'd nit-pick with some. A typical person is not going to get 0.055/KWH electricity.
But here is the BIG mistake. You assume gasoline will cost $2.80/gallon FOR TEN YEARS. That is obviously absurd. I pay $3.20 now. And gas pricing are going to rise faster than inflation over the next 10 years. And if the basic tenet of these Oil Drum sites is true, peak oil is going to send that gas price skyrocketing up. So that Nissan Leaf may actually be much cheaper than the Toyota Corolla. It all depends on the price of gas in the future.
Yes, rising electricity prices will affect things too but only very slightly. Electricity prices are FAR more stable. Just compare the history of electricity prices to gas prices. And the electricity usage is much smaller (due to electric motor efficiency) so even significant rise in electricity prices doesn't affect the outcome compared to gasoline price changes.
I agree - I was trying to be conservative.
The Leaf overall is pretty much equivalent to a high end Versa plus some extra features that aren't available on the Versa IIRC. We're looking at ~$33k up front versus ~$17k for a comparable compact. Fuel costs for the Leaf are about 2c/mile and for the Versa they are about 9+c/mile. Maintenance costs (including the battery for the Leaf since that's a wearable item) for the two are going to be identical under +/- 150k miles and above that (after the first battery replacement) the Leaf will probably be a couple cents per mile cheaper. Given a ~7-9c/mile difference in operating costs they will roughly equal each other in costs at +/- 200k miles, not counting rebates of course. After that the Leaf will likely be much cheaper, but if someone is planning on ditching the car before ~200k miles then the Versa may be a better deal depending on how much the Leaf depreciates. Of course w/ incentives the Leaf is the lower cost option.
How is $350 / month cheap?
I'm paying half that amount to drive an ICE car and yes I'm also including gasoline which BTW pays for the freeways.
Why should I have to subsidize some Latte Liberal's overpriced eco-bling toy:
-- $7,500 to buy the car
-- paying for the roadways in gasoline taxes so s/he can drive on it for free
-- carpool lane access
Why should the lower-middleclass have to subsidize the upper-middleclass?
Actually, you got it wrong. It should be upper middle class subsidizing lower-middle class, but the lower class does not want to be subsidized. Upper middle class can afford the bigger cars; but the lower middle class does not want to give up their oversize wheels. The subsidy should pay exactly for those people to get rid of their expensive-to-drive-gas-guzzling F150s, Grand Marquis and what have you. And at US level of gas taxes, you do not support anything, pretty much.
The upper middle class is willing to make a choice - and trade something for something, or at least "do the right thing"; The long term cost difference between "a Prius" and "an Explorer" pays for a lot of lattes. And eco is cool now.
Smaller cars are not that smaller too: I ditched a V6 SUV for a Honda Fit.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6972#comment-729507 and
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6972#comment-729737
So you would have access to carpool lanes, drink latte, people will look at you with at least envy and definitely approval, you will save money... and you do not have to become a Liberal.
Actually now that you mentioned it I plan on changing my ideology. Why should using government as a tool for taking other people's money to fund one's ideology be exclusively reserved for Liberals, why can't non-Liberals do the same?
I'll call my new ideology *conservative-Liberalism*
Imagine a person who shares the same social values as a conservative but does not hesitate to use government as a tool to achieve his economic agenda just like a Liberal. However, Government will no longer be a tool used to create social economic equality, instead the wealth of a nation will go to those whom I consider deserving of it.
That's my vision for PO, how do you like it!
You, sir, are now ready to join the GOP.
First with tongue in cheek, remember that the neighbour next door, who may be at a loosing side of your redistribution might have a gun.
Seriously, it is a question of priorities. Some of them have to change to accommodate changes that will be brought by the future including PO. Heck, to survive it. Those who will not adapt, will get marginalized. If they are now, there are chances now even during the recession. One is to use the helpful hand of the government.
If ANY government intervention is labelled wrong and liberal, then yes, trying to reduce trade deficit, save oil and trickle down stimulate electric infrastructure is liberalism. But in reality of today's life libertarianism just plain does not work. State must be there at least to pick up the pieces (i.e. a few trillion dollars to bailout uncontrolled free market believers), but picking up the pieces is not the best way to proceed. Proactively one can do more.
You fail to realize a simple concept. You're not the only one here who thinks you're the smart one. Think about it.
How do you know your idea is the right one?
Out of the dirty dozen different ideas that have been dropped down the pipeline how do you know your proposal/technology will be the one to still stand after the dust clears away?
How do you know that the ultimate end result won't be people favoring Lead acid battery EV cars for cost considerations, so therefore everybody who invested their money into Li-ion cars lost their shirts..hmmm?
wrong. The free-market DID put EV cars on the road
http://www.evalbum.com/
You're just upset that the market did not give you the type of car you wanted.
Actually, those who converted cars to EVs did so out of frustration that the free-market was NOT bringing EVs to the road.
When regulations in California finally resulted in EVs being brought to market, GM sought to do all they could to kill them. And they succeeded, if but for a decade or so...
Are these EVs "liberal" or "libertarian"?
They were made because it is a free country driven by entrepreneurial spirit. People made them, because they wanted to and they could. Same thing about hot-rods and dragsters, (by now electrics are good for 177mpg@7.5 on 1/4 mile)
There is no deciding here which is right and which is wrong here. The point is how the things WILL become in the future and they will lead to EVs, among other things, at the expense of 300M Hemi and alike.
We do not know whether all electric EV is the way of the future. We will not know if we do not try at a decently large scale. But we DEFINITELY know that large displacement ICE are not.
And yes, I am somewhat upset that the market did not give me the car I really wanted. What I have is like everything in life, a compromise.
Seriously now pancake . . . you have cited one completely bogus argument after another. Just stop. Let me count your bogus arguments:
1) You added battery lease payments when the battery is included with the car.
2) You assumed people will lease the Leaf for 10 years. No, people would buy it.
3) You added in the $7500 tax credit on top of that. No, it is already included in the lowered lease payments.
4) A total of 500 charge cycles? Complete garbage.
5) You brought up EVs from 10 years ago. Well, the batteries sucked back then and gasoline was dirt cheap back then . . . it is completely different ball game.
6) You whined about subsidies. Well . . . how many billions are we paying the Navy to keep the Persian Gulf shipping lanes opening? How much are we paying in added healthcare costs from respiratory diseases from car pollution?
I've never seen such a dishonest argument against EVs. I'm tempted to ask what oil company you work for . . . but it seems your knee-jerk rejection stems more from blind-faith ideology.
Try looking at the facts objectively if you can and don't bring up false garbage you hear on your AM radio.
*wrong*
Crude oil is not subsidized. It is one of the most heavily taxed commodities in the world
It's time for a reality check, Crude oil pays for YOUR ideology. Once oil becomes too expensive to use as a fuel source, your ideology will collapse.
Oil makes *Eco-Bling* aka your ideology possible.
//
Just wait and you'll see, the Nissan Leaf will share the same fate as the EV1....it will fall over it's own eight.
Crude oil is not subsidized.
You are in denial, by purposefully ignoring military costs and other indirect costs, such as pollution and GHG emissions.
Pfft. Crude oil is taxed heavily in other countries but not in the USA. And I agree that you are in denial over all the direct & indirect subsidies that oil gets. The Iraq was not all about oil but it certainly was much about oil. And the Navy spends billions patrolling the Persian Gulf to keep the shipping lanes open. Our government gives out leases for oil fields at artificially low rates. Pollution from oil burning boosts our healthcare costs from respiratory diseases. And CO2 is heating up the climate.
I don't even know what "eco-bling" is but it certainly is not an ideology. It seems you've been hoodwinked by the John Peterson Swiss-boiler room operation where he endlessly bashes Li-Ions with sophistry in order to support his failing investment in Axion.
The Leaf, like all new technologies, will start slow and have some bumps along the road. This is just the start of a long transition.
The EV1 was created because the California Air Resources Board mandated zero emission vehicles if you wanted to sell cars in California. It was not an economic driven thing, it was a hardcore government mandate based on environmental concerns. I enjoyed "Who Killed the Electric Car" but that movie doesn't really get the story right. GM certainly handled the end of the EV1 poorly but it was really economics that killed the electric car at the time. The batteries were crappy. The cars were very expensive. And oil was $10 to $20 per barrel back then.
Today the situation is MUCH different. Oil costs 4X as much ($83/barrel today) and it will continue to rise. The modern Li-Ion batteries are much lighter and cheaper. Are we at the cross-over point for EVs right now? No, we are not. But we are very close as the calculations above showed. And as I pointed out, his calculations were wrong because they assumed a constant price of gasoline for 10 years . . . an obvious fiction. Thus, every time gas prices go up, we get closer to break even. (And if there are significant oil price hikes in the near future, we may already be past break-even since you need to consider the lifetime operating costs of the vehicles.)
The early buyers of EVs will be buying for other reasons like national security concerns, interest in technology, trade deficit concerns, environmental concerns, etc. But as time passes, the battery technology will get cheaper & better and the price of oil will continue to rise. (You have heard of Peak oil, right? Pretty much the central thesis of these Oil Drum sites.) And eventually, even you will see the light when it is cheaper to drive an EV than it is to drive a gasoline car.
I don't know what ideology you are talking about. I'm just pragmatic. But at least I presented a path for the future. What happens in your world when oil becomes too expensive to use as a fuel source? Do we go back to horses and Oxen?
The Iraq was not all about oil but it certainly was much about oil.
There certainly were other motivations in the White House, but in the end neither of the Gulf Wars would have happened without oil.
“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil”
Alan Greenspan, in his 2007 memoir.
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GM certainly handled the end of the EV1 poorly but it was really economics that killed the electric car at the time. The batteries were crappy. The cars were very expensive.
GM would have lost money for a while, no doubt. OTOH, so did Toyota, with the Prius. Both the CEO at the time (Rick Wagoner) and Bob Lutz have said that killing the EV-1 was an enormous mistake, GM's largest in the recent past by far. The batteries weren't great, but they were adequate, and the high costs were due to low volume.
Are we at the cross-over point for EVs right now? No, we are not. But we are very close as the calculations above showed.
I think the calculations showed we're right there. You questioned the electricity prices, but I think they're correct. And, my price for the Corolla was probably a bit low.
The Tesla roadster car gets 200 miles range on a single charge. The total life of the battery pack is about 100,000 miles.
Therefore 100,000 / 200 = 500 cycle life
FYI cycle life (number of complete charge - discharge cycles) is a function of DOD (depth of discharge)
see chart
at 80% DOD cycle life is 500
at 50% DOD cycle life is 1000
The standard rule is to use 80% DOD when advertising a battery's cycle life.
but...
A common trick used by suppliers to fool people who haven't done their homework (such as yourself) is to advertise a battery's cycle life assuming a DOD of only 50% because it makes the battery look more hot and sexy.
Tesla doesn't put battery lifespan in terms of mileage, they put it in terms of age, mostly because they're using cells that are optimized for power output, not lifespan in terms of cycle life and/or calendar life. Your chart is also for lead acid batteries IIRC. Different chemistries behave in different ways in terms of cycle life versus dod.
The chart I posted is indeed for lead acid but Li-ion batteries share the same cycle life vs. DOD (depth of discharge) property.
For example
We know that the Tesla pack uses Li-ion "type 18650" batteries.
Li-Ion 18650
scroll down to Technical Details
"Cycle Performance: 90% of initial capacity at 400 cycles"
now cross reference this to the
cycle life vs. DOD chart
It's the same.
Therefore the Tesla battery pack has a cycle life of 500 at 80% DOD.
18650 refers to a size, not a specific chemistry. Just because the roadster uses a common size doesn't mean you can pick some other battery of the same size and realistically claim that they will perform in a similar manner. You also can't take one data point as evidence that a given cell behaves similar to another cell in terms of cycle life versus depth of discharge. You need at a minimum to compare cells of the same chemistry and even then lifespan can vary a lot. If you're comparing two cells to see how they perform at various dods you need a complete graph for both cells, not just one data point.
The Tesla roadster uses Li-ion batteries. The link I posted earlier again right here is for Li-Ion. It says so in bold print at the top of the page. What is it that you have difficulty understanding?
Like I said before they are the same cell, Li-ion What is it that you have difficulty understanding?
here's another Li-ion battery a little cheaper (different brand) but this one has a cycle life of only 300 LG brand
another website for Tenergy brand Li-Ion batteries, cycle life is 500 the evidence
The difficulty comes because you don't seem to understand there are many different kinds of Li-ion batteries and they do not all perform in the same manner. You can't just arbitrarily pick a Li-ion battery and claim the roadster uses the same thing.
There are many different anodes, cathodes, and electrolytes used and different Li-ion batteries have different characteristics. Some provide better energy density, some better power density, some better cycle life, and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Electrochemistry
In order to determine the lifespan of the roadster's pack you need to determine exactly what kind of Li-ion batteries are used in the roadster and then find a manufacturer's (or something as robust) data sheet, which will give you how much capacity is lost due to aging and cycling at various temperatures.
You can't just pick another Li-ion battery and assume they're identical. Just because something shares a characteristic with something else doesn't mean they will behave in the same manner and that all their other characteristics are the same.
You are posting garbage. Again.
The Tesla Roadster was built with crappy battery technology. They just took off-the-shelf laptop batteries and shoved them into a car. Those Lithium-Cobalt batteries do have great energy density but they suck for automotive usage because they don't have good lifetimes and they can have safety issues. I don't fault Tesla because those were the best batteries available at the time. But no one uses those batteries. Not the GM Volt, not the Nissan Leaf, not the Think City, not the Fisker Karma, etc.
The newer Li-Ion battery chemistries have longer lifetimes and are safer. They do not quite have the same energy density of the Tesla Roadster batteries but the trade-off is well worth it.
So please, stop posting this garbage.
I agree that state-of-the-art batteries have much longer life.
OTOH, I wouldn't fault Tesla quite so strongly.
The cobalt chemistry they're using does give significantly higher density, which they needed for their very large battery, and they've done a pretty good job of addressing safety issues.
And, they developed very good state-of-charge and thermal management for the battery pack, and it's starting to look like they'll get unexpectedly good life out of those old batteries: they may beat the 500 cycle life specification by quite a margin.
They may look good in the long run, after all...
quote from article:
I believe Li-ion is a wonderful technology that has a wealth of potential uses. But it is not and never will be a cheap general-purpose solution for all energy storage needs. Julia Child is rumored to have owned a solid gold frying pan that had incredible thermal uniformity but no economic utility in the average kitchen. I remain convinced that many of the highly touted bulk storage applications for Li-ion technology are in a comparable category, technically feasible but impossibly expensive in the real world of paychecks and budgets.
source
.. 'In theory, theory should work like the real world, but in the real world...'.
It's true enough that you won't find a lot of gold frying pans or any other solid gold cookware out there in the general consuming public, at the same time, Lithium Rechargables of a growing range of chemistries are powering electronics, portable tools, lights, E-bikes, and now some E-cars.
There's a difference between Expensive and 'Impossibly Expensive', which seems akin to many of the challenges against Renewable Energy, inasmuch as RE, like EV's is more expensive than folks are used to, which seems to be a death-knell to them, until perhaps they are reminded of an older day when people would work and save, sometimes for years, to be able to afford something of real value that they were eager to obtain.
I think the 'quick and cheap access' philosophy is the one that is supported by this disappearing oil, frankly.
I agree that we should look for real value, and that EVs would be worth buying even if they were priced higher than conventional vehicles.
OTOH, the Leaf is as cheap as a Corolla to run: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7022/731588 , and will only get cheaper as EV costs fall and oil prices rise.
Your source is (Sept 19, 2009 out-dated.
Along about Feb. 2010, they ditched the battery lease idea after lots of opposition.
http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2010/02/nissan-says-it-will-sel...
Teh emphasis on plastics in keeping the weight down is intriguing. If we are post peak, these materials may become prohibitively expensive and may ultimatley end up representing the majority of oil consumption of the whole car.
Agreed, much better to build the car out of a renewable material, like wood, and it will look better too;
Details at http://home.clara.net/peterfrost/tryaneii.html
Does 70 mpg using the 600cc engine from a Citroen 2CV, top speed 100mph!
Just a little big, and overpowered, for this competition, but you get the idea. Build a 2/3 size one, and with a 150cc engine, and away you go.
I guess beauty must be in the eye of the beholder.
I thought you were trying to enter a contestant for a reverse beauty pageant. Here's another butt ugly car.
http://www.aerocivic.com/imgs/profile-z.jpg
//
If somebody held a gun to my head and MADE me choose an EV car, I'd go for one of those DIY lead acid 144 volt EV conversions like these:
http://www.evalbum.com/2083
http://www.evalbum.com/1791
http://www.evalbum.com/379
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I think wood looks beautiful almost everywhere, though I agree the 70's styling is not great, but I can appreciate the craftsmanship to build it. I would have done horizontal cedar strip (same as how I built my canoe) but when it comes to woodworking, everyone has their own ideas.
You can build an ugly car out of anything, not just wood. BUt wood is really good for one offs.
That said, this was a production car made of wood;
Marcos GT, 1967
The guy who built those cars learned what you can do with wood when he was building the fastest and most beautiful machines ever built of wood;
DeHavilland Mosquito, 1942
Made of Ecuadorean balsa plywood skinned with Canadian Birch, all held together by milk based casein glue! Set a world speed record on its second flight and was the most successful plane of WW2!
I do like some of those EV conversions, and know a fellow who has a converted S-10. gets 60km range, and when he needs more he puts his 6kw Honda generator in the back, and he can then get "unlimited" range in the city - a Volt style series hybrid at a $20k discount!
I know of one on one of the Gulf islands here in BC. Gasoline is very expensive there (equiv of $5/gal, but electricity everywhere in BC is very cheap - 6-7c/kWh, and you can't drive more than 15km from end to end, so his electric PU is ideal for that.
There are niches for EV's, but they shouldn;t try to be ICE cars, 'cos they're not.
I do like some of those EV conversions, and know a fellow who has a converted S-10. gets 60km range, and when he needs more he puts his 6kw Honda generator in the back, and he can then get "unlimited" range in the city - a Volt style series hybrid at a $20k discount!
This is an excellent illustration of why a Volt style series hybrid (EREV) will ultimately be cheap to build with economies of scale: basically, it's very cheap to add a range extending generator to an EV, and the savings from the smaller battery pay for the generator.
Seems like people are really stuck on the idea of single occupant vehicles... Very inefficient. If we wanted to raise the bar a little, we could offer a gold carrot for the development of highly highly efficient tractor trailer truck, or even better, a super efficient and easier to build system freight trains. What would be even better though, would be a way to plant the psychological seeds of change for communities and regional economies that would not require so much transportation over such great distances, or depend on so much energy consumption! We need to redefine the popular sense of what an ideal or fulfilling way of life might be... much simpler for starters. Ah, but then that's the way my grand parents generation lived, when world population was much lower. So then we have that specter of population, continued growth, and long term carrying capacity. Dang! Maybe I should stock up on beer and guitar strings? Write some songs about it anyway. :-)
Think you can do better than Roy?
"End of the Ship" by Roy Zimmerman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNi1sevKNd0&
It certainly looks like this competition is just the X-prize with smaller cars and higher mpg, but there are a few fundamental flaws, IMO, that will limit the usefulness of this:
1. It is only open to students. Students are not the only people that can come up with good ideas. A team of farmers from Cuba might have just the thing for this competition, but if they are not students, they can;t enter. This seems a pointless restriction.
2. The winner of the race, is the team that goes the fastest! This seems counter intuitive, as the teams then search for the highest speed, for a given fuel consumption. It would better to specify a practical cruising speed, say 60-80km/h, which can easily be regulated in the race by a cruise control system, and the winner is then the vehicle that gets the best mpg. Speed above this is unneccessary, and a speed of 25km/h is pointless - you can easily do that on a bike/velomobile
The Shell mileage challenge shows you can get thousands of mpg in an impractical car at a speed slower than a bike - so what? This race is unlikely to yield anything really useful - set the rules so the most people can enter, and the cars they make can be used.
If the car can only go 30km/h, you will not be allowed to use it on most roads.
Comments :
1 ) That's right students are not the only one to have good ideas, but anyone willing to participate just can found a student team and help them, either by sponsoring, giving them advises, acces to testing facilities... So that's not a very strong practical limitation and it's good to involve students for their education.
2) It's a race ;-)
Well, yes, I concede it is a race, but considering what it is trying to prove, I think it optimises for the wrong thing.
IF no one can achieve the 1L/100km, then what, no one has qualified?
If it was done the other way, set the speed, and then you would have some qualifying marks on consumption, like 1.5L/100km to make it into the final, and from there most economical car wins.
I guess I view it as a competition to find the most efficient car, as that is an interesting result, but as i stands, it is a race to find the fastest, and there are many such races, - that is not nearly as useful a result, IMO.
Jean-Luc,
There is no mention of what the "prizes" are. Is there any money up for grabs, or just the prestige? Can the teams and public bet on/against each other?
Leaving aside my opinion on the speed/mileage criteria, I think your rule set is much better, and simpler than the X-prize ones. To enter in this race will not require spending vast amounts of money, though I'm sure someone will....
Perhaps the goal is more to teach, than to create a marketable solution? Certain students (and most people) perform better in competition, and are more interested in races than in an academic exercise, say, to design the vehicle to meet insurance industry expectations.
Sure, but these are not beer swilling couch dwellers, they are technical students, who will have no issues at all, with a measured winner.
The biggest issue with 'fastest', is another car could get far better fuel numbers, which is actually the stated main aim.
The contest is NAMED for a fuel consumption, so to then award the main prize, for something else is a little unfocused. Should be easy for them to fix.
Actually, I have seen a "race" that is along the lines of what I am proposing. It was a supporting event for the the Australian Grand Prix in about 1985 or 86.
The race had the top 10F1 drivers, each in an identical car, a 4cyl car made by Gm's Australian division, called the Camira. It was an "economy race -each car had exactly 500cc of fuel in the tanks, lines etc, and the drivers had to go as far as possible on that, whoever went furthest won. But, to keep them from dawdling, they had a "pursuit" car, that started 30 seconds later, and drove at a constant 60km/h. If you got caught by the pursuit car, you were eliminated.
You could see them trying to go as slow as possible, slipstreaming each other etc, and trying not to get caught -actually made for quite a sight having the worlds fastest drivers in a "hypermiling" competition, before anyone even knew what hypermiling was.
Thanks for your comments. Maybe "Challenge" isn't the best name but we are quite sure almost all cars will make the 100 km with 1 litre, the question is : at what speed ? We did set a minimum speed to 25km/h that could lead to a situation where nobody makes it. The idea of a race is that it's fun, the performances will be set with the qualifying runs for every team. It's true we want to put quite a lot of teaching and that it will not be a fully marketable solution that will come out but more tracks for a very energy efficient vehicle with realistic characteristics. But still they will only be prototypes.
And sorry but the prizes are only for prestige, it could change in the future but we are not going to promise anything unless it's 100% sure.
The idea is good, my only issue is with a web site called /www.1litre100km.com
that states :
The goal is to build a vehicle with very low petrol consumption.
then the Main Prize should naturally reward the lowest fuel usage ? (not the fastest)
To manage this, how about determining all the km/litre and prize allocating on that, and then doing a reverse-grid race, where drivers rank against a Speed / Distance formula (based on the median curves from the contest ? )
In a reverse grid, the best rated cars, start from the back.
Another example : Yacht racing has Line Honours, and also a Handicap system, so work something similar to that ?
Ask for some sponsors ? Large sums are not needed, but something they can win, gives something tangible to show the long suffering parents !