Nuclear / Thorium Cars - Solar Cars -- Electric Cars -- Hybrid Cars: What are latest Progresses n public availability ? (vehicles, 2011)
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Peace be on you. What are latest progress and possible availability-to-public, in Nuclear / Thorium Cars - Solar Cars -- Electric Cars -- Hybrid Cars?
Are delays technical or political?
Thanks.
Cost is probably the biggest one. They have test solar powered cars, but it's not something you would want to get into an accident with. It's interesting you mentioned Nuclear. They do use nuclear to power space craft. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) are used to make power and last for decades. 4.8 kg of plutonium oxidecan generate 2.7 kWh/day, The Tesla roadster uses 12.5 kWh a hour, I don't see nuclear as being a viable alternative any time soon. (Not to mention the radiation hazard).
Amazing the thoughts of folks about cars and technology. We have the technology to put cars on the road that make twice the HP you have today and get fuel economy over double what we get today....but you can't have it. Any politician that tells you we must reduce the amount of oil we import is a liar and he is a scumbag. It's all about the money. If we were to double the fuel mileage of todays vehicles, the Gov't would fold over night as they would be out billions of dollars in tax revenue. It's not in the Gov'ts best interest to give you cars that get great gas mileage. It's all about the politics. We also sit on the largest oil reserves in the world yet the politicians won't allow drilling on it. They haven't issued any new permits for refineries either meaning more refined products are coming into this country than ever before. And that situation is going to get worse as Mobil/Exxon is going to shut down 2 by the end of the year. It's all about the money and politics. Have you ever seen a politician THAT WASN'T A MILLIONAIRE?
They haven't issued any new permits for refineries either meaning more refined products are coming into this country than ever before. And that situation is going to get worse as Mobil/Exxon is going to shut down 2 by the end of the year.
I think you need to quote some sources before I believe a word your saying. The United States imports crude oil that it refines into gasoline, diesel, heating oil, etc, it does not import refined petroleum products in any significant quantities. The United States actually refines crude oil for other countries because they do not have enough refinery capacity to do it themselves and exports refined refined products to other countries like Mexico. The shelf life of refined products is very limited, this is one of the reasons they do not have a huge stockpile of refined products on hand at any one time.
As to a nuclear powered car - using either uranium or uranium-thorium (the thorium is converted into U-233 in a neutron flux) - mostly a pipe dream of the late 40's - the smallest nuclear powered ships AFIK are way bigger than any 18-wheeler, and running a reactor plant is not trivial. The comic books that show a guy putting a pill the size of an aspirin in a car that will run it for a year are about as realisitic as Spider Man. Just from the perspective of E= MC*2, yeah, that would be about the mass for the energy needed, but how to convert the mass to energy (criticality) and how to convert the heat energy of fission into mechanical power (steam cycle, Rankine cycle with Helium or CO2) - pretty soon you are into tons of equipment, way bigger than the car, and your build budget gets into 7 figures pretty quick as well.
So far practical nuclear applications are steam cycle, so in principle you might think about a reactor-powered locomotive, but it would be so expensive to build no one would be interested, plus you would have to have training and licensing of the engineers to about the same level as NPP operators get. And what about an emergency plan if you ever wrecked the loco?
I'd hate to see a flywheel storge car get into an accident, after seeing an engine flywheel come up through a car when it broke at a drag race. And an engine flywheel doesn't spin anywhere near as fast as an energy storage flywheel in one of those systems.
I'd hate to see a flywheel storge car get into an accident, after seeing an engine flywheel come up through a car when it broke at a drag race. And an engine flywheel doesn't spin anywhere near as fast as an energy storage flywheel in one of those systems.
Then you're probably not going to like where Porsche put their flywheel.
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