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I'm a big fan of using my own two feet or a bicycle to get around, but even I think this prediction is a little over the top. Cars will be around for many more years, because our living patterns demand it.
These patterns can demand all the want the basic issue here is , and will remain, of sustainability. If it can't be sustained it will not be around.
It's well known ,and seldom denied, that the IC engine is old tech. That said, what sort of engine did you have in mind to replace it with?? Where is all this American Ingenuity that you claim will save the day? All of the stuff that is supposed to be "new" tech is just a re-hash of old tech one way or the other.
Electric Motor has it beat right upfront quite well.
Not really an American Ingenuity thing as much as Get The Existing Corporations and Status Quo out-of-the-way thing.
I bought my last car in 1986, a 1969 Dodge Charger. I bought my truck in 2004, a 1990 F250 diesel. Already have been running my vehicles on homemade fuels from landscape waste and algae experiments. Working on making my own lubricants as well. Fuels are not hard to produce if you have hydrocarbons to play with.
These patterns can demand all the want the basic issue here is , and will remain, of sustainability. If it can't be sustained it will not be around.
In many parts of the country, there are few alternatives. Case in point: I moved from the east coast, where public transportation is widely available, into a rental house in a midwestern exurban bedroom community about twenty miles south of a major city while I looked for a house to buy close to my workplace.
The town has practically no public transportation options and no viable industry, at least nothing large enough to employ the ~45k (and growing annually) town residents. The nearest employment center is 12 miles north toward the city. Twelve miles isn't a bad bike ride, except that the only route is a six-lane highway, and even if there was the option of taking less traveled country roads, the winters make commuting by bike a seasonal thing. The limited passenger rail system stops many miles short of my former community, and there weren't and still aren't any plans to extend it. Why should they? It's never been profitable.
The town lost its mom & pop stores long ago and has succumbed to the big boxes, which were relegated to one end of the town, a long way from any of the vast neighborhoods. While walking paths criss-cross the neighborhoods, none actually take you to the shopping centers, and the only roads that service the centers are highways and extremely dangerous for cyclists. A decade ago, environmentally-minded people in the community were taken with the idea of new urbanism, a fine idea, which unfortunately morphed into thousands of large houses on tiny lots devoid of any commercial interests that might actually sustain people.
It doesn't matter if one has a lot large enough to grow a vegetable garden, because the HOAs prohibit anything other than a short list of approved shrubs and flowers. That's why there's a community garden, right? Except that one has to drive across town to get there. Up until the day I left, I wanted to scream every time I saw the big ol' flat, green soccer field in the middle of my neighborhood. Wasted land, wasted water.
The residents of my former bedroom community have no way to sustain themselves without cars, and the systems that would allow them to do so aren't even under consideration. If petroleum becomes scarce, the few who have the option will probably move in toward the city, like I did, but the majority will stay right where they are, giving up their lives piecemeal to keep that pile of metal in the garage running, while the town fathers stand around and wonder when things went awry.
And, there are a gazillion towns just like the one I've described all around the country. So, no I don't think that most people have bought their last automobile. Not by a long shot.
Last edited by formercalifornian; 09-21-2009 at 10:08 AM..
And, there are a gazillion towns just like the one I've described all around the country. So, no I don't think that most people have bought their last automobile. Not by a long shot.
Dunno if you know the full background of the Last Car story line?
In the full supposing, towns and suburban areas like you have described in excellent detail (from this perspective) also collapse as unsustainable, as well.
Sort of future Detroit "Ghost Town" models -- once the oil stops either from shortage, or our inability to go further into debt to pay for it, or both.
In many parts of the country, there are few alternatives. Case in point: I moved from the east coast, where public transportation is widely available, into a rental house in a midwestern exurban bedroom community about twenty miles south of a major city while I looked for a house to buy close to my workplace.
The town has practically no public transportation options and no viable industry, at least nothing large enough to employ the ~45k (and growing annually) town residents. The nearest employment center is 12 miles north toward the city. Twelve miles isn't a bad bike ride, except that the only route is a six-lane highway, and even if there was the option of taking less traveled country roads, the winters make commuting by bike a seasonal thing. The limited passenger rail system stops many miles short of my former community, and there weren't and still aren't any plans to extend it. Why should they? It's never been profitable.
The town lost its mom & pop stores long ago and has succumbed to the big boxes, which were relegated to one end of the town, a long way from any of the vast neighborhoods. While walking paths criss-cross the neighborhoods, none actually take you to the shopping centers, and the only roads that service the centers are highways and extremely dangerous for cyclists. A decade ago, environmentally-minded people in the community were taken with the idea of new urbanism, a fine idea, which unfortunately morphed into thousands of large houses on tiny lots devoid of any commercial interests that might actually sustain people.
It doesn't matter if one has a lot large enough to grow a vegetable garden, because the HOAs prohibit anything other than a short list of approved shrubs and flowers. That's why there's a community garden, right? Except that one has to drive across town to get there. Up until the day I left, I wanted to scream every time I saw the big ol' flat, green soccer field in the middle of my neighborhood. Wasted land, wasted water.
The residents of my former bedroom community have no way to sustain themselves without cars, and the systems that would allow them to do so aren't even under consideration. If petroleum becomes scarce, the few who have the option will probably move in toward the city, like I did, but the majority will stay right where they are, giving up their lives piecemeal to keep that pile of metal in the garage running, while the town fathers stand around and wonder when things went awry.
And, there are a gazillion towns just like the one I've described all around the country. So, no I don't think that most people have bought their last automobile. Not by a long shot.
We had lots of small towns across America before the invention of the Automobile... often people spent their entire life within 20 square miles...
There are alternatives to what you describe... live close to a rail line... buy a moped, carpool... a neighbor of mine runs his car off restaurant grease... hasn't bought fuel for 3 years...
What's wrong with a green soccer field? Nice that kids have a place to go... grass is easy to keep-up and controls erosion and dust...
Plenty in inner cities have space... lots of vacant homes/apartments... no one has to live in the country side...
Sure, there are alternatives, but I was responding to Tightwad's assertion that people have bought their last cars, not just gasoline-powered cars, all cars. I don't see that as a possibility much less a probability. A few enterprising folks like Ultrarunner's friend might convert their diesel engines to run on restaurant grease, but the vast majority of affluent exurbanites will do what they have to do to keep the metal heaps running until there are no other options, and I don't see that collapse coming in my lifetime, although I could be wrong.
So many urban areas have developed into large metro regions devoid of functional public transit options because the car as primary transportation is assumed. Our entire modern society and all the commerce needed to sustain it is based on highways, and therefore we will do everything in our power to keep the system running.
I live within walking distance of work and a grocery, along with many other businesses, but I don't kid myself that I'm any less dependent on petroleum than those in the exurban town I mentioned in my last post. It's obvious to me every time I see the trucks roll in to unload their wares at the grocery that petroleum makes the world go round.
Quote:
What's wrong with a green soccer field? Nice that kids have a place to go... grass is easy to keep-up and controls erosion and dust...
Nothing is wrong with a nice green soccer field when somebody who wants to grow a garden has a place to do so without driving across town.
Another "apocalyptic" type that will undoubtedly prove WRONG -- as the links from others suggest, higher efficiency internal combustion engines AND personal transportation that look pretty much like what we have today WILL BE the major mode of transportation GROWTH for a LOOOONG time.
Eventually LPG will probably be the choice of large numbers of internal combustion engines and once the infrastructure for highly pressure gases become common place the benefits of driving vehicles with hydrogen will dominate. These are multi-decade long processes and in the mean time TREMENDOUS numbers of cars WILL BE SOLD.
For every skillless sad sack that falls down a few rungs on the ladder of consumers DOZENS more will, be hardwork and smarts, climb UP to buy cars.
Ever hear of Malthus? Basically any one that theorizes on the "scarcity" of ANY resource is falling prey to same errors of logic that have disproved over and over and over for the past 170+ years. The notion that "peak oil" is some kind of WALL that constrains civilization is ridiculous. Just because there may be some truth to constraints on the extraction of oil from low cost providers in the mid-east (and there is much conflicting evidence as to that...) in NO WAY suggest cars will be out of reach of ANYONE. Heck on cost basis alone it may be that we'll be flooded with Nano's from Tata Motors. Those would still be NEW CARS!
I think for many of these people the car is a threat to them. The car is an ultimate expression of personal freedom, the ability to go anywhere, anytime and the leftists are just plain uncomfortable with people having that freedom.
Humans by their nature are panicky beings, but we will evolve the technology to suit our purposes. We always have.
LPG powering cars is very common in Australia and you can pretty much get it at any major gas station. It is no big deal and conversion kits to LPG is big business in Australia and Holden and Ford are starting to embrace this fuel source themselves. The whole world has natural gas coming out it's wazoo and the earth makes more every day. It's not unrealistic to incorporate that or other fuel sources into our gas stations.
Also over the past 30-40 years we have found tremendous gains in efficiencies in IC engines and there is more to come with kinetic energy recovery among other things.
Oil isn't running out anytime soon and I think over the years as Algae based fuels get improved, Oil wont be such an issue anymore.
I've bought my last car? Baring nuclear war or getting hit with a meteorite, NO I reckon not.
Electric Motor has it beat right upfront quite well.
In cars it has yet to work well and in another thread somewhere in the automotive section I posted my experiences testing these cars for manufacturers.
Our electric grid could only sustain about 5% of the cars being electric and most of that energy comes from Coal power plants and in some states nuclear power. The major problems with electric cars aside, you'd need a hell of a lot of nuke plants on line to power everyones car everyday.
Electric cars are a dead end street technology wise.
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