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Sometime about 1910-1920, Henry Ford I said that ALCOHOL would be the fuel of the future. The model T was built to run on pure alcohol!
Thomas Midgely, the man who worked for DELCO (Detroit Engineering Laboratory Company), and developed Tetra-Ethyl Lead as an anti-knock additive for gasoline, Agreed. Midgely also stated in front of a Congressional Committee that Tetra-Ethyl Lead was NOT poisonous or hazardous. It is said that he actually washed his hands in leaded gasoline to prove it! It has also been said that he was suffering from lead poisoning at the time.
google it; it is an interesting read!
Since reading about Midgely and the Ethyl Corporation, I don't believe anything said by the government or anybody else about the fuels to power vehicles!
Battery powered vehicles could easily become as much of an environmental disaster as the gasoline or diesel powered vehicles. Hazardous in different ways, but still hazardous!
Sometime about 1910-1920, Henry Ford I said that ALCOHOL would be the fuel of the future. The model T was built to run on pure alcohol!
Thomas Midgely, the man who worked for DELCO (Detroit Engineering Laboratory Company), and developed Tetra-Ethyl Lead as an anti-knock additive for gasoline, Agreed. Midgely also stated in front of a Congressional Committee that Tetra-Ethyl Lead was NOT poisonous or hazardous. It is said that he actually washed his hands in leaded gasoline to prove it! It has also been said that he was suffering from lead poisoning at the time.
google it; it is an interesting read!
Since reading about Midgely and the Ethyl Corporation, I don't believe anything said by the government or anybody else about the fuels to power vehicles!
Battery powered vehicles could easily become as much of an environmental disaster as the gasoline or diesel powered vehicles. Hazardous in different ways, but still hazardous!
Please not both crude oil and natural gas substitute can be made from coal. Just heat it in the presence of water steam. if the heat is provided by a high temperature gas cooled nuclear reactor the system does not need to burn coal to produce the petroleum substitutes.
Well, it WOULD enhance our health, no doubt about it.
We certainly can't go back to horse and buggy days, what would we do with all the horse excrement?
The best answer would be the broadcast power that Tesla was supposedly working on, and supposedly had almost perfected before he died.
Compressed natural gas (CNG) is a viable fuel, with much of the infrastructure already in place (there are natural gas lines all over the country), and all that is required is a fueling station in your own garage to refill your vehicle. For those without natural gas service (yes, there are many areas that don't have gas lines), LPG is a viable alternative. Again, with a small amount of training, anybody can refill their own vehicle.
Batteries are heavy, expensive, full of toxic chemicals, and some require exotic metals that are in limited supply. They also require electricity to recharge them. Where is the electricity going to come from?
Wind power? Yeah, right! There are two huge wind farms in Montana. I recently made a trip that passed both of them, and they were both idle, no power being produced. So much for that idea.
Solar power? Where are you going to put the solar panels, and how much pollution will be produced in the manufacture of the panels? How much petrochemicals will be required to make the panels?
For that matter, how much petroleum is involved in the manufacture of an electric vehicle? How easily recyclable is an electric vehicle?
THINK instead of blindly following!
I really see the electric car as a boondoggle. building out a network to recharge is going to be very expensive. recharging the cars takes a lot of time.
The batteries are very difficult to deal with, they are expensive, when they go bad they are toxic. There is very little upside.
There are however other alternatives that can and will be game changers.
as I pointed out, Elio Motors is in the process of producing a car that gets 84 MPG in a gas powered engine. The car is a two seater and has a price point of $6800
I fully believe in my lifetime, there will be a shift from fossil fuel to some other major energy source. what that will be remains to be seen. But electricity is just too fickle.
If I were to bet, I would bet on some form of oil produced from living organizims like Algae or E Coli.
Well, it WOULD enhance our health, no doubt about it.
We certainly can't go back to horse and buggy days, what would we do with all the horse excrement?
The best answer would be the broadcast power that Tesla was supposedly working on, and supposedly had almost perfected before he died.
Compressed natural gas (CNG) is a viable fuel, with much of the infrastructure already in place (there are natural gas lines all over the country), and all that is required is a fueling station in your own garage to refill your vehicle. For those without natural gas service (yes, there are many areas that don't have gas lines), LPG is a viable alternative. Again, with a small amount of training, anybody can refill their own vehicle.
I drove a NG delivery truck back in 1983. That said I do not want all of my neighbors with refilling stations in their garages nor is that practical.
So the infrastructure isnt in place right now. The range is still limited compared to gas also which I why I disliked the NG truck. Every morning I had to take it to get filled where with the other trucks one didn't.
Nothing wrong with NG but it's not a long range solution. IMO.
Quote:
Batteries are heavy, expensive, full of toxic chemicals, and some require exotic metals that are in limited supply. They also require electricity to recharge them. Where is the electricity going to come from?
The batteries in a Prius do not require electricity (as in an outside source) to recharge them.
This is what I find odd. You promote something that we do not have the infrastructure to make it practical but dismiss something that is being made better each year. The batteries in Hybrids have been improved upon quite a bit in the relatively few years they have been around.
I have no idea what advances in regenerative energy will come along in the next couple decades (the ability to recharge batteries while going downhill or braking) but I'm pretty exciting to see what they come up with. I have to believe that we aren't that far off to where we will have extended ranges on batteries with small auxiliary power sources to recharge the batteries.
Quote:
Wind power? Yeah, right! There are two huge wind farms in Montana. I recently made a trip that passed both of them, and they were both idle, no power being produced. So much for that idea.
Solar power? Where are you going to put the solar panels, and how much pollution will be produced in the manufacture of the panels? How much petrochemicals will be required to make the panels?
For that matter, how much petroleum is involved in the manufacture of an electric vehicle? How easily recyclable is an electric vehicle?
THINK instead of blindly following!
Please do. As I have already pointed out, the batteries are already easily recyclable and the cars themselves are no different than any other car.
electric cars are a joke. sorry. they have very little real value. they are not "Green" and they are not the answer to reducing oil consumption.
I was damned impressed with my dad's Prius. We took it on a trip and I did better than I would have in my diesel VW.
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