Oil Alternatives!

[Joey D]

Last year Texas (hot, arid southern state) had a record snowfall. This summer New York had a record low high temperature. That must be global cooling right? I am in a drought, but just a few hundred miles north it is flooding. Individual instances mean nothing on a global scale. We are comparing data that is only 150 years old, at best. Are you going to tell me that the dinosaurs lived in colder climates? Or maybe explain how the Sahara went from lush forests to desert before the industrial age. The climate moves around all kinds of crazy ways and crazy things happen with it. That is the nature of the Earth.

Well if you want to get technical global warming will eventually bring about an ice age. But like you said the climate shifts constantly for many different reasons we don't really need to get into here.

They work out cheaper for the customer? With the cost difference between them and an equivalent sized car it will take ten years to make up the difference in gas, and most people won't keep a car that long.

Math times boys and girls....

A 2008 Toyota Prius starts at $22,175 according to the Toyota American website. The fuel economy is rated at 60 mpg city and 51 mpg highway. The 2008 Toyota Corolla, a car of similar size and interior room starts at $15,205 according to the same site. The fuel economy is rated at 26 mpg city and 35 mpg highway. The difference in price is $6,970.

The Prius according to Edmunds.com through the Toyota site can go 714 miles in the city and 607 miles on the highway, if you average it out you can in theory go 660 miles.

The Corolla according to Edmunds.com through the Toyota site can go 343 miles in the city and 462 miles on the highway, if you average it out you can in theory go 402 miles.

A different of 258 miles.

The Prius has a 12 gallon gas tank, which at $2.75 a gallon would be $33.00 to fill it up if it was empty. The Corolla has a 13 gallon tank, which at $2.75 a gallon would be $35.75 to fill up. A price difference of, obliviously, $2.75.

I'm going to say most Americans drive about 12,000 miles per year, is this a fair estimate? I drive less but then again I don't drive all that much.

At this you would have to fill up the Prius about 18 times, which mean the final fuel bill would be $594 for the fuel bill. For the Corolla you would have to fill up 30 times $1072.50 for the final fuel bill. This is a difference of $478.50.

At this rate you would have to own the Prius 14 and a half years for the fuel savings to balance out if you bought one over a Corolla…I don’t know about you but I don’t think most people own a car that long.

 

[FoolKiller]

At this rate you would have to own the Prius 14 and a half years for the fuel savings to balance out if you bought one over a Corolla…I don’t know about you but I don’t think most people own a car that long.

I don't usually compare the Corolla either. I prefer to go by engine size. The comparable engine sized car would be a Yaris sedan, which gets 40 mpg on the interstate and is cheaper.

I guess it depends on whether you want a comparable car size or engine/power size. But since the Yaris is really just a matter of inches difference, although the front seat leg room is actually larger in the Yaris compared to the other two (42.2 - Yaris, 41.9 - Prius, 41.3 Corolla). The overall difference in physical size is barely noticeable to the owner. Rear leg room is even stranger, as the Prius is the largest (38.6) and the Corolla is the smallest (35.4), with the Yaris being slightly larger than the Corolla (35.6).

I guess it depends on what you are looking at. If you want luggage space and overall size the Corolla is closer, but if you are looking at power/engine size or interior room the Yaris is closest.

So, financially the Prius doesn't make sense and if you are wanting to be environmentally conscious you have to consider that the pollution has caught up by the time you buy the car. And that is ignoring the refining and whatnot as the nickel turned battery will actually travel around the globe (Canada - mined and refined - to Europe - making it into a usable battery form - to Japan - put in the car - to the US - to be sold) before it hits the showroom floor.

 

[Joey D]

I forgot about the Yaris sedan, and by using that the length one must own a Prius to have it balance out would probably be a couple more years. The only reason I picked the Corolla is they seemed to be similar cars, but I can see where the Yaris would work in the same way. If I get even more bored today I might have to run the numbers to see the difference between all three cars. Or I could just use the Camry normal model and the Camry hybrid model...or any other hybrid car for that matter.

Actually something I might do is go through all the hybrid models and figure out which one, if any offers you a better bang for the buck.

 

[Philly]

I just call it a Pious. So, Piouses?

Earth

Muffin

Mobile.

I'm guessing that the other hybrids won't do nearly as well (Much worse is probably a better term...) as the Prius in terms of money and environmental "savings." The Prius was designed to be a hybrid, where the rest of the Toyotas were originally petrol powered and probably not designed as a hybrid.

I need to go on an anti-earth muffin mobile campaign. "SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT! DON'T DRIVE A HYBRID!"

 

[Joey D]

Earth

Muffin

Mobile.

I'll have to do a better one when I'm not on ancient photoshop here at work.

 

[Philly]

WTF? You missed the earth part:tup:

 

[FoolKiller]

WTF? You missed the earth part:tup:

Replace the tires with Earth.

 

[Joey D]

Fine!

 

[FoolKiller]

Perfect!

 

[GT4 genius]

This isn't an anti-prius thread incase you havent noticed! And i agreed that the prius was not at all enviromentally friendly. And here in ireland all prices are drastically differrent and the prius is called a D segment car here putting it in line with eg the nissan primera, the toyota avensis the opel vectra etc.

Nissan Primera= 40mpg
Toyota Prius= 60mpg
Combined cycle

average miles per year 20000miles

Nissan:
1 litre = €1.20
1galleon= 4.6litres
1galleon= €5.52
40miles= €5.52
1mile= €0.14
20000miles=€2760= 1year

Toyota:
60miles=€5.52
1mile= €0.09
20000miles=€1840=1 year

toyota price= €28000
Nissan price= €25000
Difference= €3000

1year difference= 2760-1840=920
4thyeardifference=920*4=3680
as well as a smaller car tax

Ps maybe the hurricane wasn't called Julie but did american oil prices not jump by almost 300% in late 2005 early 2006 in some areas, please confirm because if this isn't true i can stop using this source, and i apologise if it isn't i do try to make valid points i can back up.

 

[FoolKiller]

Ps maybe the hurricane wasn't called Julie but did american oil prices not jump by almost 300% in late 2005 early 2006 in some areas, please confirm because if this isn't true i can stop using this source, and i apologise if it isn't i do try to make valid points i can back up.

Um, 300% increase would mean our gas would have hit over $8 a gallon. I don't think many places broke far over $4 and then it came back down relatively quickly as the panic ended. It may have doubled (100% increase), but it definitely didn't go up 300%.

At the time gas was already over $2, but I will round down.
2*3=6 2+6=8

Now, maybe you could talk about the local stations in the region that were price gouging going that high (which I see no problem with, but that's another thread).


I bought gas about an hour ago and it cost me $2.75.

 

[Joey D]

The only time gas was at 8 bucks a gallon was on 9/11/01 when people freaked out and thought the world was going to end.

 

[Philly]

The only time gas was at 8 bucks a gallon was on 9/11/01 when people freaked out and thought the world was going to end.

Really? That's like a 600% increase...

 

[Joey D]

Ya I remember my dad telling me he saw it on the way home from work at something like $7.95 for regular.

 

[Philly]

That's nuts. I'm sure there is some smarty over in England laughing at that too, saying "that's what I always pay..."

 

[Joey D]

But they don't pay that, petrol isn't £8 a gallon...it's more like £3.50 or something.

In the UK I found everything is priced the same way it is here in America, just a £ sign instead of a $ sign.

 

[GT4 genius]

Yea,iam from and thats what i do always pay, i mentioned theexact figures earlier. Anyway do people believe that hydrogen will be the way forward in 30 years time, i am trying to get back to the thread

 

[Rotary Junkie]

I'm not seeing hydrogen as a viable alternative, but listen to this logic involving the Chevy Volt concept:

The turbo-three makes about 70-80KW, IIRC.

The electronic motor that POWERS the car makes 120.

The turbo-three spins the generator needed to make enough power to charge the batteries, run accessories, and run the motor.

So, in theory, if we can make the generator efficient enough to power both the motor spinning it AND the drive motor, with only a single, small battery to provide initial life we have perpetual motion. So if we could get approx. 210-250kw out of a generator that only needs a small amount of power to spin, we could have a fuel-free vehicle.

Chew on that.

However, seeing as that is ALMOST impossible, increasing the efficiencies of the internal combustion engine may be an easier route. The higher the compression we CAN run, the higher our thermal efficiencies. (A small bump in compression can HELP fuel economy, as less air/fuel is used to make the same power) With that, think about the fact that, on average, only 30-40ft/lbs of torque is needed to maintain 70mph. We need a way to limit the amount of air and fuel available to the motor so that it only ever makes that amount of power for steady-state cruising, but it can open back up when needed. And it can be done! We have dual-core processors capable of calculating the millionth digit of pi in minutes, why not use that same technology to its fullest extent? Why not make cruise control your most efficient choice? Once speed is set, the computer dials back fuel and air until a minor (50rpm or so, tops) drop in transmission output speed (already has a sender) and dials it back in until the car maintains. Hit a hill and it dials JUST ENOUGH in.

Because, while today's cruise control systems and today's cars have no problem maintaining speed on the freeway or anywhere else, they feed more fuel than is NEEDED to make that power.

Taking that a step further still, leading back to the Volt: If we get a 40% efficient or better IC, add in the proper management to JUST maintain a certain RPM to as perfect as possible, and get better efficiencies out of the generator, think of how efficient it could be. Then add in generator flexibility: only use enough power/RPM to power all running accessories and keep the car moving at its present speed, all, again, managed electronically. And, in this case, no cruise button would be needed to show that managing current speed is wanted; The "throttle" pedal controls EXACTLY how much power is being used by the motor (fed to it), and the system simply responds to that demand. (On second thought, the cruise button thing would never be needed, a switch could be wired into the throttle to tell when acceleration is wanted in the IC-only setup)

So, in doing this, we make abso-bloody-lutely best management of the fuel we are using, but also using the minimum possible amount of fuel, in fact, make that using the minimum amount of energy possible.

Why produce 150kw of power when you only need 50 at that moment?

 

[GT4 genius]

I dont see why you dont believe fuel cells aren't a viable solution, take a look at this before you jump to a conclusion. www.fuelcells.org

Good idea with the car iam sure.

And somebody posted earlier saying that fuel cell cars would be silent, and yes that is true but us petrol-heads out there can just combust hydrogen to make our childish roars.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Truthfully, I don't give two s***s about the viability of hydrogen. Why? I see ways to make our gasoline go much further, as well as make more power out of it.

When (it is not really a question of "if" at this point to me, or the people doing it) the goal of 75% or better efficiency is achieved with an IC motor, it WILL be nearly silent, in fact, it SHOULD be COMPLETELY silent. That exhaust noise you hear is the sound of combustion. Combustion should be completed by the time the exhaust valve opens, or else energy is being wasted.

But once that goal is realized, efficiencies would be approaching (if not higher than) 90%, and the only things stopping perfection would be heat and friction, and they cannot be avoided.

And at 90% efficiency, your bog standard 100hp daily driver would create much more than that. Or use MUCH less motor. We're talking 10hp/cubic inch. Unturboed.

See, and we no longer would need to revamp the world. Our dead dinosaurs will last MUCH longer with such high efficiency.

Hmm, utter silence, 100+mpg 500hp supercars, how's that working out for you?

And since combustion is COMPLETE, emissions are as close to nothing as possible. In fact, at this level of efficiency, it'd be more efficient to produce our power off of IC engines than nukes.

 

[GT4 genius]

Ok maybe your right about 75% effieceny but i highly doubt we'll ever see a car with 500hp doing 100+ mpg with normal unmodified petrol, or as you like to call it gasoline.
Also do you think oil is going to last forever, at the very very best new finds may last for 100 years although this is unlikely. Remember how oil is formed, isn't it something like millions of dead fish over thousands of years create a milimetre thick or something! These are guess figures. So say fish have been around for a million years and say it takes 3000 years to create 1 inch of oil right thats 333 inchs high of oil beneath past or present ocean floors, right. That will surely not last forever.


I am just after reading this on the site i posted below
If all the goals are met, FCVs offer the promise of energy at $1 a gallon - or less!
These goals will probably be met by 2010.
Now whos going to make the first commercially viable Fuel Cell Vehicle

 

[ExigeEvan]

Truthfully, I don't give two s***s about the viability of hydrogen. Why? I see ways to make our gasoline go much further, as well as make more power out of it.

When (it is not really a question of "if" at this point to me, or the people doing it) the goal of 75% or better efficiency is achieved with an IC motor, it WILL be nearly silent, in fact, it SHOULD be COMPLETELY silent. That exhaust noise you hear is the sound of combustion. Combustion should be completed by the time the exhaust valve opens, or else energy is being wasted.

While I won't argue that the IC engine can and will become more efficient, I think it is rather far fetching to believe that 75% efficiency can be reached in this century, and maybe even next.

The IC engine as we know it (With the Otto cycle) has been around for nearly 150 years, and efficiency is at about 35%. So you may think that in another 150 years we'll about double that, lets underestimate say cause I don't think the original IC was 1% efficient. So 65% efficient. That perhaps is reasonable, but I think to go any higher than that is going to be difficult.#

The concept of igniting fuel is going to produce heat, it's going to produce noise and yes you can control it but down to as little as 10% of the total energy?

The next big step I believe is making the car and the driving style more efficient. We have lighter material, we could produce materials that use nano technology in order to reduce friction, and we can make the driving process more automated on cars that require greater efficiency as their aim.

 

[GT4 genius]

But do you not think that the ic engine will all but die off within 10yrs, you's dont seem to see the potential of FCV's which are 3 times more efficent.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

GT4: Oil can be remade. Maybe you can find the article, I at the moment have no interest, but there's a company making home heating oil (that can be used as diesel fuel already, and refined into gasoline) out of turkey guts, and rubbers and plastics, as well as plant matter, etc. can be made INTO oil.

Also, the COST OF CONVERSION will offset anything and everything about fuel cells.

Exige: better efficiency is created by higher compression. Like 20-30:1 or higher still.

It CAN be handled by a bit of a camshaft timing strangeness. Like leaving the intake valve open for a good while ABDC, thereby bleeding off the pressure. For our target is to have a 30:1+ static compression ratio, but about a 7.5-8:1 dynamic compression ratio. Thermal efficiency goes UP, air and fuel needed goes DOWN. In fact, if we can get a set of cams ground to our liking (OHV/SOHC is out of question unless we make our own camshaft. The LSA on our cams is HUGE, and the cores don't support it.), we may just run north of 50:1 compression.

If we get to what we want, a 500cc engine will be MORE THAN able to provide enough power for a big car hum along at 90mph, and all the while it'd be using so little fuel that "you can't even make a gas tank LEAK that slowly, much less power a vehicle on it!"

Then you drop the hammer and get hit full-force with 300hp without burning as much fuel as a traditional four banger does cruising down the boulevard, whilst this thing is at WOT.

Imagine a Kei-car! They're limited to 64hp, soo... 6.4 CID, anyone? 105cc. The thing wouldn't NEED fuel, it'd run on air alone, basically. And not a helluva lot of that.

Damn, that would make for a fun quad! 60hp, 500lbs... MMmm...

EDIT: FCV's being 3 times as efficient? Surely you don't mean to say that they already hit 90% efficiency! Waiwaiwai, they'd be MORE THAN PERFECT!

Not happening in this lifetime.

If the IC engine can be made to hit 80-90% efficiency, hell, 75%, it'd be able to run on alcohol with ease AND better-than-current economy, as well as great emissions. (Like, qualifies for PZEV or ZEV status.)

I see the IC staying alive for a long, long time to come.

 

[ExigeEvan]

But do you not think that the ic engine will all but die off within 10yrs, you's dont seem to see the potential of FCV's which are 3 times more efficent.

10 years? No chance. It's taken the British goverment nearly ten years of planning to get people to realise that the analogue television signal is going to switch to didgital and you'll need a digital reciever box. 1 year away and a huge quantity of people aren't ready yet. And that's a much smaller and less expensive change.

If FCV was viable now, then it would be atleast 15years untill the majority of IC driven cars were off the road. And we are no where near point of changing to FCV.

Also, Hydrogen may be more efficient to use in a car, but the amount of energy required to make it useable in a car is probably far higher than that used to refine oil into petrol.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

And, it still needs to spin electric motors, the loss-monsters of the world.

 

[GT4 genius]

10 years? No chance. It's taken the British goverment nearly ten years of planning to get people to realise that the analogue television signal is going to switch to didgital and you'll need a digital reciever box. 1 year away and a huge quantity of people aren't ready yet. And that's a much smaller and less expensive change.

If FCV was viable now, then it would be atleast 15years untill the majority of IC driven cars were off the road. And we are no where near point of changing to FCV.

Also, Hydrogen may be more efficient to use in a car, but the amount of energy required to make it useable in a car is probably far higher than that used to refine oil into petrol.

10yrs is slightly optimistic but i do believe they'll be mass produced by then. As for hydrogen production i am not sure about the figures, but its not that difficult and i am sure it won't be as difficult as making oil from turkey guts as the rotary said.

 

[Rotary Junkie]

Ahahaha! That process is actually VERY simple. I'll look for the Motor Trend issue.

Much simpler than hydrogen. And it works out cheaper than imported oil, so FTW! (That's not For The Win, folks!)

 

[FoolKiller]

Yea,iam from and thats what i do always pay, i mentioned theexact figures earlier. Anyway do people believe that hydrogen will be the way forward in 30 years time, i am trying to get back to the thread

It has potential but currently it takes more energy and money to make it than you can get out of it. Technology has a long way to go yet. If you can overcome the negative return, then this will probably be a trend we will see.

So, in theory, if we can make the generator efficient enough to power both the motor spinning it AND the drive motor, with only a single, small battery to provide initial life we have perpetual motion.

Um, no. I looked up the Volt first to make sure I understood this. The generator must be powered by something, and that something is a gasoline burning engine. Perpetual would mean you never had to plug it in, never had to add gas, or ever put anything in it. Find me a generator anywhere that can power itself. It can't because a generator works by using magnetic friction. The magnetism that creates the power is constantly trying to stop the generator from turning. A generator, by definition, can never be perpetual because it has to be pushed with more power than its magnet has. If you give it less power the combination of the magnetism and friction will pull power away and the generator won't turn.

Truthfully, I don't give two s***s about the viability of hydrogen. Why? I see ways to make our gasoline go much further, as well as make more power out of it.

In all honesty there is more to this equation than just how much is available. Given the political climate of the Middle East, and the fact that it has been unstable for millenia, it could come to a point where availability is gone for us, even if the stuff is still in the ground. The only 100% definite way to guarantee available oil would be genocide, and that isn't an option at all.

An alternative to oil, from my point of view, is a way to quit be reliant on an unstable region to not completely break down and provide the kind of stability other long-term markets experience. The way our society is created we are nearly as reliant on fuel as we are for food, yet the food market doesn't bounce all over the place without a natural disaster. And what fluctuations there are in the food markets would be greatly reduced when it can be shipped without having to use a fuel source that comes from a volatile region.



While peak oil may not be a concern for a long, long time many other aspects of the oil industry are a concern right now.

 

[ExigeEvan]

10yrs is slightly optimistic but i do believe they'll be mass produced by then. As for hydrogen production i am not sure about the figures, but its not that difficult and i am sure it won't be as difficult as making oil from turkey guts as the rotary said.

Hydrogen production is difficult, per se, just very energy intensive. For now.

It would surprise me if there wasn't a mass produced hydrogen car available in 10 years and if there wasn't a country/region capable of sustaining such a car. (My money is on California, with solar powered Hydrogen plants).

But mass-produced is a very loose term. The current generation of hybrids are mass produced, but they're not overwhemingly common to the point that they make a huge difference in oil demand.