Ethanol trickling to pumps

The price of hybrids is dropping now. I'm currently in the market for a new car for my wife. By the time it's my turn (probably 2 or 3 years from now). I suspect hybrids will be only slightly higher in cost than traditional IC vehicles.

As far as fule cell vehicles, I look forward to the day when they're readily available.

 

I heard that fuel cells can run off bio-diesel... Do you know if that is true?

 

I suspect my next car will be a hybrid as well... but my 97 Sentra needs to get me more than 2 or 3 more years. I have 3 kids to support.

 

I usually agree with you... but there is nothing wrong with being rationally sensitive to environmental issues. I don't consider it PC either to want domestically fueled vehicles that don't require us to be hostages to terrorist sponsoring oil sheiks.

In fact, I am almost ashamed at the warm feeling of nationalism it gives me to think about seeing my farmer neighbors supply our fuel than Osama's cousins.

 

Heheh!!! My car is a 97. I bought it used in 2000, and since I've babied it, it's almost as good as they day I bought it. I have a nasty habit of fixing the most minute thing when it goes wrong. But that nasty habit makes my cars last longer. My last car lasted me 15 years, and a collector bought it.

 

I bought a vintage sports car from a guy a couple of years ago. He had babied it and restored the things that needed restoring, then had to sell it. It's more than 20 years old and has 51,000 miles on it.

The one I drive every day will be headed for the junk yard if it ever dies. We've been thinking that it couldn't be long for this world, but it keeps going and going and going. We're not going to sell it, we're going to drive it into the ground. It is 17 years old with 319,000 miles on it (as of today), and it still doesn't use any oil.

Our other one is an American made piece of junk with only 122,000 miles on it and it died during the summer. I wish I could find someone to buy it for parts. But, even if they did, we don't need another one at the moment.

BTW, biodiesel is still an IC engine. Here's a link for a little bit of info on fuel cell technology: Fuel Cells

It's kind of like making a battery that you replenish the chemicals that create the electricity. Hence, the hydrogen comes into play. The only exhaust is water vapor.

 

Guarantee that he doesn't get profits from American grown alcohol?

 

I wonder if his family or supporters own stock in Safeway, McDonald's, Coca Cola, or any other US companies?

 

Probably much less opportunity than Arab oil.

 

I usually agree with you... but there is nothing wrong with being rationally sensitive to environmental issues. I don't consider it PC either to want domestically fueled vehicles that don't require us to be hostages to terrorist sponsoring oil sheiks.

In fact, I am almost ashamed at the warm feeling of nationalism it gives me to think about seeing my farmer neighbors supply our fuel than Osama's cousins. </font>[/QUOTE]Rationally sensitive is the critical phrase. There is nothing short of developing our own oil supply for domestic and stratigic use that can free us from the vagaries of OPEC and others. There simply is nothing out there that has the ability to cost effectively transport us than the energy derived from crude oil.

While plentiful on the earth, hydrogen is very expensive to use extract for use as a fuel, as are processing methods for coal, and ethanol production. Fuel cels have been tweeked on for many years now and the costs for that technology is very high also.

Maybe if the scientists could capture and convert some of the excess heat of the internal combustion engine, for aditional effeciency, we could see terrific reductions in consumption. We lose somewhere around 55% of the energy of the gasoline in our tanks as excess heat given off to the atmosphere through our radiators. We have the overall efficiency of the internal combustion engine about as far as is cost effective, and most any new gains come at extremely high prices. For instance should industry invest $10B in order to raise overall fuel efficiency 1/10th of 1%, and that it would require the consumer to replace the flux capacitor every year at a cost of $2000? No that would be silly and do harm to the economy. But we have these Prius and Honda whatever's who's effeciency's are such that the added cost of production can not be recouped in the resulting fuel cost savings, but the net result is that people feel as though they are somehow helping or deriving savings, but they're not. There's a lot of feel good technology out there to efficiently seperate green stuff from our wallets.

 

We have a 93 Sentra that our 17 year old son drives now with 350K on it, and still runs great but is in need of it's 2nd replacement pair CV joints. I've used Mobile 1 synthetic oil and other synthetic products in all our vehicles since the 70's and have never worn out an engine, or transmission, even though surpassing 500K on a couple of them, and over 300K on all of them. We never trade vehicles (almost never) as we wear them out or render them cost effectively a no go and recycle them.

 

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