Guest Aaron Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 I have thought for years (before I could drive) that if the government actually wanted to do something constructive concerning clean fuels, then they would start pushing alcohol burning cars. Guys like us get good old internal combustion (even though it is not as efficient) that we can work on and hop up. It burns clean, and it creates demand for agricultural products (corn) that would help that segment of the economy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWOT Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 jmortensen, Just to answer your question, I think you have made an error in thinking. The price of water can fluctuate all they want it to because we depend on water, hell, we kinda die without it right? In the case of gasoline, if we simply don't need it, the price will come down to make it more attractive, it's simple business. Oil companies will lower the price of gasoline simply to try and maintain current market share. Every person who converts away from gasoline is a net loss over a temporary loss in profit due to price drops. Think of it this way, would you rather have a customer that buys once then stops completely at a price of $50? Or a customer who comes back a few times at a price of $30? What we could really use is a government rebate program, trade in your current vehicle and get something like 'good condition' blue book value of the car towards the purchase of a new hybrid, tax free. Something to think about. Not to mention the government could then sell the cars back to parts suppliers on a 'parts only' stipulation and a fresh supply of car parts would become available Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 Yeah, but your first example was a supply and demand example. And my response showed how they can screw us all on that too. The demand went down, and supposedly the cost to supply it did not, so the price went UP. Now if they never had the "conservation" push, and people just used more water, so supply stayed the same and demand went up, prices would also have gone up. So when companies want to increase prices, it seems to me that there is always a justification for it, sometimes a good one and sometimes not. In this case I think it is not. And that doesn't even take into account the points Bill260z made. I think he's right and that the price will never go really significantly down again. BTW - I consider gas a necessity, and I don't know too many people who would disagree. I know I won't die with out it, but a practical necessity. Hell in CA they almost made driving a right!!! What then would gas have been? If you can't afford gas, then you'd be denied your RIGHT to drive?!?! Kinda ridiculous, but it helps to show how important gas/driving is. The thing that surprises me most is that people say "well I guess it's time for them to jack up prices again" like we are expecting and even accepting of NEEDLESS price increases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 What we could really use is a government rebate program, trade in your current vehicle and get something like 'good condition' blue book value of the car towards the purchase of a new hybrid, tax free. Something to think about. Not to mention the government could then sell the cars back to parts suppliers on a 'parts only' stipulation and a fresh supply of car parts would become available Isn't this tantamount to extortion??? "Yeah, we'll buy your car so that we can sell you a new more efficient model. And if you don't, well, you'll have to pay us for protection (of the environment). If you do, well, you only have to pay a fraction of the protection money." Sorry, I don't like that plan. I like my old gas guzzler. I want to drive IT, not some 4000 lb Toyota fwd that makes 120 hp with electric and gas motors going full bore. I don't want the government making it any harder than it needs to be for me to drive it. It's not the government's job to "help" me determine what kind of car I drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWOT Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 You missed the whole point of the idea. The point is to give the hybrids to people who use them JUST for transportation, not for pleasure. That way the majority of miles traveled (for work) would be clean miles. If you want to keep driving your current car, it's not like they would stop you. It's just a thought anyway, not like the oil companies would ever allow the goverment to do it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 I didn't MISS the point, I just entirely disagree with it. But that's OK. You keep voting for taxes on gas and candidates that support them, and I'll keep voting against them. We'll just wash each other out on election day. Jon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrWOT Posted May 21, 2004 Share Posted May 21, 2004 You got yourself a deal Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bluex_v1 Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 Yeah, but your first example was a supply and demand example. And my response showed how they can screw us all on that too. The demand went down, and supposedly[/i'] the cost to supply it did not, so the price went UP. Water municipalities don't operate in supply:demand economy because they are gov't induced monopolies. There's no market competition to drive their prices down. Now if you were to say, instead of having a water strike, you have a drive to get people to build their own cisterns with evaporative water filtration and stuff so they cut themselves free of the supplier, that would be a more appropriate comparison I think. adding this: if there's one thing I thing the gov't should do, it would be to relax restrictions on new car manufacturers who are attempting to break into the alternative power vehicle market. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pop N Wood Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 People keep trying to manipulate and mandate the energy markets and it simply does not work. Has been proven time and again. Supply and demand always gets them in the end. Mark my words: we are about to relive the 70's. Has been coming for some time now. We are too dependent upon oil again and we are simply due for another correction. People want to encourage alternate energy sources, but as long as gas is a cheap as it is they will never make it. Think about it. We live in a nation that pays more for bottled water than gasoline. Solar power, wind power, fuel cells. All nice and dandy. But the fact remains they are considerably more expensive than fossil fuels. Technology and economy of scale may bring the price down some. But the only thing that will make them viable is when fossil fuels get too expensive making the alternate "cheaper" in comparison. And how does anyone think fuel cells will reduce our dependence on anything? Where do you think the energy comes to charge the fuel cell? How do you make hydrogen? Taxes and government subsidies do not make energy cheaper. They simply shift the expense to someone else. The only thing they can hope to do is encourage people to conserve, and supply and demand will take care of that with time. Biodeisel and gasohol may have it's place. But like someome posted here some time ago, look at the numbers. Convert the entire corn crop into alcohol and you will supply the US with gasoline for something like a day. It will barely make a dent. The price of gas will fluctuate over time, but let's face it. Short of some break through in fusion, the only way sure way we can avoid rising gasoline prices is to reduce our consumption. And like it or not, supply and demand will make that happen. One last thing. The current incarnation of hybrids make no sense to me. They still derive all of their energy from the gasoline motor. The great mileage and low emissions is because they built a truely efficient gas engine. The electric part is just a gimmic to make people feel good. I have often wondered what kind of mileage a Toyota Prius would get if you ripped off the 110 pound battery and associated electronics and just ran it on the gas motor. Think about it. Put on the cruise control and drive through Ohio and all the "hybrid" part is contributing is excess weight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 Sorry, I'm definitely not a student of economics, so if I err I like to know it (thank you). I don't think it changes the fundamental cause and effect of what this type of tax would be used for: forcing people to sell their vehicle and buy one that the govt wants them to buy. It's like the cigarette tax all over again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bluex_v1 Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 And how does anyone think fuel cells will reduce our dependence on anything? Where do you think the energy comes to charge the fuel cell? How do you make hydrogen?... The electric part is just a gimmic to make people feel good. I have often wondered what kind of mileage a Toyota Prius would get if you ripped off the 110 pound battery and associated electronics and just ran it on the gas motor. Think about it. Put on the cruise control and drive through Ohio and all the "hybrid" part is contributing is excess weight. As for ushering in the 'hydrogen economy'' date=' the US isn't doing too bad when it comes to methane recovery. That will help in the mean time until either home-based or local station-based electrolosis facilities can come on line and make use of the existing electrical grid during the evening off-peak hours to split the hydrogen out of water. Yes, it will require more fuel for the power plants day to day, but the transmission infrastructure itself should be close to adequate as is. At that point though, we are probably looking at constructing new nuclear power plants (better to have polution contained under a mountain were it can be accessed and later processed if technology catches up than to have it dispersed in the atmosphere) rather than to just burn a lot more coal. In this case, all our hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are essentially battery powered, except instead of replacing a battery pack, you just pump the chemicals needed for the battery back in with the potential energy already in it. That's really how people need to look at the technology...its a battery...a refillable battery that oozes out water as it discharges. On the toyota prius...if that were the case, they wouldn't get [i']worse[/i] gas milage on the highway compared to city driving. they are something like 50mpg highway, 60mpg city in real world use. The fundamentals behind it are that electric motors produce a constant torque regardless of RPM, so it is capable of accelerating the car way more efficiently than the internal combustion motor. Also, instead of wasting kinetic energy by converting it to heat during braking, the electric hybrids can convert it into electrical energy and store it via regenerative braking. Also, if you have the car on a long cruise across ohio, that 110 lbs of battery and electronics isn't going to net you anything...except maybe a very slight reduction in rolling resistance because there'd be less weight on the wheel bearings and tires...but the mass has already been accelerated, so that won't matter. But, I probably wouldnt bother with one if I lived in the middle of nowhere in the great plains either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pop N Wood Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 Regenerative braking is the only way the hybrid regains anything positive. The electric motor can't be used continuously, since it would quickly run the battery down. And guess where the energy comes from to charge the battery? There is something to be said for having the 30 extra HP for brief spurts of acceleration. But the Birkenstock crowd isn't really worried about passing people anyway, and no one on this board will be impressed with the combined 130 HP so what is the point? I can't believe regenerative braking buys much. Hence the example of driving an Ohio freeway. Naw, they got the hybirds backwards. Make an electric car that has a constant RPM gas engine running a generator. You could then tune the snot out of the engine to run efficiently at that one speed, or turn the gas engine off half way home and plug the car in at night to recharge with minimal pollution. As for hydrogen fuel cells being a battery, that is exactly the case. Just another storage medium that has the double advantage of being extremely efficient and non-polluting. The problem is where do you get the energy to recharge the pig? You are back where you started. The only thing fuel cells are an answer to is pollution. And I don't think fuel cells will do anything to cut down on our electrical transmission infrastructure since they are geared toward different markets. Fuel cells will impact the gasoline distribution network, but private homes and factories will still need a massive electrical grid. In the 70's there was a huge shift away from gas and oil power plants. This was due to the high price of oil and gas relative to coal and even nuclear. In the 80's gas got cheap again, coal got more expensive because of enviromental regulations and nuclear got regulated out of existence. Now we are back where we started with a significant percentage of our electricity being generated by oil and gas. The difference this time around is all of our nuclear plants are approaching the end of their lives since we haven't started a new one since the 70's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
datsunlover Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 Hmm.. so its bad all over.. I've been bitching for weeks now about the gas hikes.. about two months ago, I started going to trade school, 300 K's away. Gas was 75 cents a liter. Now, not even 2 months later, it is 95 cents... 20 cents in two months!! (I ont know the conversion to gal, but I assume it works out to roughlythe same % hike most of you guys in the states are seeing) AHHHGGG!!! Anyway, I am now seriously thinking about buying a diesel car for day to day transportation. Ive noticed the price of diesel doesnt spike as much as gas... I'm assuming because if it did, the truckers would basicaly stop running again. (It was a few years ago I guess.. here in Canada anyway, a bunch of truckers just slowed down to like 40k and cloged traffic for quite some time on a few major highways.) My 93 King cab w/V6 is not that bad, but it hurts none the less with the current prices. My Grandmother (who I have been staying with while in cshool) drives a 2001 VW Jetta TDi. Automatic with AIR, and she STILL gets 800K to a tank that only costs $28 to fill! The only problem there, is a VW TDi is not cheep! Its the same problem as trying to buy a gas/elec hybrid... too pricey. As for the moment, my temporary solution is going to be a moped I think. (Actually, I've got a plan to build one that resembles a lowered/raked chopper, but thats another topic...) Not fast, and kind of goofy looking, but it'll help me same some gas money for the Z! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnc Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 I like my 12mpg around town V10 F350 SD and my 12mpg around town 1964 Lincoln Continental and my 12 gallon per hour 1970 Datsun 240Z. You guys all buy and drive Hybrids so I've got more gas. FYI... my home, work, home commute is 5 miles total. I use less fuel every day then any tree hugging, granola eating, earth shoe wearing, tamboreen banging, haven't showered in a week, all natural fiber wearing, tofu eating, herb smoking, sierra club joining, six children, environmentalist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
COZY Z COLE Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 I fell of my chair on that one..... LARRY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted May 22, 2004 Share Posted May 22, 2004 Thank you John. I can't even believe we're having this argument. It's hybridz meaning turbos and V8's, not hybridz meaning electric/hemp oil diesel hybrid (at least not usually). You'd figure if people really thought that they were the "problem" then they would stop doing whatever they're doing rather than wait for the govt to come in and make their hobby prohibitively expensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bluex_v1 Posted May 23, 2004 Share Posted May 23, 2004 Regenerative braking is the only way the hybrid regains anything positive. The electric motor can't be used continuously' date=' since it would quickly run the battery down. And guess where the energy comes from to charge the battery? There is something to be said for having the 30 extra HP for brief spurts of acceleration. But the Birkenstock crowd isn't really worried about passing people anyway, and no one on this board will be impressed with the combined 130 HP so what is the point? I can't believe regenerative braking buys much. Hence the example of driving an Ohio freeway. Naw, they got the hybirds backwards. Make an electric car that has a constant RPM gas engine running a generator. You could then tune the snot out of the engine to run efficiently at that one speed, or turn the gas engine off half way home and plug the car in at night to recharge with minimal pollution. As for hydrogen fuel cells being a battery, that is exactly the case. Just another storage medium that has the double advantage of being extremely efficient and non-polluting. The problem is where do you get the energy to recharge the pig? You are back where you started. The only thing fuel cells are an answer to is pollution. And I don't think fuel cells will do anything to cut down on our electrical transmission infrastructure since they are geared toward different markets. Fuel cells will impact the gasoline distribution network, but private homes and factories will still need a massive electrical grid. In the 70's there was a huge shift away from gas and oil power plants. This was due to the high price of oil and gas relative to coal and even nuclear. In the 80's gas got cheap again, coal got more expensive because of enviromental regulations and nuclear got regulated out of existence. Now we are back where we started with a significant percentage of our electricity being generated by oil and gas. The difference this time around is all of our nuclear plants are approaching the end of their lives since we haven't started a new one since the 70's.[/quote'] I think you are assuming all electric hybrids are similar to the honda insight's operating system, which is not the case. The insight has a relatively small full time gas motor with an electric motor built into it for spurts of acceleration and braking, and as a result it runs at varing RPM where it is not most efficient (however, it is no pig at about 1900 lbs). This system is what is known as a 'Parallel Hybrid'. And I agree, it is not the smartest way to configure the vehicle as far as physics is concerned. There may be cost of production issues that still make this configuration popular though. The 'Series Hybrid' however, has the combustion motor operating soley as a generator, mechanically divorced from the drive train, so it not only runs at peak effeciency, but also reduces drivetrain resistance. The toyota prius is a mix of the two with a planetary gear mechanism to seperate the combustion motor when it is not needed. Once the car has accelerated from a stop with battery power, the combustion motor then is started and works to drive the vehicle directly. It does not operate at a fixed RPM, but its RPM band is much narrower than a normal Parallel Hybrid because when the combustion engine is running, it does some really weird load balancing automatically using a variable speed output to the power generator. I don't really understand how all of that works yet. In my opinion, and I think we are probably all on the same page here, hybrid electric cars are only a step in the right direction and most certainly not the answer. I think the only real solution for the next century at least, is to switch over to vehicles that store energy that originates at a fixed power plant. The main idea is not only to reduce polution, but to reduce our dependence on one source of energy for our transportation needs. By using electricity (or hydrogen via electrolosis) as our energy medum, it opens up every single source of power plant fuel to be used by our vehicles (coal, nuclear, solar, geotherm, wind, hydro...). Now, by shifting the polution production to fixed facilities that can theoretically operate more efficiently and scrub the polution more effectively, there is some net benefit...and even more looking ahead if we ramp nuclear power back up or find something new (helium3?). The point is, our entire transportation infrustructure would be orders of magnitude more flexible to adapt to better ways of producing energy. I'm not saying batteries or hydrogen fuel cells are the long term answer here either...there are other ways to store energy that originates at a power plant for use in a vehicle too, such as ultra-high speed flywheels and compressed air. These all have a common theme though, and that is to place them on the much more flexible electrical power system and get away from relying 99% on oil for all our transportation needs. Deversify your portfolio, don't put all your eggs in one basket, etc. ...or turn the gas engine off half way home and plug the car in at night to recharge with minimal pollution.Shh! don't give that away yet. Some of us are trying to act on it. Unfortunately some of them surely have way more investment capital than me. And I don't think fuel cells will do anything to cut down on our electrical transmission infrastructure since they are geared toward different markets. Fuel cells will impact the gasoline distribution network, but private homes and factories will still need a massive electrical grid. I must not have been clear here... What I meant to communicate was that our presently existing electrical transmission infrastructure would be sufficient, or very nearly so, to support power needs for various electric based vehicle storage media because they could be charged at night when the infrustructure is not otherwise seeing much use. I think a massive electrical grid is a good thing (just needs to be managed better and have more reserve capacity available) and should be the provider of both home and transportation energy. Getting around the gov't induced monopoly issue there is a totally different discussion from doe.gov: "One quarter of the world’s coal reserves are found within the United States, and the energy content of the nation’s coal resources exceeds that of all the world’s known recoverable oil. Coal is also the workhorse of the nation’s electric power industry, supplying more than half the electricity consumed by Americans." This is interesting too, given the context of the discussion: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/futuregen/ Sorry to hijack this thread so thoroughly, but its something I feel strongly about. I want to make sure I can still tear ass around in my Z for fun when I'm 70. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moridin Posted May 23, 2004 Author Share Posted May 23, 2004 You know, people complain, but IMHO gas should be MORE expensive. If gas cost $4.00 per gallon alot more people would start looking into things like gas electric hybrids or biodiesel. Once the demand for gas began to drop off, the price would drop leaving the gasoline for enthusiasts like us, IE the people who drive cars for the sake of the car itself, not just for a mode of transportation! Of course, the meantime while waiting for the trend to conversion would suck, but lets face it, in order for prices to drop, people have to WANT to use an alternative for gas, which means the alternate must be cheaper! Couple of things. First, what makes you think that they would EVER lower the price? Reminds me of the water conservation BS in SoCal about 10 years ago. I remember my dad talking about it as they rolled out the plan. Conserve water for 2 months, then they would lower your bill if you conserved enough. He called it right. A couple months after the conservation period, the water company sent letters to everyone saying that they had done SUCH A GOOD JOB CONSERVING that the water company couldn't make any money, so they needed to HIKE UP the prices. BS!!! Is OPEC going to drop prices on oil? I doubt it... "The power to tax is the power to destroy" is a Thomas Jefferson quote. Who would the higher gas price going to affect anyway. Not rich people. Not people who can afford to go buy a new hybrid car. No, it will be everyone else. I understand taxes on gas to fix roads, but even there I have problems (15 Caltrans workers watching one guy fill a pothole). Biodiesel looks like a good alternative. Too bad CA made it ILLEGAL to make biodiesel yourself. So you're still stuck buying it from retail sources, and you gotta wonder how long until they start taxing the hell out of that. If they come out with a better alternative to gas, I'll be on board. Until then, I'd appreciate not being taxed up the @ss... Hating the gas prices now, expecting to be infuriated in a year or so, Jon I think I remember that to make biodiesel, you must use a very deadly chemical type to complete the reaction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moridin Posted May 23, 2004 Author Share Posted May 23, 2004 Sorry' date=' I don't like that plan. I like my old gas guzzler. I want to drive IT, not some 4000 lb Toyota fwd that makes 120 hp with electric and gas motors going full bore. I don't want the government making it any harder than it needs to be for me to drive it. It's not the government's job to "help" me determine what kind of car I drive.[/quote'] You do know that the Prius makes 295 ft lbs. of torque, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JMortensen Posted May 23, 2004 Share Posted May 23, 2004 You need lye, diesel, vegetable oil, and methanol IIRC. All of these products are TOTALLY legal for purchase and ownership individually. Not an expert, but my best friend was going to make it in his garage, instead he just started running on straight vegetable oil. Here's something of interest : http://www.veggievan.org/veggiecar/index.php If you want a front driver with 295 lb/ft of torque go for it. I'd rather have my rwd with the same. Again, I have nothing against the hybrids. I just don't want to buy one. I want to buy one when I feel that it is the car I want, not the car the govt wants me to have. I always said that I wouldn't buy another American car until they got better. I just bought a GMC truck. Same goes for the alternative fuel or hybrid cars. Not interested until they come up with something that suits me. When they do I'll probably go buy one. Until then, I don't think that punitive taxes should be used to coerce me into it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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