World's Fastest Electric Car

[Guest grimlynsan]

"Wanna go to the park?"

"Nah man I cant."

"Why not?"

"That ******* Ben beat me to Denny's."

 

lol

[Pop N Wood]

Ethanol has a higher octane than regular gas. Thus allows higher compression.

 

Ethanol is typically produced from corn or other crops. Takes fuel to run the tractor. Not to mention fertilizers, harvesting, drying the grain before it can be stored and of course distilling the corn. I actually don't know all the specifics, I just read the newspapers a lot. I should do a search. The study is fairly recent.

 

Ethanol at the pump is often cheaper because it is typically so highly subsidized by the government. At a $1,50 a liter I don't know, but here in the states without the tax breaks it is not cost competative.

 

Ethanol most certainly has a lower energy content than gasoline. Few things have as high an energy content as gasoline. By energy content I mean energy per gallon.

 

Found some links. One on the production process

 

http://www.autoblog.com/entry/1234000160050891/

 

another on the fuel mileage

 

http://hybrids.autoblog.com/entry/1234000293055890/

 

I once drove my 1979 Ford Fiesta cross country. I consitently got 40 MPG on the tanks were I filled up with regular gas. Every now and then I got a tank which returned 35 MPG. Finally realized the 5 mpg drop was on tanks that had the ethanol blend. That particular car did not like ethanol.

 

Here in Baltimore they have a winter formula for gas. They say it is "oxygenated" to reduce smog. My Toyotas don't like that crap either. My guess is either MTBE or an ethanol blend.

[Gollum]

I'm a firm believer that MTBE will cause any car to run worse than without. Living in cali every car my family & friends have owned has seen both MTBE gas & non-MTBE gas (thanks to 76). Non MTBE gas runs smoother and gets better gas milage in every first hand witness car.

 

I don't care if it burns "cleaner" if it burns like crap.

[Drax240z]

But, the real neat idea, is the idea of an air hybrid. Why not use an alternator on a motor to compress air that could then be used as an alternate motor. It would be interesting to see if that woud be more effective than the current electric hybrids.

 

Uhhhhh... so you are going to use the electricity generated by the alternator, which is driven by the air motor, in order to compress air to run the motor? I'm no thermodynamics wizard but I'm seeing a flaw here.

[Gollum]

hmmm, reading that back again that doesn't sound right....

 

I admit it! I'm an idiot. Don't listen to me...

 

And no i'm not joking or being sarcastic. Otherwise i'd be using smilies.

[savageskaterkid]

i believe one of the reasons y sum of the cars you've drivin with an ethanol mix have worse gas mileage is becuz ethanol is a higher octane then gasoline, with means its harder to burn, and im not sure how high the octane of it is....so i couldn't tell you.

 

Since its a higher octane, you need more pressure to get it to burn correctly, thats y racers use it, becuz of there higher compression ratios. Newer cars have knock sensors that retard the timing when it starts to ping just the tinyist bit-thats y you don't notice a new car knocking-becuz it retards the timing based pretty much on the octane. take a new vetter or sumthin and put ethanol blend in it, and im sure it will run better. You can run a vette on 89 octane, but the performance will b lacking, put sumthin higher like 93 and you'll notice a diffrence.

 

I don't think of a 76 ford as being high compression, so that could be y you've had problems with the stuff.

 

If they made ethanol more than normal gasoline, they could just bump up the compression on new cars. Think of the torque and HP that a 12:1 motor would put out, while running cooler, and passing smog with flying colors and it could all be from the factory, if they make this more widespread. And the price of gas would drop for older cars that can't run ethanol.

 

If this doesn't sound right then tell me, but im pretty sure its the compression that seems to be the problem with the ethanol in your car.

[Gollum]

Well, in CA they have lower octanes becuase they're "supposed" to run cleaner. We get 87 89 and 91. 110 octane is legal, but just not sold at the pump, exept at some race tracks.

[rudypoochris]

i believe one of the reasons y sum of the cars you've drivin with an ethanol mix have worse gas mileage is becuz ethanol is a higher octane then gasoline' date=' with means its harder to burn, and im not sure how high the octane of it is....so i couldn't tell you.

 

Since its a higher octane, you need more pressure to get it to burn correctly, thats y racers use it, becuz of there higher compression ratios. Newer cars have knock sensors that retard the timing when it starts to ping just the tinyist bit-thats y you don't notice a new car knocking-becuz it retards the timing based pretty much on the octane. take a new vetter or sumthin and put ethanol blend in it, and im sure it will run better. You can run a vette on 89 octane, but the performance will b lacking, put sumthin higher like 93 and you'll notice a diffrence.

 

I don't think of a 76 ford as being high compression, so that could be y you've had problems with the stuff.

 

If they made ethanol more than normal gasoline, they could just bump up the compression on new cars. Think of the torque and HP that a 12:1 motor would put out, while running cooler, and passing smog with flying colors and it could all be from the factory, if they make this more widespread. And the price of gas would drop for older cars that can't run ethanol.

 

If this doesn't sound right then tell me, but im pretty sure its the compression that seems to be the problem with the ethanol in your car.[/quote']

 

I agree with the compression argument. The benefits would be vast imho for using ethonol. But, as stated before, how do you make enough? It is good for some cities/regions sure, but how can they make enough for the entire US let alone the world?

[Guest grimlynsan]

Higher octane levels mean that the fuel contains more energy. Not the other way around. In Australia I use 98RON fuel (slightly higher than premium) in my Z. The milage is increased over standard (93RON fuel) and the car doesn't ping at all (compared to the other fuel).

 

I think that any EFI car, especially one with an aftermarket ECU would run better on ethanol/ethanol blended fuel.

[rudypoochris]

Higher octane levels mean that the fuel contains more energy. Not the other way around. In Australia I use 98RON fuel (slightly higher than premium) in my Z. The milage is increased over standard (93RON fuel) and the car doesn't ping at all (compared to the other fuel).

 

I think that any EFI car' date=' especially one with an aftermarket ECU would run better on ethanol/ethanol blended fuel.[/quote']

 

I think higher octane means it is more difficult to burn, not sure if that in turn means more energy. But it does mean compression can be upped thus creating more energy.

[Pop N Wood]

Higher octane levels mean that the fuel contains more energy. Not the other way around. In Australia I use 98RON fuel (slightly higher than premium) in my Z. The milage is increased over standard (93RON fuel) and the car doesn't ping at all (compared to the other fuel).

 

I think that any EFI car' date=' especially one with an aftermarket ECU would run better on ethanol/ethanol blended fuel.[/quote']

 

Higher octane means more resitantance to detonation. Which, on a FI car with knock sensor, means the computer can advance the timing more. This means greater efficiency which means higher gas mileage. Refine the gasoline more and, given the same octane, the cars should run the same.

 

This article

 

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

 

says gas has an energy content of 125,000 Btu/gallon whereas ethanol yields 75,700 Btu/gallon. 67% more energy per gallon.

 

incidentially, this web site

 

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html

 

looks like it has quite a lot of interesting info about alternate fuels.

[savageskaterkid]

i recently got accepted into a college-UNO(University of NW Ohio) and im taking high-performance tech-they say that most of the graduates end up with nascar at sum point-they even have a regulation track and drag strip on campus. They also have a class that is alternative-fuels, such as alcohal dragsters and such, i thought that this was part of the high performance degree, but i was wrong, it is its own degree, its about a 1.5-2 year course for this degree, and i can bet you that the people doing this degree are going to be making sum big bills in the next few years.

[strotter]

The "energy problem" is an interesting one for a number of reasons - not the least of which are political. There was an interesting NOVA (or Frontline?) on last year about energy use worldwide: some of the talking points I took away from it were:

 

1. The world currently consumes about 5 terrawatts of energy in all forms, including fossil, hydro, nuclear, etc. That number is expected to double in the next 15 years or so (China & India becoming more prosperous, etc etc). And, 80% of *that* is used by 1/4th of the population.

 

2. Petroleum supplies are expected to satisfy worldwide consumption for at least the next 35+ years, at current and projected growth rates. However, that doesn't mean it's *cheap* petroleum; it's just "available".

 

3. Coal can be liquified to a form roughly equivalent to gasoline, and fairly economically, too (roughly twice the cost of petroleum? Something like that...). However, the process is dirty (both environmentally and physically) and involves strip mining at a never-before-seen scale. However, there's lots of coal in North America & Europe.

 

4. You can forget wind farms and solar panels - though they can potentially provide significant amounts of electricity on windy and/or sunny days, you can't store the power, nor can you transmit it very far; therefore you have to have enough "backup" generation capacity to handle the entire grid when the "clean" sources are offline. Do-able in theory and from an engineering standpoint, but unreasonable from an economic standpoint. (A variant, albeit an expensive one, is orbital solar collectors; they can be very large (like miles...), and are online 24/7 and require almost no maintenance once active. But the money, the money...)

 

5. Nuclear power is not a happy solution, either: besides the problem of handling the waste (which isn't as big a problem as some say, though not trivial, either), there isn't that much uranium in the world, certainly not enough to make a significant dent; this in turn means you need to use plutonium (which you can make for free, in a reactor: weird, huh?), which is fine for a reactor and makes lots of clean power. HOWEVER, powerplant-grade plutonium is by definition weapons-grade plutonium, meaning potential bombs. So, to satisfy the needs of everyone you're going to need tens of thousands of reactors worldwide, with different qualities of security, while simultaneously there are lots of people that'll want to build something different with this material - a "political" problem.

 

6. Research on nuclear fusion has been cut to virtually nothing in the U.S., mostly because the public doesn't understand the difference between "fusion" and "fission". Also, we've been working on it for fifty years and haven't got it working, so for sure it can *never* be done. (However, the Europeans at CERN are having some interesting results with their magnetic-bottle "pinch" test reactors; looks like they may crack the problem here in a couple of years). If someone can figure out affordable fusion, they'll Rule the World with and Iron Fist.

 

7. The economies of high-energy-consuming economies are uniquely sensitive to energy costs; it's one of those things that affect (effect?) virtually every aspect of production, transportation, and manufacture. Relatively small increases in the cost of energy have disproportionate effects on the economy. The Arab oil embargo is a good example; a relatively small, short-term increase in petroleum prices (though larger than the increases we have recently seen) triggered a recession that lasted through the rest of the '70's, changed how business was done (and with whom), enabled the ascendency of the Japanese as a significant manufacturer in the U.S.A., so on. As a result, changes in so important a part of the economy need to be glacially slow, giving the economy time to adjust and adapt to changes. This in turn means that those in a position to actually do something about it have to implement changes years before actually necessary - or at least lay the groundwork. Politically, this is difficult at best. Imagine the outcry if the President of the United States announced a $1.00/gallon tax on fuel, the money to be used to research, say, room-temperature-long-distance superconductors for efficiently transporting energy from source to demand, and creating the associated infrastructure; they would be impeached in a matter of minutes. Such things would have to be done almost surreptitiously. People simply aren't willing to spend a dollar to save their children two.

 

Overall, it was a fairly depressing episode.

[rudypoochris]

Three is a good idea but difficult, and five is a good one also. But contrary to popular belief the plutonium created by nuclear reactors cannot be used to make bombs, can't remember why, i learned it in chemistry though, if some chemist wants to chime in. And also the fuel to run the reactor is very small and must only be changed once every 6 months ish. I watched this all in chemistry class but it might be outdated. Also the amount of power a nuclear reactor can generate is enormous compared to pretty much anything else except (fusion, or is it fission i can't remember which is the bigger). So pretty much we would also need MUCH less plants compared to the current energy systems.

[Gollum]

My grandfather was an engineer for various oil companies back in the day, and he'd always been looking for power solutions and such on the side. He designed & blue printed a power plant that could be cookie cutter made and used the power of sea waves to drive conductors. It could adjust for tide on the fly, and would be cheep power that could be reproduced for cheep anywhere. Main problem would be getting the power over long distances.

 

During his pitch to PG&E they said they like the idea and would like to look over the plans and meet him again next week. Those were his only copies of the plans and he have them to PG&E. A week later that hadn't called him about a meeting and upon trying to get a hold of the people he was talking to he was told those people didn't work for the comapny and never did. He was furious and went over to PG&E and while there a friend of his that had set up the whole meeting to begine with tells him to go home. He said that this whole thing was much bigger than you could imagine and that if he pursued it his life could be at stake.

 

The plans got buried because they didn't like the idea of a power plant that would be cheep and easy for competition to replicate. At the time PG&E was a small comapany and could afford competitors getting wind of this.

 

And in acuality a plant like this would be much better than wind. Even huge boats gradually move up and down from the energy in the water. I'd like to see wind do that. It's also much more consistant. There are waves all year round, and much less variable than wind.

[Pop N Wood]

Guess PG&E's goons didn't intimidate enough people

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1032148.stm

 

There are quite a few others attempting such devices.

[Gollum]

sweet, only took 4 decades for it to catch.....