Fortsätt till huvudinnehåll

What will cars be like when the oil runs out?


aptera 230 mpg electric 3-wheeled car
Originally uploaded by mod*mom.

The oil will not run out. It will just become more and more expensive. And will people kick the car habit when that happens? Not if they can help it.

What are the alternatives? Hydrocarbons are the perfect transport fuel. They come in convenient liquid form and have a high energy density.

One possible substitute is hydrogen. It can be converted into electricity using a fuel cell, with the cars driven by electric motors or it can be used in an ordinary internal combustion engine, suitably adapted. But fuel cells are likely to be expensive, since they use rare metals such as platinum. And hydrogen is difficult to store and handle, as it does not liquify except at very low temperatures, which makes it awkward and potentially dangerous to deal with. The biggest objection, however, is that energy is needed to manufacture hydrogen. As it does not occur naturally, it is not an energy source but simply a means of storing energy obtained from somewhere else.

What about biofuels? They are fine if they do not have to be grown specially, for example if they are made from waste materials, such as biogas from sewage and landfill sites.. Otherwise, the production of biofuels takes up land, water and other resources needed to grow food. Ethanol, another biofuel, can be made from waste products, though it tends to be made from crops specially grown. And ethanol-powered vehicles emit toxic and irritant gases.

How about electricity? As long as there are only a few electric vehicles, they can be powered by low-cost off-peak electricity which is usually available because nuclear power stations cannot easily be switched off. If there was any substantial number of electric cars all being charged at night, then the demand would quickly grow to the point that there would no longer be an off-peak period.

There is also the issue of batteries. These contain either lead or lithium. The former is toxic and the latter is a fire hazard. The production of both is energy intensive and they have a limited life; fortunately, the metals in them can be recycled quite efficiency. But they are heavy.

There are no easy answers but with the days of cheap portable energy coming to an end, the future of personal transport must be ultra-lightweight vehicles running at speeds where air resistance is not significant, which means around 30kph. And being too flimsy to share the roads with today's heavy vehicles, they will need a suitable infrastructure of their own.

Etiketter:

Kommentarer

Skicka en kommentar

Populära inlägg i den här bloggen

Importing people to sustain demand

I got involved in a discussion with a Youtuber called “Philosophy all along”. This was in connection with criticism of Trump’s policy of deporting illegal migrants, which he argued would be bad for the economy as it would reduce demand. This implies that there is a need to import people to sustain demand. There is no obvious reason why a population should not be able to consume everything that the same population produces. If it can not, then something else is going on. It is a basic principle that wages are the least that workers will accept to do a job. Wages are a share of the value added by workers through their wages. The remainder is distributed as economic rent, after government has taken its cut in taxes. Monopoly profit is a temporary surplus that after a delay gets absorbed into economic rent. Land values in Silicon Valley are an example of this; it's like a gold rush. The miners get little out of it. Rent and tax syphon purchasing power away from those who produce the g...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

The Zombie Train that refuses to die

The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer

How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...
Skicka en kommentar
Läs mer