I've noticed around where I live that while people are moaning and complaining about the price of gas, that there doesn't seem to be any less cars on the road.  And I'm not noticing an increase in smaller vehicles either. I still see tons of large cars and SUV type vehicles on the roads too.

Personally I don't see the price of gas going down any time soon, if ever. People are buying it so it will keep going up. If people stopped buying it they would have no choice but to lower the price.

The same with houses. The price of homes where I live have tripled in price in the last 10 years. And they will continue to do so because people just keep right on buying. Once people stop buying and houses sit and don't sell, prices will start to come down.

If you want the prices to drop, stop buying :)

At least the traffic isn't bad at night (I did night shift for a while way back).

Gadgets are nice but, as you note, not when a tank of gas costs as much as the gadget!  Obviously, the so-called 'hyperdriving' technique isn't going to remedy the situation - and as far as I can tell it isn't very safe either.

I'm gunning for bio-fuels.  But, hear me out, not for bio-fuels based on crops.  Two problems with using, say, corn as both food and fuel:

1. The amount of land resources required for the amount of fuel (and food) returned makes it impractical (period!).
   2.  In the event of crop failure, you get hit twice.  Both food and fuel shortages.  Eggs, baskets, what was that saying? ;)

I think we need to consider alternative bio-fuel sources (such as the algae-based one currently in experimental stages).  Bio-fuels are replenishable.  Fossil fuels are what they say - fuels based on the long-term fossilization of organic matter.  The processes involved here are in the millions of years.  Trees were once widely used as replenishable bio-fuels (fire wood or charcoal for thousands of years) - but with the current populations and energy demands the same situation exists as with crops.  Unlike crops, though, trees aren't seasonal.  They take many years to reach maturity so this route is even less palatable.

The solution is obvious - genetic bio-engineering shake hands with some potentially high-yield bio-fuel resource.

The problem with solar power - to counter other claimants - is that we currently don't have the technology to harness it efficiently and cost-effectively like the organisms (eh hem) that spent BILLIONS of years evolving to reach the current levels of efficiency that they exhibit.  Solar cells suck comparatively.  They work but they are extravagantly expensive for the energy they provide.  And lest we forget that the Earth rotates, solar energy is only available for a portion of a day (variably due to atmospheric conditions).  Some places in the planetary extremities (near the artic and antartic circles) get no sun for months.  Solar is good ... there?

This is what makes something akin to this algae-based bio-fuel palatable.  It requires solar energy for the algae to store energy that is then extracted into a fuel source.  How better to trap solar energy than to use nature's long evolutionary process in our favor.  Either I'm insane or a genious (I vote for the latter - voting closed). 8P

Latest prices from my local garage, down the bottom of the road...

Unleaded - 119.9p per litre = 2.337USD per litre = 10.619USD per gallon

Diesel - 132.9p per litre = 2.59USD per litre = 11.768USD per gallon

and there's no sign of it slowing any time soon.

Me, I'm not so concerned - I mostly use public transpot or carshare.

JonTheCelt

*make alternative fuels and energy sources viable again.

*As long as it doesn't need crops like sugarcane (first generation bio-fuel) I agree on that. The worldwide food-crisis isn't only caused by lost rice-harvests in Australie, but also because valuable cropfields are more and more used for bio-fuel.
(in holland the price of vegetable oil has doubled because people are using it, as a cheap replacement for diesel oil, which is a luxury problem of course ! In azië and afrika people are starving)
As long as bio-fuel is made of bio-industries residues like chicken- and pork dung. and other none eatable products (second generation bio-fuel) I don't have any problems with that. Alternative energy is a must because the Oil-peak, which is the point after the oil-production is only going downwards, is calculated within 10 years.
Wind - and solarenergy will cover only a part of need, Atomfusion which is non-poluting compaired to Atom-splitting is the power of future, but will only be available over 40-50 years. So in the meantime, the only sound solution is to be very economical with our current supply of energy and fight wars for it, because that will only cost enourmous amounts of energy. I personaly think that the high energyprices aren't a bad thing because they forge us to be more economical. I heard that SUV's and off the roads-trucks are getting very cheap because everbody dumps them, I applaud on that!

B.

Well, it is a well known fact that a diesel engine can run on sunflower oil or liquid frying fat. At the current price levels it's cheaper than diesel.
Problem is that your car starts to smell like a snackbar after a couple of weeks...

Actually I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains, my husband drives to Sacramento every day for work and we have noticed fewer cars. The roads were starting to look like LA traffic and now it's like it used to be. Also there are people in Sac and up where I live that were driving to San Francisco every day, now lots of folks are using the transit system and walking or taking their bikes. More motorcycles on the road now too. Maybe Al Gore is behind all this....yes...that must be it!

@scanmead - thanks but I've been here nearly 9 years now.  Still don't like the summer heat and both the job and housing markets here are deplorable but I'm looking and my apartment is nicely priced.

@Marque - lucky you!  I love the Sierras!  I miss the seasons.  All we have here is spring and oh-my-GOD!!

UK petrol prices are high, but it doesn't affect me on a personal level as I don't drive.
Here in Manchester public transport is exceptional compared to most places. I live about 5 miles from the heart of Manchester. To get there I can either walk around the corner to get the bus there, or walk 10 mins to get on the Metro Link.
The Metro Link is a great service, it runs on the old train lines from South to North Manchester, loads of get off points. Once you get into Manchester centre it runs on the tram lines through the main shopping area.
The only bad time to get on the Metro is when Manchester United are playing!

Victoria_Lee, make that a belated welcome. ;) I haven't followed all the arguments, but bio-fuels seem to have their own set of problems. Fuel cell is win/win as far as removing dependency on imports and being non-polluting. The higher fuel costs affect everyone, even if you use public transit or a bicycle. The price of everything goes up, from furniture to food, because they have to offset the transportation costs. That causes more people to ask for raises so they can continue eating, pushing prices up more. It's not looking pretty out there.

Quote - As far as gas prices catching up with inflation, why are the Saudi's saying there's no reason for the price going up that high? Barrel prices are closing lower. I look at it this way. When the realestate market crashed the investors all ran to oil futures.

That wouldn't make sense as a cause, though - the spike has been running since before the sub-prime meltdown, and at the same rate of ascent.

Quote - They're doing the same thing to oil they did to the realestate market. Running the price up until it is unrealistically higher than it's actual value and more expensive than folks can pay before the bubble eventually bursts from the economic burden and there will be a surplus of oil because everyone in in transportation just about had to file chapter eleven. The price jumped to quick and the economy didn't have time to adjust.

You're forgetting China and India... they're consuming it at rates that match nicely with prices.

I can agree to a sense of panic in driving up the price in the futures market, but I don't think it's caused by refugee investors from the sub-prime arenas (who are still trying to eat their losses in that market).

It costs me ab't $80/mo. for gasoline (with the missus driving it most of the time) - maybe $100 if we decide to make a run for the coast on a weekend day. The only way it gets more than that would be the ~$120 extra it would cost to drive to her mother's house (which is about 3.5 hours' drive south of here).

I do agree on your propane vs. CNG though... did a bit of nosing around on that. Seems that I'll have to build it myself though for CNG conversion - selling a kit that hasn't been approved by the EPA is apparently a federal crime(!?) - "tampering with an emissions-control system" or somesuch.

/P

Quote -
I know there's a lot of "I'm so happy, the US is FINALLY paying $5 a gallon. We should have done that years ago" crowd.

Oh, rest assured I'm not happy about it - it's going to drive up the price of a lot of things. I'm just relieved that it happened, and for only one reason: it'll force technology to step up to the plate and we can finally start moving ahead now, while we still have oil in plentiful supply (as opposed to having to take desperate measures later, when we start running out).

/P

Quote - > Quote - Europe has more public transit options...

Wish it were still true. Twenty years ago, I could take the train to the university, first a 5 minute walk to the train station, 40 minutes by train, then a 10 minute bicycle ride.  Less than an hour overall, and the trains ran every 30 minutes, very reliably.
Nowadays, this same trip takes over 2 hours, IF the trains are on time. One train every hour, instead of one every 30 minutes. The costs - even with gas prices as high as they are, my ecomomy car is cheaper (almost 40 mpg), and even with the traffic jams I can get there faster than by public transport.
I do NOT live in a remote rural area, I live close to one of the major cities of the Netherlands (Arnhem) and the university is located in another major city (Utrecht). Distance: 50 km (about 30 miles).

Heh - just the opposite here.

It's a 15 min. bicycle ride (5 min. by car) to the MAX light rail station near my house. I hop on there, jump off the train 25 min. later near work, where my employer has nicely provided a free shuttle service between the rail station and the campus. The rails are still expanding. Bus service is as close as a two-minute walk as well, and I can go anywhere in the Portland Metro area within two hours for ~$5 (I think? I do the monthly pass thing so... well, here's our area's public transportation website ).

Quote - Alas, the US don't have a monopoly on idiots in the government....

It's a humanity thing :)

(though I gotta admit, Neelie Kroes (sp?) is pretty sharp - she's been giving Microsoft a much needed bitch-slapping these past couple of years :) ).

We'll just have to wait and see what happens with the elections this year.  As much as I like John McCain, he is a Republican and I don't see much of a chance of him getting elected after the debacle we've had these past 8 years.

I don't know much about Barak Obama so I guess it's off to study his politics and platforms so I can make an informed choice in November.

well, I think anyone who wants 5$ gas should have their head examined...heck, I miss 35 cents a gallon...;)

The real problem is the current world technology is based on cheap energy. Sure, there's technologies out there that are now feasible because they're cost-competitive with high oil. Solar does help (even though it only uses a small part of the light spectrum, we need panels that use all of it), geothermal, wind/wave, etc., are also helpful. Biofuels can be helpful as well, but long story short; either the technology isn't there yet, or it just takes a long time to put the infrastructure in place.

It shouldn't be to hard to make a 'frankenfood' crop that humans wouldn't eat, but could be engineered to create much more ethanol/bushel than current food crops. Even though corn yields are around 200 bushels/acre, a lot of that goes to feed for animals, which Indians and Chinese are eating a lot more of.

It took a long time to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out it.

I can't believe there aren't more people discussing THIS:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SNCA_enUS269US269&q=Water+Based+Fuel

http://www.markjoyner.name/logs/archives/news/video_man_runs_normal_car_on_water_based_fuel.php

As noted, atomic fission/fusion is a future prospect 40 or 50 years in the future.  None of us here will benefit from this.  Even then, it wouldn't help most personal transportation systems - maybe they could create small, safe reactors that fit in automobiles 40 or 50 years after that.  Some energy sources are only good for distribution as electricity while others can be stored locally and used while others need to be stored mobily and used while on the move.  You can't do electric cars that run on some grid unless you want to cable the entire ground surface of the planet - the electricity has to be onboard.  In cities, gridding may be possible - but not without very, very long term infrastructure changes (see Boston tunnel for how much hope I give that).

Speaking of infrastructures, that is the key.  Of course, we don't have to settle on a single fuel but we shouldn't go nuts and try to use every possible alternative.  Why?  Infrastructure.  How in heck are you going to maintain an infrastructure for battery, solar, gas, diesel, ethanol, propane, other bio-fuel, hydrogen, etc. etc?  It won't ever happen.  Ethanol is slowly being intergrated into the current infrastructure and if we can keep the bio-fuels ethanol compatible (?) this will only serve to kickstart the retooling.

I think that we're truly running out of options here.  We've wasted decades not heavily investing in fuel/energy alternatives all the while realizing that the peak was coming and that resources were limited.  As more of the world population enters the 'oil age', oil and gas will evaporate at an ever faster rate.  Remember that you can't really drive a car on solar power (even the best ones require sunlight, are fragile, and can only support one person).  What about trucks, tanks, buses, large construction equipment, airplanes?  Not ever likely (maybe in 200-400 years, maybe).

My preference would actually be to have a horse.. but I can afford that even less.
I'm going to have to give my harley a bath and charge up the battery.

We should all become Amish. :)

I wish the hydrogen fuel cell was the answer, but it's not. The technology exists, but it takes a lot of electricity to separate hydrogen out of water...a whole lot! The only two power sources capable of providing enough hydrogen to run an entire transportation infrastructure are nuclear...which is totally "politically incorrect" here in the USA...and fossil fuels...which brings us right back to where we started.

Why does the thought of a reactor in my vehicle make me nervous? Insert visions of a car wreck with a nuclear response team. Long haul truckers glowing in the dark... Keep in mind, while it may be more fair that Americans are paying more for gas (and food), that means less money to spend on other things... like what you sell for a living. Don't want to use water for fuel? Try this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4 . (I really want that blue truck!) I've also seen a version of this in development in India. The oil producers may have sounded their own death-knell.

Quote - We should all become Amish. :)

If I only knew how, and the physical ability, I'd love to live more 'off of land'... But I was born and raised in a big city... I don't know any other way. Not enough to run off and make any drastic and quick changes.

When looking at alternative enegry sources three things must be considered. Production, Storage and **Distribution.
**
Oil- you know the problems.

Bio-fuels  -basicly, it takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. The water content makes the liquid itself extremely hyper corrosive. Tanks and pipes have to be replaced constantly. So production must be very close to usage. Not to mention that corporations would just LOVE to keep you comming to them with wallets open.

Electic -This is the answer. The oldest production auto tect is the electric car. The materials needed to make em are pluntyfull and easy to get from local/national sources. The technologies are well established. Distribution is as close as your homes plugins. Production is straight forward and varied in there abundance of sources. In cities companies will make and distribute, in the country individuals can make there own. (solar, wind, hydro ect...)
To supply the entire US with electric would take some 10,000 square miles of production area. This is about one quarter of the state of Nevada. It sounds daunting, but it's really not when you consider how many MILLIONS of square miles roof tops cover. Although batteries are not as effecient as they could be, they probably will never be 100%. Even 80% as now is usefull.

Fuel cells -They do not work in cold climates. Almost useless in a third of the US and Europe. Corporations again would love to keep you shelling out cash every week.

Quote - Keep in mind, while it may be more fair that Americans are paying more for gas (and food), that means less money to spend on other things... like what you sell for a living. 

Exactly!
60% price change in three months for something that's a necessity - like fuel... That's only going to take a chunk out of a disposable income for things like Poser content.

For example, when Bar-Code said something to the effect of, what are you complaining about... well, I'm complaining because I want to buy some of his and other people's product, but instead of $35 or $40 to fill up my gas tank this week, I had to pay almost $70.

That means there's about $30-40 dollars of Poser content I, or anyone else in a similar situation, are not going to buy this week, or this month.

Also, with fuel surcharges that are being added in more and more places, the cost of necesities, like groceries is going to go up before too long. That means the budgets will get even tighter for some time. At least untill the unemployment rates start going down instead of up.

My other half works at a petrol [gas] station, every night she comes home and tells me about the sh*t she gets from the customers, vebal absuse, spat at, coins thrown at her etc etc, because of the high prices, panic buying, or the price has changed while customers walk across the forecourt to pay.

She's on minimum wage, yet the shell tanker drivers on strike are complaining that a salary of 32K (Yep 64,000 dollars) a year isn't enough!

mrsparky, I hear you. Although I'm not on the frontlines, you can't help feeling bad for the people who take the abuse for something they can't control. Let's hope in the very near future, those truckers will be looking for jobs, while your better half still has her job... manning compressed air tanks. ;)

Quote - When looking at alternative enegry sources three things must be considered. Production, Storage and **Distribution.
**
Oil- you know the problems.

Bio-fuels  -basicly, it takes a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. The water content makes the liquid itself extremely hyper corrosive. Tanks and pipes have to be replaced constantly. So production must be very close to usage. Not to mention that corporations would just LOVE to keep you comming to them with wallets open.

Electic -This is the answer. The oldest production auto tect is the electric car. The materials needed to make em are pluntyfull and easy to get from local/national sources. The technologies are well established. Distribution is as close as your homes plugins. Production is straight forward and varied in there abundance of sources. In cities companies will make and distribute, in the country individuals can make there own. (solar, wind, hydro ect...)
To supply the entire US with electric would take some 10,000 square miles of production area. This is about one quarter of the state of Nevada. It sounds daunting, but it's really not when you consider how many MILLIONS of square miles roof tops cover. Although batteries are not as effecient as they could be, they probably will never be 100%. Even 80% as now is usefull.

Fuel cells -They do not work in cold climates. Almost useless in a third of the US and Europe. Corporations again would love to keep you shelling out cash every week.

While I agree on oil and fuel cells, I certainly do not agree with bio-fuels in toto.  As I mentioned, algae-based bio-fuels only require water and sun.  No idea about the refining process itself but I didn't read anything yet about requiring 'one gallon of oil to make one gallon of bio-fuel' for this form.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9933355-54.html

Do not forget what goes into making electricity.  Sans hydro-electric generators and such, it requires coal (lots and lots of it) to generate electricity.

And again, you can't fly a commercial jet airliner (747 or Aerobus) with electricity.  It would require its own generator (probably the size of a house).  See any problem with this?  And large machinery (like those construction trucks and bulldozers and such) would be difficult to convert to electricity.  Currently, the alternative to large transportation systems in the military (submarines, battleships, aircraft carriers) is nuclear.  You'd need 99.9% electrical efficiency in a super-compact generator to use it for these purposes.  Algae looks really good to me...

mrsparky - I admire your wife for doing what she does, works hard, little pay & gets abuse. I'm afraid I would have either thrown the towel in or be up for GBH.
What is it with these jerks who take out their frustrations on people when they have nothing to do with the situation.

Today the personal vehicle, tomorrow the planes, trains and submarines. I am so ready to buy one of those French compressed air cars right now! It would somehow feel so liberating. You're right about the larger commercial modes of transportation, planes probably presenting the largest hurdle. But we're operating with 19th century technology right now, and we need to move on. And it doesn't have to be the same answer for each one. Heavy rail could possibly use magnetic power. Large construction equipment, maybe the reactor answer. Solutions are out there, but we've been too lazy and complacent to develop them. I'm actually excited to think this just might precipitate change! Internal combustion is sooo last century! Hey, it might even change world politics if every country could easily produce the energy they need.

Internal combustion is sooo last-last century. :)  It is amazing that we could rely so heavily on the same power technology for so long while other areas leap into utilizing later and newer science.  This is the drawback to industrialization and corporation (in my view).

We feel the price of energy most keenly at the gas pump. But a large part of the energy budget goes into heating or cooling houses, offices, etc.
Usually they're heated by direct or indirect consumption of fossil fuels. with an energy efficiency of 70% to 90%
The thing is, we could heat our houses at a far higher efficiency, easily at 200%-300%.
Sounds crazy, eh? Efficiencies of more than 100% are impossible, aren't they?

The technologiy to reach these efficiencies is old, well tried, well tested and ubiquitous - the fridge. It's a heat pump. It transports heat energy from volumes with low temperature (inside the fridge) to volumes with higher temperature (outside the fridge), against the natural flow (from high temperature to low temperature). The amount of energy to transport 1000 kJ of heat from outside (let's say at 10 degrees Celsius) to inside (at 19 degrees Celsius) is far less than 1000 kJ (around 150-200 kJ should be enough), so the total influx of heat is around 1200 kJ. Divide this by the 200 kJ you spent to get this amount of heat into your house, and you get an efficiency of 600%.

Yet, as far as I know, heat pumps are NOT used to heat offices. I'm quite certain that heat pumps could reduce our total energy consumption by a significant amount. Why on earth don't we use this?  It can't be technological hurdles, this is old and tested tech. It only can be human inertia - this way of heating doesn't fit the accepted template of rules and regulations, and it would cost the energy companies a huge amount of money if heating costs were suddenly cut by 80% or thereabouts.

kuroyume0161 :-)

Yes of course. Military vehicles, aircraft and possibly some trucking will need the higher energy outputs of petrochemical sources. But most other needs can use the lower energy methods.
Petroleum has been at top not just because it was a waist product and was cheep but also because of all the 'safe to handle' energy sources it had the highest energy outputs by volume compaired to the others. E-85 get 27% less energy output per volume then gasoline.

No one alternative will fit the bill, but a varied mix will be required.

As for the bio fuels- all bio fuels are carbonized sugars bonded into long changed alcohols. No process exist that dosen't require heat  (Think moonshiners still)
Not to mention all the energy need to grow them. All total it adds up to a near 1 to 1 ratio.

Sun alone won't make ethanol. The sugars in your algae need to get cooked at a pretty high temp.

Personally, I like tidal generators- they are neat. :) The french built one that makes about half the electricity of a nuclear power plant. :P  Just from the riseing and lowering of the tides.

...ah, the famouse 'water-fueled car'...;) This chestnut has been popping up since I don't know when. The secret is to use HHO instead of H2O (huh!?). I've seen this in another forum, and smarter people shot this one more full of holes than Swiss Cheese. If it was that easy, we would have gone over years ago...;)

Quote - ...ah, the famouse 'water-fueled car'...;) This chestnut has been popping up since I don't know when. The secret is to use HHO instead of H2O (huh!?). I've seen this in another forum, and smarter people shot this one more full of holes than Swiss Cheese. If it was that easy, we would have gone over years ago...;)

LOL Well it's news to me old chestnut or not. I'd never heard of it. Too bad it's probably just another sham/urban legend.

A few bits and bobs:

1. we can't possibly all become Amish... we'd  (well most of us would) starve to death if we tried. Not due to lack of motivation, not due to skill... but due to sheer numbers: Humans vs. Amount of Arable Land Available. Without fertilizers, machinery, and massive infrastructure, there's no frickin' way we could possibly feed everyone in North America, let alone send the tons of surplus overseas.

2. I don't foresee personal reactors (the idea of some of my neighbors possessing a potential city-destroying device running a miniature but continuous thermonuclear explosion is something I'd rather not have to deal with).  I do however see an increase of mass transit infrastructure, and a movement away from sprawling suburbs and into tighter groups of villages, towns, and cities. I also see a radical shift in how we power what we do have. For example: My old dual G5 Mac, which eats up to 650 watts, will be seen as a massively wasteful anachronism (and indeed, a MacBook Pro laptop can easily match it, but eat only about a tenth of the wattage just to do it). I see houses with unused rooms (e.g. my former and my ex-wife's house... four bedrooms, three bathrooms, an entry parlor - which didn't do much more than collect dust and occasional warmth in the sofa from the butts of more formal visitors). I see less desire to maintain acres of useless grass (which is incidentally the most cultivated plant in the industrialized world), and a shift towards gardening, towards nature-friendly xeroscaping, and towards putting otherwise idle land to actual use.

1. Err, no such thing as a free lunch insofar as a water-powered car... see also the writings of Isaac Newton -  especially where he mentions Conservation of Energy. ;)

/P

I think it's time to get serious about playing the lottery!

Screw the economy!  Let's party!

Well, the joint French/Indian compressed air car company is about to start taking pre-orders for the US. First deliveries targeted for 2010. First Indian deliveries should be next year. http://zeropollutionmotors.us/ And the price as it stands now is more than reasonable for an import. Come on, Ford, GM, and Chevvie, let's get on the stick! And I'm curious to see if the Australian version can get up and running fast enough to compete.

I've seen a (news?) story about these compressed air cars in the recent past.  Sounds interesting indeed.

It's all about converting some non-mechanical energy into mechanical energy in these cases.  Water wheels were a direct conversion system - moving water (basically mechanical) turned a water wheel which in turn turned a grinding wheel.  The first non-mechanical energy conversion system was steam (ignoring human, horse, oxen power).  Steam is, obviously, boiling water which creates heat and, more importantly, pressure.  It is the pressure (release) that is used to drive the pistons on locomotives so that they move.  This is the same principle used in pneumatic and hydraulic devices.  And the former is!  Compressed air. :)

It gets even more interesting. Right now you do need to plug the car into either an air refueling station (3 minute fillup), or plug it in at home to run an onboard compressor (4-hour fillup). They do have some experiments running where there is an onboard compressor that would run off the engine while driving, making it basically an unending compressed air supply. Your tank refills itself while you're tooling around. It does need an oil change every 30,000 miles, though, so it's not completely petroleum free. An interesting side note: the exhaust is cooled air. In Phoenix, maybe having the exhaust vent inside the car would be a passable AC? Having "good" exhaust seems so backwards. An AC that doesn't strain the engine or decrease fuel mileage?

Quote - I've seen a (news?) story about these compressed air cars in the recent past.  Sounds interesting indeed.

Same here - the Tata car, I think it's called. 'course, I can see gas stations get irate when they see you borrow their free tire-pressure thingy and fill your tank with it. :)

/P

The claim of being able to drive from the east coast to the west coast on a single tank of gas is quite suspicious, and I, for one, don't believe that one. A modern car engine has an efficiency of around 30%, so it is possible to calculate the amount of energy used to drive that distance. That amount is far more than the amount of chemical energy stored in a tank of gas - hence, an impossible result.
Reclaiming braking energy, repressurizing the compressed air tanks using an onboard compressor driven by an efficient engine, those can be used to increase efficiency, but not to the amount of exceeding the energy content of the fuel itself. You'll need extra energy input.

On another note, solar cells are not very efficient; they convert about 20%-25% of the light (radiation energy) to electricity, and the increase in efficiency over the years hasn't been that spectacular. In five to ten years, solar cells might reach 30%.

The idea of using solar energy to heat up steam, which then drives a turbine, seems to work pretty well. Parabolic mirrors can concentrate sunlight on a single spot, concentrating a tremendous amount of heat, more than enough to generate high pressure steam, which is perfect for driving turbines. I seem to remember reading about such an energy plant in Nevada, although I may be mistaken.
Electricity generated this way could be a major economic boost for African countries. They have the space, they have the sunlight, and I imagine that the US (and the rest of the world) would prefer electricity over cocaine as the major export product of countries like Colombia....

All forms of energy on Earth are ultimately derived from either geothermal heat or solar radiation (and often a combination of both). Finding ways to use these sources is a worthy endeavour, and there's a lot of work to do. The fact that fossil fuel is getting painfully expensive only accellerates the research, that's the silver lining.
Sure, Big Oil and their strawmen will continue to try to squeeze us dry. But they also know that the days of the oil economy are numbered, and they're aso researching other energy sources (and the ways to generate income from those sources. Big Oil will transform into Big Sun or Big Wind, whatever).

It would be ironic if in twenty or thirty years or so, Bush were regarded as the president who blundered the world into a renewable energy economy....

Quote - > Quote - I've seen a (news?) story about these compressed air cars in the recent past.  Sounds interesting indeed.

Same here - the Tata car, I think it's called. 'course, I can see gas stations get irate when they see you borrow their free tire-pressure thingy and fill your tank with it. :)

/P

I dunno where you live but gas stations round here now all charge for the "Free" air!

There are actually 2 compressed air engines that look good. The French engine is going into production, and is basically a piston engine that doesn't use combustion, just pressurized air. The second Australian engine is a rotary, that uses compressed air for rotation and 'lubrication'. This engine is small enough to easily pick up with 2 hands, and it uses no gear box, putting around 90% of its power output to move the vehicle. The initial design was intended for small warehouse vehicles moving produce, but it has been tested in at least one car. Anyone notice the news today that the Saudis are now thinking gas prices are "abnormally high", and might reconsider increasing output?

On those compressed air can engines....
What sort of a tank is the compressed air stored in?
How much energy does it take to charge up the tank?

::::: Opera :::::

On the French version, there are 3 cylinders made of carbon fiber, so that in the event of a crash, they will safely split, and not explode. They meet US safety standards. To completely fill all 3 tanks, takes 4 hours of running a compressor, similar to your standard Sears air compressor. It would certainly be equivalent or less than running my home's AC for the same amount of time. This would be the equivalent of 28% my current gas tank, so as long as it costs less than $28USD to fill all three, it saves money. more info: http://zeropollutionmotors.us/

so, assuming the tank is safe and you can store enough compressed air to take the vehicle on a typical miles-before-refuel, and assuming the amount of electricity required to charge the tank is low.....

The issue becomes how to generate the electricity. In my opinion, this should be nuclear fission with reactors like they have in france that themselves recycled the waste. Then, in a few decades, the fission could possibly be replaced by fusion reactors. So, no you don't have a nuclear reactor in your car; you make electricity at a stupendously powerful plant and consumers use that cheap, clean electric to either charge and air tank or charge an advanced battery-storage device. The cars run on electricity or compressed air.

Is a compressed air engine loud? One of the big pluses for electric cars is the quiet.

::::: Opera :::::

Well, here in Arizona we do have nuclear power plants, and hydro-electric dams. As I mentioned before, though, the goal is to eventually have the compressor run off the engine while driving. The video at youtube sounded a bit like an old VW bug engine. The Australian rotary engine is quieter and has a smoother sound.

if the compressor is going to run off the engine while it is running, then you have to have a gasoline engine on board. Unless you think you can drive the car on compressed air and ALSO charge the tank back up as well. But there's no free lunch.

:: og ::

Nah.  Air compressors work with electricity so all that will be needed is a battery to run the compressor motor in order to recharge the tank.  There will be a need for some lubricating oil in the compressor motor as it has moving parts but that's it.

My feeling is that you'll get more power (torque) from a pneumatic-compressor driven system than a pure electric system - though they have improved the latter recently.  We'll see.

a battery.

If you need a battery in the vehicle to run the compressor, that has to be a powerful battery. Hopefully no one thinks it is 'easy' to compress air into a tank.

So, this powerful battery....why not  just use it to power an electric motor to run the vehicle?

::::: opera :::::