Lord Blackadder
Aug 8, 12:43 PM
The problem with the US is out transportation system was never laid out for a good mass transit. We have massive urban sprawl and no real way solve that problem. Add in the fact that rail systems were never designed into the system so retrofitting them is will be very costly and very difficult to do.
We have plenty of rail, and we are building more. The problem is that people don't ride it. Just as we have plenty of fuel efficient cars, and more are coming to market - but people are still buying SUVs. We [rightly] blame oil companies for being grasping and short-sighted. But consumers also bear much of the blame.
As for the mass eletric cars I think you pass over my point about how most of them will be charged at night during off peak hours which means for the most part the grid can take a a huge number of them before we will start having a real issue.
It still would not even begin to handle the strain generated by millions of new electric cars suddenly appearing in driveways across America. Large-scale adoption of electric cars would just make coal and oil get burned faster by power companies. Yes, power plants are more efficient than most cars in producing energy. But we are still burning fossil fuels and polluting. Also, has anyone done a study to compare the true efficiency of the best full electrics vs an efficient, equivalent diesel or gas car? For example, given an identical amount of oil, which vehicle uses it more efficiently? A diesel hatchback or an electric that gets it's juice from a power plant burning oil? I'd be curious to see the results. I'm not trying to sound skeptical - I just don't know what the comparison would reveal.
We need something to replace the use of gas. Hybrids I will say are a great thing to bridge between our combustion engine and what ever is next. Things like the volt I think are the best examples of the bridge because we just need to replace the power generator and that is fairly easy to do compared to having to figure out some other type of engine to move the car. We have electric motors that we can advance for moving.
GM's European arm Opel created a concept diesel series hybrid, the stupidly named Flextreme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Flextreme), which promises dramatically improved fuel economy over the Volt. I just feel like any series hybrid that uses a gasoline engine is a foolishly crippled piece of technology when appropriate diesels are available and would deliver far superior fuel economy.
Reducing our usage of fuel I would argue is a dead end tech. All it will do is delay the problem but not solve it. Hybrids bridge us to the solution.
Reducing our fuel consumption is not a solution, but it is the first crucial step in bridging the gap between fossil fuels and whatever alternative we develop. We need time to transition, and if everyone practices conservation we buy more time to transition.
As yet, no hybrids on the market outperform straight diesel engined cars consistently, so the hybrid concept is still very much in its infancy. I have yet to be convinced, especially with the cost and [lack of efficiency] of the battery packs. They may ultimately meet expectations, but they haven't yet.
We have plenty of rail, and we are building more. The problem is that people don't ride it. Just as we have plenty of fuel efficient cars, and more are coming to market - but people are still buying SUVs. We [rightly] blame oil companies for being grasping and short-sighted. But consumers also bear much of the blame.
As for the mass eletric cars I think you pass over my point about how most of them will be charged at night during off peak hours which means for the most part the grid can take a a huge number of them before we will start having a real issue.
It still would not even begin to handle the strain generated by millions of new electric cars suddenly appearing in driveways across America. Large-scale adoption of electric cars would just make coal and oil get burned faster by power companies. Yes, power plants are more efficient than most cars in producing energy. But we are still burning fossil fuels and polluting. Also, has anyone done a study to compare the true efficiency of the best full electrics vs an efficient, equivalent diesel or gas car? For example, given an identical amount of oil, which vehicle uses it more efficiently? A diesel hatchback or an electric that gets it's juice from a power plant burning oil? I'd be curious to see the results. I'm not trying to sound skeptical - I just don't know what the comparison would reveal.
We need something to replace the use of gas. Hybrids I will say are a great thing to bridge between our combustion engine and what ever is next. Things like the volt I think are the best examples of the bridge because we just need to replace the power generator and that is fairly easy to do compared to having to figure out some other type of engine to move the car. We have electric motors that we can advance for moving.
GM's European arm Opel created a concept diesel series hybrid, the stupidly named Flextreme (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Flextreme), which promises dramatically improved fuel economy over the Volt. I just feel like any series hybrid that uses a gasoline engine is a foolishly crippled piece of technology when appropriate diesels are available and would deliver far superior fuel economy.
Reducing our usage of fuel I would argue is a dead end tech. All it will do is delay the problem but not solve it. Hybrids bridge us to the solution.
Reducing our fuel consumption is not a solution, but it is the first crucial step in bridging the gap between fossil fuels and whatever alternative we develop. We need time to transition, and if everyone practices conservation we buy more time to transition.
As yet, no hybrids on the market outperform straight diesel engined cars consistently, so the hybrid concept is still very much in its infancy. I have yet to be convinced, especially with the cost and [lack of efficiency] of the battery packs. They may ultimately meet expectations, but they haven't yet.
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