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... I squeeze this in here
There is no fuel substance or no anything in future (when PO is understood- in say 10-20 years from now) – that will allow for 1 person to hitchhike inside a chunk of steel weighting in at 1-2 tones at a 15% efficiency per fuel content – cruising in 100 mph - for the sole purpose of transporting this piece of Skin&Bones from A to B. Money will not matter – society will rule this (my guess)
The techniques of cheap&easy personal transport are here already today –
Light and fine-tuned small petrol-cars reaching 3000 kilometers IN USING 1 liter of petroleum – wow, And those cars actually maintain a nice speed as well.
The challenge is the transition between an eventual micro-car-street-environments alongside the Humvees, SUVs, Truck/Trailers and so forth ..
If the car-oil economy where to be started freshly today – including the concerns of all we know, WE WOULD HAVE GONE DOWN THE MICRO-CAR ALLEY ….
Personally I believe in mass-transports for the future and lightly motorized vehicles in rural areas …. Lets hope
Sorry, paal, those numbers don't work. I'm interpreting "nice speed" as 100 KM/H.
A liter of gasoline has about 34.8 MJ. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline)
1 watt is a joule / second, so 34.8 MJ is 9667 watt*hours. If you assume your petrol engine is "only" 62% efficient, then you are really only talking about 6000 watt*hours of useful mechanical work.
If you are running that car at 100 KM/H you could run for 30 hours on a liter. That means 6000/30 = 200 watts continuous output
No thanks! I think I'll just use pedals for my 200 watts.
The operative points being:
Quintuple the efficiency and use electricity instead of liquid fuel, and it becomes quite affordable on all points. Cut the weight to 3/4 ton, and you get the VentureOne.
Engineer-Poet:
Looks cute, sort of like a 50 year old cover of Popular Mechanics-but if you go parking in the thing, will you need back surgery?
Looks like the model I made to get me in the BIDNESS. 'Cept the two wheels were in front.
Well this reply goes to :
SunnyvaleCA
-as it seems we have an issue here - NEVER SHOOT THE MESSENGER .. ..and IF you have any problems with my provided link then (google : Shell Eco-marathon 2007)
...furthermore and e.g.IF the 'four of you' ever see me play around with numbers, its never my own :)))):: )
Now - reality is everything, mine is different from yours , obviously ! It is about information.
I'm aiming at something like this 3000 km to 1 liter of el' petroleeeeeeeeeeeee
(hi performance/weight/distance...utilization.. and stuff like that ..
I know my numbers are insane ..... but theY are there for your eyes only ... AND if you SunnyvaleCA struggle to grasp it ... DONT blame me - please blame Shell , Yeah Shell - the oil company - they put it all together ...
Reality of the future - IS something between options of today and what is possible in the future. I just showed U what is possible today............
Still I believe in the grim reaper ... as for how we will arrange for energy as time comes our way -
oh i think people won't like a small, vehicle where the top has to be bolted on and off by someone else just to allow the driver in. of course its also poorly ventilated to keep it's aerodynamic shape.
well TrueKaiser
- what are you doing here at The oil drum in the first way ?
This place is about future solutions ... and the flagggging of the concept of power down and mitigations regarding dwindeling oil (and other NOT renewable energies)
I prefere to be 'clamped in' if that is what it takes ...
U may have a nice walk .....
Why are you obsessing about a vehicle (not a car; it doesn't have the safety equipment, lights or bumpers to be street-legal) which is overall less useful than a bicycle, just because it can run at 1/3000 liter/km?
I calculate the LHV of diesel fuel at roughly 40 MJ/liter; the economy figure you quote equates to under 4 watt-hours per km of raw fuel (perhaps 1 watt-hour/km of engine output from such a tiny engine). In short, a 100-watt solar panel could drive this vehicle at 100 kph all day, if the vehicle could actually achieve 100 kph on road.
On the other hand, a REAL electric car consumes in the region of 120-150 Wh/km. Get 6 hours/day of power out of a 1 kW solar array, and you're good for between 40 and 50 km/day while having seat belts, air bags, turn signals, bumpers, and space for groceries and a couple of friends.
A 1 kW solar array should cost between USD 5000-10000 installed. That ought to power such a vehicle for the length of the 25-year warranty. Want more range? Add more panels.
Now why should we even think about "powering down" to the absurd extreme that you're talking about here?
Engineer-Poet wrote: a REAL electric car consumes in the region of 120-150 Wh/km. Get 6 hours/day of power out of a 1 kW solar array, and you're good for between 40 and 50 km/day
[...]
A 1 kW solar array should cost between USD 5000-10000 installed. That ought to power such a vehicle
That would be 6kWh/day. Would that be the December output of the solar array?
What happens if your neighbor decides he wants to use the solar rights?
During December in the cold, dark parts of the world you use the output from your cogenerator.
Looking at the links returned, I found that in California, the Codes, Covenants and Restrictions cannot be used to block installation of solar power. Ergo, if your neighbor decides to use the sun to heat her water and power her car and computer, you can't use the CCR's to stop her. Neither can she stop you.
Equitable availability of solar power is determined by height limits and setback requirements, which wasn't important enough to you to post a search URL.
Engineer-Poet - Im not obsessing anything, I simply try to put forward that cars can be made MUCH more energy efficient - than the trend has been the last 100 years.
Thats my only point.
In scaling down consumption drastically to day - as in a magic trick - the downslope of the PO-curve could easily last mouch longer into the future ...
The point you miss is that conversion to non-petroleum energy will come about long before a 3000 km/liter vehicle becomes worthwhile.
Com'on Engineer-Poet
I'm not taking any stance to anything - I'm just putting up some info on low-efficient cars ... and conveying the idea that future personal commuting may lay between todays gas guzzlers and this 3000 km/l vehicle...
I'm not trying to tell you that this experiment-car is the future, cos' it will not be able to handle a minor uphill .... but it will be closer to the truth than todays cars in 50 years ... my guess.
Is this difficult to understand ?
( E_kinetic = 1/2 m v^2, that m has to come way down...)
If you include everything scheduled for delivery this year, today's vehicles include the Tesla Roadster. The future is going to look much more like that.