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146 comments on Performance Governing: Getting Lucky and Staying Lucky

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vacosvc on July 5, 2008 - 8:06am

Drizzt: Your ideas for developing a 150 MPG Car are a bit off track.

First, energy storage solutions, be they compressed air, batteries, flywheels, or hydrogen powered fuel cells, do not address the core issue/problem/paradigm shift:

Total BTUs available for use in our economy are going to shrink.

The dilemma in front of us is: how fast, how far, and how evenly distributed, the decline will be.

Second, turbines are not more efficient converters of fuel to mechanical energy. Their advantage in aircraft is light weight and mechanical simplicity (reliability), in electrical power production, reliability and low capital cost / MW (compared with a coal fired or nuclear power plant) are the reason for the growth in natural gas fueled electrical power.

Forrest

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Drizzt on July 5, 2008 - 3:37pm

PriorityX
I checked your link RE the Air Car thinking it would be a three minute 2 or 3 paragraph summary. ACH! It was a whole discussion, and technical...I read it all. Thanks

Vacosvc
1. Drizzt: Your ideas for developing a 150 MPG Car are a bit off track.

2. The dilemma in front of us is: how fast, how far, and how evenly distributed, the decline will be.

Hmmm...I am not a mechanical engineer. I gave examples AND meantioned there are likely OTHER solutions that exist but have been bought & sat on by Oil Cos because increased auto efficiency would reduce Oil Profits. So...I still believe that 150 MPG is feasible in JUST two years.
Regarding your second point; MY point was that a fleet of 5 million cars getting 15o MPG would reduce the speed of the decline and allow more time to adapt with less trauma. A fleet of 100 million if built over time or in multiple countries would extend the decline proportionately more.

3. Second, turbines are not more efficient converters of fuel to mechanical energy. Their advantage in aircraft is light weight and mechanical simplicity (reliability), in electrical power production, reliability and low capital cost / MW (compared with a coal fired or nuclear power plant) are the reason for the growth in natural gas fueled electrical power.

Regarding point 3, please provide a link! I disagree, and will explain why.
A four cylander engine has four cylanders that go UP/stop, then DOWN/stop a total of two times for one compression cycle. Each time the cylander stops it will leach NET energy from the energy to get the cylander to go the opposite direction. A turbine engine has no corrosponding STOP part of its cycle; it is simply ON. This is also why a wankle engine is mechanically more efficient than a cylander engine; Wankle engines don't have a STOP portion of the combustion cycle. Another point is that due to the drastically simpler design of a turbine engine there are less contact points to cause frictional losses.

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Mr-D on July 5, 2008 - 6:57pm

First comment here, but super efficient vehicles already exist and are being sold in Europe.

Has anyone heard of the TWIKE? I would buy one if they were sold in Canada. Top speed is around 55mph (85kmh). It uses electricity and gets the equivalent of 250-500 miles per gallon. This would great for transportation within cities for a tiny fraction of the energy being used now.

It looks like it's really fun to drive and they don't take up much space to park either. You can even get some exercise while driving one (no joke). They just need to produce a lot more of them. The discovery channel show Daily Planet did a good show on this one.