> -----Original Message----- > From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On > Behalf Of Doug Pensinger > Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 11:50 PM > To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion > Subject: Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? > > Dan wrote: > > > > > But, let's just take 30. At $1.50/gal, that's 5 cents/mile. Lets say > > these > > cars are kept for 150k, which is on the high side...that's 7.5k for gas. > > The break even point, assuming CDs pay zero, with the MSRP discount, is > > close to $6.00/gal. And, that's comparing with a smaller car. > > > > and: > > > > > > > They talked about 5 people, they talked about 240 miles, but > > never said that 5 people could be taken 240 miles. My guess is that the > 5 > > person seating is tight, and only for the 80 mile version of the > > car....otherwise they'd explicitly say otherwise (If I were the project > > manager I'd be all over the tech. writer's back to make sure that the > > capacity was stated explicitly if it existed...if it wasn't there, I'd > be > > happy with what they wrote). > > > > Now tell me Dan. Does your Escort get 30 mpg with 5 adults aboard, or are > you engaging in the same kind of deceptive language you're accusing others > of?
OK, I didn't state things precisely correctly. I've measured the 30 mpg driving back and forth to be with Teri while she was at seminary. This trip is 300 miles, with about 30 traffic lights and a few stop signs. What I was getting at is that the 80 mile version seats 5, while the 240 mile version uses the space that passengers can sit it for the extra batteries. So, five people can no longer fit in the car. If the car were to degrade to 220 miles with 5 people instead of 1, then that's not a big deal. But, 80 and 240 are very different numbers. And since all the other manufactures of similar cars (Toyota, Chevy) are in the 40-100 mile range, having a car that uses the same fundamental technology (the wheel design is not going to change things by factors of two) and is more than a factor of two better sounds rather fishy. > Not that nine out of ten cars has more than one person in it. And by > the way, gas prices around here are back up to $2/gal and will probably go > higher soon. So if your getting 23miles/gallon (with your five people in > the car) for 150k at $2.50/gal that's 16k for gas. California is special in that it has gas blends that are more expensive and tend to get slightly lower gas mileage. But, then, virtually everything costs a lot more in California. :-) When I was selling my house, I got great amusement considering the multi-millions I would get for my house out there. > And if batteries become cheaper and wind/solar interests buy up used > batteries to store power generated at off peak times, > http://www.its.berkeley.edu/sustainabilitycenter/newsandevents/CEFISrelate > d_sandia_report.pdf > the maintenance cost of electrics is probably a lot cheaper than gas > powered cars that are much more mechanically complex. First, I got a "not there" when looking for the paper. Second, batteries will have to become many orders of magnitude better for storage of power generation at off peak times for use at peak times....particularly if we are thinking of things like wind power which would be close to economically feasible right now if there was such a storage mechanism. Let me run some numbers to give a feel for this. Let's say we have a 200 MW wind farm (say 300 MW nameplate, allowing for nominal winds to below nameplate), and will need to store 100 hours worth of energy to make it feasible to use it as a stand alone facility. That means we'd need 20 GWh of storage. According to http://www.allaboutbatteries.com/Battery-Energy.html storing this energy with the type of advanced Li-I batteries we've been seeing in the best cars, we'd have to pay >80 billion for the storage. The windfarm itself costs only 300 million in my example, so you see that battery storage is far away from economical for this purpose. That's why folks are looking at lowering the cost of conversion to hydrogen and compressed air storage downhole. Now, I'm not saying that finding a cheaper better battery is impossible. Rather, I'm arguing that it will take a breakthrough. Thus, I'd argue for the government funding nanotech and nanochemistry as the best means of approaching this. If we can get Li-I batteries to increase their capacity by say 10x, while holding their cost constant, then electric cars become economically feasible. But, if we don't, then we can subsidize electric cars with hundreds of billions and we still won't have anything more than an expensive subsidy program, like ethanol. Good engineering, by itself, can cut costs. But, the engineering that I've been associated with that has drastically cut costs have involved game changers from other fields (e.g. drops in computer prices that allow for the modeling of complex EM problems in days instead of centuries). Good manufacturing techniques can shave off costs and improve reliability. But, you are old enough to remember, with me, when Japan was suppose to blow past the US in GDP because of their superior manufacturing techniques. Their approach to manufacturing is superior. But, having a colleague who worked with Japanese on a R&D project, I know that their risk aversion approach to innovation means that they are not as good at disruptive innovation as "cowboy engineers". Thus, their 5th generation computer program was a failure, and the US economy did far better than the Japanese economy over the last 20 years. > But none of that is as important or as relevant as the fact that there is > _no_ future for petroleum based energy for this country. That's an easy statement to make, but natural gas is doing very well at the moment. In particular, one needs to consider how there are now shale plays, something that would have been not thought possible years ago. As long as oil and gas are a lot cheaper than alternatives, people will choose to use them. You might argue that folks aren't smart, but short of a dictatorship, you cannot force good choices against the will of the overwhelming majority of people. And, what most people want is to pretend that they are going green by recycling their milk jugs without making any real sacrifices. 0 The only way to stop this is to find a cost competitive method. If it were just a question of manufacturing and industry working closely with government, then the Japanese would have had efficient battery cars years ago, they are much better than the US, on the whole, at manufacturing, and their government has poured multiple billions of dollars into various industry projects. They are far more dependant on foreign energy sources, and their dependence on the good will of the US for their national defense makes them even more vulnerable. If it were just a question of manufacturing, why does Toyota offer no more than a 100 mile range battery car that looks to be a subcompact (maybe) for 40k or so? Toyota is very good at manufacturing, they build quality stuff. >We spend billions upon billions of dollars on maintaining a presence in the >Middle East to protect our sources while we finance our enemies with the >money we spend on oil. Factoring the political costs of our dependence on >oil makes it quite a bit more expensive than you imply. The geopolitical risks inherent in dependence on Mid-East oil have been apparent, not just to the US, but to Japan and Europe since 1973. In the 35 years, there's been lots of talk, but the dependence on foreign oil has grown in the US, has decreased then increased again in Europe, and has stayed unbelievably high in Japan. Yet, none of these countries have changed this. I'd argue it's because for every country, while the price of dependence is high, the price of switching has been higher. Otherwise, why would _no one_ do it? Germany and Japan are manufacturing juggernauts, and have both had a history of oil being/contributing to their undoing in war. Why don't they provide a reasonably priced solution? The answer is obvious to me. If they could, they would. Fossil fuels are so cheap, that switching to alternatives would be prohibitively expensive. (with nuclear power as the exception that the French have taken and US has decided not to take). >By providing ourselves with > alternatives, even if they are initially more expensive, we provide > ourselves with a future and make the terrorists irrelevant (not to mention > broke.) Sure, but magnitude matters. If the alternatives were 20% more expensive, it would be a piece of cake. But, we are talking about massive percentages of GDP more expensive. I know you've been involved with engineering, so I am flabbergasted that you write as though new technology is simply a matter of willpower. If there is a hidden conspiracy here, it would have to involve oil companies controlling the EU, Japan, China and India, as well as the US. Do you really think the Japanese government cares about the profits of Chevron? I fear what will happen is that fundamental research will not be supported, and we will repeat the ethanol subsidy disaster with electric cars based on present technology and hundreds of billions of government money, and we'll make as much progress in the next 10 years as we have in the last 10. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
