At 1:18 AM 1/19/5, thomas malloy wrote: >>At 12:09 PM 1/18/5, thomas malloy wrote: > >and Horace Heffner responded; > >> > >>>You people need to visit J C Whitney's website and look for a gas >>>powered heater. I'm glad to hear that only a few of you are freezing >>>to death in your cars! >> >>Actually, so few people freeze here because they enough common sense to >>carry emergency arctic gear. > > >> Throwing more hydrocarbon energy at a >>hydrocarbon energy problem is not a solution. > >IMHO, it is way more energy efficient to have a gas powered heater / >absorption refrigerator built into the auto for the few times when >you will need it than upsize the engine and use the waste heat.
I have not suggested that upsizing an engine is the solution. On the contrary, I have pointed out that the coming downsizing of engines will create a problem with heating and cooling and the solution I proposed is *vehicle insulation*. Also, I think heat/defrost/AC is used far more often than "a few times", in fact more than half the time in some places. Vehicle insulation is a far more energy efficient solution than auxilliary heating/cooling. I also pointed out that suitably designed vehicle insulation has many other advantages as well. However, this is a solution that requires action by the auto manufacturers themselves. Isulating is such an obvious way to improve a vehicle. I wonder why it is not being done already. I suppose the principle reason is that it is easier to sell the general public a low capital cost than a low operating cost. At some point, however, I think vehicle comfort will play a large enough role that marketing of high milage vehicles will be affected by the feature. Regards, Horace Heffner
