At 04:17 PM 6/23/2006, Harry Veeder wrote:
Yes.
I was thinking it won't be effective in the long run.
Yup. Stretching out supplies only buys time, but that's valuable.
However, in the case of oil, a project to improve efficiency may
actually serve two other purposes:
1. It would slow down global warming.
2. If it focuses on plug-in hybrid development, it may help the
transition to pure electric vehicles and/or cold fusion powered
vehicles. As several people here have noted, a plug-in hybrid may act
as a "bridge" to pure electric or CF designs, by improving and
lowering the cost of batteries, the transmission and other subsystems.
I am assuming that CF will work best in a hybrid heat-engine/electric
vehicle, rather than direct drive with a steam turbine or piston. As
I noted in the book, this would solve the problem of the sluggish
startup time of a CF cell. I assume the cell would remain hot in
stand-by mode. Generation would be either with a steam turbine or
advanced thermoelectric chips. Present day thermoelectric chips would
not be suitable, because the engine would be huge.
- Jed
