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Post by Trowa on Apr 27, 2015 11:09:14 GMT
I think some of you are underestimating green energy capabilities. Keep in mind, despite what this graphic suggests, every roof can have solar panels so energy loss over long power lines won't be as much of an issue as you might think. Also, battery storage efficiency will eventually store excess energy for night and bad weather times. Looks pretty good just powering the planet on solar alone. Wind energy should fill any unexpected gaps. Recently in my home town, they closed a 121 megawatt coal power plant and built 328 wind turbines which produce 542 megawatts. solar powered roadsI'm not sure if you guys have seen this yet but it could solve most of the worlds energy problems. Its solar powered roadsI saw a documentary on the topic a while ago and the problem with that was solar panels contain toxic materials that would be difficult to despense of in mass quantity. So not only is it insanely expensive as James Two7 said but you have the same problem as Nuclear power. Albeit not radioactive material. Not only that but you MUST consider the carbon footprint of constructing such a quantity of solar panels. They dont appear from thin air and when you start looking into most of the supposedly "green" solutions they are just a bad if not worse than burning coal or oil. Its actually quite comical when people drive hybrids or electric cars to be "green". The intial carbon footprint of an electric car is larger than that of a gasoline powered car. It makes some of that back over time by NOT burning fuel but then again where does the electricity come from? Unless you are hooking up to a windmill chances are your local power company burned coal or used nuclear power to create the energy needed to power your car. If you are powering through wind, water or solar energy then thats awesome but if not then dont kid yourself when buying one of these cars. Hydrogen fuel cells would be ideal but where do you get the hydrogen? It doesnt exist natural on this Earth in very large quatities because it only has a single valence electron. Meaning it bonds to just about everything. Meaning you have to seperate and thats not exactly cheap! The biggest problem is that the oil companies have patented just about every solution that was ever viable throughout history. There have been engines that ran purely on water built dating back 100 years that achieved up to 100miles per gallon OF WATER. The solution is to get rid of the real problem. Big oil companies.
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Post by tjezc☻ on Apr 28, 2015 6:43:39 GMT
The biggest problem is that the oil companies have patented just about every solution that was ever viable throughout history. There have been engines that ran purely on water built dating back 100 years that achieved up to 100miles per gallon OF WATER. The solution is to get rid of the real problem. Big oil companies. I'm thinking steam engines
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Post by Trowa on May 7, 2015 2:30:48 GMT
The biggest problem is that the oil companies have patented just about every solution that was ever viable throughout history. There have been engines that ran purely on water built dating back 100 years that achieved up to 100miles per gallon OF WATER. The solution is to get rid of the real problem. Big oil companies. I'm thinking steam engines Steam engines use coal as their fuel to produce heat and evaporate the water. The engines Im talking about used water as its fuel.
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nudeltime
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Post by nudeltime on Sept 27, 2015 13:58:51 GMT
It's not going to happen anytime soon if we (generally and collectively) keep giving massive multinational corporations power. We have such a dependence on oil that it is near impossible to break away into something new. They have so much money that they can squash literally anything they want to. If they see the population shift they have the money, connections and power to keep a hold for a few more years and this happens too often. Watch the documentary 'Who Killed the Electric Car?". It's a really good documentary about GM's EV1 electric car, that was set to be the revolutionising vehicle that would have spurred on everyone else to go electric. Instead it was crushed by the oil companies after they pressured General Motors into stopping their program and recalled all their leases on the cars. Resulting in every single one of them getting crushed, except for 40 which were donated to museums. The EV1 had so much potential, considering it was an electric car of the 90s. 0-60 in 8 seconds, top speed of 80mph (electronically limited which sucks), range of 160 miles in one charge. Those stats (except for top speed) are equal to, if not better than a lot of electric cars today. Imagine how much further developed GM and other companies would be if this had gone ahead as planned? A Prius would be a much better option if all of this was developed properly 15 years ago. So I guess you've figured out by now that I think electric is the way forward Just watched it link. True. Oil industry pressures the car companies and government doesnt want to let go of the gas tax, also there's so much money flowing around, nobody sees that the world will end if we keep it up like this...
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tonkiekong
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Post by tonkiekong on Oct 10, 2015 12:55:26 GMT
I personally think that hydrogen fueled cars are the way to go, but in order for that to be "clean" we would need the energy used to create hydrogen to be solar or wind powered. Also the fuel tank will most likely have to be pretty big or strong enough to withstand the pressure needed to store hydrogen in a liquid form.
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jsantospt
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Post by jsantospt on Oct 19, 2015 1:06:45 GMT
Oil prices will increase as production will not follow the increase in demand. Electric cars will become much cheaper to run and the general public will adopt it. Many cars manufacturers are now pushing their alternative fuel vehicles in fear of becoming obsolete, the oil lobby won't be able to crush it now. Batteries are the main technological problem in electric cars. Lithium ion batteries are still very expensive, heavy and have poor range. Hydrogen cells are even more expensive. This new battery technology has an impressive energy stored/kg rating if it is true. The car will most likely fail or is being used only to showcase the battery. Dammit Oil Prices why you no go up? I think the way to really are Hybrids, Diesel + Eletric cars, they can run on batteries on city (100km range should be enough tbh) and then use the Diesel motor for big trips. Batteries are still expensive, heavy and prove to issues, until that doesn't changes we won't see the electric car being adopted widely
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Post by stormcaller3801 on Oct 27, 2015 16:15:56 GMT
I expect the oil companies will keep pushing oil until their renewable energy projects hit a point where they've got massive market share by dint of sheer volume. Then the anti-renewable groups will find their funding gone and the oil companies will put forth a massive public relations campaign about having seen the light and phasing out oil production in favour of renewable sources.
My only real concern is, when it happens, how expensive will it be to convert/replace my existing car?
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