Re: Serial Electric Hybrid (Re: The Financial Crisis is much worse

Wayne Throop wrote:
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seawasp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
It just reduces the primary problem, of course -- you still are
either burning (less) fossil fuel with your local generator, or
sucking down more electricity at home which is primarily fossil
fuels.

True. Though even in the US, in some regions the majority of grid
power comes from hydro or nuclear, especially off-peak (such as at
night, though I suppose if everybody was chargingtheir commutin'
car,
it wouldn't say off-peak).

If, over time, more non-carboniferous power sources were brought
online, the situation would incrementally improve. And I think
that's key.
You can't go straight for a solution that's a large change from
current practice. You have to sneak up on it. And hybridism
(especially serial hybridism, and especially with the engineering
going into platforms where the onboard source of electricity can be
swapped out for whatever works best) can be a useful step. This is
also why things like flex-fuel engines are of interest (though I
druther they were far more flexible than they currently are...). If
you can burn lots of kinds hydrocarbons, then you'd be far more
likely able to burn synthesized hydrocarbons, whether synthesized by
industrial or agricultural means.

Hrm. I mean, there just has to be a tolerably efficient way to go
from
hydrocarbons to electricity without throwing all those little bits
of
metal back and forth inside a heavy casing. Nobody's been looking
for
one because the ICE has such a huge lead in engineering practice. If
your veee-hciles, and especially the manufacturing and design
infrastructure for them, already have plug compatibility at "a
source
of electricity", you can take advantage.

Actually "they" have looked at all sorts of things. Fuel cells work
fine with hydrogen (and Honda has a fuel cell car in production and
available for lease in parts of the US) and kind of with methanol or
natural gas but nobody's figured out a way to make one work with
gasoline. Chrysler put serious effort into turbine cars and found
that they weren't viable at the time and didn't offer any real
benefits, and I don't know of anything that's changed--hot rodders
build them with some regularity but don't seem to drive them much
(google "Leno jet motorcycle" for one celebrity's experience with a
turbine vehicle on the road). Steam cars used to be popular and good
performers and could with turbines still be good performers, but they
don't offer any advantages and do have some disadvantages. The Wankel
worked but has pretty much flopped in the market, even Mazda has
pretty much given up on it except as a prestige thing in their sports
model, but it's a reciprocating engine with a weird-shaped piston so
I'm not sure you want to count it.


--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)


.

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