Re: 680HP & 217MPH

one80out@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Mar 14, 1:18 pm, Michael Johnson <c...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
one80...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Mar 14, 11:11 am, "dwight" <tfro...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<NoOptio...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1173843087.736162.254780@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Remember back not too long ago when 200 mph top end was the holy
grail?
This car is going to be incredible!
http://www.thegmsource.com/index.php?categoryid=9&p2_articleid=256
Anyone care to guess what this thing will run in the 1/4?
Patrick
15.2 and a new set of rear tires.
dwight
Hey Patrick, I got home last night to find the new Hot Rod mag and the
cover made me think of you immediately: http://www.hotrod.com/toc/thismonth/
"GLORY DAYS" -- "650HP BLOWN VETTE - 600HP VIPER - 500HP SHELBY"
Seriously, these are the golden years.
History also stands to repeat itself as the greenhouse gas religion
grows in power. Just as fuel costs, emissions regulations, and
insurance ratings combined to kill the last golden era, this growing
global warming hysteria is making fuel economy regs inevitable. And
this time is different. I know in the '70's and '80's we all thought
that technology could never overcome the burden of HC, NOx, and CO
regulation, and restore real performance. We were wrong, as these
modern Vettes, Vipers, and Mustangs now show.
But this time, there is no possible techno fix. It simply takes a lot
of fuel and air to produce the heat necessary to produce this kind of
power. That means a lot of waste product; perfect combustion means
one molecule of CO2 out for every atom of carbon in. Every molecule
of gasoline has about 10 atoms of carbon in it. Assuming that all
other systems are optimized, the only way to reduce CO2 production is
to increase fuel economy.
So to all you 20-somethings: buy a Viper or a Shelby and put it in
storage and forget about it. 40 years from now it'll be your
retirement fund. Because that's a history that's very likely to
repeat as well, once these ground pounders are also legislated out of
existence.
There is no reason an electric, hydrogen etc. powered car can't be made
as fast as a gasoline powered one. In fact, there will likely be great
advantages to them that current cars can never match. The fact is that
internal combustion engines are terribly inefficient and need to be
thrown on the scrap heap of automotive history.

I could really go for a four wheel drive electric car with a drive motor
in each wheel. Electric motors can be torque monsters. Plus, I can
only imagine the performance to be had from a computer controlling all
four drive wheels independently and with great precision. I hope I live
long enough to be able to drive one of these wondermobiles one day.

"No reason?" Wow, hard to believe an engineer could write that.

Actually, it's hard to believe an engineer worth his salt WOULDN'T write that.

Affordability and the existence and availability of the vast resources
necessary to build the vehicles and keep them on the road, in the
millions of units, come to mind, without a lot of thought, as
categorically disabling reasons. These are the same reasons the
current fad for ethanol won't pan out. The current fossil fuel and
internal combustion technologies are supporting tens, maybe hundreds,
of millions of vehicles today. The vastness of that rolling stock I
think is not really appreciated by the futurist dreamers. At present
it costs about $1,000,000 and a team of PhD's to put and keep one fuel
cell vehicle on the road. The barriers are not the invention of new
technologies but the adaptation of the existing technologies to the
production of multi-millions of units per year.

I didn't say the transition to alternate power for vehicles would be like flipping a light switch. It will be done over decades. Personally, I think the driving force behind a change will be economics. The replacement technology(ies) will be, and have to be, less expensive to operate. This isn't much of a stretch considering the inefficiency of the internal combustion engine and the efficiency of electric power or fuel cell technology to name just two potential power sources.

Generating electricity (and hydrogen from electrolysis) can be done in multitudes of ways. You can do it right in you own back yard. Right now the capability doesn't exist to do this efficiently, or cheaply, but over two or three decades I expect there will be great advances in technology that will allow it. Just think of where we were from a technology perspective 30-40 years ago relative to today. If we just advance the same relative level over the next 30-40 years I don't see how this can't happen.

One thing I always wonder about, when people decry the inefficiencies
of the IC engine in favor of electric motors, is how can it be more
efficient to generate the electricity with fossil-fuel created heat
(coal or fuel oil), boilers, turbines, and generators -- each with
its own heat and friction losses -- then to conduct the resulting
electricity along heat-generating wiring (more energy losses), then
use it to charge a battery (more energy losses), then use that stored
electrical energy to power a motor, with more energy losses. Surely
this question is susceptible to an engineering calculation. I just
wonder how it pencils out, all the engergy losses flowing from all
that infrastructure, compared to the self-contained chemical to
mechanical to kinetic energy converter we know as the internal
combustion car.

You are thinking in terms of current technology and not what the future holds. There are numerous ways to generate electricity and if you can do that you can generate hydrogen. IMO, the only thing currently holding back full blown electric cars is battery technology. If we had affordable batteries that could run for 500 miles per charge and recharge in five minutes 90% of the electric car problem would be solved. The technology of the hybrid cars today are good enough to just plug this type of battery right into them with no hassles. The technology for electric vehicles is farther along than many people realize. Provide these type of batteries at a reasonable cost and economics will do the rest to switch us to electric cars.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 680HP & 217MPH
    ... global warming hysteria is making fuel economy regs inevitable. ... There is no reason an electric, hydrogen etc. powered car can't be made ... efficient to generate the electricity with fossil-fuel created heat ... use it to charge a battery (more energy losses), ...
    (rec.autos.makers.ford.mustang)
  • Re: OT: NASA quietly corrects GW data
    ... We have the technology to generate 100% of our electricity ... use the natural gas to run hybrids. ... and can be used directly in fuel cells as well--that technology ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: OT: NASA quietly corrects GW data
    ... We should be building nuclear power plants at top ... We have the technology to generate 100% of our electricity ... is also mature--the difficulty with fuel cells is not that we don't know ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: OT: NASA quietly corrects GW data
    ... We have the technology to generate 100% of our electricity ... and discontinue all use of fossil fuels for that purpose. ... Fuel cells work fine. ...
    (rec.motorcycles)
  • Re: The future of hybrid cars
    ... but run less fuel gas and steam through them. ... > Fuel shipped to refinery, refined, tanked to petrol station, placed in ... > would come out broadly level, at which point car batteries can be used ... > - electricity genration is less dependent than cars on Middle East oil ...
    (sci.energy)
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