[lorenzo]

Suppose you are forming a team to participate in the Automotive X-Prize. What would your car look like?

Let's assume these provisional rules:

1. economy: the car must get the equivalent of 200 miles per gallon; that is: 200 miles (321 kilometres) per 121 Megajoules (200 miles/321 kilometers per 33 kilowatthour).

2. it must sell at least 2000 units per year for a period of at least 5 years in a row.

3. it must comply with all European safety-standards.

4. it does not use any fossil fuel in the "tank" (so no natural gas, gasoline, diesel, or synthetic coal- or gas-derived fuels).

(5. GHG emissions during the entire life-cycle of the car will have to be determined, but obviously they'll have to be low - sorry for being vague here, this is too complex to scratch on the back of an envelope.)

6. it must be able to carry at least 2 persons, and 75 kilograms of luggage.

Roughly speaking, what would your car look like? Passenger configuration, propulsion system, materials used, possible price tag...?

[gg3]

I'll go with one that's already been done: the 300-mile-per-gallon Volkswagon, 2000 or 2001 if I'm not mistaken.

Looks like an updated Messerschmitt. Tandem-style seating (passenger behind driver), fighter-cockpit-style hatch for entry and exit, and the two rear wheels are close enough together that one can envision a 3-wheel version of this (which in California would make it legally a motorcycle).

Runs on diesel, for which you can substitute biodiesel.

To see what this one looks like, put "300 mpg VW" into a picture search.

[lorenzo]

Mine would be a solar-DAFC inflatable hybrid:

-a large surface area for the solar cells
-a set of direct ethanol fuel cells that power a generator charging li-ion batteries
-all electric propulsion
-highpressure inflatable beams forming the fuselage (mainly side structures) (a bit like the MIT inflatable cars): http://www.archinode.com/mitcar1.html
-highpressure pneumatic skin

[Windmills]

Whatever your futurama car happens to be, make sure it can handle the crumbling, bumpy, pot-holed roads that peak oil will give us. If it can't handle mud like a 4x4, then it literally will be a dream car.

[lorenzo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Windmills', 'W')hatever your futurama car happens to be, make sure it can handle the crumbling, bumpy, pot-holed roads that peak oil will give us. If it can't handle mud like a 4x4, then it literally will be a dream car.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '[')So we can keep on driving for many more centuries, for millenia even.

Cheers.

[sch_peakoiler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Windmills', 'W')hatever your futurama car happens to be, make sure it can handle the crumbling, bumpy, pot-holed roads that peak oil will give us. If it can't handle mud like a 4x4, then it literally will be a dream car.

[MonteQuest]

FYI-post on topic or don't post.

I deleted all the flip and off-topic remarks.

[grabby]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lorenzo', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Windmills', ' ')
the 1500 exajoules can be planted each year again, over and over again.

Cheers.

[grabby]

One coal/coalgas plant can make 30,000 barrels a day.
one huge ethanol plant can make 3500 barrels ethanol per day or 2500 oil barrels equivalent energy.
that is 1/15

the coal plant needs no energy input, it makes energy
the coal plant needs no water, unlike the millions of gallons the ethanol plant requires.
both coal and ethanol produce CO2 to distill.

coal product distillation yields 100% product.
ethanol yields 5% product

distilling water is 3 times as intensive for energy as oil (water has the highest specific heat)

ethanol is way less efficient.

by 20 -30 times per dollar spent on the plant.

ethanol or biodiesel is very polluting to the environment, coal/gas does not polute the air.
it is a closed system.

we would need 100 coal plants to make 3 million barrels a day.
we would
need more than 5000 ethanol plants to make the same energy approximately.


the coal plants would make electricity
the ethanol plants would take electricity.
coal can be dug daily

ethanol field can only be harvested every 3 months averaged over winter. in north amrica.

to make 84 million barrels of ethanol you would require 1 billion bushells of organic matter.

1 billion bushel baskets would stretch around the eart side by side 7 times

DAily
cant transport that much bulk and make energy profit.

[grabby]

CAN an Xbox car run the worlds cars?


all the sun that hits the world is:
Average over the entire earth = 164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day So the entire planet receives 84 Terrawatts of Power our current worldwide consumption is about 12 Terrawatts so is this a solution?

cover the world completly in solar panels.

at ten percent efficiency this would be arount 10 terrawatts.

All the sun in the world on solar panels would make 10 terrawatts, we require 12 terrawatts.

not enough sun in the world to power our present electricity use.


how much OIL do we burn?

1 barrel is 1 megawatt/hour
20 million megawatt hours per day electricity required.
to replace our oil if we used elecric cars.

300 million megawatts requred if we wanted to produce hydrogen.
(which is 30% efficient to burn also)


so about 1 terrawatts per hour per every hour per day.

asuming the oil burning engines are 30% efficient.

If we cover every square inch of the earth in solar panels that would equal our oil consumption today.

so it is obvious that no amount of biofuel can ever replace our needs.
since plants are 2% efficient not ten

you need ten planets of biofuel to make enough ethanol for us assuming there is no ocean. and land everywhere.

Our oil use is greater than the energy striking the earth from the sun at a ten percent efiiciency conversion, and 5 times greater than any amount of biofuels you can ever grow on the entire planet incuding algae from the oceans. Asuming 12 hour days and 365 dunny days per year.

coal can make us go 20 more years, then the greenhouse gases will destroy the planet.

bottom line we are painted in a corner we have to cut use of oil

We will cut use of oil one way or another.
That is a guarantee.Nice solar calculations for fun.

This is getting too long.

bottom line it will take 1000 square meters charging all day to make enough hydrogen to run a family average driving per day on hydrogen. using oregon july sunshine.

Our roofs on our houses. will have to be filled with solar panels to drive thecars as we do now.

[Demoth]

First, I would not attempt to build something along those goals for about another 5 years because several important technologies are just now coming out of the research stage in electronics.

Current battery technology simply stinks. Storage, output, recharge life, recharge times and cost are all tradeoffs between battery types. Enter something like this-

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2005_03/pr2901.htm

If this battery pans out to be near as good as advertised, we can now build an electric engine that has all the advantages of lithium with a full recharge time of less then pumping a full tank of gas albiet with special outlets only. We also have an engine that would not require a battery replacement for much more then the life of the avergae car.

I would use this battery in an electric engine, advanced nano solar panels with 5X the efficiency of current solar panels covering the entire top of the car to help supplement power and do some recharging during the time the car is sitting outside and a small 2 gallon bio-deisel generator for emergency charging if needed.

Body style on the car would be the current toyota matrix model. A solid and safe 5 passanger build that is lightweight (currently runs nice on a small corrola engine) with lots of storage room as needed by folding down the back seats, making it station wagon like. It's a cheap, stable, and decently good looking design.