[emersonbiggins]

Don't worry; economies of scale will bring that puppy down into the upper 4's, easy.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Drifter', 'T')he car of the future is here. Why is everyone so worried?

[IanC]

I, for one, would actually be worried if the car of the future were actually here.

Yeah, in the not too distant future, The Car will be an armored Hummer with a big gun on it to keep all of us starving citizens in line.

After that, The Car will be an oxcart to haul away the corpses...

-Ian

[frankthetank]

ianc is closer to reality then that fuel cell.

[eastbay]

I understand it will be economically feasible to own and operate one of these beauties in around 20 years.

About the same time we get cold fusion. 20 years from now. Uh huh.

And 20 years from now they'll tell us it will all be widely available in only 20 years.

[thylacine]

solar plane

Looks like the plane of the future is here (or nearly here). Flying from Australia to Europe would be a laugh a minute at 40mph. "oh look darling we're being overtaken by a skein of geese!"

[Windmills]

"We're too heavy. Throw out the in-flight meal."

"You mean the rice cake?"

"Throw it out now! We're losing altitude!"

[peak]

ok this doesn't solve anything for the short term.

its quite obvious this car won't be in to production until we get the infrastructure to mass product hydrogen and transport it. there is the problem of hydrogen leakage and the energy it takes to compress hydrogen. meanwhile, other countries are still going to be using oil and we will still have gasoline powered cars on the road since we can't produce a hundred million cars in 1 year. oil prices are still going to be high and just go higher with china and india both consuming more fuel. our gas stations currently don't hold hydrogen.

the whole hydrogen economy idea just doesn't seem realistic on the large scale. we also can't be using natural gas to get hydrogen because there is not enough supply.

An easier solution would be to get people to use motorcycles and small cars instead of cars that hold 9 passengers with only 1 person inside of it 95% of the time. Why go through all of this hassle with the hydrogen economy which might not work just so people can still drive large heavy cars?

There are problems with the fuel cell solution

1. companies are going to first seperare hydrogen from fossil fuels (which is cheaper) and in effect raise the prices of those fossil fuels until its more profitiable to seperate hydrogen from water.

2. i'm to tired to give more reasons, i'm sure others can give more.

[Cabrone]

I think GM thinking they will be producing anything in the future might be wishful thinking on their part.

Why is it such a large lump too?

[waegari]

You need oil to produce cars, too.

[Battle_Scarred_Galactico]

$600,000 How is this any good to anyone ?

What a steaming heap of shit.

[Temperedoil]

In 2004 there were more than 800 million cars in use around the world.

How much oil, iron, coal, glass, magnesium, aluminium, copper, etc, would it take to mass produce over 800 million cars, plus the millions more for additional new car buyers? How much oil to extract, transport, process, all the minerals, materials and cars? How long would it take? How much oil and other minerals and materials would it take to fuel and maintain the cars once built and in use?

In a world of declining oil supply, the sheer numbers make proposed technological alternatives to our modern day cars seem like fantasies at best.