Sorry, but no. If you want streets that are nothing but rivers of horse poop and urine, OK. Otherwise give me a good old internal combustion vehicle, although I am fascinated by fuel cells.
I am enthusiastic about "drill baby drill." It's hard to imagine fuel cells becoming the thing any time soon. I recall Toyota saying in the mid 90's there would be a fuel cell RAV 4 in 2000. 25 years on they have a car finally but hydrogen is harder to find than a working Tesla charger in a Blue shithole. Also Trump's admonition that they're great but might explode. LOL!
John, I am a Toyota fan and I talked to my salesman about progress on the hydrogen car. Not much, and aside from a few zealots, not much interest. IMHO, plug in hybrids is where things are going to go. Biased, because I own a RAV4 Prime and spend an average of $20 per month on gas and about $30 on electricity to run it. The biggest problem is in availability.
Yes, why not have a nuclear engine in every car? With a special code to turn it into a bomb. The code is only given to consumers of high moral quality.
I am a Toyota fan as well. There is a fuel cell/hybrid now that looks a lot like an Avalon/Lexus 350. 30 years ago the fuel cells were going to use a thing called a reformer IIRC to allow gasoline, ethanol, etc. to be the fuel which would go through this reformer membrane and separate the electrons etc. The failure to go ahead was because this membrane could not be made reliable enough for long enough to be practical. The on vehicle storage issue with hydrogen was solved a while back but the other issues like generation, distribution and safety remain as hydrogen seems to be the only workable fuel. If those membranes worked and current fuels could be used instead of hydrogen I am pretty sure the fuel cell vehicles would be a big thing today.
Kinder Morgan sets up landfills to capture the methane and bottle it on site. I've seen landfills where they flare off the gas like in the Permian. There is so much natgas in the Permian they do not have enough pipeline capacity to send it all, hence it is flared. Diamondback is partnering with Verde Gas to make high grade gasoline from this excess natgas. Some are using it to generate electricity and converting from diesel engine powered sites to electric motor power. Still others are attempting to attract these electricity hog AI and data centers to site near the fields for the cheap electricity they can generate with the gas they had been flaring
Why, thanks again, John S., my local landfill/recycling center saves $10,000 per month on its power bill that way; they stuck a pipe in the bottom of the old landfill and run it to a generator shack. The owner, 4th generation, showed me when he was walking the yard.
I was on a back road in Midlands, TX; from where I was sitting, I counted 31 flareoff stacks. Each one was millions of pilot lights' worth of gas, all of it just going to waste. We really could be doing all of this so differently.
Diesel electric, todays standard for railroad, proves it.
My dad was a coal tender on the old trains, and yet there is still a place for them too, such as in Nepal and the Himalayas. The one-size-fits-all model of the Greens and the corporates is a bloody crime against nature.
Funny how almost no one is aware trains are electric and the huge diesel engines are the generators.
If anyone is interested in seeing the most amazing recycling/power generating operation I have seen, it is the Olmstead County operation in Rochester, Minnesota. They burn garbage at over 2,000 degrees and generate electricity and provide steam heat to a lot of government buildings. They extended the life of their landfill by 125 years which is significant in that area because it is mostly solid rock a short distance down which is unsuitable for a landfill. Unlike most places they can't just put them anywhere. If anyone is going to the Mayo Clinic and looking for something interesting to do while there, this is worth seeing.
Up and back to Vegas for $50, the first 50 miles is electric. It is wonderful not to have to charge up on trips.
I drive on the electric plug-in for about two months on about a quarter tank of gas, then run the gas out to freshen the tank. That fill-up is usually 30-40 dollars.
Oh yeah, A/C is expensive, we pay on a budget leveling plan at $246 per month. It would be about $400/month in summer without the balancing.
A natural autoclave, ha, that is about right. Summers, you get things done in early morning or at night. Playing golf in January makes up for it thoтАЩ.
The electric vehicle industry shut down fuel cell research. I saw many operative fuel cells at a conference I attended in 2001. Then, they all disappeared.
As JHK said long ago, trying to control hydrogen in a relatively dumb car public is a big problem. Boy, you think Pintos blew up when hit from behind? Imagine the Hindenburg every time an accident happens, or the reaction around a leaky тАЬpumpтАЭ when the local idiot lights up a cigar.
Schrauth is so right on about fuel cells, and they aren't limited to hydrogen. I just wanted to thank him for banging on about them as a wonderful alternative.
Remember that when we can't afford food anymore. Mass famine will stalk the land eventually and sooner than most think possible. At 40 C or 104 F enzymes necessary for photosynthesis start to break down. You do realize we live on an ever-warming planet, don't you? https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
We are now deep into The Long Emergency (Kunstler, 2005). Mr. Trump is the current driver of the fire truck racing through Clusterf*ck Nation with sirens blaring. Sorry, global warming is on the back burner (no pun intended) for the next 4 years. And is NOAA still around?
"At 40 C or 104 F enzymes necessary for photosynthesis start to break down."
I've lived amongst farmers in the boiling hot Southwest all my life. I've been an irrigator, and live next to an irrigation ditch, which I swim in on those boiling hot days amongst our thriving fields. And you're saying the lush, overgrown, verdant jungles of the steaming tropics are "photosynthesis breaking down?"
Shit is very important. The fields must be manured by the beasts of the field. Properly managed, they can stay fruitful for thousands of years as some Hindus and Chinese have done. Those that opted for huge yields via petrochemicals ruined their fields in short order.
First you need to change American attitudes about cars and independence. HOV lanes have become a gigantic failure as government thought they could change the minds of Americans and did not. I would like to see America use a few billion dollars and build MAGLEV trains right down the middle of the Interstate highways. AMTRAK disappears overnight. The biggest problem? Government cannot figure its way out of a wet paper bag. Light rail in bigger cities have pretty much failed as income producers and have become debt producers.
John, Light Rail is a gigantic income producer almost wherever it has been mandated. Please do a deep dive into the management class net worth before and after Light Rail was introduced and I think you will find their net worth increased significantly as did the net worth of all their crony friends who managed to get their fingers in the pie. Many Americans like to look down their nose at the govt officials in Mexico and Africa but if the truth were known the Mexicans are pikers when compared the the sheer number and amount of graft/corruption that goes on in America. Due to Doge spending just a few hours looking at USAID files we learned that American taxpayers were paying for most of the illegals to come to the US as well as the many rent-a-mobs that the Marxists used to show their friends in the media that conservative policies and people are horrible and have to be attacked daily in order to convince Joe lunchpail that the Marxists will keep the evil Rs from pushing grandma off the cliff and will keep the evil Rs from causing irrepeparable harm to our children (at least the ones that they cannot murder via PP).
Ron Neff, here's a light rail investment joke, since I can see California's Highway To Nowhere from near my house (and a best friend used to work on it):
The African and the Asian go to the UN/World Bank class on international development.
A few years later, the Asian calls his friend the African and invites him to visit. The Asian shows off his big, fine house and his brand new luxury cars.
"How did you do this?" the African asks.
Grinning, the Asian says, "see that multilane superhighway over there? 5%, right off the top!"
A few years after that, the African calls and invites the Asian to his house.
The Asian, gaping, can't believe the African's broad mansion and his fleet of limosines.
"How in the hundred hells did you do this?" the Asian demands.
"Look out de window...do you see that highway over there?" chortles the African.
"What highway?" says the mystified Asian.
"That's right!" laughs the African. "100%, right off the top!!"
I'd kinda hate to see it. I've got some 4 million miles on those interstates, and I want to see more. I keep having daily flashbacks; for a few seconds, I'll be somewhere I was once, out of thousands of places. 30 years of coast-to-coast, border-to-border.
Just climb in that big puppy and ride...ride with the wind.
Almost time to resurrect the horse and buggy. EROEI will rule in the end.
Sorry, but no. If you want streets that are nothing but rivers of horse poop and urine, OK. Otherwise give me a good old internal combustion vehicle, although I am fascinated by fuel cells.
Democrats could be the street cleaners.
Yes, Kathy! Excellent idea, they can start in San Francisco. Pelosi and Newsom can start a trade school there.
Or, they could quite literally "be" the street. Cinders and such.
They don't seem to mind gluing themselves to pavement, so...
I dunno if fuel cells will save humankind, John. In the meantime, drill baby, drill!
I am enthusiastic about "drill baby drill." It's hard to imagine fuel cells becoming the thing any time soon. I recall Toyota saying in the mid 90's there would be a fuel cell RAV 4 in 2000. 25 years on they have a car finally but hydrogen is harder to find than a working Tesla charger in a Blue shithole. Also Trump's admonition that they're great but might explode. LOL!
John, I am a Toyota fan and I talked to my salesman about progress on the hydrogen car. Not much, and aside from a few zealots, not much interest. IMHO, plug in hybrids is where things are going to go. Biased, because I own a RAV4 Prime and spend an average of $20 per month on gas and about $30 on electricity to run it. The biggest problem is in availability.
Actually we will be fueling our cars with water one day. Hydrogen derived from water. No reason it wonтАЩt be accomplished.
100% recycling cycle with hydrogen.
Heavy water!
Yes, why not have a nuclear engine in every car? With a special code to turn it into a bomb. The code is only given to consumers of high moral quality.
I am a Toyota fan as well. There is a fuel cell/hybrid now that looks a lot like an Avalon/Lexus 350. 30 years ago the fuel cells were going to use a thing called a reformer IIRC to allow gasoline, ethanol, etc. to be the fuel which would go through this reformer membrane and separate the electrons etc. The failure to go ahead was because this membrane could not be made reliable enough for long enough to be practical. The on vehicle storage issue with hydrogen was solved a while back but the other issues like generation, distribution and safety remain as hydrogen seems to be the only workable fuel. If those membranes worked and current fuels could be used instead of hydrogen I am pretty sure the fuel cell vehicles would be a big thing today.
What about methane? It's used in fuel cells too, isn't it?
Then we could blow up the undersea clathrates and the tundra, lol
or invest in garbage dumps and manure piles /s
Kinder Morgan sets up landfills to capture the methane and bottle it on site. I've seen landfills where they flare off the gas like in the Permian. There is so much natgas in the Permian they do not have enough pipeline capacity to send it all, hence it is flared. Diamondback is partnering with Verde Gas to make high grade gasoline from this excess natgas. Some are using it to generate electricity and converting from diesel engine powered sites to electric motor power. Still others are attempting to attract these electricity hog AI and data centers to site near the fields for the cheap electricity they can generate with the gas they had been flaring
Why, thanks again, John S., my local landfill/recycling center saves $10,000 per month on its power bill that way; they stuck a pipe in the bottom of the old landfill and run it to a generator shack. The owner, 4th generation, showed me when he was walking the yard.
I was on a back road in Midlands, TX; from where I was sitting, I counted 31 flareoff stacks. Each one was millions of pilot lights' worth of gas, all of it just going to waste. We really could be doing all of this so differently.
Diesel electric, todays standard for railroad, proves it.
My dad was a coal tender on the old trains, and yet there is still a place for them too, such as in Nepal and the Himalayas. The one-size-fits-all model of the Greens and the corporates is a bloody crime against nature.
Funny how almost no one is aware trains are electric and the huge diesel engines are the generators.
If anyone is interested in seeing the most amazing recycling/power generating operation I have seen, it is the Olmstead County operation in Rochester, Minnesota. They burn garbage at over 2,000 degrees and generate electricity and provide steam heat to a lot of government buildings. They extended the life of their landfill by 125 years which is significant in that area because it is mostly solid rock a short distance down which is unsuitable for a landfill. Unlike most places they can't just put them anywhere. If anyone is going to the Mayo Clinic and looking for something interesting to do while there, this is worth seeing.
I drive about 13000 miles a year.
Why?
Errands in wide open Phoenix and an occasional trip to Cali or Las Vegas.
for $20/30?!!
Phoenix traffic is bad enough, but there's the proof in the pudding right there.
Uhh...what about A/C? You live in a natural autoclave.
Up and back to Vegas for $50, the first 50 miles is electric. It is wonderful not to have to charge up on trips.
I drive on the electric plug-in for about two months on about a quarter tank of gas, then run the gas out to freshen the tank. That fill-up is usually 30-40 dollars.
Oh yeah, A/C is expensive, we pay on a budget leveling plan at $246 per month. It would be about $400/month in summer without the balancing.
A natural autoclave, ha, that is about right. Summers, you get things done in early morning or at night. Playing golf in January makes up for it thoтАЩ.
Thanks, I meant a/c in the car, but you've got a hybrid! No plugging in! Obvious why they got rid of hybrids, because the sadists hate us.
The electric vehicle industry shut down fuel cell research. I saw many operative fuel cells at a conference I attended in 2001. Then, they all disappeared.
As JHK said long ago, trying to control hydrogen in a relatively dumb car public is a big problem. Boy, you think Pintos blew up when hit from behind? Imagine the Hindenburg every time an accident happens, or the reaction around a leaky тАЬpumpтАЭ when the local idiot lights up a cigar.
Gas isn't flammable, right?
Sure it is, but not near as volatile as hydrogen, plus the small size of the hydrogen molecule makes leaks more of a problem.
Fumes
There are multiple ways to store it safely.
Yeah, until the first one blows sky high.
A BMW electric car burned my neighbors house to the ground.
MurphyтАЩs law prevails evermore and someone will find a way to blow one up.
Or some terrorist?
Would a hydrogen electrical plant, for example, require any less security than a nuclear plant?
Schrauth is so right on about fuel cells, and they aren't limited to hydrogen. I just wanted to thank him for banging on about them as a wonderful alternative.
Remember that when we can't afford food anymore. Mass famine will stalk the land eventually and sooner than most think possible. At 40 C or 104 F enzymes necessary for photosynthesis start to break down. You do realize we live on an ever-warming planet, don't you? https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
We are now deep into The Long Emergency (Kunstler, 2005). Mr. Trump is the current driver of the fire truck racing through Clusterf*ck Nation with sirens blaring. Sorry, global warming is on the back burner (no pun intended) for the next 4 years. And is NOAA still around?
"At 40 C or 104 F enzymes necessary for photosynthesis start to break down."
I've lived amongst farmers in the boiling hot Southwest all my life. I've been an irrigator, and live next to an irrigation ditch, which I swim in on those boiling hot days amongst our thriving fields. And you're saying the lush, overgrown, verdant jungles of the steaming tropics are "photosynthesis breaking down?"
Shit is very important. The fields must be manured by the beasts of the field. Properly managed, they can stay fruitful for thousands of years as some Hindus and Chinese have done. Those that opted for huge yields via petrochemicals ruined their fields in short order.
How many bushels are you currently getting per city block? I've also heard cement is very hard on plows.
The Earth abides, friend. Every "weed" pushing through cracked cement is a testimony to the goodness of God.
The soil needs that manure to keep the microbiome healthy!
They already are. Sorry dog owners but I donтАЩt stand anywhere near a trash can during the summer.
Horses fart to much methane don't cha know!
Often have wondered if the Amish got it right by stopping at the car
I saw "horsebuggy whips" at a carriage maker's in Conneticut servicing the Amish community, so they didn't get 'em all!
It's way past time to embark on my interstate highway removal project.
First you need to change American attitudes about cars and independence. HOV lanes have become a gigantic failure as government thought they could change the minds of Americans and did not. I would like to see America use a few billion dollars and build MAGLEV trains right down the middle of the Interstate highways. AMTRAK disappears overnight. The biggest problem? Government cannot figure its way out of a wet paper bag. Light rail in bigger cities have pretty much failed as income producers and have become debt producers.
John, Light Rail is a gigantic income producer almost wherever it has been mandated. Please do a deep dive into the management class net worth before and after Light Rail was introduced and I think you will find their net worth increased significantly as did the net worth of all their crony friends who managed to get their fingers in the pie. Many Americans like to look down their nose at the govt officials in Mexico and Africa but if the truth were known the Mexicans are pikers when compared the the sheer number and amount of graft/corruption that goes on in America. Due to Doge spending just a few hours looking at USAID files we learned that American taxpayers were paying for most of the illegals to come to the US as well as the many rent-a-mobs that the Marxists used to show their friends in the media that conservative policies and people are horrible and have to be attacked daily in order to convince Joe lunchpail that the Marxists will keep the evil Rs from pushing grandma off the cliff and will keep the evil Rs from causing irrepeparable harm to our children (at least the ones that they cannot murder via PP).
Ron Neff, here's a light rail investment joke, since I can see California's Highway To Nowhere from near my house (and a best friend used to work on it):
The African and the Asian go to the UN/World Bank class on international development.
A few years later, the Asian calls his friend the African and invites him to visit. The Asian shows off his big, fine house and his brand new luxury cars.
"How did you do this?" the African asks.
Grinning, the Asian says, "see that multilane superhighway over there? 5%, right off the top!"
A few years after that, the African calls and invites the Asian to his house.
The Asian, gaping, can't believe the African's broad mansion and his fleet of limosines.
"How in the hundred hells did you do this?" the Asian demands.
"Look out de window...do you see that highway over there?" chortles the African.
"What highway?" says the mystified Asian.
"That's right!" laughs the African. "100%, right off the top!!"
I'd kinda hate to see it. I've got some 4 million miles on those interstates, and I want to see more. I keep having daily flashbacks; for a few seconds, I'll be somewhere I was once, out of thousands of places. 30 years of coast-to-coast, border-to-border.
Just climb in that big puppy and ride...ride with the wind.
We need to move up;
https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/opener-blackfly-electric-aircraft-1234628552/
IтАЩm waiting on one with twelve rotors.