AGE
August 24th, 2005, 09:51 PM
M-317,
I guess you are being consumed by your Mark VII repair effort and aren't thinking about alternate fuels right now. That's the right thing to do--get your current transportation working right so you can go to school, work, etc. I'm starting a new thread because this subject warrants it.
Anyway, a Mark VII really doesn't seem to me to be the right platform to try to make into a super economy buggy. Naturally everybody is concerned about the price of gas. ABC News had a brief piece on this topic tonight. Remember, this is not a new subject, it's just becoming of more interest lately.
Your earlier propane discussion seemed to involve the idea of a big conspiracy between the oil companies, the auto companies and maybe others to keep oil consumption up. I don't believe this is the case--it's just that oil (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, etc.) is great for vehicle use. However, lots of effort has gone into other stuff.
Remember that even solar powered cars are being built for competition every year. Lots of propane vehicles and electric vehicles are in use and even natural gas vehicles are around. All of these technologies gotta supply power to the vehicle. The power is needed to accelerate the vehicle, move the weight around (especially on hills), and overcome wind and rolling resistence. This has been quantified for various vehicles so powerplants can be studied without requiring a vehicle for each one.
To develop power, an energy source is needed: fuel, battery, sunlight, wind, nuclear or some such source. You can't burn water, it is already a product of combustion or waste relative to energy. You could use rubber bands if you could wind them up tight enough, acceleration will be sluggish though.
Since there isn't any free lunch in the auto busuness, serious effort is needed to study each system. Also, since the price of each fuel may vary with time, one favorite system might fall away if that fuel gets expensive. This might be the gasoline engine the way things are going.
Finally, for any system to become popular, it must have decent performance, be relatively polution free, be convenient (available fuel or recharge stations, etc.), and have acceptable initial and maintenance costs.
Per ABC News one of the best systems now seems to be a standard hybred gasoline/electric vehicle modified to permit initially charging the batteries at home every night. Every morning the vehicle starts out with fully charged batteries and the gasoline engine doesn't run much (only for acceleration and hills) initially. For short trips mileage can be 100 mpg or better. Of course the longer the trip, the more the mileage approaches the hybred mileage.
Guys (and gals too), if you are interested in this stuff get an engineering education and get into it. Lots of cool interesting work remains to be done.
I guess you are being consumed by your Mark VII repair effort and aren't thinking about alternate fuels right now. That's the right thing to do--get your current transportation working right so you can go to school, work, etc. I'm starting a new thread because this subject warrants it.
Anyway, a Mark VII really doesn't seem to me to be the right platform to try to make into a super economy buggy. Naturally everybody is concerned about the price of gas. ABC News had a brief piece on this topic tonight. Remember, this is not a new subject, it's just becoming of more interest lately.
Your earlier propane discussion seemed to involve the idea of a big conspiracy between the oil companies, the auto companies and maybe others to keep oil consumption up. I don't believe this is the case--it's just that oil (gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, etc.) is great for vehicle use. However, lots of effort has gone into other stuff.
Remember that even solar powered cars are being built for competition every year. Lots of propane vehicles and electric vehicles are in use and even natural gas vehicles are around. All of these technologies gotta supply power to the vehicle. The power is needed to accelerate the vehicle, move the weight around (especially on hills), and overcome wind and rolling resistence. This has been quantified for various vehicles so powerplants can be studied without requiring a vehicle for each one.
To develop power, an energy source is needed: fuel, battery, sunlight, wind, nuclear or some such source. You can't burn water, it is already a product of combustion or waste relative to energy. You could use rubber bands if you could wind them up tight enough, acceleration will be sluggish though.
Since there isn't any free lunch in the auto busuness, serious effort is needed to study each system. Also, since the price of each fuel may vary with time, one favorite system might fall away if that fuel gets expensive. This might be the gasoline engine the way things are going.
Finally, for any system to become popular, it must have decent performance, be relatively polution free, be convenient (available fuel or recharge stations, etc.), and have acceptable initial and maintenance costs.
Per ABC News one of the best systems now seems to be a standard hybred gasoline/electric vehicle modified to permit initially charging the batteries at home every night. Every morning the vehicle starts out with fully charged batteries and the gasoline engine doesn't run much (only for acceleration and hills) initially. For short trips mileage can be 100 mpg or better. Of course the longer the trip, the more the mileage approaches the hybred mileage.
Guys (and gals too), if you are interested in this stuff get an engineering education and get into it. Lots of cool interesting work remains to be done.