A collection from vanity row.
Just heard Amory Lovins @ Techonomy:
“Ultralighting vehicles is a huge opportunity. Today, only 0.3% of the car’s energy moves the passenger. New manufacturing with aluminum and carbon fiber can triple the efficiency. It’s like finding a Saudi Arabia under Detroit.”
“We should speak of peak oil not in supply, but in demand. Oil is becoming uncompetitive at low prices even before it becomes unavailable at high prices.”
Nice compilation! Hey there’s actually an New Jerseyan in the crowd. Perhaps some day I’ll make another if NJ ever stops raising State College tuitions! Unfortunately, it would appear that the one license plate that would make most sense for a Gastroenterologist would appear to be taken! I’m sure you can figure out which one 😉
I read a book called Factor Four on how to quadruple energy efficiency in many areas of our life and our economy (doubling wealth, halving resource use). It said the same thing about a car’s weight, pointed out that Toyota already built a concept car from carbon fiber that weighs under 500kg and is 4 times more fuel efficient, and predicted that this sort of "hypercar" will soon become widespread as it makes so much sense. The book also talked about many other things that were already implemented in some places and just need to become more wide spread (better airconditioning, insulation, water conservation, etc.) It is a very interesting read – highly recommended. One particular example I liked is a large scale HVAC designer in Singapore that realised that standard A/C blowers are about 2% efficient… and that a lot of energy is also lost by friction in ducting. By using properly designed propeller blades and efficient brushless motors, and by routing the ducts in smooth, round paths instead of rectangular corners, he can downsize the blowers by an order of magnitude, adding much less waste heat to the system. This means the chiller can also be much, much smaller, allowing him to use a highly efficient one for the same price. The whole system uses less than half the energy of a conventional system for the same or smaller total cost. Using more efficient computers can also reduce the load on AC, conserving a lot of energy. All it needs is a little bit of holistic thinking.
The sad part about this book is that it was published in 1998. We’ve had all this technology for over a decade at least, and not much has happened… everything still seems to be still "just a few years away". Ironically it may currently be better to buy an old car – i.e. the Honda Civic weighed 850kg in 1990, 1000kg in 2000, and 1300kg now. The engines have become a bit more efficient, but also a lot more powerful, and they have to move more mass – the fuel consumption has pretty much stayed the same. My 1991 Civic averaged under 6l/100km (>40mpg), a target that most current cars can’t beat.
Let’s hope all the momentum we see currently will eventually turn the sales figures away from SUVs and towards more clever car concepts.
(btw I love the Tesla, but I would _really_ like to drive an Aptera, it’s just the coolest thing ever 🙂 )
yes, it looks very cool – like a flying car, without the flying… 🙂 I really like how they reinvented the car from scratch, instead of copying the "old school" look. Alas, it will probably still take a while before it will be available outside the US.
So for now I suppose I’m stuck with building my own… (admittedly nowhere near as cool, much smaller and only human powered so far… working on that 🙂 ) But at least more than 70% of the energy go into moving the passenger… 🙂
Electromobiles and other alternatives do exist, but are so much more expensive than conventional vehicles.
I had a similar idea a long while back:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12536044@N03/3465936279/in/photostr...
They need to get better use of these vehicles on the regular rail system. I have multiple very verboten gadgets that let you ride a recumbent bike on the rails. Do it at night with stealth if you must and way out in the country. In Sao Paulo metra rail surf is a great video sport. Regardless, the human transport rail system in the US is SO out of date with tech. I know people in the US are getting much fatter but please! All that power and weight to move such
light objects. Rather than all that work on Google car what about Google railcar? Already in the works no doubt. Along with Google James Bond car for you know who.
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