I snapped this photo while driving southbound on California’s Interstate 5 recently. We all know that Prius owners tend to be a bit smug, but this vanity plate takes the cake.
Click for a larger image
Now before anyone gets all bent out of shape, I’ll point out that I own and drive an electric car myself. But I don’t go rubbing other peoples noses in my wattage.
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You’re right, Wally. Mrs. Smokey has a lead foot and she likes to drive fast. She’s doing her part to add beneficial carbon dioxide to a planet starved of CO2/plant food. So mpg takes a back seat to horsepower.
And you know what’s even better? Her car can’t use ethanol. It’s all good!
PaulHClark (12:24:12) :
“Apologies to my friends in the US but Ford, Chrysler and GM are well……, companies with great histories”.
Paul,
Both Ford and GM produce state of the art efficient cars in Europe that compete with VW, Audi, Mercedes and all the Japanese and Korean toys.
The big cars (trucks) that symbolize the “American Dream” use a lot of fuel but that is the price you pay for driving a heavy car.
In many countries in Europe where fuels comes at much higher prices, the big US trucks are coverted to run on Liquid Petrol Gas which reduces the price of a refill by 50%.
CO2 emissions are reduced by approx. 15-20%, engine life is stretched due to the clean burning of the fuel and the engine runs more silent and smooth without loss of performance (Vialle Liquid Injection).
I understand that in the USA, EPA provides tax benefit for a whole range of LPG conversions.
So forget about the hybrids and keep on driving the icons.
The big cars come cheap now and the American LPG society will figt for furher benefits as they underline the clean non toxic properties of LPG.
So is it possible to maintain the American Dream in times of crises?
Yes we can.
Anthony, You could tell it wasn’t Al Gore Jr driving the Prius… if it were it would be flying at 105 mph and trailing the smell of burning silly weed.
There is one way hydrogen can work. If we had a larger program of nuclear energy, reactor output not required for the grid at night can be used to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen. Most newer natural gas distributions systems put in over the past 10 years or so a “hydrogen tight” systems.
The idea not to replace natural gas but to hydrogen “enrich” the natural gas and use it to power fuel cells. The impact of the hydrogen would be negligible on conventional usage such as residential heating, standby power generation, engine fuel, etc. But it would make home fuel cells more efficient.
So you couple a program of nuclear hydrogen generation with a utility home fuel cell program. Excess power at night can then be stored and used later. It isn’t extremely efficient but it is better than wasting power. You would use the water output of the home fuel cell for tasks such as toilet flushing. While it wouldn’t produce a great deal of water, but it would reduce demand somewhat.
The oxygen generated could be the real benefit because it could be provided to emergency response units, the military, hospitals, medical supply outlets, welding supply uses, etc.
That is about the only half-way efficient use of hydrogen I can think of.
Assuming the needed advances in battery technology happen in the near future, the all electric car is where we are headed. Hybrids are just an intermediate step. I don’t care how we power the electric grid. Coal is the current backbone, but if you care about CO2, nuclear is fine too. Sorry, Greenies, but renewables will never play more than just a minor part.
The future electric car will have a powerful, silent motor on each wheel (the ultimate AWD) and, with lighter composite construction, will be very, very quick. With less space taken up by engine and transmission, there will be more passenger room as well. I don’t believe we’ll miss the old gas hogs a bit.
The batteries will evolve into a few starndard sizes and when on a long trip, we will just stop and exchange the exhausted battery pack for a freshly charged one – and for less money than we pay now for a tank of gas.
I can’t wait!
JimB,
That $40k is also no profit for GM.
For those arguing hybrids pay for themselves, they don’t. We who don’t buy them pay for them. Money doesn’t grow on trees.
Also, for people like me who buy a car and drive it until the wheels fall off, paying for new batteries is much less lucrative than replacing the wheels.
Compare a Toyota Prius to a Yaris. Where’s the ROI if I purchase a Prius over the Yaris? Better still, a Honda Fit.
And no, I don’t care what anyone drives. I drive a Dodge Durango, my wife a Dakota.
Steve
Man, you forgot Kelly’s ugly duckling – the C-130! Typical Johnson engineering
Mike
Steve (2)
And the P-38!
(just yankin’ your chain…)
D Caldwell,
I don’t share your optimism for all-electric vehicles for the vast majority of drivers, although there is a niche market for them.
Battery technology is not there, and having worked in the mfg. business for the last 25 years, 15 in automotive, nobody in my information chain has hinted on any new magical battery technology waiting in the wings. Then there is the question of lifespan and practicality issues in the northern cold states.
I doubt an electric hybrid is anywhere in my future, but should Scuderi prove out their engine and put into production, it may be.
http://www.scuderigroup.com/index.html
I kid you not…. But on Top Gear… a British irreverent TV car program… They drove a Prius and a BMW around a circut for ten laps. The Prius set the pace whilst the BMW followed right behind….. They then measured the fuel and found that the Prius used more fuel…. So the moral. Drive a BMW at Prius speeds and you produce less CO2….. Cool ‘eh!
Michael J. Bentley (07:41:10) :
More steps from raw energy source to wheels means more power lost in conversion. […]
With your electric car, you have the (let’s be really bad here) Coal fired energy plant to the transmission line to the substation to the house to the plug to your charger and finally to the battery. With the hybrid you have the gasoline to the engine to the charger to the battery.
Um, you left out “from the battery back to electricity”. You lose a few more percent at that chemical conversion step too…
IMHO this is why all the electric and hydrogen cars will have a deficit to the Diesel that can only be made up by some kind of government fiat…
The hydrogen car produces water instead of CO2. Where does the water go? If it goes onto the pavement, what will the roads be like in winter? Here in western WA, daytime highs are forecast to be below 32F for next ten days and maybe till 2009, a massive Artic Outbreak is upon us. Night time lows in the 20s and teens. If the water is retained in the car, there goes the power to weight ratio. And is the water pure H2O? If there is ppm of anything in the water, the toxin hysterics will be telling the media that we are being poisoned and we know what the media will do with that. Plug in electrics? How expensive will it be to convert oil refineries to produce electricity?
DR, you and I are in complete agreement that a successful electric will depend on battery performance that does not currently exist. My entire post was dependent upon that one big IF.
When the needed breakthrough in battery technology does occur, it will likely not be from within the current automotive establishment. Your automotive information chain may not be where you’ll hear about battery technology advances.
David Y (08:08:33) :
The Prius’ technology is becoming dated. Where’s my plug-in, clean diesel Lith/ion hybrid?
http://www.soultek.com/clean_energy/hybrid_cars/hymotion_plug_in_conversion_kit_announced_today.htm
Can help you with everything but the Diesel part… so when your battery pack is fading, just DIY upgrade to a plug in … There are Prius clubs for folks who like to hack the car and convert it…
And while we bemoan the stateside fates of the big 3, why aren’t we seeing the slick 45+ mpg clean diesels of Ford/GM Europe on our roads today?
Don’t you know? Diesels are dirty earth destroying cancer causing monsters and need to be banned! /sarcasm> (Proud owner of 2 Mercedes diesels 😉
Really? I think GM killed the diesel market in America in the ’80s with their abominable dieselized gasoline engine… Only us diehards hung on.
Lastly, it’s interesting how people immediately assume you’re an environmental whacko in a Prius, when many of us are meat-eating, gun owning, libertarian conservationist hunters.
I’ve never hunted a libertarian conservationist before… 😉 Seriously, folks just jump to an end point. Both ways. If you are in the middle you just get rocks from both sides…
Sorry but most Prius users remind me of Mac users. They generally believe they are best.
E.M. Smith
I am under the impression that the internal combustion engine, due to heat loss and mechanical friction, only delivers about 30% of the original energy in the fuel to the drive wheels of the vehicle. There is a good bit of energy consumed in the distribution of transportation fuels as well. Not to mention that petroleum is a finite resource and when the global economy spins back up, we’ll see just how finite it is. I’m thinking that we will need alternatives at some point in the future.
I have no idea what the equivalent energy efficiency of an electric might be overall, but the electric power grid already exists whereas an enormous new infrastructure must be created to accomodate the widespread distribution of hydrogen. The missing element for the electric is, of course, battery performance. The discussion of the electric car as a viable alternative is relatively moot until advances in battery technology are made.
Now if they’d just pay their traffic fines…
E. M. Smith,
Thanks, yes I did. A problem with writing quickly…but I think the point that there is no free lunch, emissions happen someplace in the process came out. At least I hope it did.
Once again, preaching to the choir, however badly…
TNX
Mike
SteveSadlov (08:15:10) :
$150 / BBL was a pure speculative bubble, driven 100% by US monetary policy. Believe me, you are not going to see a repeat of that particular monetary policy any time soon.
Um, monetary policy had little to do with it. The Fed was not printing money… We had an economic boom with China buying anything that would burn, then speculators, hedge funds, and even private folks like me started buying oil for asset diversification. Didn’t involve the Feds monetary policy at all.
Unless truly deluded, the Fed will be moving into the arena of a strong dollar.
Not any time soon. The Fed and Treasury are pushing cash into the system as fast as possible and will continue to do so for some time. The total of stuff bought = quantity of money x velocity of money. Its that velocity term that folks forget about. Right now V has headed toward 0; and even near infinite money supply x 0 is nothing. THAT is why Paulson looked so scared when he called congress and said “Now Please, not next week!!!” Once V hits zero it’s darned near impossible to get it back…
Until V starts ramping up, the dollar will be produced and provided in as much quantity as possible at as little cost as possible. Look for a Fed Funds rate of 1/2% or less (if things don’t suddenly improve). In about 6 months IFF V picks up, then the Fed needs to start sucking dollars back out of the system. They will approach this cautiously and accept some inflation in exchange for not nuking the economy with a repeated deflation/deltaV heart attack… (And this ignores all the Obama Fiscal plan with lots of spending…)
And like the subsequent early 80s crash in price, this crash will result in low prices for decades.
Don’t count on it. OPEC must have oil over $70/bbl or countries fall. (Venezuela’s budget is predicated on $90/bbl.) Russia needs oil at those prices to fund its empire rebuild. They have all the oil and all the motivation to cut back supply. And we have told them that we will do nothing to use our coal to stop them (we could do what South Africa did after the 70s oil shock – see SASOL South African Synthetic Oil Company ticker SSL). Obama announced his energy staff and they are NOT going to endorse coal. We are now toothless.
So we’ve told OPEC and Russia that we will not use our coal, and we will embark on a decade or two long project of playing with electric cars. Ideal for them… Hubbert’s Peak assures that they can raise prices with only modest effort. Every year a couple of million bbl/day goes offline. The present overage of production is about 2 years worth of natural decline. If either a) the economy does not enter a depression or b) 2 years pass; then oil is back on the rocket ride upward. (See the Mexican oil fields and the North Sea fields as examples of what is going POOF! on the supply side…) This is even if OPEC can’t agree to cut back. But they will agree…
In the long run, the price of oil will stabilize at the price of the next most cost effective alternative that can be made in size. That’s gas to liquids and coal to liquids. It would take 10 years to get there with a crash program (and we’re on the ‘never’ plan while the EU is on the 15 to 20 year program…) That equilibrium price is about $70 to $80 /bbl.
So don’t expect $1.xx gas to last for long. China is growing 6%/Yr and both China and India will resume sucking on the oil pipe very soon. I give it to the end of the recession (global end, not US end) and place that about 9 months to 1 year out.
We could always slide into a depression, then gas will stay $1.xx / gal., but nobody will have any money to buy it with… and planning for a depression is, er, futile.
The dismal science…
Richard Sharpe (13:33:49) : “How much of that is caused by legislation artificially restricting where we can drill and making promising field unavailable?”
There are really only a couple areas that matter that are off limits. Most important is offshore California, but when you add it up , the “off-limits” areas are a small part of the overall supply equation. It would be helpful, but it wouldn’t be the difference between consistently “cheap” fuel & “expensive fuel. On a maximum success case (not a P50 Most Likely), I estimate 1 million barrels a day could be brought online from off-limits sources, which is +/- 5% of the US demand , 1.1-1.2% of World daily demand. Not to say we shouldn’t do it – we should – but we need to be realistic about it’s impact. We also have to realize that we need all the energy we can get (economically) – regardless of source. The key statement there is “economically” – if it can compete, it should be in the mix. Period. No worrying about politics or smugness. Just cold, dispassionate, economic analysis.
(PS I was typing fast @ur momisugly lunch & had to run to a meeting – didn’t get to look over the spelling before posting – thks for the correction)
Can somebody enlighten me why we are not hearing more about this?
http://solarhydrogenco.com/
The Solar Hydro-gen (H2) Generator consists of a unique self-contained system that accepts solar radiation into the case, where an electrical reaction is created that splits water into its components; hydrogen and oxygen. No other fuels such as gasoline, diesel, oil, natural gas, or coal are used. The traditional utility electricity-to-electrolyzer is not used in this system. The hydrogen is processed and stored for use twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week energy supply. The unit is made in modules offering opportunity for large or small hydrogen generating facilities.
Pierre Gosselin (04:30:27) said :-
Ask yourself where you would prefer to see your kids in a collision with another car. I’ll stick to my SUV, thank you. Nothing like putting passengers at risk because of a made up crisis.
I’d prefer people to think of other peoples kids and not just their own to be honest 😉
I thought SUV’s are more dangerous though ????
Regards
Andy
Jack Simmons (08:17:09) :
Electricity is a means of conveying energy, not generating it. Hydrogen falls into the same category.
So far, so good. I agree with a lot of your points, but on a couple of them I think you are repeating things that are often said in other sources, but not accurate…
Electricity is not even a very good way of conveying energy. A windmill farm in the Dakotas generating 100MW of power and sending the electricity generated to California will lose all but 7MW in transmission inefficiencies, basically heating up the atmosphere in between the states.
American Superconductor (AMSC) makes superconducting transmission systems. See: http://www.amsc.com/products/htswire/HTSCables.html They are installing one of them in New York.
There is also the small matter of the Pacific DC Intertie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
That connects the Pacific Northwest with the L.A. basin for 3100 Megawatts worth… Older technology, yes, but it’s always nice to have an existence proof of something to cite…
There is not really a problem with moving lots of electricity around the country long distances with acceptable low losses. We literally do it every day.
More good stuff about French nukes… then …
There are four isotopes of plutonium in the fuel rods. Only one, PU239 is useful for weapons. The mere presence of these other isotopes poisons the fission process in a nuclear bomb, making the use of this plutonium in weapons IMPOSSIBLE.
This is often stated, but quite wrong. It is easy to be lead to believe this. McPhee in “The Curve of Binding Energy” quotes Taylor, one of our best bomb designers, on the subject. As a rough paraphrase his statement was “There is good Plutonium for making bombs and less good Plutonium, but there is no bad Plutonium for making bombs.”
OK, that’s a theoretical from a long time ago. How about a real world?
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaMomentum.html
the delay gave them time to prepare additional devices – two sub-kiloton experiments, and a boosted fission device using reactor-grade plutonium to enable India to draw upon its very large inventory of power reactor produced material if desired.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaShakti.html *with PICTURES*
talking about the Shakti III device:
This device was an experimental fission device using “non-weapon grade” (reportedly reactor-grade) plutonium. It was probably a test of fusion boosted device without the boost gas to prove the ability to use lower grade plutonium from India’s large power reactor plutonium stockpile.
Since just about anyone with an internet connection and a decent physics education can design a bomb and U can be gotten from the ocean with plastic mats I’m not real worried about this path to a nuke; but it has been done. They also made a U233 device, as was our MET device of Teapot:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Teapot.html
which proves the Thorium to U233 path works (even though you will find folks saying it won’t work due to U232 contamination being too hot).
I don’t know if it’s deliberate misinformation or just that so much of this was classified, but the fact is that you can make bombs out of a lot of nuclear material that isn’t ordinarily thought of as ‘boom stuff’.
Don’t ask why I know this… hanging out with kids who’s dads designed bombs it just kind of comes up in conversation…
You bought that, right? 😉
JimB (12:50:52) :
Steve Moore:
“Taylor was to weapons design what Kelly Johnson was to aircraft, or Gerald Bull to artillery, so I’ll assume he knew what he was talking about.”
Would you make the same assumption about Hansen?
Steve has it right. Taylor was our very best. He designed both the largest and the smallest fission bombs we ever made, and some of the most creative. McPhee’s book about him is a great read.
Jack Simmons (08:17:09) :
Electricity is a means of conveying energy, not generating it. Hydrogen falls into the same category.
So far, so good. I agree with a lot of your points, but on a couple of them I think you are repeating things that are often said in other sources, but not accurate…
Electricity is not even a very good way of conveying energy. A windmill farm in the Dakotas generating 100MW of power and sending the electricity generated to California will lose all but 7MW in transmission inefficiencies, basically heating up the atmosphere in between the states.
American Superconductor (AMSC) makes superconducting transmission systems. See: http://www.amsc.com/products/htswire/HTSCables.html They are installing one of them in New York.
There is also the small matter of the Pacific DC Intertie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
That connects the Pacific Northwest with the L.A. basin for 3100 Megawatts worth… Older technology, yes, but it’s always nice to have an existence proof of something to cite…
There is not really a problem with moving lots of electricity around the country long distances with acceptable low losses. We literally do it every day.
More good stuff about French nukes… then …
There are four isotopes of plutonium in the fuel rods. Only one, PU239 is useful for weapons. The mere presence of these other isotopes poisons the fission process in a nuclear bomb, making the use of this plutonium in weapons IMPOSSIBLE.
This is often stated, but quite wrong. It is easy to be lead to believe this. McPhee in “The Curve of Binding Energy” quotes Taylor, one of our best bomb designers, on the subject. As a rough paraphrase his statement was “There is good Plutonium for making bombs and less good Plutonium, but there is no bad Plutonium for making bombs.”
OK, that’s a theoretical from a long time ago. How about a real world?
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaMomentum.html
the delay gave them time to prepare additional devices – two sub-kiloton experiments, and a boosted fission device using reactor-grade plutonium to enable India to draw upon its very large inventory of power reactor produced material if desired.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/IndiaShakti.html *with PICTURES*
talking about the Shakti III device:
This device was an experimental fission device using “non-weapon grade” (reportedly reactor-grade) plutonium. It was probably a test of fusion boosted device without the boost gas to prove the ability to use lower grade plutonium from India’s large power reactor plutonium stockpile.
Since just about anyone with an internet connection and a decent physics education can design a bomb and U can be gotten from the ocean with plastic mats I’m not real worried about this path to a nuke; but it has been done. They also made a U233 device, as was our MET device of Teapot:
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Teapot.html
which proves the Thorium to U233 path works (even though you will find folks saying it won’t work due to U232 contamination being too hot).
I don’t know if it’s deliberate misinformation or just that so much of this was classified, but the fact is that you can make bombs out of a lot of nuclear material that isn’t ordinarily thought of as ‘boom stuff’.
Don’t ask why I know this… hanging out with kids who’s dads designed bombs it just kind of comes up in conversation… You bought that, right? 😉