2/3 of Americans: buying fuel efficient car patriotic

Well, I'm your stereotypical right-wing "nutjob" and I not only drive a Prius, I *love* my Prius. I refuse to p*** away huge sums of money on a vehicle, and huge long-term sums of money to operate it.

I also was looking for a car with a good safety rating, thoracic airbags, and head curtain airbags. The Prius certainly scores near the top in crash test ratings - according to the Euro NCAP offset test - and the tops for fuel economy in its class.

Ironically, the price of fuel will have to raise quite a bit to "offset" the higher fuel economy from new technology. Or the net effect will be to use *more* energy. This is proven by Jevons Paradox.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer\";p=\"74450)</div>

People "in their right minds" never bought them. Hummer owners are pathetic GI Joe wannabes with s**t for brains.

 

i dont know if its just because i live in a "green" state or what, but the movement is huge here. i can easily believe the 70% figure.

this area used to be a fanatic truck area with all the logging that used to go on around here, but the times they are a changin'

 

I met a lady Friday who was really proud of her new car of 2 weeks. I asked what she had bought and she said it was a Hyundai Santa Fe. I've seen them and they're pretty cute. Asked what the gas mileage was and she said 18 in town and 22 freeway. What could I say? If I had met her before she made the purchase maybe I could have influenced her but a mere 2 weeks after the fact? I just felt sad for her.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(prius04\";p=\"74404)</div>

As far as Coal Crisis, no since there were crises caused by coal supply problems in that era. If you mean about Substitution? Then yes, because he couldn't have foreseen Petroleum replacing Coal as a superior substitution.

However, he was right wrt what we saw in the 90's, when we had strange subsidies and marginally more efficient appliances/HVAC result in the construction of homes around twice the size of a home made before 1980.

Despite the fact the average family size was much lower.

Ideally, you increase energy prices slightly higher than the average increase in appliance/HVAC efficiency, so in the end you will still pay more if you use more. Price in the form of excise taxes will "correct" obvious waste.

If you have a market where energy prices fall - like during the 90's - you then encourage all sort of binge consumption. What the h*** it's cheap so why not? That really helped the economy, but now we're paying dearly for it.

In a market where energy prices are kept high due to excise taxes - which are used to fund mass transit and other more efficient alternatives - you won't see the same sort of waste.

For example, in the EU most domestic hot water is from tankless units, so no standby losses. Here we use 40-60 gallon electric or gas tanks and the standby losses really add up.

The price of fuel is very high by our standards, and they also tier their registration and insurance fees based on emissions/weight/motor, so SUV's and pickup's are rare. Tiny 3 cylinder turbodiesel cars are common.

When you compare average energy consumption, here are some interesting facts: the United States uses around 30% more energy per capita than the EU. Canada has twice the energy use per capita then the EU.

Now that shouldn't happen, but there it is. We appear to have made our industry more efficient, but we have really lost wrt vehicles (Single occupancy pickup and SUV) and homes (Twice as big as they were 25 years ago).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DanP\";p=\"74464)</div>

They also have s*** for brains wrt financial decisions. Have you priced an H2? The vast majority of those things are financed until the end of time.

 

ya makes me laugh when i think of all the hummer owners who got hummers for the tax deduction...

now they will pay triple that in gas costs, have a vehicle that im willing to bet will get about 15 cents on the resale dollar...

yep, this is fun i wanna see $3!!

 

David:

Sure the depreciation will be absolutely horrific on all those giant SUV's and pickup trucks. Much like in the early 70's with large cars and performance cars.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(prius04\";p=\"74751)</div>

No, the whole "point" of Jevon's Paradox or any other theory of Economics - eg The J Curve - is to broaden your understanding of the issues that confront those who study Economics: "How to best satisfy insatiable demand with limited resources" as an Economics professor once told me.

And Jevon was entirely correct with his analysis of the coal problem. When James Watt remodeled the steam engine (He didn't invent it of course, Thomas Newcomen is generally credited with this and is known as the "father of the industrial revolution"), the overall efficiency skyrocketed, but so did coal consumption.

When you compare electronics in the 1950's, which were mostly vacuum tube and terribly inefficient, to modern solid-state electronics, the efficiency has exponentially gained. Unfortunately, we now have so many electronic gadgets our power consumption has also increased. Maybe we can "blame" Economies of Scale for this.

You may be interested in the following discussions of Jevons Paradox:

http://www-dse.ec.unipi.it/luzzati/italian...vonsparadox.htm

http://porena.blogspot.com/2005/02/improvi...counter-to.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

http://www.mnforsustain.org/erickson_dell_...e_part_IIIA.htm

When you consider that Jevon's wrote his famous work in 1865, it's eye opening that a person from that era could even conceive of such ideas. In the field of Economics, Jevon is far from discredited, if anything his message is a warning of what happens if you don't fully close the entire cycle.

As far as the Chinese, there are way more of them than us, and they have plenty of nukes. I doubt we can convince them to not only dramatically improve efficiency but also dramatically lower consumption.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(prius04\";p=\"74765)</div>

There is a good link to this at:

http://pubs.wri.org/pubs_content_text.cfm?...?ContentID=2433

On the one hand, since the Chinese market is almost Virgin, they might be able to pull it off. However, if demand truly skyrockets, as one might expect in a Virgin market, then it wouldn't matter if every car got 80 MPG, the overall oil useage would go way up.

That's why I really liked my Economics classes, just when you thought you had it all figured out BAM back to square one.

 

everyone if you havent already, take a look at the article in Wired magazine (link in another post) on hybrid technology.

some very sobbering stats to consider. right now there are 500 million cars on the road in regular use. by 2050 there will be an estimated 3.85 BILLION!!! when China and India is in full swing.

we need to do something and we need to start now!@!

well actually... we have. now everyone else has to get with the program. dont know if we can continue to wait for the big 3 to do something

 

> by 2050 there will be an estimated 3.85 BILLION!!!

Don't get too excited. A projection for 45 years into the future of human affairs is simply worthless.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(prius04\";p=\"74775)</div>

Maybe "gigawatt hours" of electricity?? Maybe Joules is better?

Our current method of obtaining hydrogen is foolish at best. If all you can do is electrolocize it from water, it's cheaper to just use electricity to run motors. Using hydrogen in gas state is remarkably inefficient. Same as catalyzing hydrogen in a fuel cell that runs on gasoline or methane.

Part of the problem is that gasoline is so convenient to use. As an example: one U.S. gallon of gasoline contains 131 Mega Joules (MJ) of energy. One kg of hydrogen contains 142 MJ of energy.

However, hydrogen stored as a gas at 2,200 psi in a common gas storage container holds 91.2 litres with an energy of 1.6 MJ/l: this is the same energy as 8.2 litres of gasoline, but you require a 91.2 litre medium-pressure gas cylinder.

An exotically expensive 10,000 psi storage tank will provide 5.3 MJ/l. Cryo storage tanks will allow 10 MJ/l and even this is far from the energy content of a litre of gasoline: 35 MJ/l.

I used to get The Industrial Physicist until they ceased publication. However this is covered in their archive:

http://www.tipmagazine.com/tip/INPHFA/vol-.../iss-1/p20.html

We really need to dream up some sort of cold-fusion source, and I'm wondering if we already haven't dreamed it up but are sitting on it. I've often wondered about this, as on the surface a cheap means of cold fusion would be Utopian, wouldn't it?

Then I think about the history of nuclear weapons.

The "Fat Man" plutonium implosion weapon dropped on Nagasaki weighed almost 11,000 lbs and had a 21 KT nominal yield. Around 8 years later the same nominal yield was obtained from "Atomic Annie" a 280mm howitzer-style gun firing a 500 lb nuclear shell. It was tested during the "Upshot Knothole" series as "Shot Grable."

The first large scale hydrogen bomb test, a design developed in part by Dr Edward Teller, was detonated in 1952. It was called the Ivy Mike Shot. It used pure liquid deuterium fuel - in a cryo state - in a device 20 ft high and almost 7 ft wide, weighing 164,000 lbs. The nominal yield was 10 MT.

The dry fuel bombs with similar yield, as packaged in the Mk 17 and Mk 24 weapon family, weighed around 39,000 lbs. By 1958, the Mk 53 version weighed around 6,100 lbs.

In theory, a similar yield from a cold fusion device could be obtained from something the size of a large Thermos.

Sure, there will eventually be a solution, if not for the reason of oil shooting past $150 a barrel. In the end, it's all about cost-benefit.

 

hygrogen fuel makes a lot of sense in areas where geothermal energy is available. since in all cases, only a very small percentage is used, hydrogen generating plants make sense.

Iceland has that luxury and has a goal to be a 100 % petroluem free country by 2007. an ambitious goal for sure, but they are not all that far from it now. if only they could be convinced to export some of that or find an easy way of transporting it.

would an underwater pipeline be out of the question? it is now because of the cost to build it. but all of a sudden, it looks like all other options are out of the question because of the cost, including the one we are now exercising