Topic: 'Green Cars' (Read 4667 times)

that type of high MPG would sell the car over it's ugliness

toyota echo is popular, pruis...

This is what sci-fi has been telling me cars will look like in the future for decades. I'm glad we finally got here.

That's the car. I like it. But I've seen a lot of negative comments about its looks. Which is too bad, because we need to evolve to point where form follows function.

I'm an American, and that car is smexy. Looks future-cool, not ugly. I did a google search expecting some smart-car looking abortion of a vehicle, and when this beauty popped up:



I was happily surprised. Unless we're looking at different vehicles?

The XL1 is going to go into production, but in a limited number. The sad thing is, if it went into mass production, I believe the production costs could come down. As for America, well:

- I always see posts (typically from Americans) stating the car is ugly. Idiots. People believe a car is ugly if it does not conform to what people expect a car to look like, which is defined by current trends.

- There's a big machine out there collectively called "automobile fashion and sexiness and the marketing of" which goes a long way to influence the way people think. Sad.

why isn't that car available in America

and i'll forget most of them like after watching it for the first or second time

Volkswagen has nearly done it. No doubt there is room for improvement even on that model.

One of my biggest criticisms of mainstream environmentalism is that it often gets its priorities wrong because it fails to see the bigger picture.  

When it comes to automobiles, there far is too much attention going to the vehicle and not enough attention to the transport system as a whole.

The automobile is just one cog in the industrial complex that is the modern transport system.  This system consist not just of automobiles, but highway systems, refineries, gas stations, parking spaces, etc. but most importantly, the cities that are designed to accommodate cars.  

After 100 years and trillions of dollars spent on R+D, modern automobiles are already highly optimized, and are fast approaching fundamental limits.  It is practically impossible to achieve a 10-fold efficiency improvement on a Volkswagen Polo BlueMotion or a Prius, at least not without paying a high penalty in price, complexity, comfort, useability and safety.

Therefore, the focus should not be on building greener cars but on using them smarter.  In my opinion, the lowest hanging fruit is city planning. A 10-fold decrease in energy consumption can be achieved by designing greener cities, and it doesn't require complex technology and resource depletion, just time and willpower.  Hong Kong is a good proof of concept; it's no secret why it spends an order of magnitude less energy per capita on transport than North American cities.

Unfortunately unlike car companies, cities are run by politicians, who have little stake in investing in long term improvements, but the problem will solve itself once the oil price hits $300. High energy cities will then start to become uncompetitive and lose population to low energy cities.

Here is a sobering "bigger picture" analysis of green cars:

http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html


PS. I ride a bike around town not because I'm a green hipster but because it's convenient and economical.

Looked to me like an econ documentary, but the two are so closely intertwined, I won't contest that statement.

What's the point of posting this?
The point of watching is that it's a nice docu and will inform you about some things regarding energy.

what's the point of watching

Like said: Check: http://torrentz.eu/20a8bef3a8426c741f39d4a553a5792abf2c5e6a
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503769/

I'm not a huge fan of wind. It seems the geographic footprint is high.

To me, the best reduction in geographic footprint and land friendly energy production would be some combination of an offshore wind farm combined with tidal and wave power (which are fish friendly) combined with floating solar panels for the production of converting sea water to hydrogen.

I'm not ignoring energy production. It should have the following qualities:

- Renewable
- Environmentally friendly

Most have some tradeoffs and environmental issues. Even wind farms.

Energy storage should be dense, and allow recharging quickly. Hydrogen meets those requirements to some degree. See the Honda FCX Clarity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_FCX_Clarity ), which does pretty well. Improvements will continue.

Energy storage is important, but what about the other parts of energy? I think energy production and energy conservation are too often ignored.

Compressed hydrogen is an excellent method for energy storage. Hydrogen fuel cells convert the hydrogen to electricity and produce water vapor as the exhaust.

Cars can certainly be powered by those generation methods, they just need to be used at the power station, rather than on the vehicle.

Battery technology needs to improve a good bit before electric cars are really suited for the masses.

Cars are an excellent place to put solar panels on, especially foldable ones that can be put on the windows. This keeps it from becoming superheated and generates electricity at the same time. It's killing two birds with one stone.

Some types of renewable energy are not suited for cars, however:

• Wind Power: Unless it's a really windy day and the car is nearly stopped, this will waste more energy than it will generate.
• Geothermal Power: Quite obvious, hopefully.
• Hydro Power: Hopefully still obvious.

Solar Panel->Battery