So, is the petrol running out and stuff?

Forde said:
What's making the petrol prices rise steadily at the pumps? Is it that the current oil supplies are becoming harder and thus more expensive to extract and refine?




They think they look rich/cool?
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Think being the optimum, the vast majority of people I know look at 4x4s and either lol at "cool driver" or simply go "why"

Its personal choice though, plenty of other ways to make youself look like a twot
 
On my way to work I pass a finishing school. Virtually every day I see nice shiny top dollar Range Rover's pulling out of certain side roads where sat navs have routed them.

Its quite amusing you can predict the thought process "hmm we have to go to the wilds of suffolk/essex border we better take the range rover", funny thing is its not far from the M11 and the roads are actually really good. Although I can imagine a few city folks being mortified that they are outside the congestion zone and hence have to resort to big metal :)

Fun part is overtaking them as I know the road and where its safe to do so, they seem to have a big problem with corners and slowing down waaaaay more than they need to, guess its a panic thing, OMG this 1.5 tons isn't going round that slight kink in the road BRAKE!!
 
robskinner said:
Fun part is overtaking them as I know the road and where its safe to do so, they seem to have a big problem with corners and slowing down waaaaay more than they need to, guess its a panic thing, OMG this 1.5 tons isn't going round that slight kink in the road BRAKE!!
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Wait till you meet one coming the other way, you'd probably appreciate it going slower when it meets you head on.

:Not a 4x4 owner
 
Jonny69 said:
I think that's a little far fetched, don't you? I don't say things in my research because industry/government/etc want to hear it. I do it because I've based it on evidence and drawn my own conclusions.
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Im not trying to accuse you of that, sorry If it came off that way, what I meant was that if two scientists are shouting about two sides of a coin it will be the one that is saying what the government/industry/etc want to hear that gets the publicity.

Prime examples would be smoking/asbestos, the unpopular voices were hushed until the amount of them drowned out their opposition, another would be that report the government commissioned the other year to see what the worst drugs threatening British society were, they expected the answer to be cocaine/weed/etc but when the scientists came back with tobacco/alcohol (two taxable commodities) the government brushed them aside casting doubt on their credibility and forcing the lead scientist to resign.
 
It is absurd that the world seems to believe that we can survive on oil forever. The solution is clearly nuclear and renewable energy sources. If we produced enough nuclear power all vehicles could run on electricity and we simply wouldn't have the problem of using such a finite resource. The arguments against nuclear ie unsafe (unfounded and untrue) and disposal are just not worth the paper they're written on because we have to make the decision whether we'd rather risk things underground getting irradiated or rely on a finite source of fuel that clearly isn't going to hold out.

PS. People in those enormous cars **** me off enormously, clearly highly unnecessary.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
It is absurd that the world seems to believe that we can survive on oil forever. The solution is clearly nuclear and renewable energy sources. If we produced enough nuclear power all vehicles could run on electricity .
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no they couldn't unless battery or capacitor technology vastly improves.
 
Tefal said:
no they couldn't unless battery or capacitor technology vastly improves.
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Or you just use fast swap battery pack and have very simple robotic "petrol" stations. And you never actually own the battery packs. You just rent them.

There is so much research and investment going on and at an ever increasing rate. That the switch has already started and people will surprised where we will be in 20 years time.
 
busy stations would require racks of thousands of battery packs depending on recharge time though. and as atm the packs are huge things buried in the car (can you think of a place you can add another door sufficiency big to pass the pack though on a normal car?)
 
Tefal said:
busy stations would require racks of thousands of battery packs depending on recharge time though. and as atm the packs are huge things buried in the car (can you think of a place you can add another door sufficiency big to pass the pack though on a normal car?)
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There's already such a station in Japan.

You don't need a door. Simplest solution in my mindy would to have long flat battery compartment in the floor. Where ever it goes, it need to be standardised.
And you don't need thousands, becuase you can recharge at home and while out and about, including fast charging. You only need to swap when going on long distance journeys. The start up company in Japan, reckon that the average person would only need. To visit a battery swap place 10 times a year.
Personally I would need to visit a place about that amount. 4 or 5 trips a year that are more than 100mile return.
 
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It's actually been slowed down for the demonstration, real operating time is 40 seconds.
With Renault suggesting a similar principle


They have actually started to standardise recharge technology. For fast swap to work they need to standasie battery pack shape and fixings.
 
Oil is natually made over time but we will surely use more than we have/can attract in some future generation, maybe 100 years, government's don't say how much they stock.
I believe fusion is the future.
 
ahh cool hadn't thought of putting it in and out from underneth, very smart seems kinda obvious now >.<


But i notice that both of those facilities take up large amounts of space to process just once car (and will need a large storage and charging warehouse attached to busy stations too.

I suppose with more gps systems coming with cars + satellite communication that all the stations could automatically update their stock levels so say there's 3 classes of battery (A, B, C for small care large car/van and truck) you could check whether the station you're heading too still has batteries of your class in stock and charged which could be a good feature for route planning (ie the gps system will automatically put in fuel stops along long routes).


But also it does seem like it could be a legal night are in terms of who's liable for any damage caused by a faulty or damaged battery pack.
 
ubersonic said:
Im not trying to accuse you of that, sorry If it came off that way, what I meant was that if two scientists are shouting about two sides of a coin it will be the one that is saying what the government/industry/etc want to hear that gets the publicity.
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You really think government/industry/etc would rather climate change and biotic oil are correct? Really? People with massive vested interest in the status quo want science to be correct that will require massive, and unpopular, efforts to deal with? Really?

Science is, of course, influenced by political matters. But the methods it employs have been repeatedly successful in overcoming that bias over time.
 
You probably missed it as I edited the post.

But big space isn't required as such stations wont process the same number of cars as petrol stations.
As you will only change them when doing large trips.
They reckon that the average person in Japan, will need just 10 swaps a year.

Remember you can charge at home and in car parks, work places etc. So you only need it when doing over ~100 miles at a go, or when you don't have enough time for a fast charge. That isn't going to be many times a year for most of the population.

It also solves one of the downsides of electric cars the huge bill for the battery pack when they die. This way you could just "rent" battery packs. Spreading the cost over all the years and allowing for a swapping system to work, without you going my batter was brand-new and your replacing it with something 5years old.

Liability insurance.
 
nonhelmet said:
It is likely to become increasingly uneconomical to extract it. At some point it will become too expensive and alternatives will have to be sought, and at some point it will take more effort and energy to find it and dig it up than is actually generated by it.
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This. I think decades ago it cost 1 barrel to extract 100. Now isn't it like 1 barrel to extract 20? Something like that...

Hydrogen ***!!
 
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