My Alfa is a 2 litre Twin Spark petrol. They are not economical motors, but it is 14 years old. I would imagine there has been quite a lot of progress since then. And I don't drive it hard - if I did the mpg would be far worse.
I used to be quite a staunch naa electric cars will never take off, got to say over the last yr or 2, I have changed my mind. Tesla will bring out something that will do 350 miles to a charge, for like 30k and next to nothing to run, there is one major worry though performance, to let the average Joe blog focus/Hyundia driver loose in a car that will almost certainly do 0-60 in like 6 secs and less with a linear torque line will increase accidents for sure. I do not do a real long distance mileage as much now, and next car will be around £40k Teslas as they stand now is not far off, got to say tempted.
Not that old chestnut again. Compressed air engines have been tried many times in the past, but have some fundamental drawbacks. E.g. When air is compressed it gets hot, and the higher the pressure the hotter it gets. All the energy from that heat is then wasted during storage. Afterwards when the compressed air is used to drive an engine, it gets extremely cold which causes the piping to get iced up, unless it is completely dry - which it won't be. And the pressure vessel needs to be massively strong, thus heavy and expensive. Compressed-Air Propulsion.
Electric vehicles should be viewed as an alternative to dinosaur burners, not as a replacement, and in my eyes they're very welcome. Battery tech and petrol tech can happily co-exist, and indeed learn from each other, but battery tech will make huge gains in a shorter time - the days of commonplace electric vehicles is closer than you think, there's already a huge number of fully electric delivery trucks working daily inside the M25 with the likes of UPS and HSS Hire, to name just two. And I'm a fan. I've already benefitted from electric motive power. My mate lent me his electric bicycle while the police looked after my license for 9 months...and I tell you what, I thought it was ace. Only did about 15mph, but it got me to Slough and back (20 miles each way) without breaking a sweat, and I'm a right fat fker
glasgow uni chemistry dept have just announced they have developed a new way of making and storing a new way of making hydrogen from water. looking good for renewable's now.
Water is essentially just burnt Hydrogen. To relieve the oxygen from the water to create hydrogen, for me just thinking about it without seeing the data, would infringe on entropy unless the energy used was far in excess of that released in its creation. Ie The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I'd be interested in the article Fin if you have a link. Currently they use large amounts of electricity to do it.
My son insists its easy to make fuel from water, basic chemistry, just no one will do it as the 'barons' wont make as much from that
The biggest issue is hydrogen containment. I think we all know how the Hindenburg ended up. Hydrogen is highly reactive.
Two issues. First is the storage of hydrogen, difficult but not impossible. Second is that there is no natural source of hydrogen out there waiting to be used as a fuel therefore it all has to be made. Making hydrogen fuel is possible by a number of routes but all involve putting in energy which is then released when the fuel is 'used', and you never get back more energy that what you put in. Therefore whilst hydrogen has many useful properties as a fuel in certain specialist applications as a general fuel to solve the worlds energy supply needs it is irrelevant.
alright ill admit my catapult system has a few flaws but how about a wind powered car ,no shortage of wind round here N N o N: The world´s first wind powered car
