Jun 10, 2008 10:56PM GMT
Question
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Lifestyle - Autos
Alternative Fuel to Replace Gasoline in Vehicles; Which are you betting on?
Alternative fuels are derived from resources other than petroleum. Some are produced domestically, reducing our dependence on imported oil, and some are derived from renewable sources. Often, they produce less pollution than gasoline or diesel.
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Answered Electric; The Toyota Prius is only the beginning.
I think electric cars would be great, but only if the electricity is really produced without coal, gas and petroleum. Hydrogen cars are fine as well the problem is, that in order to produce it, one needs a lot of electric energy, so why take the detour to hydrogen and not directly use an electric car? -
I am from Switzerland, and yes of course it is possible to use solar energy to produce the hydrogen. That is certainly not bad, but not very useful either. Everytime you change the form of energy you have some losses. First you have losses when you produce the electric energy, then you have losses to distill the hydrogen and finally you have losses when you burn the hydrogen within the motor. So why not directly charge the battery of an electric car?
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Great idea, but that would require a major upgrade to the electrical infrastructure as well as building more nuclear plants.
The upgrade would be very expensive, especially in urban areas where the wires are underground.
Building new Nuclear plants would be very difficult, if not impossible to get approved. Do you want one in your neighborhood? -
It is required in any case, because oil, gas and coal are finite sources of energy. We have to change at some point, the earlier the better. And on a short time scale nuclear plants are a good alternative until other forms of energy can replace it. Of course nuclear power is not the right final solution, because uranium is finite as well.
By the way I live within 4 nuclear plants in a radius of 30 miles and I visited one of them and I am convinced that they are safe. And by the way the people agreed to build them, in Switzerland it wouldn't be possible that a nuclear plant is built without a referendum. -
Answered Hydrogen; Produced domestically and non polluting.
Electricity requires generation primarily by fossil fuels...not very alternative, though great with end user emissions.
Ethanol from corn will die, and is taking arable land for food out of the business of feeding people.
Biodiesel, I've read that it can be produced efficiently from algae of all things, but not yet an significant quantities. Other sources don't seem to be catching on in a large scale yet, though we have a new biodiesel plant recently opened in the Houston area.
Compressed air?
You'd think we could somehow harness the power of Earth's magnetism... -
Answered Other; The alternative fuel of the future will be...
In addition to the problems listed by others, of the alternatives listed, hydrogen, has problems with establishing a distribution infrastructure. Biodiesel and ethanol are limited by supply and demand versus food supply requirements, and unless there is a huge leap forward in batteries, electric cars are limited in range. The compressed air car seems to be an amazing leap forward, but I want to know more. The answer is some of each type will be required to overcome out dependance on oil -
Answered Hydrogen; Produced domestically and non polluting.
It takes a lot of electrical energy to produce hydrogen, but a hydrogen fuel cell car is probably the most promising vehicle energy source. It will take more breakthoughs to make it safe and viable, but it appears to be the best for the environment and for getting away from oil dependencies. -
Duck.
It's already here.
http://automobiles.honda.com/... -
I was talking about plug-ins, not solar cars. People tend to think of electric cars as non-polluting, but that depends on the source of the electricity. If you plug in your car to charge it up, where is the power coming from? It comes from whatever source powers your house - or whatever location you choose to plug in the car. If you have enough solar panels on your roof, you could power the car with solar energy. If you get your electricity from the local power company, it may be nuclear, coal, diesel, hydro-electric, etc.
Answered Other; The alternative fuel of the future will be...