Winning the Oil Endgame-Homepagea lot of the focus here is away from acquiring more fuel and on fuel efficiency-i watched one of the proponents in a podcast..
with people having all these glowing testimonials about the rosy future you wonder what the fuss is all about

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ill have you know irl most look on me as a beacon of normalcy

How about a brief synopsis? What's their plan?

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hes saying for instance the weight of the automobile is costing us a lot-we're losng energy in heating the tires and the road (sic) so using some carbon fiber material theyve developed they can produce mnuch lighter vehicles that are still very tough...
he touches on wind energy in the dakotas,but most of the talk was down the line of efficiency-he said during the 70s we managed to cut fuel costs with technology way less sophisti***edthan what we have available today

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ill have you know irl most look on me as a beacon of normalcy

Okay, I scanned it. This is co-funded by the pentagon. They want to cut our use in half by using lightweight materials in new cars, trucks and airplanes. Also. they think more efficient use of natural gas will drive the price down. They also think that 1/4 of our consumption should be replaced with bio-fuels.

All of this will be achieved by offering feebates to people who purchase these lighter economical vehicles, a scrap and replace program for the poor, a $1 billion dollar prize for developing an advanced vehicle and loan guarantees for heavy truck and airplane buyers.

so whats wrong with that?

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ill have you know irl most look on me as a beacon of normalcy

There's nothing wrong with it. However, it will take more than a decade to implement and we need relief now. Also, from what I've read, the US doesn't have enough farmland to pull off replacing 25% of our consumption with bio-fuels. Not to mention that current bio-fuels like ethanol, increase food prices and cost too much to produce.

Carbon-fiber material is expensive ... expensive enough to put these kinds of cars out of reach for the average American.

So much for 'lighter cars' being a magic bullet.




I mean, I agree that Americans' love affair with the big SUV or Minivan doesn't help at all. We certainly could make do with smaller (and consequently lighter) vehicles. But using expensive materials and thereby making cars unaffordable to the average family isn't going to help anybody. You might as well look at some of the 'concept cars' produced and claim that they will solve the problem ... and completely overlook the $300,000 price tag the concept cars carry with them.

Who "heats the tires and the road?"

Is this your bong-post way of saying that the heavier car's weight causes more friction between road and tire where efficiency is lost?

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Banned Before Bored

Meh, fuch that noise. The average efficiency of internal combustion engines is less than 30%, as most of the energy released by burning gasoline, or any other fuel for that matter, is not converted into mechanical energy. Most of the energy is wasted as heat, (around 60% of the energy gasoline contains), which is simply disposed of as quickly as possible. Why not capture some of that heat, and put it to work? Capture, and use just half of that, and you double the efficiency of your engine. All without forcing people to ride around in Papier-mâché models of real cars.

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Yep, that's what he's saying. Most tires can handle being overinflated by up to 10 psi....improved gas mileage right there. I would'nt care to try it on some of the roads I drive on...but other people are doing that now, along with a lot of really crazy shit.

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