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Old 05-27-2007, 01:05 PM   #87
The Eschaton
Vivacious Vivisectionist
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: The Future
Posts: 36
Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce View Post
Nope, you won't make mileage, refueling time, or performance targets to make them acceptable to the public. That said, they should keep trying.
Pure electric car yes, you are right, they not ready yet. I was saying given 30 years and unlimited electricity, you might just want to electrify everything, i was comparing that to the hydrogen car option. I think what makes sense now and for the foreseeable future is hybrid electric/ethanol. That car would be electric for short drives around town and you would use the ethanol for between city driving. They already have user modified cars that will do this.

Quote:
The problem there is they have yet to discover how to do the biofuels, anywhere near efficiently or economically without using corn, cane or some other high sugar plant. High sugar plants are energy intensive to produce and end up being energy storage/transfer systems rather than an energy source.
There's a place for ethanol produced by corn, sugar crops are better. I think the corn gets more support than it deserves for political reasons and its probably not the best way to make biofuel but certainly doable for now. There are going to be lots of ways to make biofuel. Food crops for now, in the long run maybe algae and bacterial digestion of cellulose.
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