[Rap]

But gee the market was way up today!

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[ds968]

so much for those who believe in market performance "fundamantals" , eh ? in a one hour span the market goes +200, then -200 , then + 400.. uhh, somenone remind me what fundamatal principles apply there <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/unsure.gif" class="smilie" alt="" /> unless hysteria one of those fundamantals based apparently on reaction to every single newswire headline that flashes every other ten minutes or so <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/dry.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />



I thought politicians take the prize for stupidity, the market power brokers clearly take the prize for insanity

<img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/mad.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

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[Rap]

No insanity there at all. Profit taking, trimming, booking gains and losses. One thing these guys do well is timing the making of money!

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[Cloud9...68]

To me, the worst are the so-called financial pundits and analysts - those who seem to actually believe they can predict what the market is going to do. The fact that someone is willing to pay those clowns make more than minimum wage is a travesty - although something tells me they make a lot more the the vast majority of us on this board

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[Rap]

Seriously, what's the travesty? Supply demand. People watch advertisers pay. It would not be on unless it made money. Perhaps reality shows might fall under the travesty but then again the same dynamics rule. Your just jealous! Get in line behind me!!! Lol or better yet we could be meteorologists. Here you get paid with the probability that you will be wrong when you speak. Course I am not a good looking leggy blonde with. Well enough said. Lol

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[Cloud9...68]

lol - I hear you. Your comparison to reality shows and weather reporters is valid. It just amazes me that people listen to these goof-ball financial prognosticators, but you're right of course that it's their choice. Hey, people watch the Kardashians and The Bachelor (grmph! Where's my puke bag?!) too; sad that we have to scrape for examples like these to prove that the free market works!

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[Rap]

I'm worried about you, how do you know about all of these shows? Oh no wait. Are you a secret closet watcher? !!!!

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[Cloud9...68]

I would be blissfully ignorant of the existence of these horrible shows, would I not live in a household with a wife and two teenage daughters. Pure mind rot. But then, I'm sure they think the same thing about "Top Gear" and "Pawn Stars."

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[968Syncro]

Invest in electric car companies. It won't be ethanol, hydrogen, or any other material based (hydrocarbon) fuel. Electric cars (battery) is the only way. When push comes to shove, the world actually will turn to nuclear and make it much safer (we've already forgotten about Fukushima no?; solar, wind, and hydro power won't be enough to meet demand). For cars, electrical distribution already exists, and it doesn't exist for hydrogen (the show stopper), ethanol doesn't have the energy density our future will demand and will compete with food (more important). Also keep your eye on grid scale energy storage; it exists today but only at a very primitive and inefficient level (e.g. pumping water uphill with excess power, letting it down for generation).



New battery design could give electric vehicles a jolt

Significant advance in battery architecture could be breakthrough for electric vehicles and grid storage.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/flow-...-0606.html

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[Rap]

Do they work in the mountains in the snow?

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[Cloud9...68]

Syncro,



I actually agree with you, for the most part. Among the different alternatives to oil, my opinion, for what it's worth, is that electric is probably the best (or least bad) one for the way most people drive. As the owner of five older cars, one of which always seems to need some kind of maintenance, the thought of not having to worry about oil, a cooling system, a fuel system, sensors, catalytic converters, leaking seals, etc., is mighty appealing.



But I don't think electric cars are anywhere near ready for prime time on anything resembling a large scale. Electrics have a few obvious and very challenging drawbacks:



1. Range

2. Charge-up time

3. Cost



These three problems are highly inter-related: Range wouldn't be such a big deal if the charge-up time wasn't an overnight affair, and given that most people drive less than, say, 30 miles each way to work, electrics would make ideal commute-only cars for a lot of people, but their cost makes them unattractive as single-purpose cars. I think most people figure that a Honda Fit, which gets an average of 30+ mpg and can be driven anywhere, anytime, for $17K makes a heckuva lot more sense than a Nissan Leaf for $30K+.



The other big drawback is battery technology. I subscribe to Design News magazine at work, which is a very pro-electric car publication, but they just did a review of the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt which stated that in extreme cold temperatures, the Leaf's range drops to a pitiful 19 miles, and that even in mild weather, customes are only averaging about 65 miles. And the Volt's real-word mileage is much lower than claimed, too. So, I wouldnt invest in electric car company stock anytime soon.



I think battery technology needs to improve pretty dramatically before we'll start seeing electrics begin to displace gas and diesel. Maybe the technology being developed at MIT which you cite will show promise, but it's typically a ten-year cycle between lab proof-of-concept and real-world application. But I have heard that good progress is being made on lithium ion batteries as well, so maybe in a few years, electrics will begin to be competitive. But of course, conventional IC engines will continue to improve in the same timeframe, so it's a moving target, I'm afraid.



So, to be a candidate for an electric car, it helps if you:



A. Are pretty well-to-do

B. Live in California, Arizona, Florida, or parts of Texas

C. Drive under about 80 miles a day, and have another vehicle you can take on longer trips



It's a pretty limited demographic, but it's a start. I guess I'd summarize by saying that all the alternatives to gas and diesel suck, but electrics probably suck the least.



I do completely agree with your assessment of nuclear power. Everybody was freaked out by Fukoshima, with good reason, but you have to realize that that plant took a hit from the absolute worst-case scenario - a magnitude 9 quake (which means that at the epicenter, the lateral movement of the earth was approximately 1000 meters, or 10 football fields!), followed by a tsunami, and yet not a single person died. Compared to the number of people that die each year in the coal mining industry, I'd say nuclear has gotten an unjustifiably bad rap lately.



Oh, before I forget, another big drawback of ethanol, regardless of how it's produced, which we briefly touched on earlier, is the fact that it can't be transported in pipes because it's so hydroscopic. If we converted completely from gasoline/diesel to ethanol, all that fuel would have to be transported from the ethanol plant to the service stations by truck. The total miles driven per year in the US is 2.5 trillion (with a "T"). Assuming the average car gets 20 mpg, that's 125 billion gallons of gasoline. But ethanol has 33% less heat content than gasoline, so it would require 166 billion gallons of ethanol to replace gasoline. An average tanker truck has a capacity of 7500 gallons, so that's 22 million additional trucks on the road carrying very heavy loads sometimes very long distances on our already crumbling interstates. And if we want to produce the ethanol from garbage or waste agricultural material, that's an additional who-knows-how-many millions of truck-miles. If you're a believer in man-made global warming, think of all the additional CO2 emissions from all this transportation. Not saying this by itself is a show-stopper for ethanol, but it's another nail in its coffin, imho.

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[flash]

range is not a factor for 95% of the public - that group commutes back and for the to work, and not very far - the range of the electric car would more than suffice



charge up time is not a factor - while at work, charging could be accomplished, though the range would still allow them to get home without issue, where they could then charge overnight



the batteries are a problem - they do have to get that working better - we also need to figure out how to dispose of them better, and not have to ship the materials all over the globe - the prius is likely the worst car you can buy in terms of the environment for those reasons



as for ethanol, we transport gasoline by truck a lot now - we are using pipes for ethanol both here and in brazil - it is working, though not without the complications you state - they'll figure out the water issue - it may be a case of more localized refining, like at the local garbage dump - that would eliminate the need for pipes altogether, and since it is a cleaner product, it won't upset the neighbors



the trucks are already hauling the garbage around, so there would be no additional trucks for that - they would just be re-routed to the refinery instead

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[Cloud9...68]

I think the stumbling block currently for electric cars lies with the interplay of the three challenges I cite: i.e. If they were cheaper, people could live with them being a single-purpose vehicle. They'll have to come down in price quite a bit before a lot of people begin to consider them as alternatives to a growing list of decent small gas-powered cars (the Fit, Ford Focus, Mazda 2, Chevy Cruze, Mini Cooper, etc.). And the way electrics perform in the cold is just scary. But as battery technology improves, I do think electric vehicles will eventually be a reasonable alternative to gas powered. But I think realistically, that is about ten years in the future. And at that, I fear the biggest obstacle may be the degree to which conventional engines will have improved by then.



And I'm sorry, but given the number and magnitude of issues facing ethanol (competition with the food supply for grain based, poor yield for cellulosic, amount of water usage in processing, VOC and NOx emissions in processing, difficulty of transport, heat content, etc.), I just don't see it ever getting off the ground, unless something incredibly drastic happens. Maybe I'm wrong; we'll see.



This may not be a solid, quantitative argument, but I find the progression of statements on the subject of alternative fuels by recent presidents at the state of the union speeches intriguing: In one of Bush 43's early speeches, he was touting hydrogen fuel cells (I think that was the speech where he made his first "addicted to oil" comment). Then at a subsequent one, it was cellulosic ethanol. More recently, the focus has been on electric cars. Personally, I think this makes sense. Hydrogen fuel cells are a total crock (even Click & Clack say so, so it must be true!). Ethanol isn't quite as bad, but I sense the enthusiasm for it waning as well. Of these three, I think electrics make the most sense, but we need a better battery before they are going to be a significant player.



In the near term, I totally agree with the way Obama is being aggressive about tightening up the mileage standards. I'm excited about the innovations we're likely to see with conventional engines to hit the mileage mandates, in vehicles the public actually wants to buy. It will be definitely be interesting.



I do share your concern for the resources we commit to protecting our oil supply. We need to either get smarter about the way we do it, or get serious about finding a different fuel. I just don't think we've hit the tipping point yet. Fascinating topic, for sure.

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[flash]

like everything, cost is a factor of production numbers more than anything else



how is garbage competition with the food supply? i am talking about crop waste as the primary source - we have enough crop waste every year to fuel the entire country



if you think hydrogen fuel cells are a crock, you need to pop out here to the lab where i did the CARB testing - they make the "gas tanks" there - they are cranking the tanks out every day - there is an entire fleet of the cars here, and now filling stations popping up all over california - that one looks like a year or two and we will see them on the road as commonly as we now see the electric car (every day here)



again, it's all about cost, but that will be driven by production numbers and operating cost to the consumer which creates demand

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[Cloud9...68]

Fuel cell-powered cars in any volume are pure fantasy, and are the absolute dead last option as a power source for a car. The fact that a few cars are running around California doesn't mean they will be produced in volume. Not a whiff of a chance in this century. The problems are staggering:



1. Hydrogen is the most diffuse, energy-sparse fuel imaginable, so you need a huge, expensive tank to get any kind of range

2. Producing hydrogen is an incredibly energy-intensive proposition.

3. It's a gas, for goodness sake!

4. Fuel cells are enormously expensive, and their cost isn't likely to drop significantly anytime soon

5. Because hydrogen is such a wimpy fuel, any fuel cell car would have to be augmented by battery power (it has to be a hybrid, in other words) to get any kind of range out of it. So between the tank, the fuel cell, battery pack, electric motor, and the required hybrid drive, you're driving what amounts to a science laboratory on wheels to pick up that loaf of bread at the grocery store.



I would be utterly stunned if a fuel cell car could be produced in volume for less than $100K. Ethanol makes more sense. So does natural gas. So does running your car on liposuction waste material (I read a story of a plastic surgeon who actually did that!)



I know everybody (including me, believe it or not) wants to see some viable competitors for petroleum-based fuels appear on the landscape, and many very smart people are working feverishly to reduce the hurdles to getting them on the market. But as I said in my last post, what I think everyone is underestimating is how much progress is going to be made in the next decade on conventional gas and diesel-powered cars. It's going to be a steep uphill climb for any of the alternatives.



But hey, I also said August 2 was going to be "a big nothingburger," so maybe my prognostication skills leave a lot to be desired...

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[flash]

why? you drive up to the pump and fill up, just like gasoline - the tank is not that big - i've seen them - they are about the size of a 25 gallon air compressor tank - range is about 300 miles on a car the size of a prius - maybe you haven't seen what's really out there?



seems pretty straight forward and viable



p.s. - there are a lot of them out there right now - i saw row after row of tanks on racks being shipped - seems like they are moving forward in spite of those who think it will never happen



i know that ford cancelled their hydrogen plans, and gm scaled back, but the lab is full of cars, and according to them, the plans are stepping up, so somebody is making them

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[Rap]

Cloud don't worry about being wrong about 8-2. Although I started the question there is no right or wrong here. Just how much your portfolio went down!

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[Cloud9...68]

[color="black"][size="2"]The only company I'm aware who made fuel cars in any volume was Honda, and they ended that program a few years ago. Maybe there are others (you're right, clearly somebody is making them), but I have no idea who, or in what volume. I'm guessing it's part of a government program - I vaguely recall a program called Freedom Car, or something like that. BMW had what was possibly the largest hydrogen program of any car company (but they were working on internal combustion applications, not fuel cells), but they've scaled back as well, and are focusing their alternative propulsion efforts more on electrics.[/size][/color]

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