So why isn't everyone driving cleaner/emission-free cars already?

[snadge]

Fossil fuel powered, polluting monsters sound the best when ragged hard, flooring an electric motor just isn't the same.

agreed ( as I eye up a new audi rs4)

 

[absinthe pirate]

I personally don't have a "clean" car as i couldn't afford one. I got what i could for under £2k! i am ashamed how much i already use my car though, plan on cutting back to the good old days when i used to catch a coach instead...

But i would love to have a cleaner car and can see it being a viable if not necessary option in the future...

anyone know much about biofuels? Esp the vegetable oil one, thats not a bad idea...

 

[subversplat]

I personally don't have a "clean" car as i couldn't afford one. I got what i could for under £2k! i am ashamed how much i already use my car though, plan on cutting back to the good old days when i used to catch a coach instead...

But i would love to have a cleaner car and can see it being a viable if not necessary option in the future...

anyone know much about biofuels? Esp the vegetable oil one, thats not a bad idea...

You can convert to biofuels straight away by just getting a diesel car (easily affordable under £2000) and mixing your own fuel 1/4 diesel, 3/4 vegetable oil - the 1/4 diesel is there to stop your fuel congealing in cold weather (not that we've actually had much this year!) and clogging your injectors, if the weather's dead hot, you can just use pure oil. If legality is an issue for you, you can apply to the Customs and Excise bod for a form to fill out to pay road duty on all the oil you use, or you could not if you don't want to

There's genuinely no excuse not to be using this cheaper, cleaner method of powering your cars save "I can't be bothered".

 

[Wilson]

its not really an alternative if the veg oil youre using is produced using conventional farming practices though especially if its been put into a disposable plastic bottle and shipped to a supermarket shelf, maybe if you could access organically produced oil at the farm gate then it might be but if everyone switched to that as a form of fuel then there wouldnt be any farmland left for growing anything else

if you can convince me otherwise then ill start chucking veg oil in my shitheap

 

[subversplat]

There's even less reason for the farmers not to be using veg oil rather than red diesel (even the road duty part is eliminated!) but that's another step. The "alternative" part is that your particular car is closer to being carbon neutral than if it ran on pure fossil fuels, even factoring in the trip to the supermarket. Diesel doesn't magically appear in the forecourts.

 

[Wilson]

i agree about the farmers especially arable farmers they should all be on farm produced biodiesel right now

but in terms of my car im not convinced that i wouldnt be using more fossil fuel and producing more co2 by using veg oil, the fertilizers to grow the crop use a lot of fossil fuel to produce to start with

 

[Obnoxiousness]

I bought a diesel car in December and I've noticed a huge drop in the amount of fuel I am using. I estimate at least 30%.

I couldn't afford to buy a Smart car, so this was my best option. But having just visited the Smart car web site, I find out that they are petrol engines... I thought they were at least part electric.

 

[Stanley Edwards]

Someone's just bought a hybrid.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2237675.ece

A decision by the EU's top environment official to trade in his environmentally unfriendly Mercedes Benz for a greener, hybrid model - from Japan - has focused attention on the European Commission's polluting ways. The decision will bring the first non-European car on to the crowded forecourt of the Berlaymont building where commissioners' official limousines line up each day.

The Independent.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Continuing the traditional human response to a problem, the solution of 'biofuels' looks to be making the situation worse.

# The grain required to fill the petrol tank of a Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one person per year. Assuming the petrol tank is refilled every two weeks, the amount of grain required would feed a hungry African village for a year

# Much of the fuel that Europeans use will be imported from Brazil, where the Amazon is being burned to plant more sugar and soybeans, and Southeast Asia, where oil palm plantations are destroying the rainforest habitat of orangutans and many other species. Species are dying for our driving

# If ethanol is imported from the US, it will likely come from maize, which uses fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation using fertilisers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces, and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind

# Meeting the 5.75% target would require, according to one authoritative study, a quarter of the EU's arable land

# Using ethanol rather than petrol reduces total emissions of carbon dioxide by only about 13% because of the pollution caused by the production process, and because ethanol gets only about 70% of the mileage of petrol

# Food prices are already increasing. With just 10% of the world's sugar harvest being converted to ethanol, the price of sugar has doubled; the price of palm oil has increased 15% over the past year, with a further 25% gain expected next year.

Little wonder that many are calling biofuels "deforestation diesel", the opposite of the environmentally friendly fuel that all are seeking.

With so much farmland already taking the form of monoculture, with all that implies for wildlife, do we really want to create more diversity-stripped desert?

Others are worried about the impacts of biofuels on food prices, which will affect especially the poor who already spend a large proportion of their income on food.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5369284.stm

A fine example can be seen in Mexico, where increased demand for corn (to produce ethanol to burn in vehicles) from the US has pushed up prices beyond the ability of many people to be able to feed themselves.

Also worth a read if you're in any doubt: The Limits of Biomass Utilization

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

You can convert to biofuels straight away by just getting a diesel car (easily affordable under £2000) and mixing your own fuel...

Not all diesel engines take kindly to veg oil.

Here's a couple of old threads which might be worth reading for anyone considering putting veg oil in their tank:


http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=76290

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=124975

 

[dirtyfruit]

So why isn't everyone driving cleaner/emission-free cars already?

Oil

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

It's easy to imagine that 'Oil' became the default method of powering vehicles due to it's inherent superiority as a fuel.

Look a little deeper and it becomes clear that it isn't quite that simple.

The extraordinary efforts devoted to convincing the public of oil's superiority are well documented. The lies, deceit, distortion and conspiracy backed up by one of the most effective 'psychological operations' in history all helped to set us on this 'path dependence' regarding hydrocarbons.

Back when Ford and Edison were fighting to launch their Electric vehicles, the technical superiority of the Electric Vehicle over the 'Oil' fuelled ones was more apparent.

It's interesting that one of the major selling points emphasised by the internal combustion engine powered vehicle manufacturers was the notion that the noisier and dirtier a vehicle was, the more 'masculine' it's driver.

Reading back over this thread, it appears that not much has changed. Confronted with the fact that there are EV's available today that outperform Internal Combustion Engined vehicles in terms of economy, emissions and performance - not to mention the convenience of not having to go to a filling station - STILL there are people who profess to prefer ICEV's because:

Fossil fuel powered, polluting monsters sound the best when ragged hard, flooring an electric motor just isn't the same.

In times to come, when the full impact of our insane addiction to finite fossil fuels is becoming more apparent, what are we to tell the kids who will be growing up without many of the things we take for granted today?

"Oh, erm, sorry we spanked the last hours of ancient sunlight driving to Tesco - but it sounded awesome!"

They'll hang us from fucking lamp-posts.

 

[stavros]

With biofuels, isn't it a nice idea, but the way you'll get is by chopping huge swathes of rainforest which will more than counter the positive effects.

 

[cybertect]

One day they'll make a super efficient car that actually looks good

Here ya go

http://www.teslamotors.com/

 

[cybertect]

IBack when Ford and Edison were fighting to launch their Electric vehicles, the technical superiority of the Electric Vehicle over the 'Oil' fuelled ones was more apparent.

The thing is that electrically powered vehicles fell rapidly behind petrol-powered cars between about 1905 and the outbreak of WW1. Ford's Model T in 1908 made them affordable, electric starters in 1912 made them easy to use and developments in engine technology made them go further and faster.

Edison tried to improve battery technology to keep pace, but finally gave up. Ford's interest was at least partly fuelled ('scuse the pun) as a defensive move against a patent suit over the use of an Internal Combustion Engine in a car.

While early electric vehicles could keep pace while horses were the chief component of traffic on they streets, once petrol-powered vehicles could displace horses in significant numbers between 1910 and 1920, electric vehicles quite literally could not keep up.

Petrol quite simply delivers a hell of a lot of energy for a very small space weight penalty. It's taken the best part of a century and some clever microprocessor trickery (with significant amounts of R&D funded by other industries) to get battery-powered vehicles to the point where they can compete with oil in an urban situation. For longer distance motoring, it's still oil's game.

Internal Combustion Engined vehicles in terms of economy, emissions and performance - not to mention the convenience of not having to go to a filling station - STILL there are people who profess to prefer ICEV's because

Charging at home is fine if you've got off-road parking adjacent to your house.

As my car is parked on the street, charging it from my house would involve, at best, a trip hazard across the pavement or, worse, occasionally several hundred metres round the corner and over a couple of streets.

A journey every couple of weeks to the Shell to top up isn't a major inconvenience. I'd be interested in an electric car with reasonable performance, but small practicalities like these are important.

 

[GarfieldLeChat]

there's the peugeot of course who ar eplannign to introduce an electric engined 308 shortly and if this proves to be a sucess then they will introduce the platform to the entire rage including the citroen range, this being the case we may yet have eco cars with the potential to actually be usable...

at present though these are still hybrids...

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/first_official_picture.php?sid=469&page=1

intrsetingly they have alsop come up with this which they are calling a faux by four... gives all the benfits of a 4 by 4 but with none of the down sides...

cultral shift anyone?

 

[maya]

There was a great little electrical car called Think, which got boycotted by the entire american car industry when presented to the US market, and the european company which produced them got squeezed into bankruptcy...

The methods for change are available- One could start manufacturing environmentally friendly transport alternatives tomorrow, if given the chance- But nothing will really change unless forced through by official policies, because people are making money from the old technology and don't want to be challenged on their monopoly...