


Billionaire says he will turn to natural gas instead









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By Solandri on 7/9/2009 2:34:08 PM , Rating: 4
Oil is mostly used in transportation (also for heating in the Northeast U.S.), and accounts for a bit less than half of the energy consumption of the U.S. Roughly half of that oil is used by passenger cars, and the other half by commercial trucks. The other half of the energy used by the U.S. is mostly electricity, which primarily comes from coal plants (nuclear and hydro are the other big sources).

The U.S. is self-sufficient when it comes to electricity. It and China have the world's greatest coal deposits. The problem, as we're seeing with the development of hybrid and electric vehicles, is that electricity is really difficult to store. That makes it a poor choice for transportation relative to oil (with our current technology). The low population density of the U.S. also leads to greater transportation needs compared to places like Europe and East Asia. So even though the U.S. could by all measures be energy independent, it's just cheaper for us to buy foreign oil to power our transportation industry.

By mcnabney on 7/9/2009 5:36:27 PM , Rating: 2
The storage problem of electricity is a non-issue. Only big nuclear and coal plants have difficulty turning on and off. Natural gas is like a light switch and solar, hydro, and wind can be throttled to lower levels of output in seconds if needed. We just need to build the capacity.
Once electricity enters oversupply and batteries mature it should be a no brainer switching auto engines into electric motors.
Oh, and for the whiners that think electric cars will be stodgy, slow, and difficult to maintain - think again. Electric motors have amazing torgue and the use of electric motors eliminate the need for most of the modern car's engine/transmission woes since the number of moving parts that can wear will plumet. Reliability will be astounding.

By Eris23007 on 7/9/2009 8:34:54 PM , Rating: 2
Explain how throttling solar and wind power works please? This is contrary to my understanding of the issue.

By Alexvrb on 7/9/2009 9:07:04 PM , Rating: 3
It is NOT a non-issue. He was referring to storage in terms of automotive usage. Not power plants, and not future storage solutions. Batteries will improve, yes, but right now we can't switch all our cars to electricity. Even if we did, charging a battery and then using said battery to power a motor isn't exactly super efficient either. I mean you're going Power Source (Coal, Nuclear, etc) -> Transmission (lines and infrastructure) -> Battery (AC/DC conversion required) -> Electric motors. It's still probably better than an ICE, but to what degree, especially with more efficient ICE designs in the pipeline (like HCCI).

As far as electric cars lacking an engine and transmission, this is only true for pure electrics. E-REVs like the Volt still have an engine, although it is only used to extend range and is not coupled to a transmission or the wheels. Not to mention traditional hybrids like the Prius and Insight, which have both an engine and a transmission. Both traditional hybrids and the Volt are designs which bridge the gap between gasoline cars and electrics.

On top of that, electric cars won't eliminate the need for repairs. It will reduce them, and will reduce required maintenence significantly. But there are lots of other things on a car to replace, chassis parts, climate control, tires, brakes, suspension. If your electric motor(s) or batteries do eventually fail, it will be costly to replace them, the industry will make sure of that.

Not to mention that in order to get better performance, some electrics will use a more traditional drivetrain (electric motor coupled to a gearbox). Tesla does this, heck they even tried a 2 gear transmission, but they couldn't secure one that could handle the abuse in time. So they settled for a strong one-gear fixed ratio transmission by Borg Warner that could handle the abuse (the ones with the early trans were locked permanently in second gear which reduced performance, and promised to replace them with the final trans later). I'm sure someone will try 2+ gears again.

