Why the electric car is useless, for the united states./rant

I don't think we will ever see fuel cells in cars, we just can't produce hydrogen to supply that much power. It isn't viable. I speak with experience, I do hydrogen fuel cell research at school. We'll see what the future brings though.

havent heard about it, ill look into it. +k for debating intelligently

you are right, it is kinda hard to do all shipping by rail. a lot of the us is so spread out that its just not feasible. its more transportation of people that is severely lacking compared to other nations

And i wasn't saying your point about rail is a bad idea. It's just that rail is mostly used for transportation of large large quantities of items such as corn, oil , wheat...i guess more or less commodities. haha.

I'm just really for anything that gets us off of foreign oil (or realistically, reduce our dependence). I like when Obama said,

"And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the middle east."

Every president since Nixon has promised us energy independence from the middle east and look where we are today: still importing oil. the difference this time, opposed to when Nixon was president (which we imported about 24% of our oil, which, is also when oil production peaked in this country) is that we import 70% of our oil from other nations. we now send 700 billion dollars overseas every year.

T Boone Pickens says - "Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion - it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind."

As a nation, we can no longer keep one hand in the pocket of the enemy, no longer can we afford this transfer of wealth, it will be the death of us. We have to do something and we have to do it now, which is why i support the Pickens plan. here the link to it.

http://www.pickensplan.com/index.php

The Pickens plan is pretty simple and i will try to explain it real quick.

T. Boone Pickens is a rich billionaire oil man (founder of Mesa Petroleum), has been in the oil business for 50 + years. he knows we cannot drill our way out of this problem and he knows the saudis dont have as much oil as they claim (they are pulling alot of water). what he wants to do is to build a huge wind farm from western texas all the way up to the canadian border to produce, roughly around 20 percent new energy for America. (that percent came from the Department of energy)

so, instead of importing 20% more oil to to run cars, he wants to use 20% of our natural gas (that we currently use to generate electricity) for large transportation vehicles, saving us around 300 billion a year from the middle east.

So essentially he is just replacing the pie chart with new energy that is available now. he's taking 20% of our current natural gas supply and putting it towards transportation and making a new 20% to replace the natural gas figure.

this is no means a fix to our alternative energy and fuel craze but its a bridge to the future, and something that we can get done within the next 10 years, but we need the right leadership to accomplish this.

if you read down this far, plus karma for you.

electric cars will shift the demand for gas to a demand for lead for lead acid batteries, lead is a limited resource but 99% of it is recycled. its much better for the environment

wow, that is actually really cool. do you know if obama has talked about it at all? because if he really is going to create jobs, this would be a great way to do it.

exactly my point. this would create thousands of jobs, and millions in the future. Im sure Obama knows about it but it has to go to the house and senate just like everything else in this country. Actually, on the 23rd of this month, there is going to be a live VIP roundabout with some higher up national energy leaders so that will be interesting to see.

I live in Montana and T boone is coming to speak in Helena (our state capital) next friday and i really am towing with the idea of going down. hes a smart man and knows what he is talking about. if a billionaire oil man says we need to start thinking about different energy dont you think we should listen to him? haha

True you do need big farms for them. But i live in MT and there is a huge like 110 windmill farm in Judith Gap. It is huge and its a pretty cool site.

I can not remember the name of the guy (ferrinski does though and will know what im talking about) but he wants to build a wind farm from like texas all the way up through north dakota becasue thats one of the windiest spots in the nation and ther is plenty of space for it. And if we did build that (obviously it would take several years to complete all of it) all of those windmills would produce 20% of all power for the USA. Which is awesome and i think there is no reason we shouldnt invest in that other than all these stupid bailouts and stimulus packages, IMO.

And you have to admit that is a great idea to build that. I mean there is just useless space where it would be built so why not?..

Where did you get the US military out of that?

oh ok. haha

they wouldn't be buying all the land for the farms, they would be leasing it from the farmers/ landowners in those targeted areas.

the reason everyone is bashing poli sci majors is because there are a few on this site that are complete dipshits. while I will say its a useless major, its no more useless than a lot of majors out there, and with the way our economy is running, I'd just like to say "good luck" to all you business majors who will be graduating in the next 4 years. also, everyone I've met or talked to in my poli sci classes seemed pretty sharp. almost everyone in my gened classes was so fucking stupid, it boggles my mind. of course some friends from other schools tell me all the poli sci majors are dumbfucks, so who knows.

Is everyone ignoring the fact that the people in power and people who are high up in the world dont want the US to lose its dependence on oil? The electric car could have been around years ago, its hardly some crazy conspiracy that people in power are making craploads of money off of the oil industry... theyre going to keep the US dependent on oil until it all runs out.

well look at it from their perspective. if you controlled the greatest sources of fuel in the world would you not want to sell as much as you can for whatever you can get? of course you would.

The difference is our leadership. if our government wants us off of oil they could make it happen real quick. Like i said before, i dont like Obama but i like his energy plan (for the most part). i like the pickens plan, or any other sound plan thats out there that can get us off of foreign oil. I know about the electric cars in the 90's so don't bring that up please (that will open a whole new box we dont want to go into and we have had that discussion already).

The government could subsidize almost anything we want to do. just like the Fed subsidized 90 percent of the funds to build the interstate highway in the 50s. its all about leadership and direction.

solar,wind, and water power too

Everyone who is interested in alternative energy look at the pickens plan.

my threads for when i have more time. there's some serious education that needs to go down in this thread.  and for the record, anyone saying "fuck hippies" or "fuck environmentalists" is just a pretentious douchebag who doesn't know the first thing about anything.

that is why we must invest more directly in renewable energy, wind power, solar, oceanic tides, ect. that will help is when it comes down the road

Dude you really should have just left it at mythreads... There is some real intelligent disscussion going on, and you had to go and ruin it...

you're right. i only read the first few responses and didn't even look at the second page. my bad. i was in a bad mood. got $300 worth of my shit jacked today.

dude that sucks that you got your shit jacked. i hate when people steal stuff.

Yes, the first couple of posts were dumb but for the most part this thread has been very civilized and nobody had gotten pissed yet so its nice. haha

your welcome to join back in because I still want to talk about it (not so much the electric car because i have been brining up the Pickens plan and why I like it but i would talk about any kind of Alternative fuel/ energy)

random, but do you not find the whole venus project thing a bit ridiculous/overly utopian/idealist considering the times we are living in?

Oh, and anybody bored right now there is a summit in Washington right now on the National Clean Energy project with alot of major major players in the Alternative energy fields. im watching it on the internet right now from the pickens plan web site.

some good information is being presented, and both sides are arguing the pros and cons of alternative energy. we can all disagree with what we want to do for energy in this country but we are already in the process of building very large alternative energy plants as we argue in this thread. haha

To the thread creator, sorry for the post whoring haha but i just want to keep everybody informed.

on the electric car issue, Walmart is currently developing and testing right now a semi that can run 40 hours (i believe) off of battery power before recharging. So.... we are already developing electric into our transportation system.

and i heard that right out of the CEO's mouth this morning (over the internet not in person lol.

the electric car is pointless until the the majority of our energy is green...
how are you charging the car? you plug it in... wheres that electricity coming from? coal or oil most likely...


hydrogen fuel cell cars seem to be the way forward right now, not electric.

............except it take a huge amount of electricity to make hydrogen out of water.

hydrogen car ftw

the problem is that the cheap energy of coal and oil has avoided more research towards electric cars AND towards solar energy.

the first electric cars were build 100 years ago. if scientists had received enough funds, they would have already invented efficient electric cars.

same with solar power. the energy that reaches us every year is a multiple of the amount that all coal, oil and natural gas resources can supply

good input.

the problem now is the amount of oil we import tied directly to the cost of the oil. right now oil is cheap because the world economic problems (obviously) but if we dont seriously start moving in the other direction soon (which we are we just need the right leadership and thats where Obama steeps in) we will have a problem bigger than that of the great depression IMO. we can no longer financially survive off of oil when the prices go back up and trust me they will.

The Saudis have already stated that they need to sell oil at $75 a barrel and we will see oil back up in the 120-140 range as soon as we climb out of this recession.

As i stated earlier in the post, in washington this morning they just had the energy summit and much was talked about how to get to the next step of alternative fuels and energy, it was very good too i might add.

Almost every aspect of the Alternative energy was brought up (both pros and cons).

We are on our way to fixing the problem

Instead of just blaming the market for inefficient cars, how about we do something from our end like living closer to places we need (work, school, mall, etc) so we dont have to drive as often (we could walking more & using public transit).

The artificially manufactured need to live and die by our vehicles is insane. Snap outta it people!

As dirty as coal plants are, they are still far cleaner then ICE cars,

It is also much easier to deal with centralized pollution at coal plants then in thousands of cars for carbon caputure plans,

How else do you plan on breaking the dependance on oil? Biofuels can't possibly meet the worlds oil demands.

The majority of electric cars would be charged at night, beacause you are driving them during the day and demand on the electrical grid drops drasitcally at night so it would not overburden the grid to the extend you say. It would just make the demand from day to night more consistent.

Also all those hydrogen advocates,

Hydrogen cars still cost over a million dollars,

They are encredibly unreliable and only last a few years

They are far less efficient the pure electric cars

And the Hyrdrogen has to be created from electricity anyways so it has all the same issues as electric cars with power generation

Building a hydrogen distribution system, Gas stations would take decades and billions of dollars.

Watch the move "Who killed the electric car" and do a little research.

The hydrogen car is nothing less then big oil trying to kill the electric car with this image of the wonderful hydrogen car to answer all our problems, when it was never even realistic.

People near me (northern california) are arguing against building a wind farm because they think it will kill all of the eagles.  There was a huge add in the paper to protest it with slogans like "don't let there be blood in the air and on the ground" and telling people to wear red to the protest.  It made me laugh.  People will never be happy.  There is always something to bitch about.

Some people in your state really piss me off. haha. the eagles? really? lol tell your people to cram it. your right some people just wont be happy at all will they!?

yeah, lets stop producing the world cleanest type of energy because a few eagles (that are smart enough to not fly into them anyways) may be killed. fuck.... you have to wonder sometimes..... why these people exist. (and im not saying i want to kill eagles either)

not bad input....

To a certain extent biofuels can run part of the world's oil demands. not large transportation sectors like train and ships but they can run semis which will greatly reduce the need for oil in that part of the transportation sector. Walmarts already running trucks on biofuels.

http://world.honda.com/news/2008/4080805FCX-Clarity/

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/11/18/first-drive-2009-honda-fcx-clarity-on-the-road/


they are more efficient than electric cars... and they dont cost $1million...

Watch from 8:00 minutes in (part 8/10 of Who killed the electric car)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy3cyyzTs3U&feature=related

And the beginning of the (9/10 part)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xu7vb2Xa1U&feature=related

If you have time watch the entire movie you'll learn a lot

i posted the full video early up in the thread

People are lazy. I'll sum it up for you. Watch the part he suggested for this to make more sense. Tryin to get my work done so I can go to SIlverton this weekend. I just wanted to pipe in here a little.

5 Miracles for a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car (to become feasable):
1. The current fuel cell car costs $1,000,000
2. There's not enough room for hydrogen fuel
3. Hydrogen fuel is very expensive
4. It needs an established fueling infrustructure before it can even be feasable
5. Other competing technologies cannot improve (ex: solar, electric, hybrid)

Hydrogen is not the way of the future, unlike President Bush said.  It may be a very clean source out of the tailpipe, but it is not a feasible source of fuel.  There's too many obstacles to overcome, it's not an infinite source as solar or other competing technologies are and it still requires fuel. 

We need to get truly innovative and eliminate the concept of fuel all together.