I thought it would be interesting to ask predictions about the death of the internal combustion engine in cars and the switch over to long range electric cars with the performance of equivalent petrol and Diesel vehicles. I do not mean crude hybrids or plug ins but a feasible electric car.

Also as and when this happens, what will happen to the oil companies, given that the stuff is running out (so they tell us)

Edited 6 August, 200916 yr by Matt Bodycombe
Typo

Well there is an internet conspiracy theory that Oil is NOT a fossil fuel but a product of reactions in magma, the carbon elements merely being from bacteria it picks up nearer to the earth's crust. The assertion is that several wells which were previously thought to be empty have mysteriously refilled themselves.

It's on the internet, so it must be true. :;

Lol! I will miss internal combustion if (maybe when) it goes. There is nothing like the sound of a V8. You can't replace that with an electric motor!

The future is not electric, it will lie in other technologies.

There's a company up 'ere that manufacture electric vans!

When I say manufacture I think they just take out the engine of a standard van and replace it with an electric unit.

The report on them was on the local news not too long back and what made me chuckle was the reporter saying that they've had to add something that makes the sound of a traditional engine as customers can't get used to the fact they're so quiet!

Re-stating the frequently uttered ble*ding obvious, electric cars will move the pollution away from cities to the centres of electrical power generation, but, unless they make the electric ones 10-15% more energy efficient than the petrol/diesels, then the net energy requirement might go up due energy loss through centralised enegry generation and distribution and the huge environmental costs of recycling/ disposing of the batteries.

That said, I haven't heard any clear quantification of the overhead energy costs of running cars on hydrocarbons i.e exploration, drilling, storage, shipping, refining, distribution and storage.

Best solution for the environment and consumer has got to be electric cars run on hydrogen fuel cells re-charged from domestic energy generation systems - solar cells and turbines. Of course, that won't happen because the vested financial interests at City level want to keep energy distribution, of whatever sort, centralised, so they can skim a profit off the top at the frequency associated with revenue expenditure rather than a capital expenditure one.Boom ! Boom !

Nick

Edited 6 August, 200916 yr by Clunkclick

by the time the main stream change comes the technoligy will be great,i look forward to it,after all when the motor car first came to the masses no one said f**k this the horse was way better did they? I just wonder what the next step is,i don't think it will be electric vehicles either.

Hydrogen is very expensive to produce, and uses more CO2 than it saves to create.

BUT, there are some clever fuel cells emerging that appear to be able to convert water to hyrdogen on the fly, using a 24v system, then back again when burnt.

Once costs and bugs are ironed out, this could mean vehicles that produce zero emissions thanks to a closed system - not even water vapour!

Hydrogen is very expensive to produce, and uses more CO2 than it saves to create.

BUT, there are some clever fuel cells emerging that appear to be able to convert water to hyrdogen on the fly, using a 24v system, then back again when burnt.

Once costs and bugs are ironed out, this could mean vehicles that produce zero emissions thanks to a closed system - not even water vapour!

You'll still need to input energy at some point otherwise you'd have a perpetual motion machine and someone would get very rich.

Battery technology is the limiting factor at the moment. And as others have said we lack generating capacity at the moment so having a few million cars plugging in isn't going to help much.