I was surprised to see this article on CNN. Who would have thought that simple math would tell you to buy diesel instead of electric? I guess people are listening to Leo DiCapprio instead of using their calculators.
I'm not surprised.
Monday, September 26, 2005
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We got into lengthy discussions about this in our reactor engineering classes, especially with one of the professors in the department being an expert on fuel cells. There's this big push for hydrogen PEM fuel cells (Bush is pouring funding in) and they make absolutely no sense, since there are no hydrogen reserves - we have to make H2 from fossil fuels. The argument against it is actually a 2nd Law (of Thermo) argument.
The general feeling I get is that the best route for the near term will be diesel fuel hybrid cars (with regenerative braking) once oil gets to a certain price. The engineering on hybrids need to be improved first in order to make them economical, though. The long term solution will probably be electric cars or fuel cell cars (energy being generated by nuclear or solar energy). When are we gonna get cold fusion?
BTW, did you notice how Blogger added a word verification similar to ticketmaster? Good job by whoever runs Blogger (I think it's Google). Quick reaction to all that BlogSpam we'd been getting.
Yeah, being a EE major, I certainly am pro-electric hybrid. However, initial demand spikes for them will prevent the 'real' budget conscious from buying them until prices level off. Diesel is a great alternative and probably has a great future along side electric cars... Of course, when Mr. Fusion hits the market, it's bye-bye everything else (Mike E, are you listening?).
Yeah, I asked Vetes to turn on the word verification today. We were getting spam on every other post!
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