Solar car finishes around the world trip

Looks normal enough from the front:
But needs a trailer of solar cells!

For more details of a trip around the world without any oil see http://www.solartaxi.com

No iReal or Segway for me, I want a K9 to carry stuff

iReal
Segway




Last night I had delicious home cooked stir fry (thanks Flora) and maybe this is what stimulated my imagination as I tried to get to sleep. Been really bothered by the iReal and Segway. The idea that we might lose the use of our legs! I will keep walking. I enjoy walking, but I don't enjoy carrying a heavy bag with a computer, notebook, papers and goats milk. So here is what I want.

I want a K9 (the mechanical dog on Doctor Who), maybe a bigger breed than the one on Doctor Who, who will follow me faithfully wherever I go carrying all the gumpf that normally weighs down my shoulders and pockets. If I get a bit tired with all that walking, I can sit on K9 and he will provide with with, in winter, a nice cup of team, and in summer, a nice cup of tea. He will wait patiently outside the shop, guarding my purse and shopping and will come to the till, when summoned, to pay and pick up the shopping. When I get on the bus, he will hitch himself to the rear of the bus and recharge himself as he is pulled along. In the unlikely event that he runs out of battery (he warns me if his power is getting low and can curl up in the sun to recharge himself from his solar cells) he can can either turn tortoise and wait to be retrieved or throw out a handle to be wheeled home. He will also make life much less stressful by making sure I don't leave the house without the keys or some fresh goats milk and will make sure I take the keys out of the lock and put the goats milk back in the fridge when I get home.

City K9s would be more elegant than country K9s, that would be expected to negotiate mud, ditches and electric fences carrying buckets of feed, bales of hay and fencing posts. Evening K9s would be small chic little things, a fashion accessory, only required to carry purse, keys and lipstick. Special St. Bernard K9s would carry and, if required, entertain small children... Okay got to finish this off and do some real work.

Of course, in the future we will not be carrying paper because we will finally have epaper and we will be doing all our computing on our mobile and the shops will be delivering to our home and medical science will have found a way to get rid of my intolerance of cow's milk. But I still fancy a K9.

Idea for Car Dealer

I have great sympathy for all those car dealers who are looking at forecourts full of unwanted cars. Well here is an idea for you. Get a dealership for electric cars and learn how to service them and offer this package: You buy an electric car from us and you get free membership of our car pool. Anytime you want a larger car just park your electric car here and we'll put it on charge for you and you can pay by the mile (sorry, kilometer) from a choice of any of this range of cars. If the car pool gets popular, you can offer to take cars in part exchange if they are suitable for the pool, and offer the pool service to others, who can also choose to take an Electric car from the pool if it suits their needs.

Then you can start offering a special electricity tariff especially suited to electric car users who will be charging overnight and get a commission on use from your supplier of choice.

Then you can offer electric motorscooters and motorbikes and vars and buses.....

I have at least two customers for you already if you are based in West Cork.

And just in case you thought electric cars all looked like motorised shopping trolleys:

Japanese prototype that does 0-62 in 4 secs and top speed of 230mph!


And of course the Tesla:

Travelling Less?

As I sit at Gatwick waiting to get a flight home and feeling guilty at the huge increase in my carbon foot print, I wonder about how much travelling we will be doing in the future.

Oil supplies will be constrained in the future, which will hit first - a shortage in the ground or problems getting it out and refined, it is not clear. The recently publish report from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security estimate we have a 3-5 year window to make substantial cuts in our usage. The focus of this, and many other reports, is on doing what we do more efficiently - and this is great. But even without the cost factor, changing the car for the bus/train/bicycle etc. is also going to decrease our journeys simply because it reduces our ability to be spontaneous. At the moment, for a car owner, a quick drive down to the shops to get a frozen pizza because we have a sudden craving for one is just a case of jumping in the car and off we go. Without the car a bit more thinking has to take place first. Is it raining? When does the last bus leave? Is the local shop still open or do I need to go the bigger one further away? I'm going past the supermarket tomrrow anyway... At this stage the cravings for the pizza have passed and suddenly a bit of pasta made with ingredients in the cupboard looks a lot more attractive.

The ability for consumers to be spontaneous is a huge driver of spending - just put it on the credit card and worry about the bill later, 24 hour shopping - never go without a Ben & Jerrys tub of ice cream when you really need one, £1 flights to Budapest - lets just go. The freedom of the open road etc. etc. When freedom becomes more expensive and inconvenient we change our habits and I foresee a lot fewer miles driven as we plan our travel more carefully and combine tasks.

And it's not just people miles. Plastics are made from oil and a vast array of all that stuff we buy is made with plastic. Companies seeking to reduce costs will redesign products to last longer but with the ability to upgrade - ideally a software upgrade, meaning there is less stuff to ship around. As transport becomes more expensive, making and growing things locally becomes more competitative and again transport miles go down. As logistics systems become highly intelligent and adaptive, fewer vehicles travel with part loads, again pushing miles down.

By how much? And for how long? As we crack cheap energy and future cars become cheap to buy and run again will we want return to a country run by cars?

Hydrogen vs. Electric Cars

It seems to me the "Hydrogen Economy" has gone a bit quiet and I wonder if that's because people have been doing some sums. Assume you start with 100kWh of wind power and you can either use that to create hydrogen for your hydrogen car or put into a battery for your electric car. Which is more efficient?

This diagram from Ulf Bossel of the Lucerne Fuel Cell Forum (see their reports). Because of the number of processes involved in converting electricity to hydrogen, compressing and transporting it and then converting it back to electricity, the process cannot beat the simplicity of the battery approach, even with significant improvement. That's not to say battery power for cars is without problems (weight, environmental) or that hydrogen doesn't have a big advantage (you can recharge in 5 mins). But to me the sums do not add up, especially when the additional infrastructure cost of getting hydrogen to filling stations is added.

Interestingly, reviewing other blogs comparing hydrogen with electric, many are keen to point out how electric cars are not really green because they are charged using electricity from coal etc. They don't seem to question where the hydrogen comes from though.


Hear a podcast by Ulf given to The Watt here: http://www.thewatt.com/node/78

Electric vs. Combustion Engine Efficiency

Today I'm trying to get to grips with future vehicles and wade through all the bad information out there. So starting with Electric cars vs. petrol/diesel. The combustion engine car is inherently inefficient, mainly because of the heat losses of the combustion process, but also losses through the drivetrain and additional load such as air conditioning. Out of town, efficiency improves with 20% reaching the types.




The overall efficiency of the electric car depends most signficantly on the source of electricity. If you electric car is recharged from your own windmill, the efficiency can be as much as 80%, but if power station losses and grid losses are also included that may drop to as much as 28%. Still better than the petrol car though.

Electric-Powered GM EV1	Gasoline-Powered Acura .2TL

Start with	1 million BTUs	Start with	>1 million BTUs
Energy left after generation (39% efficiency)	390,000 BTUs	Energy left after refining (92% efficiency)	920,000 BTUs
Energy left after charging losses (88% efficiency)	>343,000 BTUs	Energy left after transport (95% efficiency)	874,000 BTUs
BTUs per kilowatt-hour	3412 BTUs	BTUs per gallon of gasoline	115,400 BTUs
Electricity available	100.6 kWhr	Gallons available	7.6 gallons
Energy efficiency	0.19 kWhr/mile	Fuel economy>	24 mpg
Miles per million BTUs	529.5 miles	Miles per million BTUs	182.5 miles
Equivalent mpg	69 mpg	Equivalent mpg	24 mpg

From http://www.electroauto.com/info/pollmyth.shtml a bit out of date


This would suggest, even with current technology, that you are greener to buy an electric car and charge it off the grid then drive an equivalent petrol car.



Here is a more entertaining comparison of electric vs. petrol. Mythbusters converted a petrol go-kart to electric and it performed almost as well as the petrol one, which considering it was nearly twice as heavy with the batteries, wasn't bad going.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/workshop/4264026.html?page=2

Flying car

In a previous incarnation I was a partner in setting up and running a flying school. I had a glider, single, twin and helicopter PPL licenses - I had the bug bad and even dabbled in building a kit plane. For kit plane lovers, the highlight of the year is Oshkosh, an airshow in the US for the amateur with everything new and exciting on display. This year's demos included a flying car, or in this case a driving plane. Not a new concept, but maybe one whose time has come. http://www.terrafugia.com/KOSH07video.html

Flying is thought of as being costly energy wise, but this is not necessarily the case. A large part of the energy cost of driving is the friction of tyres on the road. Once a modern 'slippery' plane takes off, it can be very efficient. The kit plane I wanted to build, and still hanker after, is the Europa, which will do 50mpg at 150mph and that's in a straight line! Makes you think.

Here is a pic of this cute little plane, also with removeable wings so you can load it on a trailer and take it

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Your next car might be a pet

Japan's 'Big Three' to Debut Cute Cars

Cute, communicative and cubic seem to be the fashion statement as far as offerings from Japan's "Big Three" automakers Toyota, Honda and Nissan, debuting at the Tokyo auto show later this month.

Behind the offerings is the growing view among Japanese automakers that more must be done to fight the image of cars as culprits of pollution, global warming and traffic accidents.

Their answer: Transform the car into a friendly companion - not just a machine for getting around.

Another sign that energy/climate change is being taken seriously.

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