A new plan anyone?
Driving home for lunch today - which, by the by, will be the last time I do that for a while - and I noticed that gas has already jumped up to $3 a gallon in Athens. Heck, we even postponed our staff meeting so folks could run out and fill up their cars before any potential shortages or price spikes. Seeing that most analysts are predicting gas prices to reach $4 a gallon (putting me filling up my Honda Accord at more than $50), the wife and I have decided to carpool for the time being.
All of this has me thinking ... why doesn't some automobile manufacturer decide to push ahead with new technology (or honed hybrid technology) designed to make gasoline/fuel-powered cars obsolete? Granted it would take considerable amounts of capital to launch a project of this size, but seeing how oil is a finite resource and that prices won't really go down all that much anyway, doesn't this make sense?
Arguably, our dependence on foreign crude oil - aside from the obvious environmental consequences - is a bad thing. Right now we ship lots of money over to countries featuring a significant population of people who want to kill us. So apart from the fact that we are dependent on other economies for a very vital good, the revenues from said good are, at least partially, funding terrorist organizations dedicated to waging war against America.
It would seem to me the good capitalist instinct would be to develop a means of powering cars - and engines of all sorts - here in the U.S., thus bringing money to our innovators and workers, and not financing madrassas in the Middle East.
All of this has me thinking ... why doesn't some automobile manufacturer decide to push ahead with new technology (or honed hybrid technology) designed to make gasoline/fuel-powered cars obsolete? Granted it would take considerable amounts of capital to launch a project of this size, but seeing how oil is a finite resource and that prices won't really go down all that much anyway, doesn't this make sense?
Arguably, our dependence on foreign crude oil - aside from the obvious environmental consequences - is a bad thing. Right now we ship lots of money over to countries featuring a significant population of people who want to kill us. So apart from the fact that we are dependent on other economies for a very vital good, the revenues from said good are, at least partially, funding terrorist organizations dedicated to waging war against America.
It would seem to me the good capitalist instinct would be to develop a means of powering cars - and engines of all sorts - here in the U.S., thus bringing money to our innovators and workers, and not financing madrassas in the Middle East.
posted by Jmac at 3:32 PM
10 Comments:
A-men brother. One thing that could come out of this is that Americans will realize how dependent we are on foreign oil and how one little interruption can cripple us.
My nightmare: a terrorist group decides to strike at us now, when our attention and resources are focused somewhere else.
BB
How do we know they aren't working on these new technologies?
I don't think car manufacturers are really that averse to the idea. But it just takes time to develop the technology to a level that is worth the cost (to consumers and manufacturers).
Yeah. I'm asking the same questions, Jmac.
But using logic and reasoning is no use. It all comes back to the oil companies and the control they have. Say I sound like a conspiracy theorist if you want, but you can't deny facts. There are viable, renewable, cheap alternative energy sources out there - any idiot could see that we should be using them. But the oil companies aren't having it, and that's the end of it.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/08/15/hybrid.tinkerers.ap/
Clark Howard said recently on his show that European cars are being sold that have gas mileages upwards of 80 to 100 mpg, using cleaner-burning diesel engines that are smaller and make less noise. Biodiesel and biofuels are already available, just not widely distributed. For instance, the University of Georgia has its own biofuels production facility and they have been using it to produce fuels for some of its vehicles, but it doesn't yet have the full capacity to move the entire University fleet over to 80% biofuels.
While the oil industry is a major culprit, we do have to acknowledge that American consumers have been perfectly comfortable for the past one hundred years with the deep wedded relationship to oil as the source of many of its luxuries, from plastics to fertilizers to blacktop roads—not just as fuel to speed the spread of suburban sprawl. The desire for ceaseless technological expansion has always been met with the petroleum basis in the economy. This is one danger in looking to technology again to get the United States out of its own comfortable grave.
Good points Charles. I had to twist my wife's arm - metaphorically, not literally - to get her to agree to carpool to work today to try and keep our costs down. The demand for gasoline-powered cars hasn't subsided, despite the rising prices, and if anything it has gone up as we make hideously inefficient things like Hummers and Yukons.
And for Amber and Xon, some car companies are working on these technologies ... but, because of the reasons Charles has pointed out, what need is there to accelerate the development of said technologies when the American consumer is still filling up their SUV with $3 a gallon gas? If it ain't broke, don't fix it comes into play.
The only primary alternative technology in play are hybrid cars, but they still operate on gasoline (thus giving some credence to Amber's conspiracy theory). Things like biodiesel are better alternatives, and are in play at UGA primarily because it's UGA ... an academic setting where such research is encouraged and test models can be examined closely. But Charles is right, I remember some buses or something running on biodiesel here at UGA.
In order for the automotive industry to really break away, they would have to do it somewhat outside of the traditional supply-and-demand laws ... thus creating a new supply to make a new demand.
I was behind a HUGE SUV yesterday that was tagged with a sticker that read, "Powered by Clean Vegetable Oil 100%" or somesuch. I read a while ago about people converting their cars to be able to use restaurants' used veggie oil resevoirs. Seems you filter the gunk out and power the car with the cleaned oil. And, it's free if you can find a couple fast food places that are willing to let you pump it out of their tanks. Or you can just go late at night an pump it stealth-like. This SUV was obviously a professional job, but anyone can do it.
What's ridiculous is the all-or-nothing attitude, as though it's not worth it to buy a more efficient car that still runs on gasoline. i.e., hydrogen or nothing.
I read a while ago about people converting their cars to be able to use restaurants' used veggie oil resevoirs. Seems you filter the gunk out and power the car with the cleaned oil. And, it's free if you can find a couple fast food places that are willing to let you pump it out of their tanks.
Awesome! I suppose that's similar to the premise behind ethanol fuel, but a much more scaled down version.
And I agree with you Hillary that all-or-nothing approaches are bad. Something will be needed in the transistion phase. But it's hard to argue that wholesale American dependence on gasoline refined from crude oil - particularly foreign crude oil - is an efficient long-term energy plan.
it would be smarter in general to leave the cars running on gas and just make them lighter. The technology is already there, it just needs to be mass-implemented.
To say that people are still complacently humming around in their suvs is somewhat off though. I imagine the average person is well aware of the increasing costs of truck driving, but sometimes that's all they have. Until they can get a new vehicle, of course they're going to still drive the truck. One problem is going to be that the bottom will drop out on the truck market, and it's going to be tough to give the things away. Six months of > $3 gas prices, and you'll start to see a lot of deals on full size trucks. It's also possible that the prices will go back down, and there's nothing to worry about.
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