Showing posts with label gasoline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gasoline. Show all posts
2009/07/09
Romancing the Road
540,000 miles from one car, one owner. And they are both pretty cool! The owner is 89 and the car is a 1964 Mercury Comet. She aways gets lifetime warranty replacement parts (16 free batteries so far) and carries a pistol (licensed) for protection on the long trips. Really worth watching.
These are the people and cars that made America great. I guaranty this car has done less damage to the environment for all those miles of travel than the average Prius owner does today. Why? Because once it was built, it was never discarded. If you really want to help the earth, rescue an old classic from the junkyard and pay a local hard working mechanic to restore it.
2009/05/11
Sustainability = frugality over the long term
here is the big secret:
Actual sustainability = frugality over the long term.
If it costs more over its lifetime, it is NOT sustainable. So, when gas is at $2.50 a gallon, the Prius is NOT always sustainable.
Proof: The cost of any item, in the end, is the energy required to make it. All the metal, plastic, glass, etc.. needed to make a Prius is just setting in the ground, free for the taking. The real cost of making it into a Prius is the cost of the energy required to dig it up, ship it to the foundry, refine it, ship it to the parts factory, form it, ship it to the car factory, assemble it, ship it to the lot, and sell it to you. All of the equipment and people involved in those processes are, again, the cost of the energy required to make and operate.
Just about ALL of that energy is fossil fuels. So how does it make sense to spend $22,000 (http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 51/45mpg, when you could spend $12,000 (http://www.toyota.com/yaris/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 29/35mpg? You are saving about 20mpg, or 12.5 cents per mile, for an expenditure of $10,000. You would have to drive 80,000 miles to make that worth doing. Given a 5 year average vehicle life, you would have to drive 16,000 miles per year or an average of 45 miles per day. So if your commute is less than ½ hour each way, a Prius actually HURTs our Mother more than it helps.
Of course, the numbers REALLY make a jump when you consider a USED car vs a NEW Prius. A 25mpg 2001 Camry for $10,000 with an average useful life of 20 years turns out to be a much more sustainable choice than a new Prius for that same 30 min commute.
http://www.truedelta.com/models/Camry.php
The REAL green people drive old cars and support their local mechanic until the repair bill exceeds the savings.
Actual sustainability = frugality over the long term.
If it costs more over its lifetime, it is NOT sustainable. So, when gas is at $2.50 a gallon, the Prius is NOT always sustainable.
Proof: The cost of any item, in the end, is the energy required to make it. All the metal, plastic, glass, etc.. needed to make a Prius is just setting in the ground, free for the taking. The real cost of making it into a Prius is the cost of the energy required to dig it up, ship it to the foundry, refine it, ship it to the parts factory, form it, ship it to the car factory, assemble it, ship it to the lot, and sell it to you. All of the equipment and people involved in those processes are, again, the cost of the energy required to make and operate.
Just about ALL of that energy is fossil fuels. So how does it make sense to spend $22,000 (http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 51/45mpg, when you could spend $12,000 (http://www.toyota.com/yaris/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 29/35mpg? You are saving about 20mpg, or 12.5 cents per mile, for an expenditure of $10,000. You would have to drive 80,000 miles to make that worth doing. Given a 5 year average vehicle life, you would have to drive 16,000 miles per year or an average of 45 miles per day. So if your commute is less than ½ hour each way, a Prius actually HURTs our Mother more than it helps.
Of course, the numbers REALLY make a jump when you consider a USED car vs a NEW Prius. A 25mpg 2001 Camry for $10,000 with an average useful life of 20 years turns out to be a much more sustainable choice than a new Prius for that same 30 min commute.
http://www.truedelta.com/models/Camry.php
The REAL green people drive old cars and support their local mechanic until the repair bill exceeds the savings.
2008/12/25
20% better MPG from an electro-magnet? Must be a joke, right?
In the "are you kidding me" department, we find this report of a simple device consisting of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car’s engine near the fuel injector. Using power from the vehicle’s battery, the device creates an electric field that thins the fuel, reducing its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion.
And who says so? Has to be a quack, a jerk, some backyard mechanic? Errr. no, actually, it's Temple University.
http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2008_2009/09/stories/taofueldevice.htm
"Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost"
"Temple has applied for a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc., an environmentally conscientious enterprise focused on the design, development, and commercialization of revolutionary technologies targeted at reducing emissions from internal combustion engines."
I believe the patent application is for number 20080190771 It seems to be for a device that uses the electric power from the battery to create a magnetic field around the fuel.
So do those con artists who sell the perminant magnet thing you put on the fuel line actually have something going on? Mythbusters, and many others, proved that they don't. So what gives?
The patent application says: "It has been surprisingly found that if the applied magnetic field is a short pulse, the induced dipolar interaction does not have enough time to affect particles at macroscopic distances apart, but forces nearby ones into small clusters. The assembled clusters are thus of limited size, for example of micrometer size. While the particle volume fraction remains the same, the average size of the "new particles" is increased. This may lead to the reduction in apparent viscosity because the value of the crowding factor k, is reduced. "
So it's a pulse, not a continuous application, that makes the difference.
Pulsing a magnetic coil with a specific, adjustable, duty cycle and pulse width is taylor made for microcontrollers like the PIC or MSP430, and pretty easy to do.
And who says so? Has to be a quack, a jerk, some backyard mechanic? Errr. no, actually, it's Temple University.
http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2008_2009/09/stories/taofueldevice.htm
"Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost"
"Temple has applied for a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc., an environmentally conscientious enterprise focused on the design, development, and commercialization of revolutionary technologies targeted at reducing emissions from internal combustion engines."
I believe the patent application is for number 20080190771 It seems to be for a device that uses the electric power from the battery to create a magnetic field around the fuel.
So do those con artists who sell the perminant magnet thing you put on the fuel line actually have something going on? Mythbusters, and many others, proved that they don't. So what gives?
The patent application says: "It has been surprisingly found that if the applied magnetic field is a short pulse, the induced dipolar interaction does not have enough time to affect particles at macroscopic distances apart, but forces nearby ones into small clusters. The assembled clusters are thus of limited size, for example of micrometer size. While the particle volume fraction remains the same, the average size of the "new particles" is increased. This may lead to the reduction in apparent viscosity because the value of the crowding factor k, is reduced. "
So it's a pulse, not a continuous application, that makes the difference.
Pulsing a magnetic coil with a specific, adjustable, duty cycle and pulse width is taylor made for microcontrollers like the PIC or MSP430, and pretty easy to do.
2008/09/26
Bail-out WHO?
So let me get this straight: The banks wrongly loaned money to people who purchased houses and could just barely make their house payment... When the economy sagged a bit (due to high fuel prices?) they suddenly couldn't make those mortgage payments and defaulted on their loans.
Now the banks are in trouble because so many people stoped paying their mortgage payments.
So... Gee Whiz... the solution is to forgive the bankers the bad debt and forget about the home owners.
Why not pay off part of the mortgage of those home owners so that they can continue to make their (now lower) payments and move back into those abandoned houses?
What I asked my representatives is this: "Why is welfare for people wrong, while welfare for the banking industry is right?"
2008/09/23
Imagine Sheeple without loans.
Imagine a country; a fine country with more than enough land for all it's people to have a place to live, more than enough sun for everyone to have electricity and more than enough water for everyone to grow all the food they would need to eat, if only they would work a few hours a day in their gardens.
But, imagine the people of this country are addicted to power. Cheap power. Lots of power.
The people work for those few who have the power, instead of working for themselves.
Imagine a very intelligent young woman who attended university and became very educated as well as very intelligent. Imagine that she found a way to make power for everyone, or rather that she invented a machine that would allow each person to make their own power.
She built a prototype, and wanted to start a company to build these machines, so that all the people could buy one, then stop working for the people who had the power and go back to their gardens for exercise and food, instead of health clubs and fast food restaurants.
To build so many machines, she would need money to build a factory; so she applied for a loan from a bank. But the banks in this country were all owned or regulated by the government. And the president of the government was working for the people who had the power. They had paid for him to come to power though something called an "election" in which the people pick who ever they see on TV the most. And he picked up his phone, and made a call, and set a policy, and the bank would not loan money for anyone working on alternative power.
It wasn't always like that. Once, the banks could decide for themselves to whom they would loan. But the bankers were also addicted to power, and they made foolish loans to people who could not really pay them back. Instead of letting the bankers pay the price for their mistake, the government took over the banks. They told the people that if the bankers were allowed to suffer, it would create a "financial crisis" and the people would suffer. Even though the vast majority of the people had next to no money in the bank, and only the richest people would really have lost anything, and even though all they would have lost was money, not food or land; still the people believed in the terrible "crisis". So the people, or the sheeple, allowed the government to take over the banks.
Before that, the sheeple had allowed the government to shut down a country that was a source of power, which had lowered the price of power^, because the government lied to the people, telling them that source was planning to make war on them with something called "weapons of mass destruction" which, it turned out, didn't really exist in that country. And even though some of the people realized the government was lying, when the "financial crisis" was announced, they didn't remember that their government was a government of liars, they just didn't want to face the crisis. They ran and hid and let the government take over the banks.
Stupid, stupid, sheeple.
Every year they worked harder for the power, which cost more and more every year, and the people with the power got richer and richer while the sheeple got poorer and poorer. The sheeple lost their homes, because even though the government told them it was O.K. to help the bankers, the government would not help the people keep their homes.
The sheeple could never see that they were surrounded by empty land, with water and sun and seeds and tools and enough power to work the land to make food and trees to make homes and knowledge and talent to learn and be entertained because they were blinded by power, too stupid to question thier government, and too frightened to make a stand.
But, imagine the people of this country are addicted to power. Cheap power. Lots of power.
The people work for those few who have the power, instead of working for themselves.
Imagine a very intelligent young woman who attended university and became very educated as well as very intelligent. Imagine that she found a way to make power for everyone, or rather that she invented a machine that would allow each person to make their own power.
She built a prototype, and wanted to start a company to build these machines, so that all the people could buy one, then stop working for the people who had the power and go back to their gardens for exercise and food, instead of health clubs and fast food restaurants.
To build so many machines, she would need money to build a factory; so she applied for a loan from a bank. But the banks in this country were all owned or regulated by the government. And the president of the government was working for the people who had the power. They had paid for him to come to power though something called an "election" in which the people pick who ever they see on TV the most. And he picked up his phone, and made a call, and set a policy, and the bank would not loan money for anyone working on alternative power.
It wasn't always like that. Once, the banks could decide for themselves to whom they would loan. But the bankers were also addicted to power, and they made foolish loans to people who could not really pay them back. Instead of letting the bankers pay the price for their mistake, the government took over the banks. They told the people that if the bankers were allowed to suffer, it would create a "financial crisis" and the people would suffer. Even though the vast majority of the people had next to no money in the bank, and only the richest people would really have lost anything, and even though all they would have lost was money, not food or land; still the people believed in the terrible "crisis". So the people, or the sheeple, allowed the government to take over the banks.
Before that, the sheeple had allowed the government to shut down a country that was a source of power, which had lowered the price of power^, because the government lied to the people, telling them that source was planning to make war on them with something called "weapons of mass destruction" which, it turned out, didn't really exist in that country. And even though some of the people realized the government was lying, when the "financial crisis" was announced, they didn't remember that their government was a government of liars, they just didn't want to face the crisis. They ran and hid and let the government take over the banks.
Stupid, stupid, sheeple.
Every year they worked harder for the power, which cost more and more every year, and the people with the power got richer and richer while the sheeple got poorer and poorer. The sheeple lost their homes, because even though the government told them it was O.K. to help the bankers, the government would not help the people keep their homes.
The sheeple could never see that they were surrounded by empty land, with water and sun and seeds and tools and enough power to work the land to make food and trees to make homes and knowledge and talent to learn and be entertained because they were blinded by power, too stupid to question thier government, and too frightened to make a stand.
2008/08/19
Buy a Prius, kill the earth?
The cost of anything, when you break it down and break that down and so on, turns out to be the total cost of the energy required to make it.
To make a Prius you need about $28,000 of energy. For example, the metal parts have to be machined (coal for electricity for the mill/lath/cnc and everything it takes to support the worker including fertilizer, pesticides and so on used to grow and transport his or her food) but first the metal must be transported (diesel) and before that smelted (electricity or NG) and before that the ore is hauled (diesel) and mined (diesel, etc...) and so on. The metal doesn't cost anything, it's just sitting in the ground as ore waiting for us to take it. ALL of the costs to make that metal part are the energy required to transform it from the base ore.
The point I'm trying to make is that the COST of the car is the ENERGY used to make the car.
We expect cars to last about 5 years. On the bleeding edge, one tends to bleed. Hybrid cars are not well tested, although they do seem to be holding up well in fleets and as rentals. Let's give it the benifit of the doubt: This thing is going to cost you $28000 / 5 (years) / 52 (weeks per year) / 7 (days per week) or about $15.38 per day no matter how much you drive it. That is how much oil, diesel, coal, fertilizer, pesticide, etc... you will consume with this car each day without driving it at all. If you drive it 40 miles a day (which is about the national average) then you will be spending 38 cents per mile, NOT including the gas.
At 47 to the gallon and gas at $4 (for now) that is $3.40 more or 8 and a half cents per mile. Add some regular maintenance, you are looking at about 49 or 50 cents or per mile.
That is the bottom line: A Prius costs you, and mother earth, about 50 cents per mile.
A Hummer, by the way, costs about a buck a mile.
My $10,500 used 2001 Camry, purchased in 2007, given that it has one of the highest reliability ratings in the world, will very probably last 4 years MORE or 10 years total. It has a proven track record. The mfgr warranty for most of the car is actually 8 years, for pity sake.
$10,500 / 5 (years I plan to own it) / 52 / 7 = $5.77 per day. It gets 23MPG (25 estimated, 23 actual) and I drive about 50 miles per day so add 2.18 gallons of gas at, say $4 dollars per gallon. That is $8.72 per day in gasoline for a daily total of $14.49. I have almost $5 a day more than you to put towards maintenance and repairs.
But that is with my crazy commute. In terms of cost per mile, I pay less than 12 cents a mile to own the car and less than 18 cents a mile to drive it at $4/gal. So that is 30 cents a mile!
If gas stays at $4 I save 20 cents a mile over you!
38 - 12 is 26 cents a mile allowance I have for gas more than you do just because of the base price of our cars. Gas would have to be around $6 a gallon to justify my purchasing a Prius.
At $6 a gallon, there are a LOT of sources for fossil fuels that start making economic sense and so will become available. Oil shale extraction in West Virginia, algae bio fuel, etc...
Maybe they will come out with a lower cost version of some of these hybrids in the next few years and all of this will change, but for now, driving an old beater is the most ecological thing any of us can do.
And then there is the crash test ratings...
P.S.
www.truedelta.com is a fantastic resource for reliability information. You can compare Prius reliability with Hummers for example.
To make a Prius you need about $28,000 of energy. For example, the metal parts have to be machined (coal for electricity for the mill/lath/cnc and everything it takes to support the worker including fertilizer, pesticides and so on used to grow and transport his or her food) but first the metal must be transported (diesel) and before that smelted (electricity or NG) and before that the ore is hauled (diesel) and mined (diesel, etc...) and so on. The metal doesn't cost anything, it's just sitting in the ground as ore waiting for us to take it. ALL of the costs to make that metal part are the energy required to transform it from the base ore.
The point I'm trying to make is that the COST of the car is the ENERGY used to make the car.
We expect cars to last about 5 years. On the bleeding edge, one tends to bleed. Hybrid cars are not well tested, although they do seem to be holding up well in fleets and as rentals. Let's give it the benifit of the doubt: This thing is going to cost you $28000 / 5 (years) / 52 (weeks per year) / 7 (days per week) or about $15.38 per day no matter how much you drive it. That is how much oil, diesel, coal, fertilizer, pesticide, etc... you will consume with this car each day without driving it at all. If you drive it 40 miles a day (which is about the national average) then you will be spending 38 cents per mile, NOT including the gas.
At 47 to the gallon and gas at $4 (for now) that is $3.40 more or 8 and a half cents per mile. Add some regular maintenance, you are looking at about 49 or 50 cents or per mile.
That is the bottom line: A Prius costs you, and mother earth, about 50 cents per mile.
A Hummer, by the way, costs about a buck a mile.
My $10,500 used 2001 Camry, purchased in 2007, given that it has one of the highest reliability ratings in the world, will very probably last 4 years MORE or 10 years total. It has a proven track record. The mfgr warranty for most of the car is actually 8 years, for pity sake.
$10,500 / 5 (years I plan to own it) / 52 / 7 = $5.77 per day. It gets 23MPG (25 estimated, 23 actual) and I drive about 50 miles per day so add 2.18 gallons of gas at, say $4 dollars per gallon. That is $8.72 per day in gasoline for a daily total of $14.49. I have almost $5 a day more than you to put towards maintenance and repairs.
But that is with my crazy commute. In terms of cost per mile, I pay less than 12 cents a mile to own the car and less than 18 cents a mile to drive it at $4/gal. So that is 30 cents a mile!
If gas stays at $4 I save 20 cents a mile over you!
38 - 12 is 26 cents a mile allowance I have for gas more than you do just because of the base price of our cars. Gas would have to be around $6 a gallon to justify my purchasing a Prius.
At $6 a gallon, there are a LOT of sources for fossil fuels that start making economic sense and so will become available. Oil shale extraction in West Virginia, algae bio fuel, etc...
Maybe they will come out with a lower cost version of some of these hybrids in the next few years and all of this will change, but for now, driving an old beater is the most ecological thing any of us can do.
And then there is the crash test ratings...
P.S.
www.truedelta.com is a fantastic resource for reliability information. You can compare Prius reliability with Hummers for example.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
