So how much more are you willing to pay to get away from gasoline?

[Freakshow]

There are two major benefits to having cars that don't run on gasoline:

1: Better for the environment
2: Less dependence on foreign oil

But...what if it is more expensive? We've seen how people are getting upset at a relatively minor increase in gas prices. By "relatively minor" I am referring to the increase as measured in cents per mile, not in percentage of price per gallon.

What if in the not-too-distant future, we came up with some miraculous means of powering I cars, that did not use any type of fossil fuel at all...but it was expensive? Again, I'm measuring in price per mile, since without using fossil fuel price per gallon becomes meaningless. What if it is 50% more expensive? Twice? 3 to 5 times? 5 to 10 times?

Based on the stress caused over recent gas prices increases, I'm not sure that we would be successful with any method that made any increase at all in how much it costs to drive.

Any thoughts on this? Do you think I am wrong in my prediction of how people would react? And if I am right, should the government do something to subsidize it, so that it is no more expensive that driving a gas powered car? But where would that money come from? It would just be taking taxes from one part of the economy and putting into another one.

I'm not confident that people would switch if it was more expensive. Unless they were forced to. And I'm not sure that would be politically feasible.

[Mycroft]

On Spike TV a few weeks back I watched this car/mechanic show that, among other things, showed how to make bio-diesel fuel from used cooking oil you can get for free from most restraunts. You can buy these kits and set them up in your garage, then the fuel itself can be made for less than a buck a gallon.

Not that it's practical for everyone to do this. We would soon run out of restraunts.

The thing is you really need to look at the total costs of transportation. Once your figure the cost of the vehicle, the financing, insurance, repairs and so on, then the price of fuel isn't that much even now when the price has gone up so steeply.

Would I pay more for a different type of fues? Sure, because I understand that a more expensive fuel source doesn't necessarily result in more expensive transportation.

Now once you add in the factor of not sending money to Saudi Arabia, then I'd pay more yet.

[clarsct]

How about something solid, like Ethanol.

Would you pay more in taxes to subsidize E85 if it meant less dependance on foreign oil?

Would you be ok with driving up the price of corn and, thereby, goods produced with corn, if it meant we could live on our own resources?

I think this is one direction Freak was going, but he wanted to keep it general. I think maybe a specific might help people 'latch on'.....He is free to correct me if I am wrong...

So, What do you think?

[Mycroft]

I seem to remember an old article from Wired about a new process to produce fuel from garbage. I'll see if I can track it down.

[Ed]

A fair amount. I suspect that my next car will be a hybrid. Perhaps this latest elaboration of our ongoing crisis will get people to do what the goat fornicators refuse to encourage.

[Freakshow]

Originally posted by clarsct
How about something solid, like Ethanol.

Would you pay more in taxes to subsidize E85 if it meant less dependance on foreign oil?

Would you be ok with driving up the price of corn and, thereby, goods produced with corn, if it meant we could live on our own resources?

I think this is one direction Freak was going, but he wanted to keep it general. I think maybe a specific might help people 'latch on'.....He is free to correct me if I am wrong...

So, What do you think?

Not exactly... :)

For the purpose of the question I asked, it doesn't matter what is replacing gasoline. It can be magic pixie dust. The point is just to suppose (for the purposes of this discussion) that it is going to be more expensive, in cents per mile, than what we have now. Is this acceptable to people?

I am very willing to pay more to drive around, if I could have a car that doesn't use oil based fuel, and still looks and performs well. But I also am someone who just shrugs off the recent increase in gas prices, and don't really pay that much attention to it. Others in this country have been going berzerk over the increase.


If they are going that crazy over the increases this year (which of course have gotten much worse over the past week), are they going to be willing to pay double, triple, or more than their current money/mile, to have no polution and no dependence on foreign oil?

Because if the American public is not willing to do that, I am concerned with our ability to move away from using gasoline to power our cars. This puts an additional engineering requirement on research and development of cars powered by alternative energy sources: It must be equal or less in money/mile than the average current gasoline power car. That might turn out to be a very restrictive engineering requirement. If so, what are we going to do to work around it? I see 3 possibilities:

1: Government subsidies.
Problem: Is still taking the same amount of money from the public. It is just going to rob Peter to pay Paul, as they say.
2: Outlawing gasoline powered cars, and forcing people to adopt the new cars, and just suck it up and pay more.
Problem: This will never be acceptable to the public.
3: Lengthy delays in the development and production of alternative energy source cars, to meet the "equal or less in money/mile" engineering requirement.
Problem: This could mean that we see these cars hitting the streets many years later than they could have, while researchers are creating solutions to meet this requirement.

Am I missing any possibilities?

Edited to add: I realize a fourth possiblity is that the engineering requirement is easy to meet, so the whole point is moot. That would be fabulous. But for this discussion, let's assume that turns out to not be the case.

[SlippyToad]

Originally posted by Ed
A fair amount. I suspect that my next car will be a hybrid. Perhaps this latest elaboration of our ongoing crisis will get people to do what the goat fornicators refuse to encourage. Actually what we need is not so much a hybrid, as a mixed-fuel hybrid car. Something that can be powered by multiple fuels depending on availability. I am not by any stretch an experienced engineer of mechanical things, but logic and my dealings with the physical world tells me that probably the reason we can't just pour any old thing into our tank is that the efficiency of the burn is different for different things. I imagine variable timings or parts that can be shifted to different lengths to accomodate different levels of force would be required -- computers being as powerful and tiny as they are these days could process the equations to tune performance based on what fuel was present at the moment.

I was driving through South Dakota earlier this year and saw quite a bit of ethanol gas at the pump. The 10% ethanol would run in any car, and was on average 20-30 cents cheaper. The 85% ethanol cost around fifty to sixty cents less, and required a specially-tuned or modified engine, which is how I got to thinking about this in the first place.

There are those who have claimed ethanol is not worth its cost in energy to get out, but I believe a more efficient agricultural harvesting process would fix that. There is also sugar-based ethanol, which I understand (don't have links but I'm sure they can be found) is more efficient than corn-based, very popular in South America, and not popular here due to some pissing contest between our agribusiness and theirs. And not to mention the other alternatives here -- such as the waste-based fuels. I read an article about a plant coming online earlier this year that used the waste from restraunt food (chicken bones, scraps, etcetera) and was able to generate petroleum-like oil at an effective per-unit cost in both money and energy.

We have got to break up the monopoly oil companies have. The social and economic lurching and staggering of the last 35 years has almost all been due to energy issues. Almost every recession we've seen has been due to a supply shock in the oil or energy industry (even the ones that were manufactured by Enron). This is too important to leave in any one entity's hands, and very strict laws with incredibly harsh penalties need to be forged -- once we have diversified our energy supply chains -- to keep these people from cooperating with each other in any way.

[luchog]

Originally posted by SlippyToad
Actually what we need is not so much a hybrid, as a mixed-fuel hybrid car.
(...)
We have got to break up the monopoly oil companies have.
The former is not necessary for the latter. Nor is it necessary to pay significantly more for fuel; either for transportation or electricity generation. (And ethanol is a dead technology at this point, since it's more expensive and less efficient than the alternatives.) A switch to cheaper, cleaner, alternate fuel for transportation is possible even without retooling significantly; or even at all. This will cover some electricity generating needs as well. And there is a good alternative to current fossil-fuel-based electricity generation that would require some substantial investment; but which would pay for itself fairly quickly.

Biodiesel (http://www.biodiesel.org)
Thermal Depolymerization petrol (http://www.changingworldtech.com/)
Pebble-bed Nuclear Reactor (http://www.eskom.co.za/nuclear_energy/pebble_bed/pebble_bed.html)

All of these are proven technologies; and are currently being utilized in small-scale commercial applications.

[drkitten]

Originally posted by Freakshow

For the purpose of the question I asked, it doesn't matter what is replacing gasoline. It can be magic pixie dust. The point is just to suppose (for the purposes of this discussion) that it is going to be more expensive, in cents per mile, than what we have now. Is this acceptable to people?

If they are going that crazy over the increases this year (which of course have gotten much worse over the past week), are they going to be willing to pay double, triple, or more than their current money/mile, to have no polution and no dependence on foreign oil?

Because if the American public is not willing to do that, I am concerned with our ability to move away from using gasoline to power our cars.

Almost certainly not, and there is no reason why one should (move away from using gasoline to power cars).

Most of the gasoline used by the United States is not used for personal transportation, but by the transportation infrastructure; those lovely tomatoes, limes, and tomatillos you use to make salsa for your Labor Day feasts probably didn't grow locally. Any transport company that went with a different transport fuel that was more expensive than gasoline would have to raise prices, which means that its customers would use other methods.

[varwoche]

We have no complaints about our hybrid (nothing like a Toyota). 50+ mpg plus a display that makes it fun -- sorta like a video game.

Bio-diesel can be used in any(?) diesel car without modification. The problem is availability and price to a decreasing extent. (High altitude is also a problem.)

[aerocontrols]

Originally posted by varwoche
Bio-diesel can be used in any(?) diesel car without modification. The problem is availability and price to a decreasing extent. (High altitude is also a problem.)

The products that are known as bio-diesel are varied.

If you want to burn used oil from a restaurant, you need to add a kit to your car.

[WildCat]

Originally posted by clarsct
How about something solid, like Ethanol.
Currently, production of ethanol uses more gasoline than it provides. It increases foreign fuel dependence.

[Luciana]

The Brazilian government helped develop, and later subsidized sugarcane production for alcohol fuel in the 1980s. Back then, almost 90% of our cars ran on alcohol. The demand increased out of control, and so much, that a major drought provoked shortage all around. The lines of cars on gas stations ran for blocks and blocks, and that is how people lost trust in this kind of fuel. It pretty much died in the 1990s, with no alcohol fuel car being produced.

I was small and traveling with my parents and grandparents when the shortage started. At some point we were in a road, and the fuel we had most likely would not be enough to reach the big town. My grandfather went into a liquor store and bought two gallons of the cheapest wine on the planet. He poured that into the tank and voila! We went back to the road, slowly, a kind of jerky ride, but we got there. Later he spent a lot of money having his engine cleaned to get rid of the wine!

Alcohol (ethanol) is now making a come back, even though Brazil produces 98% of its oil internally.

For the past two or three years "flex fuel" cars are being sold. They run on gasoline only, alcohol only or any combination of the two, and the detection is automatic. Currently, alcohol is 30% cheaper than gas, but the proportion shall increase as the international price of gas goes up. There are projects being developed for "tetra fuel" cars, that would run on gas, alcohol, natural gas or diesel.

If I were to buy a car today, I'd choose a flex fuel, that's for sure, as I've been hearing many good things about it. Nowadays, 7 in every 10 cars sold in Brazil are the flex fuel kind. I have read interviews with CEOs from GM and Fiat speaking nothing but good things about the technology. I know Citroen and Honda are producing those cars also in their Brazilian factory. There must be other factories, if not all, going down that path.

It is not correct to compare the price of one liter of alcohol to that of gas because alcohol runs less kilometers on a liter. So you must compares kilometers. That also means you have fill up your tank with alcohol more often, but in Brazil all gas stations carry alcohol, so that's less of a problem.

Even with alcohol fuel, you still need a tiny amount of gasoline so the car will start. In the past, alcohol did not go well with cold climate, so people would have hairdryers in their garage to heat up a certain part (I don't remember which, I was a kid). Technology has fortunately taken care of that.