Electric cars are a pipe dream

[X-Man2]

Electric bicycles are in every city and regardless of any laws (other than maybe speed) they regularly use bike paths and streets.They are never bothered with by the law.

I ride a bike most of the year which has a push trailer with gas engine.I am illegal due to the 6.5 hp engine BUT I have never been messed with by the cops.They even wave to me or give me a thumbs up.

I really wish we in the US were more like the Netherlands and used bicycles on a much greater scale.I'm afraid we are lazy though.

http://vimeo.com/38043563

 

[Billy T]

And note they won't be CNG cars.

That is surely true now and thru 2016, but as I predicted by 2022, half may be.* I also suspect that either a gas fuel, like CNG of some higher (than one) carbon molecule fuel will be make from natural gas by then to lower confinement pressure yet increase the energy stored. Gasoline has ~8 carbons in each molecule so has a high energy per molecule. Even ethane (C2H6) is significantly greater energy per molecule than methane (CH4) and lower vapor pressure. In the gas state, the pressure directly increases with temperature and the number of molecules / cc, but what those molecules are makes no difference - but that can sure boost the energy stored.

I´m not a chemist but think it is easy to make ethane from methane (and part of natural gas is ethane already) I suspect it may be transformed at high pressure as that favors making two molecules into one, but don´t know if the two "un needed in Ethane" hydrogens make H2 or are removed some way. Perhaps H2 does form but is constantly "leaked" out of the reaction chamber thru warm palladium port so you have: CH4 + CH4 --> C2H6 with escaping H2 that could be easily collected and sold. (H2 passes thru a warm palladium wall almost as if it were not there and is one way to get very pure H2 cheaply. I am not sure, but it may go thru as atomic hydrogen and then become H2 when leaving.)

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* China has huge reserves of shale methane too not yet fully defined but probably more than the US does - Why China has bought some companies with horizontal drilling technology. The cheapest NG is in Argintina and much of it comes from simple wells as it has for decades. They have the world´s largest known NG reserves. Why more than 2 million cars & small trucks run on NG in Argintina.

 

[adoucette]

And I predict you are wrong.


As to Argentina

Argentina has become a net importer of gas.

It has a contract with Bolivia to import 7 million cubic meters of natural gas a day, with that amount scheduled to increase to 11 million cubic meters next year. Liquefied natural gas is also brought in from Trinidad & Tobago.

Even so, supplies are so tight that in the coldest periods of the southern hemisphere winter, usually July, the government is forced to cut gas to industry to satisfy residential demand.

http://naturalgasforamerica.com/argentina-natural-gas-domestic-needs.htm

 

[adoucette]

Electric bicycles are in every city and regardless of any laws (other than maybe speed) they regularly use bike paths and streets.They are never bothered with by the law.

Not true.
They are not allowed on the bike paths where I live, regardless of top speed.
You might get away with them where you are, but like I pointed out, if you cause an injury and it turns out your bike is illegal you are potentially in for some serious punishment.

I ride a bike most of the year which has a push trailer with gas engine.I am illegal due to the 6.5 hp engine BUT I have never been messed with by the cops.They even wave to me or give me a thumbs up.

You think they will still give you a thumbs up when you run over a kid?

I really wish we in the US were more like the Netherlands and used bicycles on a much greater scale.I'm afraid we are lazy though.

http://vimeo.com/38043563

It's not a question of being lazy.

Cities that are bike friendly over here have plenty of bike riders, but most cities simply aren't. The key to that (and by far most of the bikes in that video were pedaled, not motorized), is that they have either excluded cars or created a set of traffic lanes just for the bikes and the bikes don't have to mix it up with cars.

 

[spidergoat]

And it used to be illegal for whites to marry a black person. Someone has to be on the vanguard of alternative transportation. If that makes you a martyr, so be it.

 

[adoucette]

And it used to be illegal for whites to marry a black person. Someone has to be on the vanguard of alternative transportation. If that makes you a martyr, so be it.

Not at all the same thing.

Killing or seriously injuring a young kid riding on a bike path with your 300 lb, 25 mile per hour electric motorbike doesn't make YOU the martyr.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGO3bt6YPKo&feature=endscreen&NR=1

 

[spidergoat]

The batteries and motor don't add more than someone might reasonably carry in a bag anyway, so I don't see the difference as long as you exercise the same caution you would on a regular bike. Anyway, I ride on the street because bike paths are for kids, middle aged moms, and the elderly.

 

[billvon]

Killing or seriously injuring a young kid riding on a bike path with your 300 lb, 25 mile per hour electric motorbike doesn't make YOU the martyr.

True. And killing a young kid riding his bike with your low visibility 2000 lb speeding car might just get you prison time.

 

[adoucette]

True. And killing a young kid riding his bike with your low visibility 2000 lb speeding car might just get you prison time.

I don't speed, so no, not if I'm obeying the law.

If you are using a motorized bike that can go over 20 mph, you are breaking the law.

BIG DIFFERENCE

 

[Billy T]

... As to Argentina
http://naturalgasforamerica.com/argentina-natural-gas-domestic-needs.htm

(Tells Argentina, now imports gas from Bolivia in the winter):

"Argentina’s proven natural gas reserves fell 51% to 13.3 trillion cubic feet between 2000 and 2009 because of rapid economic growth and government price caps that have spurred demand while providing little incentive to search for more gas. As a result, Argentina has become a net importer of gas. ..." From Adoucette´s link at http://naturalgasforamerica.com/argentina-natural-gas-domestic-needs.htm

Yes the Argentine government has proven several times it can so strongly interfer with the market place that it really messes up it natural gifts.

For example, last summer (or the one before?) in effort to reduce price of food, government prohibited export of food (assuming that if the higher profits from export were removed, the farmers would be forced to sell domestically more cheaply). That angured farmers so much that they burned their fields instead of harvest them at a loss causing sever food shortage.

Thus I am not the least surprised to learn that the country with the world´s greatest supply of cheap to produce NG needs to import NG in winter.

 

[spidergoat]

And yet somehow if we invade nations killing thousands due to our dependence on oil, that's not illegal.

Odd.

 

[adoucette]

And it's not odd because we have never done so.

 

[spidergoat]

Iraq.

 

[Billy T]

And it's not odd because we have never done so.

No? What story do you believe is why US, lead by ex-oil men, invaded Iraq twice? Public was even promissed that the cost of the war would more than be paid for from the sale of the oil.

Or a few decades ago, installed the Shaw Of Iran,* in power, even over throwing the elected government that wanted a fair price for its oil.

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* Taken straight from his French villa to the CIA´s waiting plane. The Shaw is one of the few CIA installed dictators who was smart enough to always do as he was told. Never became independant and defiant like most do. So when he was old and sick the CIA took good care of him in best hospitals in Egypt.

 

[spidergoat]

Or if we allow repressive regimes like the Saudi's Arabia to continue with relative impunity because we need their oil? There are more costs to oil than the price at the pump.

 

[billvon]

I don't speed, so no, not if I'm obeying the law.

Same goes for motorized bicycles. Cool eh?

 

[adoucette]

Iraq.

Nope

The Iraqis were partnering with the International oil companies and were selling oil before the war.
The Iraqis were partnering with the same International oil companies and were selling oil after the war.

Most of the same companies, though China did better.

We didn't take their oil or their oil fields.

 

[adoucette]

Same goes for motorized bicycles. Cool eh?

Nope.

The law states that they are not bikes if they have certain size motor or CAN go over 20 mph on level ground.

So if your are on a bike path using one of these and you run into someone doing 19 mph, it doesn't matter, it's still an illegal vehicle and just by riding it on the bike path you are breaking the law.

Which means if you seriously injure someone you could indeed be in serious trouble.

 

[spidergoat]

Nope

The Iraqis were partnering with the International oil companies and were selling oil before the war.
The Iraqis were partnering with the same International oil companies and were selling oil after the war.

Most of the same companies, though China did better.

We didn't take their oil or their oil fields.

I realize that, but oil is what made Saddam Hussein such a threat. If he didn't have oil wealth, he couldn't have been such a troublemaker.

 

[Carcano]

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/201...-lithium-ion-battery-cost-and-energy-density/


"Envia Systems, a battery maker based in California, announced on Monday what it called a “major breakthrough” in lithium-ion cell technology that would result in a significant increase in the energy density — and a sharp reduction in the cost — of lithium-ion battery packs. Envia is financed by the Energy Department and G.M. Ventures, the venture-capital arm of General Motors, as well as other investors.


“We will be able to make smaller automotive packs that are also less heavy and much cheaper,” Atul Kapadia, chairman and chief executive of Envia, said in a telephone interview. “The cost of cells will be less than half — perhaps 45 percent — of cells today, and the energy density will be almost three times greater than conventional automotive cells.”

Mr. Kapadia continued: “What we have are not demonstrations, not experiments, but actual products. We could be in automotive production in a year and a half.”

Envia, which was founded in 2007 and has licensed some technology from Argonne National Laboratory, was awarded $4 million in late 2009 by the Energy Department’s ARPA-E program, which finances advanced energy research. As a founding principle, the program was designed “to develop lithium-ion batteries with the highest energy density in the world.”