Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

SpaceNut · 2022-03-16 20:23:52

Diesel vehicles are generally more fuel-efficient than gasoline cars due to thicker density, low rpm performance, and higher compression ratio. As mentioned before, Diesel is 20% more efficient than gasoline.
Diesel-powered cars accounted for about 3 percent of total auto sales in the United States, which is considerably lower than 50 percent in Europe
If a consumer leases a vehicle the fuel savings of diesel engines are not worth the upfront costs.
Hybrids are selling at more than three times the rate of diesel engines in America and cost at least $6,500 or more than gas powered engines.

Savings for diesel use would be not very good for the US....

clark · 2022-03-17 01:39:53

I don't care if our government hands out "gold stars" or other participation trophies for electronics, anti-lock brakes, seat belts, or crash testing, but it shouldn't have the power to make them mandatory to sell a car. Government can suggest that we don't use Lead paint, wear seat belts, not smoke, not drink, not abuse drugs, etc. When they start mandating contrivances, that's when the problem arises. I want to remove all the warning labels, all the ridiculous artificial controls over every aspect of society intended to shield the overgrown children masquerading as adults from their poor decision making, and then let nature take over.
The real physical world always has been and always will be dangerous to all mortal beings who don't live inside a rubber room with a totally benevolent overseer. Whether you never leave your rubber room or swing from a trapeze until you have a heart attack at age 100, the end result is that you die. On one end of the spectrum, you're sheltered from every imaginable threat, while on the other end you have to learn from your mistakes and become resilient, or you're not long for this world. In the not-so-distant past, those who wanted to survive had to have some base level of awareness that the world can be a dangerous place, and that they shouldn't do things that increased their chances of getting killed, or accept the consequences if they did.
No one is suggesting that you can't live and die inside a rubber room if that's what you truly want, merely that many of us aren't inclined to join you there.

Because a DUI law at the federal level hasn't resulted in fewer deaths. Because seat belt laws hasn't resulted in fewer fatalities. Because requirements on airbag safety hasn't resulted in fewer mortalities.

Rear cameras shouldn't be required, because fu*kit, you should see the little assh*le running in front of your car. That's on you.

Kbd, this isn't the fight you should make. I get it, we dont need an overreach of government, But there is a god damn place for it. If you think otherwise, then you are just one more reactionary who stopped thinking, which is sad.

kbd512 · 2022-03-18 09:28:13

clark,

At a fundamental level, laws have never prevented any deaths. Everyone you think was protected by some law merely died in some other manner. You seem to believe that certain deaths are better than others, and although even I would say you have a point there, only to a point. Problems caused by the human condition, better known as "making mistakes" (aka, "imperfection"), will never be "legislated away". What you really want without plainly stating it, is morality. Unfortunately, government consists almost entirely of the very last group of people on this planet that you would ever want dictating morality unto others. If you think that's not true or not germane to your point, then you must explain slavery or genocide or nuclear weapons to me, because in modern times those activities are the exclusive domain of governments. You're painting yourself into a corner, ideologically and philosophically. You want diametrically-opposed concepts to coexist with each other. We both know that will never happen. That begs the question of what we're actually accomplishing.

As previously stated, I don't care if car manufacturers include additional features with their products, air bags / anti-lock brakes / seat belts / back-up camera / etc. A consumer should be able to choose the features he or she wants included, which is normally a function of their ability to pay. All cars that I drive have working seat belts. If they don't have them due to age, then they can be retrofitted. If you have a working 5-point harness, then an airbag is superfluous, because your head will never make contact with the steering column.

When it comes to responsibility for operating your vehicle without hitting anyone or anything, yes, that is always and forever on you. Tesla owners who use the "auto-pilot" feature are no less responsible for crashes merely because they're not paying attention to what the onboard computer is doing on their behalf. A motor vehicle requires constant attentiveness during operation. A computer program does not constitute an acceptable replacement for a skilled and attentive driver. More importantly, you will never get better driving behavior from motorists by asserting that some government-mandated vehicle feature will protect them from lack of skill or poor decision making.

You directly contradict yourself in the same sentence when you state that "We don't want government overreach, but there's a place for it." You clearly accept forms of government overreach that you agree with, whereas I do not. The government is not your mommy or daddy, because adults are not children and should not be treated as such. All free and prosperous societies must value personal responsibility and morality. All morality can be encapsulated in the phrase, "Do unto others as you would want done unto you." If you don't want one person's version of morality imposed on you, then stop trying to do the same thing to them. Government will never be your savior, either. Government's job is not to "save you" from your own poor decision making, merely to protect the rest of the populace from those decisions to the extent that it can, which is to say after someone demonstrates poor decision making, then government can decide to restrict your ability to harm others in so doing. Alternatively, it may choose to do nothing at all.

So long as you have all the privileges of an adult, you must have all the responsibilities of an adult, or the society you live in will never be free and prosperous. It may and probably will become a dictatorship to your liking, for a time, but all dictatorships eventually become grotesquely immoral and destructive to everyone. That is the wisdom of the ages, though few are truly wise enough to accept that indisputable historical fact. There is nothing "reactionary" about that, because it's always been that way and always will be as long as humans are involved.

SpaceNut · 2022-03-18 18:06:37

The cost of fuel tonight is $4.11 regular gas.

During the introduction of these safety device some people have been saved by not using them and equally some have died due to using them.
On the flip side safety windshield glass seems to have been a winner.

kbd512 · 2022-03-18 23:17:11

SpaceNut,

The additional features of modern automobiles can be helpful to have in a crash, but they should never be used as an artificial barrier to entry to prevent better designs from being offered as potential solutions. Race cars don't have tempered glass, air bags, power steering, power brakes, etc, yet the drivers routinely walk away from wrecks that would be immediately fatal in any NHTSA-certified passenger car with all of its supposed "safety features". The major automakers convince legislators to mandate their "safety gadgets", whereas NHRA mandates the use of real crash impact mitigating features that result in pretty much everyone walking away from wrecks that would never be survivable in any passenger car that NHTSA certifies for highway use.

All of that should make a thinking person ask what the actual reason for having those NHTSA-approved features happens to be.

It's not about crash protection, because we already know how to do that and it involves the fabrication of welded steel tubing chassis. There are no race cars permitted to be fabricated from sheet metal. None. The most crashworthy aircraft, agricultural aircraft, are exclusively made from steel tubing. One of the literal handful of airframes with zero airframe-related Airworthiness Directives issued by the FAA is also made from steel tubing. The assembly process would be vastly cheaper and more efficient if robotic tube cutting and welding cells were used to assemble them, much the same as a molded plastic chassis.

We're still using sheet metal because stamping and welding are what all major auto makers, to include Tesla, have sunk cost into. While that part of the chassis may be optimized for cost, the cost of everything else goes up drastically, because a voluminous and sufficiently strong steel or Aluminum semi-monocoque is so heavy relative to other options. Some light aircraft still use Aluminum semi-monocoque because while riveting together small pieces of sheet metal is laborious, it does not require much skill- nearly anyone can master riveting after a few hours of practice. To my knowledge, no car chassis have been riveted together since about the 1930s or so because welding was so much faster. The practice continued in aircraft construction because labor cost was less of a concern than how light the airframe could be made using an intricate puzzle of lighter but more costly Aluminum sheet metal and forgings. Aircraft always have been and always will be more expensive than other types of passenger vehicles due to fabrication labor costs.

Anyway...

It's not about mitigating crash injuries, because we did that by imposing a national 55mph speed limit. Speed kills and everybody knows it. The fact that the speed limit was not enforced and nearly everybody violated it was why fuel economy and crash stats didn't improve more than they did, but that was the actual solution. As speed increases, the power requirement associated with aerodynamic drag dominates. The seemingly minor difference between 55mph and 75mph nearly doubles the power requirement to overcome drag and maintain that speed.

It's clearly about something else. The only thing that actually makes any sense is driving up the cost to the car buying public while giving the appearance of improving crash protection and fuel economy. Power has increased drastically from smaller engines, yet total fuel consumption between the 1950s and 2020s, per mile driven, hasn't improved one iota, except on paper, although for two different reasons (relative inefficiency vs drastically increased power output). That is the most probable reason why we don't all drive more practical and maintainable cars, whether powered by batteries or fuel cells or gasoline or diesel. Basically, they've priced their potential customers out of the market by intentionally making vehicles very costly to make, virtually impossible to repair, and ever-more costly to produce in terms of energy investment per unit, as well as increasingly difficult to recycle when the vehicle inevitably is no longer economically repairable.

I'm not the only person thinking this sort of stuff, either. This guy is from Europe and he's asking some of the same questions:

Ep. 20 The Malaise Era Part IV: The Aftermath of the American Automotive Industry

Calliban · 2022-03-22 18:20:43

Expenditure on energy reaches 13% of GDP in the first few months of 2020. This is the highest level since 1980.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News … -2022.html

A clear sign of shrinking surplus energy.

kbd512 · 2022-03-22 18:32:40

Calliban,

If you deliberately let a harvest rot in the field rather than sell it on the open market, is that actually a sign that there's not enough food to go around, or that perhaps some other perverse incentives are involved?

SpaceNut · 2022-03-22 19:38:08

I remember the 55 crap for vehicles that were not designed for the slower speed on highways designed for 80 as it did not give better mileage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ … _Speed_Law

Highway Safety analysts wrote three papers that argue that increase from 55 to 65 mph (89 to 105 km/h) on rural roads led to a 25% to 30% increase in deaths

Highways are not rural roads and are the back roads that connect towns and cities in residential areas at a typical speed of 35 to 40 most of the time and not fast as the roads have no breakdown lane let along much of a shoulder.

The bottle necks got more cars on the road in a moving parking lot formation burning even more gas not less. The slower speed meant that more vehicles were on the road to bring the same levels of goods

kbd512 · 2022-03-22 22:38:26

SpaceNut,

If the car was not geared correctly, then it's possible to get worse fuel economy because the engine is spinning faster than necessary. I've seen very few vehicles higher in the rev range at 55mph than 70mph, though. Generally speaking, lower rpm also means lower fuel consumption. The issue you get at very low speeds or rpm range is the pumping losses created when your engine is effectively trying to suck concrete through a soda straw, which in turn is overcome by consuming more fuel (running richer) just to keep the rotating assembly spinning.

Other than that, there were also a great many liars who were actually speeding, and that's why their fuel economy was worse. 2/3rds of all honest drivers surveyed said they didn't drive the speed limit, and the rest were probably either unaware that they weren't or lying. Your Prius will turn in better fuel economy numbers at 55mph than 70mph. That's already been tested six ways to Sunday. It's hard fact, not conjecture. On that note, you already told on yourself in a previous post. You have a heavy right foot. A Prius is not a drag racing machine and won't turn in drag racing acceleration times or good fuel economy if you lay into the gas pedal. That's fine, though, because it was never intended for drag racing use. It's meant to be highly efficient and reasonably comfortable, and that's what it was/is when operated as intended and maintained in good condition.

People who have equipped a Prius with lawn mower engines and stripped out all the heavy and unnecessary crap have turned in excellent fuel economy numbers without ridiculously complicated drive trains. Excessive weight kills performance and fuel economy at the same time. The traditional answer to that problem was to put a bigger engine in the vehicle, rather than accept that cars are supposed to be simple, durable, economical personal transportation, subjecting the operator and other occupants to great risk if not operated in a prudent manner. Excessive speed always kills fuel economy, whether your fuel source is gasoline or diesel or electrons.

My Charger has a 193hp 2.7L V6 with a 6,500rpm red line, I think. It's exceptionally rare for me to rev past 3,000rpm (almost exclusively on the highway for passing or accelerating up a rather steep hill to maintain speed), and most of the time it stays between 1,000rpm and 2,500rpm. If it wasn't for the other drivers on the road with me who are constantly slamming on the gas and then slamming on their brakes, I'd never use more than 75hp of my 200hp, and I'm riding in a 3,727 pound car! I find the acceleration from 2,500rpm perfectly acceptable for nearly all uses. I'd wager that Honda's 205hp 1.5L L15B7 turbocharged gasoline engine would achieve 40mpg on the highway in my Charger by virtue of not driving like I have a fire to go to.

SpaceNut · 2022-03-23 19:10:06

You hit on the items that the auto manufacturers are not caring anything about for sure and why changing the speeds will do nothing.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-04-05 06:56:08

Slovakia will purchase gas in rubles if necessary, minister says

https://spectator.sme.sk/c/22877088/slo … -says.html

SpaceNut · 2022-04-05 20:47:20

Have been testing the Prius fuel mileage under acceleration and its down near 12 miles per gallon which means you need to get it up to speed quickly as the longer you are under acceleration the more fuel is wasted. I also noticed that the automatic transmission is not shifting up at the transition point until you let up on the acceleration.

Only good thing is the gas prices has gone under the $4 mark and has been there for easily a week so far.

kbd512 · 2022-04-06 00:38:08

SpaceNut,

Look at this graph from US EPA:

Notice the dramatic effect caused by reducing weight and horsepower in the 1970s. A 25% decrease in both vehicle weight and engine power output yielded very near to a 75% improvement in fuel economy. It's astonishing how much fuel economy increased by reducing weight and engine power output. The computer engine control advancements over the past 20 years are truly remarkable, but the only night-and-day fuel economy increase came from reducing weight and horsepower to something more appropriate for normal driving.

Since all modern cars are essentially designed to be disposable appliances, they may as well be built like disposable appliances to control costs. There's no engineering reason why we can't have 50mpg cars, but they can't weigh as much as they presently do in order to achieve that goal. Steel is great, but it can't be the primary material that the car is constructed from unless it's built like a race car. We already have the technology to do this, but there's no clear incentive to use it because the automotive manufacturers are no longer in business to stay in business. The fixation on next quarter profits, to the exclusion of all other considerations, created a long-term problem.

If the major car makers sell a lesser number of more expensive cars, it provides the superficial appearance of increasing profits to satisfy their investors, even as new car sales dwindle because they're pricing more and more of their potential customers out of a newer and hopefully more efficient car. The end result is that the average age of vehicles on the road continues to increase. Fuel economy numbers appear to be better each year, but if you divide the total number of gallons of gasoline consumed by the total number of miles driven, we seem to be stuck near our 1950s figures.

I guess nobody will figure this out because the car makers would rather go under than admit they created a problem that won't fix itself by doing more of what they've been doing. There's lots of cheap talk about creating affordable electric vehicles, but every new model that arrives is less affordable than the last. The current models are well beyond the reach of the customers who could potentially benefit the most. It makes little to no difference to a millionaire what the current gas or electricity prices happen to be. For the average blue collar worker living paycheck-to-paycheck, it matters a lot.

Calliban · 2022-04-06 05:55:17

Kbd512, this does suggest that there is a lot of fat to be trimmed when the time comes and an open market for vehicles that a soon to be impoverished public can afford. No one seems to be building anything other than SUVs and trucks in the US. Electric vehicles are an unsustainable solution for a lot of reasons. They are unaffordable to most people without some sort of subsidy or employee assistance scheme. Any sort of rapid charging would place demands on the grid that could only affordably be met by building gas turbines. This does not bode well for their future. In many ways they are a solution to the wrong problem. Gasoline is essentially a waste product for refineries, that had no use before the invention of the automobile. The world's goods transportation, mining and agriculture all run on middle distillates which go by the name of diesel. We do nothing for these essential sectors by building electric cars. By eliminating profits on gasoline, we create a waste disposal problem and push up the cost of diesel. We would end up burning gasoline in gas turbines to charge electric vehicles through the grid at much greater cost.

PS. As an aside, the yield curve between 3m and 12m government bonds has now inverted.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yield … htmare-fed

This is the harbinger of imminent recession. What is unprecedented, is that this has happened at record low interest rates. Official CPI inflation is running at 8%. Real inflation rate exceeds this. To quash inflation, rates would need to rise above real inflation, which would be around 10%. What would that do to an economy that is entering recession at interest rates close to zero? These are the hall marks of an economy that can no longer grow because of constraints in physical resources. There are no monetary solutions to this. The solutions as they are, lie in new resources and the more efficient use of old ones.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-06 06:33:13)

Terraformer · 2022-04-06 07:15:43

Official CPI inflation is running at 8%. Real inflation rate exceeds this.

That's crazy low, considering that food is above that, fuel way above that, and I'm pretty sure housing is also way above that. Inflation in the necessities is running at closer to idk 30%. Overall inflation, when you add in luxuries, might be at 8%. But the poorest don't buy many luxuries.

The easiest thing the UK government can do that will have the biggest impact is legalise e-scooters on the same basis as e-bikes. I don't know why they're dragging their heels on this, the act would literally be less than a page and would probably be nodded through by Parliament (I can't imagine any of the parties making a stink, though some MPs would). I'd like to see a network of cycle highways built too, dedicated routes for scooters and bikes manual and electric, 15mph speed limit. Make it safe for intermediate (1-5 mile) journeys, and solve the last mile problem in public transport (go thrice as fast, nine times the people can use the railway station).

Calliban · 2022-04-06 09:19:51

Terraformer wrote:

Official CPI inflation is running at 8%. Real inflation rate exceeds this.
That's crazy low, considering that food is above that, fuel way above that, and I'm pretty sure housing is also way above that. Inflation in the necessities is running at closer to idk 30%. Overall inflation, when you add in luxuries, might be at 8%. But the poorest don't buy many luxuries.
The easiest thing the UK government can do that will have the biggest impact is legalise e-scooters on the same basis as e-bikes. I don't know why they're dragging their heels on this, the act would literally be less than a page and would probably be nodded through by Parliament (I can't imagine any of the parties making a stink, though some MPs would). I'd like to see a network of cycle highways built too, dedicated routes for scooters and bikes manual and electric, 15mph speed limit. Make it safe for intermediate (1-5 mile) journeys, and solve the last mile problem in public transport (go thrice as fast, nine times the people can use the railway station).

Agreed. In theory, there are a number of resource cheap options that we can fall back on at least for human transportation. Unfortunately, history shows that when energy resources tighten, complex systems begin to fail. It becomes difficult to maintain critical infrastructure for things like water, electricity and transportation. One of the problems is that such systems rely upon a certain utilisation rate to be affordable. If large numbers of people went off grid, the grid would become unsustainably expensive for remaining customers that don't have the ability to go off grid. I suspect, the same is true for roads built for cars.

The infrastructure and systems of organisation, rules and laws, that developed during an age of rising prosperity and energy availability, end up becoming a drain on shrinking resources and our ability to adapt to declining abundance. The bureaucracy around certification of a new personal transport system is one example. Planning laws are another. These seemed sensible when people had a lot of surplus wealth and new building could impact people around them. But they are now a lead weight around the neck of anyone that is trying to mitigate energy poverty and wants to build things like small wind turbines or interseasonal heat storage systems. Likewise, scooters and velomobiles seem like a good idea. But we are still stuck with having to maintain motorways and A-roads, which were built for a previous era of abundant liquid fuels. The existence of cars is also a liability to anyone that does try and get around using bikes, scooters or velomobiles. We are stuck in a sort of trap that makes it very difficult to move away from ways of living that require high energy use. The systems that we have tend to constrain us. And the burden of legacy infrastructure, obsolete rules and bureaucracy that no longer works, ends up bankrupting society to the point where systems collapse catastrophically.

This is what Joseph Tainter described as a maintenence crisis. It explains why previous civilisations tended to collapse due to resource shortages that appeared to be recoverable to modern eyes. The Maya collapse was due to declining corn production as soil fertility exhausted. In theory, they could have avoided collapse by switching to other crops. It didn't happen because Mayan social structure, knowledge base and infrastructure, were too heavily invested in corn production to change in sufficient time. What they had built during their growth phase, became a barrier to change as resource shortages began to sap their disposable wealth. And as the crisis bit into prosperity, the quality of government declined, social pressures led to wars between city states which killed productive workers, ruined infrastructure and diverted resources away from agriculture and towards the military. The dynamics of a crisis tend to prevent implementing options that would appear to be viable solutions.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-06 09:36:36)

Calliban · 2022-04-06 10:39:09

Politicians will never accept blame for bad decisions. For years, those on the Left have done everything in their power to stand in the way of fossil fuel development. Pipelines were cancelled, government land was declared off limits and companies were sued for producing too much oil and gas, out of fear that the CO2 effluent would add to atmospheric CO2 concentration. Oil companies got the message. They cut exploration budgets, scaled back drilling and poured billions of dollars into wind and solar power projects.

Now we have an oil and gas crisis. Spare capacity is at record lows. Diesel shortages threaten supply chain disruptions. Who do they blame? Apparently it is the oil companies fault for profiteering from high prices and failing to produce more.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News … gress.html

These people are outraged with an oil industry that is doing exactly what they told it to do. It is comical that they cannot see this crisis as a result of their own actions. Society has always had to deal with conflicting points of view. It doesn't help when those conflicting viewpoints come from the same people.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-06 10:45:02)

SpaceNut · 2022-04-06 20:28:40

US roads for the most part can be used by low speed vehicles of all types but are limited to not being able to use the highway system which is the straight line from point A to B. The rural roads do need upgrading to allow for more shoulder area to ride them on for safety. This is a problem for the inner city high urban compact for being safe when on one. The roads that have route numbers for the most part do have breakdown lanes to make use of but you as the user must be observant when approaching ramps and turns as you are not likely to be seen in some cases.

kbd512 · 2022-04-07 03:06:05

Calliban,

I want to make practical vehicles for the common man and woman. I really don't care if they're gasoline powered or electric, so long as they're maintainable and affordable. If they're not both of those things at the same time, then they're disposable toys for rich people to taunt the peasants with. There's nothing wrong with making toys for rich people if that's your target market, but don't pretend that the common truck owner can pay $80,000 to $100,000+ for an electric truck that can't tow for 100 miles before it must spend 1 hour on a fast charger to tow another 100 miles, at a cost nearly the same as gasoline. That's an absurdity, plain and simple. The guy doing hot shots across counties or towing cars or taking care of your lawn simply can't afford that, so stop bragging to him about how much money you can throw at whatever vehicle you own. Instead, use your "thinking cap" to both make a practical vehicle he can afford to own and drive, even while you profit from selling it to him. You have way more money than he does, and good for you, but if you want him to start driving an electric truck, then make a practical electric truck, or make a more fuel efficient gasoline or diesel powered truck that still gets the job done for less cost.

This is practical problem solving for adults who don't look down their noses at anyone. It's not about the virtue-less signaling that our radical left does while they screw themselves and everyone else over in service to their brain-dead ideology. They say a bunch of BS, some of it sounds good to people who don't know any better (free this / that / the other, world peace, other similar utter nonsense), and then they serve up a steaming pile of cow turds and claim that that was what they promised to deliver. They have plenty of ideas about how to spend someone else's money, but none of them are worth a good fart.

Calliban · 2022-04-07 03:17:01

Peak oil production in Asia. Some interesting figures.
http://crudeoilpeak.info/asia-peak-oil-update-nov-2021

Overall peak oil occured around 2010. Chinese production peaked in 2015. Asia minus China peaked around 2000. With domestic production declining and Russian pipelines maxed out, any incremental increase in Asian oil consumption must be met by Middle East imports. Actual imports have been sliding since 2018 - 2019. Interestingly, this coincides with the apparent global peak in oil production in November 2018. It is looking increasingly unlikely that this production peak will be surpassed.

The obvious problem that this poses for the global economy is that goods transportation, agriculture and mining, are absolutely dependant upon diesel as their source of motive power. It will be very difficult and expensive to replace diesel in these applications. For large sea going ships, gasoline may be an alternative. But that means building entirely new ships fitted with gasoline tanks and gas turbines. Peak diesel will make it difficult to sustain current levels of mining, agricultural production and consumer goods distribution in the decades ahead. Peak diesel means peak economy.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-07 03:23:00)

Terraformer · 2022-04-07 06:45:22

Yes, but we can stretch the diesel out quite a bit if we stop using them for cars. Most diesel in the UK is used in cars, followed by light trucks/vans, and then HGVs.

Energy consumption in the UK There's one around for fuel consumption by type of vehicle, but I can't remember what it's called.

As you can see, transport is the single biggest sector, and the one that is most reliant on liquid fuels. But there are things we could do, including pantographs over motorways if we're insistent on keeping trucking going instead of moving a lot more stuff by water (the country is coastal and has plenty of rivers that could be used to get goods within a couple dozen miles of their destination). Of course, that still requires power, so it's only an option if we aren't electricity constrained as well (i.e. if we build out lots of nuclear fast). And cars will struggle, so we'll probably have to ration the liquid fuels for where there is absolutely no viable alternative, things like tractors and construction equipment (depending on the construction -- you could probably power a housing development off the grid, it has to be able to provide enough power when it's finished for people's houses, so maybe we can plug things like cranes into the new grid connection and power them that way). People can use lightweight electric vehicles and trains (even after Marples, we still have the densest rail network) to get around.

If we're energy constrained, not just oil constrained, then we need to do a radical overhaul for efficiency. So moving stuff by water rather than truck, accepting spot heating in houses rather than central heating, changing how we take showers etc. Maybe we can relax these somewhat if we start getting reactors online in the future.

Terraformer · 2022-04-07 07:10:36

America and Britain are very different when it comes to challenges and opportunities around an energy crunch. Britain could achieve a significant modal shift to passenger rail with a fairly small amount of investment; America cannot, even if it builds out the track required the cities are too spread out. America would have far more energy than Britain if we were entirely reliant on biomass, due its far smaller population density. Britain has milder weather, reducing the heating needs and pretty much removing the need for cooling. Providence has provided America with a freight system covering most of its states (Mississippi watershed). Towns are a lot more walkable in Britain.

So whilst natural resources favour America, making it a better place to be in the long run (probably somewhere in the watershed), in the short term Britain has the advantage. But a traditional walkable city along a major American heartland river would be best.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-07 20:15:24

They have started to make a diesel hybrid but am not sure that its going to catch on.

Gasoline has continued to drop in price and rests just under 3.90 a gallon.

Calliban · 2022-04-12 05:24:25

The Joker strikes again!
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/biden- … thanol-gas

One wonders what he will do next. Apparently the Keystone pipeline is verboten, but turning food into fuel (in the middle of a global food crisis) is a great idea. Millions of people cannot afford to eat. But at least they will be able to drive to the store and see that they cannot afford to eat.

If turning grains into ethanol is the way US farmers want to go, why not allow them to make corn whisky that can be sold for $30 a bottle, instead of fuel ethanol worth 30 cents per litre? The mind boggles.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-12 05:31:46)

Calliban · 2022-04-12 09:48:14

Large coastal or canal based transports could use stored thermal energy as a power source. A tank of high temperature phase change material like calcium chloride could power an S-CO2 generating set. With a melting point of 772°C, thermal efficiency could be as high as 60%. Sea water would provide cooling water supply to the condenser.

Ships could be moored at piers or to tethered buoys, carrying a power supply connection. They could recharge using excess nuclear electricity overnight. Electric power could heat the salt using either immersed resistance heaters or by magnetic induction. High silicon cast iron would be a promising low cost corrosion resistant material from which to construct the container. The heat transfer pipework could be cast into the cast iron casing.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-12 10:06:33)

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#426 2022-03-16 20:23:52

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#427 2022-03-17 01:39:53

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#428 2022-03-18 09:28:13

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#429 2022-03-18 18:06:37

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#430 2022-03-18 23:17:11

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#431 2022-03-22 18:20:43

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#432 2022-03-22 18:32:40

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#433 2022-03-22 19:38:08

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#434 2022-03-22 22:38:26

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#435 2022-03-23 19:10:06

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#436 2022-04-05 06:56:08

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#437 2022-04-05 20:47:20

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#438 2022-04-06 00:38:08

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#439 2022-04-06 05:55:17

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#440 2022-04-06 07:15:43

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#441 2022-04-06 09:19:51

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#442 2022-04-06 10:39:09

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#443 2022-04-06 20:28:40

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#444 2022-04-07 03:06:05

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#445 2022-04-07 03:17:01

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#446 2022-04-07 06:45:22

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#447 2022-04-07 07:10:36

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#448 2022-04-07 20:15:24

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#449 2022-04-12 05:24:25

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

#450 2022-04-12 09:48:14

Re: Current Gasoline/Petrol Price$

Board footer