³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

Hello Justin, I’ve been enjoying your blog, not least because it’s been nice to see a bit of America that isn’t Hollywood. On the subject of electric cars though, I always thought that governments loved oil because it was easy to meter and therefore even easier to tax. Government spending, certainly in the UK, depends partly on selling North Sea oil in the first place, and then taxing it all the way to the consumer. If they don’t do this, then they can’t fund their spending programs. Electricity for a car is something that a lot of people (at a pinch) could have a go at creating themselves – with the terrible possibility (from a government’s point of view) of them then travelling free of tax. Surely that’s the last thing a government would want – and what about the ethics of denying people benefits that are paid for with oil revenues? Just a thought.

Unfortunately in my part of the US (Boston, MA) I pay $0.20/kWh so it would cost about $1.60/charge. A charge on the Volt seems to be approximately 1 gallon of gas, which means that in my area the volt only starts to make financial sense when gas is significantly higher than that. The Volt was definitely interesting when gas was $4/gal. At $2/gal it's not. Yes, gas will go up, but the cost of the Volt will come down so why buy it now? The extra cost of the Volt vs. a low-end Hybrid just doesn't make financial sense (yet).

Note that at least in the US electricity is well monitored (at least by the electric company) so it can most certainly be taxed. However you are correct that they can't know that it's a road-tax vs TV/computer/light/fridge tax.

Justin: Do you have an itinerary of your trip? What's the delay between shooting and broadcast?

Just one thing I don't get about GM's electric car. Why can it only do 40 miles on one charge when a Tesla "super car" can go some 240 odd miles on one charge! If a small outfit like Tesla can achieve this in a sports car, how on earth does GM justify all this noise about such a poor spec'd machine? We deserve much much better from such a huge and influential car giant.

Well, let’s see if this week we can discover what the US can teach us (other than how to use 2 x more energy, which I’d rather we didn’t), as this might well yet validate the pleasure of finding what was promised for the series gets delivered.

Sadly, the thoughts of a few of a few in a near empty hall – or bartend...er... Mayor Steve (a real people’s champion if he can be swayed to sign up to a commitment on no more than being told to on camera by a UK reporter) - have to be viewed as potentially interesting, but hardly representative. And speaking of context, as well as a matter of interest, if 911 mayors (may now be 935 - )in the US have signed up to cuts, what might the total number be? And what’s the breakdown? I just ask because if Boris signed up London he’d probably be OK. As to a pol with a constituency in the boonies with one bus a day to work... not so sure.

I am also not clear what is meant by ‘low carbon travel’. The distance alluded to when this was first raised is surely irrelevant in the context it was mentioned. Yes, the size of the country and population has meant more inevitably is used just shunting a few hundred million folk hundreds of miles when we deal in scores here. The more important issue is efficiency. I see no need for a 6 litre car there to get from A 2 B in comfort and safety any more than I do here. Hence I was as unimpressed with Gov. Arnie’s Hummer as Sir Stuart Rose’s 7 Series Hydrogen effort, as they made potentially good points in a totally compromised way.

As to whether democratic societies are capable of making short term sacrifices, I would certainly like to think so. But as been pointed out by such as President Obama and PM Brown, we are now in the era of world economies. I guess we should be grateful then that India is a democracy, but there is a small concern as to what the Chinese government may decide for its people when the Shanghai Nano is rolled out. That one will be crossed when arrived at.. all very Prisoner’s Dilemma. But if North Korea can be persuaded to stop the whole nuke thing by us getting rid of ours, then anything is possible. And in any case this is, should be, about the technologies and policies of reduction and efficiency domestically.

I also get a bit eyebrow cranky on anything with the word ‘carbon’ and any term meaning money or trading being bolted together. So nice in theory, so hard to grasp in practice without thinking that such as business class travel will soon only be for politicians, City traders... and journalists that get invited aboard to take us for a ride.

Getting all global, with a touch of egalitarianism thrown in, in our new world order I wonder if there might not end up being some ‘them’ and ‘us’ still to avoid further ‘issues’ cropping up.

Because if I am to be bestowed with an allowance of one log to heat the home, a trip to Tescos to feed the family and an annual short haul to Majorca on Ryan Air, which I can trade with Madonna on weekly kid shopping expeditions, or ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ eco-reporters for visits to Antarctica to see the damage caused by folk going to Antarctica, it seems only fair that every soul on the planet gets the same, from Kalahari bushpersons to Mekong fisherfolk.

And while the latter might not be able to afford the trips or goodies, they would be theirs to trade. Which rather leads me to wonder if the whole thing might not get a lot worse as a consequence of a bunch of rich, or expenses-driven individuals and/or businesses simply buying what they want, only now with a guilt-free sticker. And there are a lot of rich folk and ratings-thirsty journos with places to go and people to see, who I am sure our poorer cousins will be happy to trade with for cash to buy Chinese Nanos. Expectation of better things is part of the economy-growing cycle.

Nothing less than saving the world for climate change? If all $1B gets ‘us’ is the Chevy Volt as featured, I’d say that the US might be stretched to show us anything worth a darn for now. But nice that it all comes to complement the coincidental PR assault on the airwaves and columns over here, right now, from the likes of trusted pols such as Mandelson, Brown and now Hoon (see Richard Black’s latest post). Sadly not getting as easy a ride from many quarters (even... especially eco ones) that seem inconveniently now able to raise some concerns, from where the battery raw materials are to come from to how the ‘leccy gets generated and then delivered. I merely wonder if trying to get our cross-pond cousins into 2 litre diesels delivering 60mpg might not be a more productive effort for now, whilst other, cleaner, higher enviROI options are honed before leaping to a green crowd pleaser. Hence I doubt that Mr. Clarkson, and his audience, are too concerned yet. But at least they might know that you use a lot more fuel at 100mph vs. 60mph, and how much it costs planet and licence fee to replace a piece of kit not fixed down properly in seeking to get a bit of nifty TV footage more than any other consideration.

So, again, to paraphrase what the nice lady said at one point, ‘what’s all this supposed to prove?’

I have to draw attention to your statement of the volt being the FIRST electric car, and tell you that this is an incorrect statement. The EV1 was the first modern production electric vehicle from a major automaker and also the first purpose-built electric car produced by General Motors (GM) in the United States. A documentary film entitled Who Killed the Electric Car? discusses the possibility that the EV1 program was eliminated because it threatened the oil industry. It is disappointing that the Volt still requires the use of petrol to generate electricity, when GM have shown they have the skills and capacity to manufacture completely electric vehicles.

Seems the Volt, missed being the first electric car in the world, by about a hundred and seventy years!

Please will someone do the math, before we make the terrible mistake of mass producing silent cars that will only make our problems worse?

Strictly speaking, the first electric car was built prior to 1901. At that point the distinction of 'mass market' was pointless, so what does 'first' mean, anyway?
The deployment of electric drivetrains for 150 horsepoer (100Kw) vehicles raises interesting questions on a number of axis. Dimension 1: does anyone even need to be in the car? Many errands are simply picking something up or dropping something off, and this can be done without a driver. See DARPA Grand Challenge. Most errands of this sort are short, maybe a few blocks or a few miles. A driverless pickup and delivery vehicle can skip a lot of other expense: air conditioning, stereo, airbags, etc, and can be just large enough to carry groceries... perhaps payload limited to 100 pounds (50Kg). In terms of cutting emissions, the effect of using these would be enormous.
Dimension 2: electric cars can be partially recharged while sitting at traffic lights or in destination parking lots, particularly for people leaving a car at work all day. There are prototype Li-Ion batteries that, on an automotive scale, could recharge in 5 minutes. Building recharging stations into the street would make it possible to 'top off' while waiting for a light. The 'street' charge can be done through induction coils: there would be no need for a plug or physical connection.
Dimension 3: A car driven 40 miles a day or 14400 miles per year, at 20 miles per gallon and $2 per gallon, is costing the driver $1400 per year, or $14,000 over the ten year life of the car. Subtracting fuel from the $40,000 price leaves $28,000. Subtract oil changes, radiator flushes, muffler replacement, etc, etc. and the cost might decline another $5000 to $23,000. This package would seem far more acceptable. The Volt still has a gas engine, but it’s use is incidental, so periodic maintenance might occur every two or three years, instead of in six month intervals.
The concern over use of coal burning power plants to charge electric cars is legitimate but of only limited materiality. Once the car is on the road half of the problem is solved, the demand for RE generated electricity is assured. Wind turbines and solar power can be deployed efficiently to meet demand, which isn’t known until consumption patterns are established.
Aside from the battery, an electric car should last a long time. 'A long time' is, quite likely, 30 years. The precedent for this are the street cars and electric locomotives that ran forever, a prime example being the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1s. These locomotives entered service in the 1930s and ended in the late 1970s. They were retired due to cracks in the frames. The reason cars wear out, most of the time, is engine and/or transmission problems.
Once a fleet of electric cars is in service, one will find an amazing number of after-market adaptions to make up for the extant shortfalls. Most of these will also be expensive, but they will give the car owner a far more seamless experience that is evident from the known technology. One simply has to get used to the new paradigm.

Hi Justin,

I think you will find Clarkson loves Electric:


And here is part 2, the real future:

The American perception of unlimited resources has taken on a bit of a different meaning with the arrival of personal computers. In the 19th century 'unlimited' would have meant land, forests, minerals, and wildlife. In the 21st century this takes the form of RAM, disk space, bandwidth, and markets for professional services. A careful look at population migration in the United States suggests that the region between I-35 (the major north-south freeway running from Laredo to Minneapolis-St. Paul) and the Rocky Mountains is depopulating. People are moving south and more toward the coastal areas. Opportunities tend to be greater where there are more people, a fact that has driven rural workers into the city nearly everywhere in the world.

As wind turbines and solar panels become cheaper, and the appliances that use that power become more efficient, this view is likely to expand to renewable energy resources. Mastering these technologies isn't that much different intellectually from understanding computer set-up, programming, database design, and web design. Certainly the work is more physical, but this isn't a stretch for people that currently work on power and phone lines, or in oil refineries.

As mentioned elsewhere, robotics is largely an unexplored landscape. Obviously a lot has been done over the last fifty years, but no one would believe we're in an 'age of robots'. This is not a common household appliance - yet.

Economic events, such as the recession we're experiencing right now, clean out a lot of dead wood. These are businesses that either shouldn't have ever been started for any reason, or have outlived their usefulness. The way people cope with such events is to size up market demand, and learn as much as is necessary to find a new job.

The demand for programmers, database developers, and computer network administrators is quite tight, and as a result the people that are closest to being able to move into such jobs will vacate positions that demand fewer skills. The people that fill those positions, in turn, will vacate other positions that will be filled by those out of work now. The economy will be headed in a new direction once this process plays out, one that is more technically focused. Much of the technology will be oriented toward conservation, resource management, production optimization, or waste remediation. This is true simply because those are things people want and are willing to pay for.

Hi MNpoor,

You raise some interesting points.
1. Robots are unlikely to be driving cars any time soon:


Unfortunately the sad truth is many robots would cause chaos on the roads!
See DARPA for an example of how bad these machines are!
Of course most of these machines are aimed at war zones where a few pedestrian fatalities are acceptable!
2. I thought even in the states there were cars with a service interval greater than 6 months!
I know most cars in Europe are 1 year or 10,000 miles.
I think part of the problem is loss of servicing revenue, and also that huge numbers of people will not be buying these things which is why they are so expensive.
If you make a car that costs 1 million $ to design, then after selling a million it only costs you a dollar a car. If you only sell a few thousand the development cost becomes untenable.
Of course Honda have taken the bold step of taking a hit on the development (and even production) of the Clarity.
But I guess GM at the moment can't do that, they need to make money and keep their new political masters happy with at least a fig leaf of Eco worthiness.
3. As for appliances becoming more efficient, at the moment there is little drive to produce more efficient products.
However I disagree with carbon charging, lets face it the energy balance is what keeps the economy going up and not down (like just happened). Everyone is blaming bankers but if it wasn't for fuel prices I suspect those bad investments wouldn't have gone bad.

Oh I forgot,

The idea of building charging loops into the roads at traffic lights is genius, but why stop there you could build the loops into normal road surfaces. It would be cheaper than replacing roads with rail which is what some people in this blog want.

You could also set up Com's by shorting the loops much the same way that id cards work, you could then pass on information about traffic road conditions etc.

Justin Rowlatt goes to America..



EPA announces C02 is hazardous..

Coincidence ? Or is he the butterfly causing the hurricane ?

YOU be the judge !!

lordBeddGelert; #12

That EPA announcement had been in the works for some time. The forces that started that ball rolling, could be the same ones that encouraged Justin to come to America. So, no coincidence, and no butterflies causing hurricanes.


Sceptic_Kev; #11
It would be cheaper than replacing roads with rail which is what some people in this blog want.

I can not see anyone wanting all roads replaced with rail. Aside from the noise issues, it would be completely unnecessary. More than adequate rail service can be achieved by simply expanding the existing network. We certainly do not need rail on every street.

mnpoor; #7
does anyone even need to be in the car? Many errands are simply picking something up or dropping something off, and this can be done without a driver. . . Most errands of this sort are short, maybe a few blocks or a few miles. A driverless pickup and delivery vehicle . . . can be just large enough to carry groceries . . . perhaps payload limited to 100 pounds (50Kg)

Why eliminate the driver? Do you like unemployment? Cargo bicycles can just as easily deliver 50 kg loads, and they can be purchased now, for about 3,000$. Which seems expensive compared to a 3,000$ Nano, but comparing hand-built cargo-bikes, to mass produced autos is a little unfair. Mass produced cargo-bikes might sell for about 500$

#10 Sceptic_Kev - Oil changes are supposed to be done every 3000 miles or 6 months for vehicles driven around the city. Most car owners follow manufacturer instructions without thinking much about whether those are correct for their circumstances.

#11 Sceptic_Kev - The idea behind charging at the lights is that it would be easy to manage the billing. You would use up a lot of copper if you put inductive coils on every lane on every freeway. There might be some way to set up periodic charging lanes while operating at cruise speeds, but those might prove to be redundant with some improvement in battery or fuel cell technology.

#12 lordBeddGelert - It wasn't because Justin came to the States, it's because he was able to get the mayor of Mukegon to commit. That was the butterfly!

#13 Bicycle-Fan - A number of people assert that automation creates unemployment, and given that we have 1 billion computers in the world, that means those computers put 1 billion people out of work... right? Robots would create jobs, but they wouldn't be hamburger flipping, they would be the kind of technical work involved in programming, installation, repair, sales, system integration, and a host of other high-tech buzzwords. In comparison, a 25 year-old delivering groceries would be wasting somewhere between twelve and sixteen years of education, as well as running into health problems from weather exposure and physical strain. By age 45, that person would have to move on to something more sedentary, like security guard or store greeter. Not a very promising career path, unless you've just immigrated from a very poor third world country.

One thing it's easy to lose track of in these conversations is the main point of the series: greenhouse gas reduction. There are two schools of thought: reduction in consumption, or emissions remediation. The first implies reducing resource use linearly, the second implies creating infrastructure for capture and recycling or sequestration.

The population of Earth was at about 1 billion in 1900, the last year of the 19th Century. The world had already been burning coal for fifty years at that point, primarily for steamships and locomotives. This would have created population concentrations and distributions that were unsustainable without CO2 emissions. The natural population limit of a city is about 30,000 people if it lives off the immediately surrounding land. London, Paris, and New York each had more than 1 million people in 1900.

Somehow we would have to take the energy resources in use in 1850, primarily animal power, wind power, and biomass (horses, sails, and wood-fired steam engines or stoves) and distribute this energy amonst 6 billion people, with the possible addition of hydropower, which as it turns out also emits GHG (methane from bacteria living in the impounded water). For some reason this seems like a non-starter to anyone that isn't into massive near term population reduction.

The alternative is CO2 capture, along with NOx and methane, other notorious GHGs. There has been a lot of discussion of CO2 sequestration, and the most attractive of these is reacting them with ultramafic rocks, since these make up most of the Earth's mantle, and the total CO2 in the air would be incidental to the amount of rock in the body of the earth. However, technologies for converting the CO2 to useful biomess or chemicals are popping up like flies: electrolytic cells that make methane using archaea, CO2 to methanol using organocatalysts, and the production of algae from CO2 dissolved in water. The process for converting methanol to gasoline is well established, so producing the former more or less automatically assures the production of the latter.

CO2 is a mild acid, and it can be extracted from the air with any number of alkaline chemicals: Calcium oxide (lime), magnesium oxide, ammonia, sodium (oxide or hydroxide, otherwise known as lye), and potassium (potash). One currently envisioned process is to spray water with dissolved ammonia into the flue gas from power plants.

In this scenario fuel burning physical plant is matched with CO2 extraction technology, either on-site or elsewhere. The most economically attractive approach is extraction with intent to recycle. Wind turbines are probably the best source of power for such processes, since the faster the air is moving, the more CO2 can be captured.

mnpoor; #14
Robots would create jobs. . .
health problems from weather exposure and physical strain.
???

How about putting micro-bots to work weeding, to reduce herbicide and pesticide use?

Riding a bicycle is a very low impact activity. If cities were free from private autos and air pollution, then bicycling would be an even healthier form of exercise.

There are already many unskilled people. If they can not find work how will they afford training? Many of the un-employable are able to ride a bicycle. If there was a great need for bicyclists, many more would put in the effort to become able. If tandem cargo-bikes were built, even blind or deaf people could help carry the load and guard the remaining cargo while deliveries were made.

mnpoor; #15
Somehow we would have to take the energy resources in use in 1850, . . .
and distribute this energy amonst 6 billion people. . .
For some reason this seems like a non-starter to anyone that isn't into massive near term population reduction.

Why be so pessimistic? Is it impossible to imagine a solar and wind powered world? Is it impossible to imagine that riding a bicycle to a train station, could actually be faster, safer, more efficient and more productive, than an average commute today?

The only thing keeping the elimination of co2 emissions from being possible, is city-dwellers unwillingness to give up private motors. It is the rich minority of earthlings, that are putting out the most co2. We do not need fewer people. We need fewer private motor vehicles, and more trains.

The 5.4 billion people that do not own motorized transport, should not be out-voted by the 1.2 billion that do. But since we are not likely to get that chance, (the 5.4 billion without motors, are much less likely to have access to an internet connection) the few that do, need to work hard to convince our leaders to act in the best interests of everyone.

Mitigation, or Sequestration?

There are other health and financial reasons for mitigation, that do not need AGW to be true, to be valid. Whereas sequestration, may not be viable or even possible. But by all means, plant a trillion trees, just please do not use that as an excuse to pollute more.

To the world in general;
Please plant lots of fruit and nut trees.

#16 - Bicycle-Fan

Having robots pull weeds is one of my little pet projects, although I don't have any hardware at this point. The issue is figuring out what is or is not a weed. The computer power is there, it's just a matter of having the software catch up.

There are a lot of unskilled people, but unskilled people can still produce more than would be possible in a days work on a bicycle. I should point out, as an aside, that when I was a kid I wore out bicycles pretty regularly, and I would ride them sometimes in freezing, windy weather. I always hoped that the town that I lived in would create special bike lanes, and even some kind of elevator or escalator so I could coast the whole trip. Where I live in Texas, the cities are starting to take this seriously, simply because the biking community in this area is rabid and doesn't take no for an answer.

The point of energy use circa 1850 is that if we reduce to zero footprint, that's our target. Actually, even that isn't sufficient, because rice paddies have been around since the dawn of human civilization, and they emit a lot of methane. It's my feeling that in the short term, wind power is going to take over the bulk of our generation capacity, but eventually solar is going to trump everything. Solar (Photovoltaics) is simply the most direct, easiest, and most reliable path available. There's a few more things we have to understand about making them efficiently, but we are practically there.

The 'car' concept has been around a lot longer than 100 years, and appears in most human civilization: there's a relationship between 'sedan' and 'sedan chair', and the whole business of carrying around rulers on the shoulders of minions. The fact that the majority of people don't have cars doesn't mean they aspire to do so. Most island and riverside villages have fleets of canoes, and the water is their highway.

Complete sequestration is possible. The keyword searches are 'ultramafic', 'olivine', and 'serpentine'. These are various classes of mantle mineral that tend to bond to CO2 readily, and are present in sufficient quantity to trivialize the amount of CO2 we could produce with all the carbon in the Earth's crust. Personally, I don't like the idea of sequestration when recylcing technology is so obviously practical.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, America’s national laboratory for renewable energy research) publishes a map called the Wind Energy Atlas of the United States. It shows an area of particularly strong winds in the Aleutian Islands, described as being Category 7, or over 1000 watts per square meter on average. A Canadian equivalent location is roughly described as the boundary convergence of Nunavut, Quebec, and Labrador. Average wind speeds are about 20 miles per hour in these locations, which would suggest that if any weather event whatsoever occurs, speeds go to 60 miles per hour in a hurry.

I would be interested to see Justin narrating a segment on the American view of resources being 'infinite' while standing on the side of a hill facing the wind at either or both of these locations. It's particularly important that his tie remain properly in place... no leaving it off and no flapping around. A sufficient quantity of starch ironed in will help if the tie is cotton. He should also be wearing the polished, smooth-bottom shoes. Note: most of these locations are largely exposed rock.

The URL www.renewables-atlas.info/wind_map.aspx is titled 'Atlas of UK Marine Renewable Energy Resources', and the top range of the American and Canadian maps are about the middle of the UK map, although the 'high' regions on the UK map are all out at sea. The windiest land area appears to be Stornoway, which is on par with the American and Canadian sites.

One of the perceived difficulties at these sites is an inability to ship any generated electricity to consumers. These places are where one would capture CO2 from the atmosphere, convert it to methane or methanol, and pipe it in gas or liquid form to mainland markets. One could also produce ammonia, which doesn't remove any carbon but doesn't contribute to it when it is 'burned' (or reformed into hydrogen gas). Whatever gas transmission technology is used in the off-shore North Sea rigs is the one that would transmit gas to locations on the respective mainlands.

The bigger point of this is that there are areas in the English-speaking industrialized world (and others as well) that have truly prodigious wind resources, and that carbon capture or hydrogen production would occur particularly efficiently at these locations. Any special engineering required to accommodate the high-wind environment is likely to be relatively incidental.

I don’t have it in for Justin, it’s just that videos have to be like that to get people to watch.

Because the sun shines and the wind blows, just about everywhere, renewables allow a paradigm shift from centrally, to locally produced power. You do not need to come up with fancy ways of transporting power, or worry about transmission loss, if you can make it in your backyard.

Of course most people s backyards will not be big enough to meet their energy needs with solar panels, and few (if any) urban or suburban locations will allow wind turbines. (even though there are plenty of models the appropriate size)

Of course window frames, solar panels or entire buildings, that could convert wind pressure, directly into electrical energy, with little of no movement, might solve half our energy problems (the storage half of the energy problem, may be solved by super capacitors).

But in the mean time, we could build wind generation, as close as possible to power demand, and put solar panels over as many buildings, railways, and wasted spaces as possible.

If hydrogen and methane production, is the most efficient means of storing energy, then fine, otherwise, I see no point in creating fuel just so we can burn it. Usually the most efficient system, is the one that converts energy from one form to another, the least number of times.

Why not minimize energy use by maximizing rail transport, and reduce hunger and co2 levels, by planting fruit and nut trees?

Mnpoor:
#10 My oil change is once a year, and so have most cars I've owned. I know some of my friends have come a cropper because they bought performance cars that needed a 6 month change, and nearly lost their warranty because they thought it was yearly like most cars over here.
Also if you use artificial oil it will last a lot lot longer.
These are the specs for my car using conventional oil:
Oil Change Intervals
Engine
Miles Max 15000
Km Max 20000
Months Max 12

#11 Didn't think of the billing thing, but as I said before Com's can be built in so every charge could be monitored and billed appropriately.

Also, you don't need copper any conductor can be used, even water! In fact you could paint the coils onto the road with conducting paint.

I also had a thought about your robotic cars, you could make the cars 'talk' to each other at lights and agree path ways to eliminate collisions. You could even build in control information which would tell the car where to drive, eliminating the need for expensive road scanning technology. Of course you would still need to avoid knocking down pedestrians and bicycle fans!

There are 6.7 billion peoople on this planet. Thankfully there are still less than 1 billion private motor vehicles on our roads. There is more than enough traffic mayhem and gridlock today. Imagine if eveyone owned a car?

The best path to transporation equality, is more trains and bicycles, and as many car-free cities as possible.

As you'll have time while riding the bus, give What is America, by Ronald Wright a read. He provides some interesting insights into the gringo mind.

#21 - Bicycle-Fan - Maybe this is old news to you...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o

This is why cities built around bicycles will be safer....

apater; #22

I actually do ride one of my many bicycles just about everywhere I go. I almost never ride the bus, but do rarely accept rides in family member`s vehicles, because they are going by anyway and it would be too rude to refuse.

mnpoor; #23

Although highly entertaining, I could not see much evidence of a city designed for bicycles, and crazy stunts have nothing to do with everyday transport.

Cities should be designed for rail and bicycle based transport.

There are two technologies out their that can save us all right now. The first is the OneCat that runs on compressed air. Look it up at:

The second is the stand alone heating appliance by Valliant which run on fuel cell and gives the capabilities to sell power back to the grid.check it out Ethical man the future has arrived at:

Also, UK is not far behind with this technology with the British Gas and Cerus partnership. However this is a half heart attempt. After all BG do not want to shoot themselves in the foot. Thats why they have gone in the direction of fuel cell powered by gas. These two technologies would make good episode for ethical man. What do you think Justin?

Although private motor vehicles may be too dangerous to be legal, no matter what powers them, air powered vans, could be an important step towards car-free cities. It might even be possible to convert them to human power, with foot-pumps in place of pedals.

As for fuel-cells? If the linked page states where the power came from, for its cells to produce one million kw/hrs, it is not obvious, so I can only assume it was natural gas.

That company`s renewable energy and heat-pump products have vast potential to mitigate AGW, while its fuel-cell or cogeneration systems, have no potential.

Justin

have you read Professor MacKay's book at www.withouthotair.com ?

If not you ought to be fired. If you have, do you apply any of the techniques used in the book to make sense of the challenges the US faces in choosing how to use sustainable energy and to debate it sensibly and with realistic calculations?

Questions:

1) Where is the main electricity for electric cars, such as the Volt, coming from? I assume mostly from coal and nuclear powered plants.

2) Why doesn't anyone mention developing less polluting aircrafts? The research is out there... China seems ahaid of us.



Also, before anyone wonders about my name, I DO have 4 children. We chose to have two biological and two adopted children.

I think that car makers should focus on cheap electric vehicles. They make them so expensive such that lower income people who constitute most of an average country's population can't afford them. If they could focus on making zero emission motorbikes for example they could access vast markets in countries like India and China where bikes are the main means of transport for people. They could focus on feeding public transport that still has combustion engine driven vehicles with low cost and low emissions. They give too much attention to the visual appeal and luxurious look of a car. Real changes will only start happening when people accept that we our lives or living standards will have to be sacrificed a lot for real changes to be made. It ticks me off to see governments and companies that claim to care but who make the most ridiculously modest efforts. Such a change from our currently toxic world to a cleaner one will most probably take the same level of effort that it takes for a given population to bring down a dictator and establish democracy - a persistent and unrelenting push. Iranians have shown the world how easy it is to galvanize a population. They are using twitter to put to shame their leader, twitter for goodness sake!

What car makers should really improve on nowadays is the expansion of electric cars and enhancements of the engine parts such as the valves and the radiators. See link:

What a change, a country actually making products it will be able to sell in the future, which will affect climate change more than all the carbon capture dreams...(sorry, schemes).
If anyone had noticed, Our government let LDV close a couple of months ago.
Guess what its new project was to be, that a certain Lord really nipped in the bud??
An electrically powered van. Ideal you would think for town and city deliveries??
No, not in GB! Political foresight Zero. Manufacturing forward planning also NIL!!

very interesting article - we write a lot on cars and the environment so will be following this with interest!

Thanks for the interesting film here! As always ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is on the top. Their movies just make you think and make something useful. The problem is that not too many people are interested in climate change problems. For example in my town there would be only 5% maybe of all society members who are interested and want to participate in solving this problem. The only way we can make people think about it is to use some force. I mean carbon pricing would be an ideal idea. Despite the fact that the biggest part of society would be unhappy and nervous about it - they won't have another option. And I think that after some time these people will realize that all these high prices are for their and for their children life. I think that this film perfectly shows what we have to do right now.
Talking about an electric car - I have read about it few times in some . It is a powerful thing for sure, however it is too expensive now. I mean that it would take a huge period of time to make these cars available to every member of the society. However we must try. I don't know how much money will this project need because I am not an economist or politician by myself. But I would make everything possible to help my country to establish these cars as soon as possible. And of course I would purchase one if it will be possible in my financial situation.
In the conclusion I want to say that it is nice to know that there are some people that still care about climate change issues. Moreover it is nice to know that someone is doing something about it, because the majority are just talking but not doing anything for sure. Thanks one more time for this film and I will be waiting for more nice projects from you and ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ in the nearest future.