Have Hybrids Opened The Door For Yet Another Energy Resource Shortage?

Oh... good. I extend a friendly "Hola" to our beloved friends in Bolivia!

I can see it now. Many feel we are currently held hostage by OPEC, now we are sourcing from a single nation a key material for automotive production.

Makes you wish someone can make a car that runs on saltwater.

they're already working on a car that runs on water (or it's constituents anyway)... fuel cells anyone? And no, it will never be possible to fill up your tank with the water itself because water is already at a low-energy state. You cant get more energy out of water unless you react it with something more reactive than oxygen, which would be dangerous to transport and probably not be even close to environmentally friendly.

Yeah Some people have already came up with pretty usable freshwater and saltwater engines. The government is supposedly funding their projects for future military use.

Even though we have plenty of saltwater, I like the fact that the freshwater engine has already proven itself to work with any type of water ...in any state of matter (hopefully isn't picky with purity).

Better yet, I hope that the engines would be able to run clean enough to make their "wastes" from the fuel easy to clean for the environment, so the environmentalists would take a longer time before making up some stupid complaint about the amazing vehicles running on the plentiful seawater ...that it's stealing water from our beloved ocean friends that have already made themselves home on our land and blah and blah blah and blah blah blah :P

yep, the world has a limited supply of lithium. So unless we are content to have a limited supply of electric vehicles, then we will need to find other technologies. And I'm sure that we will given enough time and research funds.

The Honda fuel cell system (in the Honda FCX clarity), with hydrogen generated from their fueling stations using solar power seems to look better day by day, unless manufacturing solar cells uses some rare resource or the fuel cells use rare stuff too? Does anyone know?

The FCX uses a lithium battery too...

More info about solar cells, in which Honda is heavily investing...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10530747

We love you Crappy!

LOL! Crappy makes the c. eastwood character in gran Torino seem like a veritable sweetheart! gm made a fuel cell RESEARCH/demo car, but they are YEARS behind honda in getting one on the street, for everyday use.

The problem with Nimh is chevron owns the patent and won't give it up as long as there is oil. they sued toyota so that toyota would stop making the EV RAV4 on Nimh batteries back in 2002. they won't let anyone make EV or plug in cars with those batteries.

What's wrong with trading with Bolivia? Sure, they have a leftist goverment, but we deal with lots of those. It would be good for Bolivia to have more than coca leaf and tin to export.

We'll have lithium powered electric cars for maybe 15-20 years. We'll have something helluva lot better than lithium ion after that. Think nano technology and ultracapacitors.

So we should have invaded Bolivia instead of Iraq? lol

They should make a car that runs on bullshit. There's plenty to go around.

!!! NOT really such an outlandish idea! that is a BIO-fuel. just needs a 'digester' which would have to be miniaturized for vehicles.

Actually I was hoping that Ford would invent the
Impulse and Warp drives...

Do any of you know when the air-powered cars are coming out? You just pump compressed air into the tank, and then the air runs the engine based on compression. No combustion or chemical reaction needed. I feel like that's the way we should go.

The pump that compresses the air requires energy.............going to need some kind of fuel.

It's just another "external" combustion engine. Cadillac made a coal-fired Eldo back in the seventies. Messy, polluting, but can be done.

shui3000:
> Do any of you know when the air-powered cars are coming out?
> You just pump compressed air into the tank, and then the air runs
> the engine based on compression."

First demonstrations proved air cars run out of farts just after some 7 kilometers. And I once read calculations of necessary pressures to achieve long distances. Trust me, you'd much rather have a bomb in your car than a container with air pressurized so much.

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LauderdaleDriver:
> Cadillac made a coal-fired Eldo back in the seventies.
> Messy, polluting, but can be done.

I want one!!!

Oil's not going anywhere folks....way too much money in it. I do like how they got people to run out and buy hybrids at a 10% or so markup over the regular vehicle. Gotcha!!