Dunno about you, but I'm increasingly unsettled by batteries batteries batteries BATTERIES!! I have a Tesla in my driveway that I'm babysitting while some family members are away and honestly my mind is blown by the size of the battery pack, how depressing the lithium and cadmium mines are, and how this scales as companies like Tesla and Apple take over the world.
Wouldn't hydrogen be far more sustainable?
There certainly are cleaner alternatives. Look to the French for most innovative ideas! What can be more clean than using simple, compressed air as source of energy!?
Sustainable
100% Compressed air engine
Zero CO2 Emissions
The real problem at the moment is where the hydrogen comes from...
Almost all of the hydrogen that is produced and used now, mostly in heavy industry rather than powering vehicles, is produced using fossil fuels. If I remember the figures right then about 6% of natural gas and 2% of coal used worldwide goes to hydrogen production.
It's completely possible to use renewable energy and create 'green hydrogen' using electrolysis, but it's expensive right now so we aren't doing much of it, about 0.1% of the hydrogen made globally is green.
If we can change that then it's a brilliant fuel source, pretty much zero-emission across the entire cycle of production and use.
An interesting concept, but in the very beginning of the video it states that the average city vehicle travels only 20Km per day - maybe in large European urban centers, but 20 Km is just 12.4 miles. For only 12 miles a day, a bicycle would work just fine - whether pedal powered or even rechargeable batteries.
But in the US, I suspect the average daily milage driven is much much greater - Indeed, via Google, the US DoT says Americans average about 13,500 miles per vehicle per year - or about 37 Miles per day 7 days a week, or almost 60 Km per day - not the 20 Km stated in the video above.
No mention is made about how the compressed air is created, but almost certainly by electric powered air pumps. Compressed air engines are not a new idea, they have been around for many years. But compressed air has a lot of disadvantages compared to hydrogen and battery power.
There were compressed air cars built in 1903 for a short period of time.
A hydrogen fuel cell - powered by hydrogen, and delivering electric power really seems like the most ideal form of motive power. A lightweight, energy dense storage medium capable of a large sustained electric power flow, with only water as an exhaust.
Even a compressed air engine will almost have some petroleum/hydrocarbon lubricants in its exhausts due to the required lubricants of the compressed air powered piston engine.
@Chris - I was amazed by the article in Car and Driver which purports that Hoosiers drive almost 3,000 more miles a year than Californians and even a 1,000 more a years than Texans.
Makes me wonder about their figures a bit, but hey!
Maybe it is the influence of the Indy brick yard, who knows?!
That's amazing. My wife's 1999 BMW is just about to turn 60,000 miles and it seems like we've spent SO MANY HOURS of our lives behind the wheel. I can't imagine driving 18,000 miles/year like people in so many states do.
18,000... If you average 30 mph, that's 600 hours, 75 8-hour days per year. Damn. Even if you go twice that speed, it's a lot.
When I was living in Palo Alto, I always thought most Californian's daily home-> work-> home commute was vastly longer than most Hoosiers I knew.
But I also do know, now, several folks locally in my community, here in Indiana, who routinely commuted half way across Indiana, 75-80 miles one way, to Indianapolis and back, 5 days a week to work - - at least until the pandemic made their jobs so non-essential. So there's that .
Thinking back over the vehicles I have owned over that past 50 years, I suspect I averaged more like 25-30K miles per year, and I never thought my milage was in any way exceptional since I knew many friends who drove far more than that. But then some of the time I was also driving to and from Indiana to the left coast to go to school for a while.
I was just struck by that article above which suggested most urban drivers drive no more than 12.5 miles ~ 20Km - per day. I would use a RAD bike for that kind of travel if the weather were not inclement, or a smaller motortcycle like the Zero or even the Harley Live Wire.
On long road trips, one does not just drive 6 or 8 hours, but more like 14, 16 or more occaisionally. Sometimes, 18-> 20 when one wants to make tracks.
To cover ~1200 miles, on 2 wheels or 4, takes about 22 hours or a bit less, if one averages a mere 55 mph for the whole trip. The size of your gas tank may make a significant difference in how long you are stationary during your trip, refueling. Stopping dramatically reduces your average speed for the trip of course.
I remember when I was 19 and a good friend and I left Kansas City in his brand new 1964 Pontiac GTO, headed for Los Angeles, and we averaged 67+ mph for the whole trip incuding time for eating, fueling, peeing, sleeping, etc. Well, we didn't really stop to sleep, we slept while one of us drove....... I was younger and less prudent then.
I really believe that beyond politics, physics, with a view of the big picture, will prevail in determining a direction for a clean future. There are countless possibilities for clean transportation..
