Cars of the Future

Biofuels are the answer...

Before I started looking into the technologies being used in the next generation cars, I had heard a number of things which turned out to be false or misleading regarding biofuels. One of the things that I had just heard about was algae fuel. I was quite impressed by the stories from CNN and local news about using algae as the next big biofuel. However, after doing some more research, the technology is far from proven, and the biggest problem I have found is that there is just no science to back up the claims that people are making about the production numbers and power output from algae. Perhaps algae will become a viable biodiesel but for right now it sounds like there are some obstacles to clear. I am seeing signs that power plants might be a good candidate for this type of biofuel, and Hawaii is trying this out as a pilot. The pilot I read about however, is not using the CO2 produced by the power plant to grow algae, but rather it is shipping the materials to create the biofuel from elsewhere around the island. This decreases the sustainability of the use, but shows that people are moving to the trial stages of these technologies. The reason I think this might work well in power plant scenarios is because you have more of a loop there than in cars. If you have CO2 being produced by the power plant which helps produce algae for use as biofuel, that loop could produce the efficiency you need to make it work. However, for production in industries like automobiles, these farms would require a good amount of land/power/water allocated to it's growth. That's the part of the science that doesn't seem to work out right now, with the return on energy gained from the algae not quite getting to the point it needs to in order to make this work on a large scale for transportation. Large ponds or warehouses to grow algae sounds like a good idea until you realize how unsustainable it might be to run pumps, create plastic enclosure, harvest, and transport all this algae into biodiesel. It might be doable, and might even be better than oil, but the margins don't seem nearly good enough for transportation.

The second thing which really influenced my research initially was that batteries simply couldn't hold enough power to give us the range we need in a car. It was explained to me that the power density in fuels was so much higher that you would never be able to overcome this efficiency problem. This is somewhat correct if you are talking about a 350 mile range on a single tank. However, there are almost NO cases where you would need that kind of range practically. Even on a long trip, your 350 mile range is more for convenience than of necessity. With a 100 mile range, almost everyone can get to and from work, and almost NO ONE would go 100 miles before hitting a gas station. Therefore, while the single charge mileage isn't great compared to today's cars, another thing I'm learning is that we often ask for WAY MORE THAN WE NEED. This is obvious with the number of SUVs and other trucks that people of North America drive (no where else does this kind of ridiculous waste occur on such a grand scale).

The battery technology we have right now could easily get us 100 miles of travel on a single charge. Now combine that with the fact that we have power readily available almost everywhere, and I think you have solved the range problem for over %95 of the population. If you add in chargers at places of work, and perhaps at retail areas as well as an added service that anyone with electricity can add, and you've got a pretty quickly built infrastructure. Certainly faster than an infrustructure which is dependant on supply trucks and fuel stations.

An Eye Opening Journey

Once I started researching the Cars of the Future, I realized that we are at an extremely interesting time in Automobile History! We are on the verge of picking the next type of transportation, and this is being FORCED upon us by restrictions of the planet we live on. We simply can not use Fossil Fuels to continue our automobiles for the long term. The first information that I felt gave me a good idea of the the industry and the problem was the documentary "Who killed the electric car".

Please help us explore this new generation of transportation by posting information, links, and opinions on where you think we should be headed!