4TehNguyen

iTrader: (1)

presentation was good, kept it neutral. Basically he said the regulations are dumb, need to be revamped, and it needs to be more market driven. Good luck getting the govt to revamp itself and stay out of the way. They want green energy to succeed no matter how much its going to cost the taxpayer.

mmarshall

One of the most notorious government price-controls, of course, is taxes. All else equal, the more they tax, the more gas costs at retail-level. The most extreme examples, of course, are in Europe.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

agreed! if govt allowed people to run natural gas powered cars for example, it would encourage an infrastructure to develop. as of right now it can't. electric cars aren't the only answer.

amen. govt does have a role in regulation, but not picking in trying to pick winners and losers. they are proof positive the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

um, maybe where you are. ours is supposed to be to enforce a bill of rights, defend the nation, resolve disputes among people, and a few other constitutional points, but of course it has gone WAAAAAAY beyond that, and look where it's gotten us - $16 trillion in debt, a crumbling infrastructure, and half the population looking to the government to carry them and save them.

then why ISN'T gas $15 then? because of competition, not government.

again, maybe not where you live. and govt here has been definitely on a path toward destroying the free market, but it still partly exists and works, DESPITE government meddling. ford survived without bailouts and now has to compete with a giant company propped up with tens of billions of stolen money.

our free market created google, apple, microsoft, facebook, without government 'help'. yes the govt funded the intitial internet build out but NO ONE could predict what would happen - the beauty of a free market. those who claim to 'know it all' (like govt planners) are sure to hugely limit possibilities or fail completely.

government has a role, to regulate and resolve disputes, but not to subsidize industries and cronies. that can only be considered corruption.

agreed!

you da man!

mmarshall

Electric cars (as I tried to address in my previous posts here) would be more of an answer than they are now if we had an adequate charging-system set up nationwide...same for refilling stations of other fuels like propane, natural-gas, etc...

On the hopeful side, 400-volt chargers are being jointly-developed by electric utilities and auto-companies that will give a full-range charge in only 20-30 minutes. That sure beats 8-12 hours with conventional 120-volt outlets.....but we're going to need a whole nationwide supply of them if electric cars are going to be feasible.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

i will just say there is a big gap between science and business (including politics). greed drives most people at the end of the day. if anyone thinks things are the way it is now for no behind-the-curtain kind of reasons, that's just naiveness.

Mr Johnson

Ummm... what?

People aren't really comprehending the problem. You want one. Spec one out and go buy one. Here's a link to spec one out now. And if you're a company there are a quite a number of CNG fueled trucks in cities running around out there.

Want to fill up? Check the map

Sure it's not mainstream (just like Hydrogen cars) yet but that's the whole point. It isn't illegal it's simply costly and our free market isn't very good at taking risks (gotta keep next quarters profits up) for the long term.

There's a lot of misinformation or lack of understanding of a fairly complicated issue. There's no "easy" way to solve the issue though helping educate the market about the inability to trade off oil and coal (can't run your car on coal and can't make plastic from it either). The video was interesting but after the good start turned into more of a marketing exercise IMO.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

according to the video it's not legal to CONVERT an existing car to cng. but thanks for info on tha civic-ng and map.

lol at not taking risks - what do you think oil and gas exploration is, risk-free?

LexFather

Exactly. The guy drives a Tesla and Fisker, *****es about the government and never acknowledges those companies got TONS of government money and help to prop up. Its a really one-way vid as he doesn't even go into cargo ships, nuclear energy and a ton of other variables. Instead we get the usual 'OMG CHINA" It is "simple" which is ridiculous on such a crazy issue

I mean I can appreciate it but its really not that great.

Lil4X

Excellent talk!

If we would unleash the regulatory restrictions on fuel and transport, truly amazing changes in our use of fossil fuels would emerge.

But there's another facet to this question: In any analysis of fuel cost, we have to strip taxes out of the cost of a gallon of gas. Gas taxes have been used as "user fees" by our states, supposedly to pay for our highway infrastructure. It's actually pretty fair, seeing as drivers of large, heavy, inefficient cars will pay proportionately more taxes - well, until you get down to the lowest income families who generally can't afford the newest hybrid or electric car and must be content with a 20+ year old beater for transportation. There's something the guilty rich can weep over for the coming years - although no real solution will be forthcoming. Lumping government greed into the pump price of gas is both unrealistic and unfair, turning our oil companies, or at least their distributors into tax collection agencies.

Another way of looking at gas costs is that, expressed in terms of current dollars, if you strip out the taxes on each gallon, gasoline, since the 1920's has cost pretty close to the same throughout the years. Sure, a gallon of gas cost about 30¢ per gallon in 1920* - and we in America weren't burning a whole lot of it yet. Still that's about $2.91 in 2005 dollars. From 1920 to 2005, the average pump price for gas (less taxes) has been between $2.81 (1920) and $1.27 (1999). Generally, the trend has been toward slightly cheaper gas over the past 85 years, although there have been market spikes, largely caused by supply issues driven by geopolitical interests overseas.

So what can we do NOW to relieve our bleeding economy and job base? First, let's go after the regulations that require us to burn gasoline and only gasoline in our automobiles. Flex-fuel vehicles are available but not heavily marketed. Let's change that. For a time, synfuels are going to be expensive, until we can develop the production and refining facilities to move them into large-scale production. No single fuel is going to drag us out from under the situation we've gotten ourselves into by ignoring the legislation that's gone on around us. Let's make some rational technologically and economically sound energy policy decisions.

If we can't haul a nuclear or coal-fired powerplant in our cars, let's reserve high energy-density fossil and synfuel blends for our transportation needs. Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than most available coal plants, so let's use that now while we develop wind and solar resources and bring them online as their technology makes them competitive. Meanwhile we can investigate geothermal, tidal, and even cheaper means of oil recovery in an organized and efficient manner. There is no need to panic over these changes, if we manage them properly, we can easily provide for our energy needs now and into the future without crashing the environment or breaking the bank.

* http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehicles...t_fotw426.html

mmarshall

Good Point. We all remember what happened with BP two years ago.

LeX2K

There are several issues I have with what he was saying. He talked about all the cars in the parking lot that people drove to be at his talk. If all of those vehicles were powered by natural gas as he suggests, it would be an incredible hazard. Just a few cars leaking fuel could easily create a small bomb like explosion. In fact many underground parking structures forbid CNG for this very reason.

He also fails to mention that the energy contained in a gallon of some of the alternative fuels is less, in some cases much less than gasoline. So even if it was $2/gallon, you'd need more of it, negating the savings. And these fuels don't do so well in cold weather either. And he also does not talk about the fact that the sheer volume of oil we consume (read energy) is tremendous, there is simply no way we could replace even 20% of that with alternative fuels currently (the exception might be natural gas). And look at the ethanol initiatives currently, they at BEST energy net zero, but most likely they consume more energy than they produce.

Now I am not against moving away from oil consumption, in fact I am all for it. But people need to understand that gasoline is a tremendously potent fuel, and modern engines are extremely adept at getting the most out it. You move into other fuels and engine power goes down, fuel tanks need to be larger, refueling will take longer and be less convenient. These factors make it a harder sell to the average car buyer. The bottom line is there is simply NO equal fuel replacement for gasoline currently, none.

But we still must slowly transition away from it, I personally think the only way to do that is to dump the internal combustion engine for good and go electric. It will take decades to do this, but the electric car is better in so many ways. You have almost zero maintenance, vastly less complicated drivetrain, and the ability to generate electricity from just about any fuel source you can think of.

But until the electric car is as good or better than the fuel burner (or vastly cheaper) people will take the petrol car every time.

Och

iTrader: (3)

It is perfectly legal for them to use biodiesel fuel, but they still have to pay road taxes like everyone else. I don't see any fault with the state demanding them to declare their fuel usage and paying the tax.

With that being said, modern diesel engines are very picky, and I personally would never use anything but commercially available diesel fuel because of the risk of damaging exhaust system and sooting up the engine. I own a 2005 Ford diesel, and that already is very picky and requires a lot of maintenance - I can't even imagine how picky and how much maintenance is required for most modern diesels.

Och

iTrader: (3)

It is illegal for people to do conversions that are not safety tested and approved. There are some CNG cars that you can buy, but they are factory models, that are properly engineered.

Would you want your neighbor to modify his car to run on CNG, with a loose gas tank rocking around in the trunk, and him refilling the tank by a hacked hose running from his stove?

spwolf

yep... and big business WILL influence legislation and everything else they can, just to make more money... free market as in customer wins does not exist.

A lot of people dont know that Chevron bought patent (from ECD) for large Nimh batteries in cars that prevented Toyota from having Nimh based plugins for a lot less.

Large corporations are not here to help me and you, they are here to make most money possible while getting away with it. I am actually anti-conspiracy but who things this is not true, is deluding themselves.

mmarshall

It's a somewhat gray area. Though I'm not a lawyer, as I understand it, motor-fuel taxes generally apply to fuel that is purchased, not actually self-produced. But, of course, the state is going to try and collect on anything it can.

Well, I can give you one example right here...on the modern Bluetec diesels used in some BMW and Mercedes products. They can be a joy to drive, for several reasons (witness my auto-reviews of them). But, unlike the smaller U.S.-market VW/Audi TDI diesels, the Bluetecs require periodic tank-refills (roughly every 10-15K miles) of a urea-solution that, when sprayed into the diesel's exhaust, helps to clean up the soot and particulates that the other emission-controls don't catch. Those urea-refills, though, are sometimes covered for a time (when applicable) by the BMW and Mercedes free-maintenance programs. Also, since the end of 2005, the Euro-style low-sulfur diesel, which is also a requirement for many new diesels, has been sold in the U.S....it previously was unavailable here.

Just out of curiosity......does your 2005 Ford truck-diesel require the low-sulfur fuel and/or the urea-solution? MeThinks probably not, as diesel-emissions back then generally did not apply to trucks.