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Gas Prices: The Rise and Fall
Gas in Loretto costs 4 dollars a gallon. In Greenhill around 5. Quite an outrage if you ask me. I'm not that old but I remember gas being only $1.82. Now we are content with $3.50 a gallon. I don't think I'm the only one who noticed this (possibly not the only one who's blogged on this already) but they are playing a trick on all of us. They rise the gas prices at around 50 cent increments and we all get pretty ticked. It is the most talked about thing for the rest of the week. Then they drop it about 25 cents. Now we are happy. Sooner or later we will be content with $10 a gallon prices cause it went down from $10.25.
With so much advanced technology that we have nowadays why dont we have solar-powered electric cars yet? It doesn't make sense to me that we have cell phones that can log on to the Interenet, and yet we can't produce an inexpensive car that can get 80 miles to the gallon.
Comments (4)
I remember 40 cents/gal being high, in response to the first OPEC embargo, 1973.
The reason we are slow to have battery cars is that large-scale battery storage has not until now been a strong market need. So the choices in electric-power storage are few, but improving.
We can't have a solar car because there is not enough area on the car to run at the needed power. But we can have a car you could charge for a commute using a modest solar panel. The Tesla car will give you a 50-mile commute using a 6x8 ft panel, charging for roughly 8 hrs. The car is expensive only because it is essentially custom-made by Lotus of England for the Tesla company. Drawback is charging time for a full "tank", or 250 miles---four hours at 100 amps!
Honda has a hydrogen fuel-cell car you fill up at home, with gas separated from natural gas using a home kit. Combine that with MIT's new hydrogen-separation process for highly-efficent hyrdolysis, and you could use your own solar to generate hydrogen for your fuel-cell Honda.
For now, long-range cars will need some kind of gas or liquid fuel since no one will wait 4 hours to fill up the highway. Battery swaps might be a solution, like propane tanks at the store. But if we could run as a plug-in for local commuting, while filling the tank for travel, one car could do both jobs. Best design for that is the series hybrid, with a fuel engine available to recharge batteries, but electric being the actual powertrain.
September 17, 2008 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cell phones can be made by the zillions for cheap cheap cheap. Not so with cars. Basically the issue with range has limited the potential of electric adoption. Until batteries get a lot better or hydrogen fuel cells become cost competitive automotive technology can't evolve. Hybrid technologies can fill the gap in the interim but that is an expensive alternative due to employing multiple technologies on each and every vehicle. There are also issues with the entire life cylce cost that have become part of the current equation that once weren't even considerd. It's a multi-faceted puzzle with very complex pieces some of which have a fluctuating shape at the moment. The technological pieces have yet to evolve to make mass production cost effective.
September 17, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I commute to work for twenty bucks a week. Price has ben stable for years now.
It's called public transportation.
September 17, 2008 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well Mr. or Ms. whatever your name is. If you had spent some time doing some research other than trying to be a smart-ass so everyone will think you have something going for you, you would have learned that the city of Loretto is just a small town with no buses or taxis. The only public transportation is for the elderly and the mental. Since I am neither, I have to pay for gas. Please think next time before you make a comment like that.
September 20, 2008 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
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