Interesting car rental (electric or dino juice?) experience

[Marcel Birgelen]

Which brings us back to the need for a replacement battery chemistry for lithium ion to make the mass transition to EVs reliable. If you Google "alternatives to lithium ion," you will find a ton of puff pieces such as this one, and I'm hoping that sooner rather than later, one or more of these technologies will make it out of the lab and into volume production.

Yeah, we hear about yet another "breakthrough battery design" almost every week. I can't count the amount of articles I've seen regarding that subject over the last ten or so years. Therefore, I nowadays tend to skip those articles all together, as most of them are indeed just fluff pieces.

While there have been many small improvements over the years to existing designs, they eventually add up to quite a lot, to the point that nowadays electric vehicles are a reality, whereas about 30 or so years ago, we still lacked usable battery designs. Still, a real breakthrough using something more abundant and less ecologically taxing than lithium seems to be difficult. There are few if any other elements with the same electrochemical potential as lithium and finding molecular configurations that somehow mimic that same electrochemical potential, while not impossible, seems more like a search for the lucky lottery number to me. I guess that's why a real breakthrough still hasn't been made. Maybe we need to settle on lithium and start mining it from asteroids.

As for hydrogen, its association with the Hindenburg in popular culture is not for nothing. The builders and operators of rigid airships spent nearly four decades trying to manage the risk caused by the stuff, and in many ways they had a simpler engineering problem, because they weren't trying to burn it to release energy: simply contain it, stop it from mixing with oxygen, and prevent any sources of ignition from getting near it. As not just the Hindenburg, but literally dozens of other airships that were destroyed in hydrogen fires, notably several pre-WWI passenger Zeppelins, the Dixmude, and the R101, demonstrated, that problem was never fundamentally able to be solved. Given that in a hydrogen-powered vehicle, you actually want to ignite the hydrogen, the risk of that ignition getting out of control and turning your car into a bomb would seem to be unacceptably high.

I think that most hydrogen-driven car designs are actually based on fuel-cell designs. Burning it directly in the engine comes with efficiency problems. So, they're essentially electric vehicles, using the hydrogen fuel cell as electric power source. I've never heard the term "ignition" in combination with a fuel cell, but the process effectively is a form of oxidation, so technically you probably could call it that way. Fuel cells themselves have become pretty safe over the years, the major risk remains in the storage part. Gasoline doesn't burn in liquid form, which is the natural occurrence of gasoline. Hydrogen, on the other hand, violently explodes in its natural gaseous form. Any type of storage needs to be far more sophisticated than your average gasoline tank.

Another problem is the energy density of hydrogen, which is far less than gasoline. This is bad news for vehicle design, as you'll need much bigger tanks.

As for storage safety, there have been some interesting developments like the storage of hydrogen in carbon "nanoflakes". Those "flakes" bind with hydrogen molecules/atoms under pressure and release them back at lower pressure, yet at a far slower pace. Hence, a breach in a hydrogen storage container would release the amount of ignitable hydrogen at a much slower pace, reducing the risk of a hydrogen explosion considerably.

While those solutions seem to work pretty well, they usually don't help to increase the storage density of hydrogen, which remains a problem.

Then, finally, there is this problem with hydrogen production. Ironically, most hydrogen we produce today comes from carbon sources. While water would be great source for hydrogen, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen still requires tons of energy, despite a lot of research into "low and medium temperature catalysts" for the electrolysis of water.

A sustainable energy cycle using hydrogen as fuel may eventually technically possible, but it's clear that we're missing quite a lot of pieces in this puzzle. Unfortunately, just like the lithium battery thing, you often hear a lot of fuzz about new inventions, but many of those eventually prove to be impractical at scale or over-hyped.

[Lyle Romer]

Yeah, we hear about yet another "breakthrough battery design" almost every week. I can't count the amount of articles I've seen regarding that subject over the last ten or so years. Therefore, I nowadays tend to skip those articles all together, as most of them are indeed just fluff pieces.

While there have been many small improvements over the years to existing designs, they eventually add up to quite a lot, to the point that nowadays electric vehicles are a reality, whereas about 30 or so years ago, we still lacked usable battery designs. Still, a real breakthrough using something more abundant and less ecologically taxing than lithium seems to be difficult. There are few if any other elements with the same electrochemical potential as lithium and finding molecular configurations that somehow mimic that same electrochemical potential, while not impossible, seems more like a search for the lucky lottery number to me. I guess that's why a real breakthrough still hasn't been made. Maybe we need to settle on lithium and start mining it from asteroids.



I think that most hydrogen-driven car designs are actually based on fuel-cell designs. Burning it directly in the engine comes with efficiency problems. So, they're essentially electric vehicles, using the hydrogen fuel cell as electric power source. I've never heard the term "ignition" in combination with a fuel cell, but the process effectively is a form of oxidation, so technically you probably could call it that way. Fuel cells themselves have become pretty safe over the years, the major risk remains in the storage part. Gasoline doesn't burn in liquid form, which is the natural occurrence of gasoline. Hydrogen, on the other hand, violently explodes in its natural gaseous form. Any type of storage needs to be far more sophisticated than your average gasoline tank.

Another problem is the energy density of hydrogen, which is far less than gasoline. This is bad news for vehicle design, as you'll need much bigger tanks.

As for storage safety, there have been some interesting developments like the storage of hydrogen in carbon "nanoflakes". Those "flakes" bind with hydrogen molecules/atoms under pressure and release them back at lower pressure, yet at a far slower pace. Hence, a breach in a hydrogen storage container would release the amount of ignitable hydrogen at a much slower pace, reducing the risk of a hydrogen explosion considerably.

While those solutions seem to work pretty well, they usually don't help to increase the storage density of hydrogen, which remains a problem.

Then, finally, there is this problem with hydrogen production. Ironically, most hydrogen we produce today comes from carbon sources. While water would be great source for hydrogen, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen still requires tons of energy, despite a lot of research into "low and medium temperature catalysts" for the electrolysis of water.

A sustainable energy cycle using hydrogen as fuel may eventually technically possible, but it's clear that we're missing quite a lot of pieces in this puzzle. Unfortunately, just like the lithium battery thing, you often hear a lot of fuzz about new inventions, but many of those eventually prove to be impractical at scale or over-hyped.

I don't see how the issues presented by hydrogen can ever ever be solved to the point that it is viable. It's such a pain to deal with that even in the mass critical world of space travel no recent rocket designs have used it as a fuel even with the superior energy to mass ratio. For ground vehicles, the space the tanks take up for any reasonably practical range is too much unless you want to tow a fuel trailer so that the base vehicle has usable space. If you try to solve that issue by using liquid hydrogen then you lose a ton of the fuel you purchased due to boil off. Then you get to the key issue that reservoirs of hydrogen don't exist on earth so it has to be manufactured.

Like the "breakthrough" battery designs that we always hear about, hydrogen fuel is a utopian pipe dream. The best compromise to minimize energy consumption and maximize vehicle usability is a plug in hybrid with 100 miles or so of electric only range. Then you have an electric car for commuting and doing things around town but a gas fueled car for longer trips. You eliminate 2/3 of the battery weight and cost (some of which is offset by the gas powered generator and don't need to waste hours charging on the road during a road trip.

However, since plug in hybrids make the most sense that means that the "powers that be" will push something different because "zero emissions" sounds better and they are too ignorant to understand that most of the magical electricity used to power fully electric vehicles will still be produced using fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Hence the semantics of "zero tailpipe emissions."

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I don't see how the issues presented by hydrogen can ever ever be solved to the point that it is viable. It's such a pain to deal with that even in the mass critical world of space travel no recent rocket designs have used it as a fuel even with the superior energy to mass ratio. For ground vehicles, the space the tanks take up for any reasonably practical range is too much unless you want to tow a fuel trailer so that the base vehicle has usable space. If you try to solve that issue by using liquid hydrogen then you lose a ton of the fuel you purchased due to boil off. Then you get to the key issue that reservoirs of hydrogen don't exist on earth so it has to be manufactured.

Like the "breakthrough" battery designs that we always hear about, hydrogen fuel is a utopian pipe dream. The best compromise to minimize energy consumption and maximize vehicle usability is a plug in hybrid with 100 miles or so of electric only range. Then you have an electric car for commuting and doing things around town but a gas fueled car for longer trips. You eliminate 2/3 of the battery weight and cost (some of which is offset by the gas powered generator and don't need to waste hours charging on the road during a road trip.

However, since plug in hybrids make the most sense that means that the "powers that be" will push something different because "zero emissions" sounds better and they are too ignorant to understand that most of the magical electricity used to power fully electric vehicles will still be produced using fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Hence the semantics of "zero tailpipe emissions."

Lyle, All of NASA's stuff since Apollo use hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen fuel cells including Artemis but except the Lunar Lander. It used silver Zinc batteries. Musk doesn't believe in fuel cells. So no idea how they are going to generate electric on a year long trip to Mars.

[Lyle Romer]

Lyle, All of NASA's stuff since Apollo use hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen fuel cells including Artemis but except the Lunar Lander. It used silver Zinc batteries. Musk doesn't believe in fuel cells. So no idea how they are going to generate electric on a year long trip to Mars.

Artemis uses LH2 because they wanted to reuse tooling and technology from the Space Shuttle program including taking the still functioning reusable LH2/LO2 engines and disposing of them on test flights. I guess technically it's a recent design but it's really just a 1970's design repurposed.

I was mistaken. I guess the forthcoming (eventually) Blue Origin launcher will use LH2 in the upper stage but stick with Liquid Methane for the lower stage (which SpaceX is using for both stages of Starship).

It will be interesting to find out how they generate electricity without fuel cells. Are you sure he is against fuel cells or just against hydrogen fuel cells? I'm more interested in how somebody can spend the amount of time it takes to get to Mars in a space capsule without going insane but that's another topic!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Not that I know about everything out there, but I'm certainly not aware of any other devices other than fuel cells that are as reliable or that will operate as long as they can.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I'm more interested in how somebody can spend the amount of time it takes to get to Mars in a space capsule without going insane but that's another topic!

Bring lots of Blu Ray or DVD movies?

[Mike Blakesley]

Heck if they can transmit HD video images from Mars, they certainly ought be able to transmit a few hundred TV channels into a spacecraft. Too bad the whole "hypersleep" idea is a movie fantasy.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Artemis uses LH2 because they wanted to reuse tooling and technology from the Space Shuttle program including taking the still functioning reusable LH2/LO2 engines and disposing of them on test flights. I guess technically it's a recent design but it's really just a 1970's design repurposed.

I was mistaken. I guess the forthcoming (eventually) Blue Origin launcher will use LH2 in the upper stage but stick with Liquid Methane for the lower stage (which SpaceX is using for both stages of Starship).

It will be interesting to find out how they generate electricity without fuel cells. Are you sure he is against fuel cells or just against hydrogen fuel cells? I'm more interested in how somebody can spend the amount of time it takes to get to Mars in a space capsule without going insane but that's another topic!

It appears this is the way of the future for Space Craft.... It never surprises me what they come up with at Vanderbilt U.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't see how the issues presented by hydrogen can ever ever be solved to the point that it is viable. It's such a pain to deal with that even in the mass critical world of space travel no recent rocket designs have used it as a fuel even with the superior energy to mass ratio. For ground vehicles, the space the tanks take up for any reasonably practical range is too much unless you want to tow a fuel trailer so that the base vehicle has usable space. If you try to solve that issue by using liquid hydrogen then you lose a ton of the fuel you purchased due to boil off. Then you get to the key issue that reservoirs of hydrogen don't exist on earth so it has to be manufactured.

Like the "breakthrough" battery designs that we always hear about, hydrogen fuel is a utopian pipe dream. The best compromise to minimize energy consumption and maximize vehicle usability is a plug in hybrid with 100 miles or so of electric only range. Then you have an electric car for commuting and doing things around town but a gas fueled car for longer trips. You eliminate 2/3 of the battery weight and cost (some of which is offset by the gas powered generator and don't need to waste hours charging on the road during a road trip.

However, since plug in hybrids make the most sense that means that the "powers that be" will push something different because "zero emissions" sounds better and they are too ignorant to understand that most of the magical electricity used to power fully electric vehicles will still be produced using fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Hence the semantics of "zero tailpipe emissions."

I also don't really see a viable road towards hydrogen-powered road vehicles, unless some real unexpected breakthrough happens, which, honestly, I don't expect in our lifetime. That doesn't entirely rule out hydrogen as part of our "fuel economy" though. Hydrogen still has a few things going for it and maybe we should not try to shoehorn it into solutions we know won't work. Hydrogen stores about three times the energy per mass unit than most conventional liquid carbon fuels (gasoline, kerosene, etc.). Also, a hydrogen fuel cycle could be entirely CO2 free, as oxidizing pure hydrogen doesn't produce any carbon-dioxide, but just water. It can also be produced without producing carbon-dioxide, even though it requires a lot of energy to do so.

Hydrogen becomes interesting again, when volume matters less than mass. That's why it never went away for spacecraft. Ironically, that also means that it could be a viable alternative for future aircraft designs: A fuel that contains about three times the amount of energy per mass unit sounds pretty promising. Yes, you need some huge tanks, but those store relatively little mass. Looking at the rather huge profile of most commercial aircraft, primarily caused by the wingspan of those machines, I don't think it will be a problem to incorporate some extra volume here, especially if, in the bottom line, it doesn't add any weight. Personally, I think a hydrogen-powered aircraft sounds much more viable than one powered by huge banks of batteries.

As for "green" hydrogen production: You don't need that much infrastructure to create hydrogen, you essentially also only need water and power. So, hydrogen could be rather easily produced by using excess energy coming from wind and solar farms. It still needs to be transported from there to the consumer, obviously, but that's no different than with other energy sources.

As for road vehicles: I'm back to driving a hybrid, it's the thing that makes the most sense for me at the time. Unfortunately, it still burns mostly non-renewable carbon fuel, but it does so pretty efficiently. I do think electric transport can work, but not using "traditional roads". Electric trains do work and electric trams and trolley busses do work too, but none of them carries their energy storage with them or if they do, just very little. Also, we're now how many years in after Tesla presented their "semi"? Then there was this other electric truck company that turned out to be a billion dollar scam... Then there are those proposed electric truck charging stations that essentially require half a nuclear reactor, which really sounds more like a bad joke... Nobody seems to be able to make electric work for heavy transport, at least not using batteries.

[Leo Enticknap]

Hydrogen becomes interesting again, when volume matters less than mass. That's why it never went away for spacecraft. Ironically, that also means that it could be a viable alternative for future aircraft designs: A fuel that contains about three times the amount of energy per mass unit sounds pretty promising. Yes, you need some huge tanks, but those store relatively little mass. Looking at the rather huge profile of most commercial aircraft, primarily caused by the wingspan of those machines, I don't think it will be a problem to incorporate some extra volume here, especially if, in the bottom line, it doesn't add any weight. Personally, I think a hydrogen-powered aircraft sounds much more viable than one powered by huge banks of batteries.

Which brings us back to Zeppelins. One of the biggest problems they had was managing weight, balance, and pressure height equilibrium, given that the volume of hydrogen a flight started with provided a fixed amount of aerostatic lift, but close to half the airship's all up weight was in liquid fuel (gasoline pre-Hindenburg, and Diesel for the two Hindenburg class airships), which was gradually burned as the flight progressed. To avoid the airship becoming unstable and its pressure height increasing out of control, very expensive hydrogen had to be discharged to compensate for the reducing weight of the fuel. So, with Daimler Benz, they tried to develop an internal combustion engine that could burn both hydrogen and gasoline, but were not able to. It would have had to have had dozens of cylinders to generate useful output from hydrogen, and the extra weight of the engines themselves would have more than offset any savings elsewhere. A Zeppelin is pretty much the ultimate example of a "volume doesn't matter" transportation vehicle, and so if they couldn't make hydrogen work as an energy discharge fuel, I don't think there is much hope for road vehicles!

[Randy Stankey]

If I was going to buy an alternatively-powered car, it would be an internal combustion hybrid of some sort. Gasoline-electric? Diesel-electric? I don't know. Diesel-electric sounds better to me because I know a little about trains but I don't know if the benefits would translate to cars.

I wouldn't pick a battery powered anything. Maybe in a hybrid as a means of recovering energy during regenerative braking or something. Again, I don't know whether the concept translates to cars very well.
Batteries take energy and resources to manufacture. Then you have to charge them. You'll never get back all the energy you put into them. Finally, when they wear out, they have to be disposed of or recycled. Batteries are always a loss from an environmental conservation standpoint. Building a worldwide fleet of battery powered cars will only make the problem worse.

I think it better to use a fuel source that we are familiar with and have infrastructure to produce and deliver already in place. The key is to use less energy/fuel. I think hybrid cars leverage the availability of petroleum/gasoline by using it more efficiently.

Zeppelins: One thing about lighter-than-air craft is that they can only lift so much. Air weighs about 1.2 kg per cubic meter. If it were possible to create a balloon of some sort that had a volume of a cubic meter but zero mass and could withstand the crushing force of a complete vacuum, it wouldn't even lift my cat off the ground. Think about it! A cubic meter is pretty big!

An airplane like a Cessna-150 weighs about 1,000 lb. (450 kg., give or take.) That's dry weight. No cargo, no pilot, no passengers, no fuel. It would need something like 375 m^3 of volume (7 or 8 meter sphere) just to make the airplane neutrally buoyant. Add fuel, passengers, crew and cargo and that volume goes up. That's for a pure vacuum that displaces the mass of the airplane so this is only theoretical. If you use hydrogen or helium, that volume gets bigger. I'm not trying to give a science lesson, here. I only remember that air weighs 1.2 kg/m^3 from school. The rest is just thumbnail math.

I'm only just trying to illuminate the concept of just how much it takes to lift an aircraft (or a cat) off the ground. (It would take a balloon with a volume of 7 m^3, by the way. He weighs 14 lb. )
The scales we have to work at just to lift a small airplane off the ground or to move a passenger car are amazingly huge! Multiply that by the number of cars (millions and millions!) on the road and the scale becomes unimaginable! That doesn't include the energy used by trucks, trains, boats and aircraft. There just ain't no energy source that's going to match petroleum. Not wind. Not solar. Not hydrogen. Maybe nuclear power if we could work out the kinks. Certainly not batteries or pure electric.

The one, the only solution is to use less fuel. To use what fuel we have more efficiently, waste less of it and drive vehicles less frequently.

We need to rearrange our home communities so that we don't need to drive more than fifteen minutes to get the things we need, like groceries and daily needs. We need to rethink our working lives so that we don't have to commute 1 or more hours, each way, just to get to work every day. Telepresence? Work from home? I don't know. What about better commuter rail so that fewer people need to drive?

We really need to start putting serious thought and effort into making cars that use less energy and getting as many cars as we can off the roads and we need to do it sooner than later.

Electric cars, hydrogen power and other exotic power sources aren't going to do it. They only just prolong the agony.

Maybe a nuclear powered car. Ford built a concept car, back in the 50's, but it never went beyond a mock-up. If we could work out the kinks, I'd be interested.

But, alas! All we really know about nuclear is how to blow stuff up!

That's exactly what we're going to do if we don't start conserving energy in a big way!... Blow ourselves up!

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't think anybody will realistically design an aircraft again, using hydrogen as medium for aerostatic lift. In any new aircraft design, I imagine that the hydrogen will be there as fuel and despite using big tanks, it will probably still be considerably compressed, mostly negating the aerostatic effect. There may be this funny curve in which the fuel itself will cause an upwards lift, after it is consumed to some extend, only to subside, once you consume more of it.

I think nowadays, we should be able to either burn hydrogen directly in some form of jet-motor or maybe for aircraft in the lower-altitude and lower speed range, convert it to electricity via hydrogen fuel cells first. We'll probably do the latter part anyway, to drive electric systems on the plane.

As for nuclear cars: I'm not against nuclear power, probably quite the opposite... I think that a properly managed nuclear fuel cycle could solve quite a few of our energy problems, but therein also lies part of the problem: It needs to be properly managed. Given how many people there are that aren't able to "properly manage" their gasoline-powered vehicle right now, I'm not sure if I'd trust those same people to "manage" nuclear powered cars... would you?

[Randy Stankey]

Yeah, when I said that we'd need to work out the kinks before we could have nuclear powered cars, I figured we all had some ideas what those "kinks" were.

The car that Ford promoted in the 50's was called the "Nucleon." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon ) It never got off the ground, so to speak.
The Nucleon was supposed to be, basically, a steam-powered car that used a uranium reactor as a boiler. Where would it get the electricity to operate the lights and electronics? If I was designing such a car I would consider using a steam turbine to power an electric generator. It would be a nuclear hybrid instead of a direct drive steam engine.

There has been some talk of designing cars based on some sort of thorium reactor but it sounds like mostly conjecture and pseudoscience. Oak Ridge Labs built a thorium reactor in the 1960's but nothing ever came of it. I'd like to see some more thought put into that, again.

Maybe, instead of a full fledged reactor, a radioisotope thermo-electric generator could be developed? Just take the heat generated by decay of some radioactive substance and use it to power a thermocouple. We already have them. They are used to power satellites and, sometimes, to power remote instruments in places where traditional power sources would be impossible to maintain. The Russians used them to power weather stations and other remote devices in the arctic circle where replenishing the fuel source every few weeks would be impossible. So, we know that radioisotope generators can be built. The problem is whether we can build one that will produce enough energy to power a car. Probably not likely unless there is some great breakthrough.

The problem is that, regardless of how we get energy, it's limited. Even if we suddenly have a breakthrough that makes fusion a workable solution, we still have to move electricity from where it's produced to where it's needed to be used. Our electrical grid is approaching 100 years old and it's already falling apart. Even if we had enough energy, we won't be able to use it.

There is one solution and one solution, only: Use less energy and use the energy that we have more efficiently. Period.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The car that Ford promoted in the 50's was called the "Nucleon." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon ) It never got off the ground, so to speak.
The Nucleon was supposed to be, basically, a steam-powered car that used a uranium reactor as a boiler. Where would it get the electricity to operate the lights and electronics? If I was designing such a car I would consider using a steam turbine to power an electric generator. It would be a nuclear hybrid instead of a direct drive steam engine.

Funny concept: Instead of refueling the reactor, you'd need to replace the reactor every 8000 or so miles. Maybe that was their way of keeping it "safe".

There has been some talk of designing cars based on some sort of thorium reactor but it sounds like mostly conjecture and pseudoscience. Oak Ridge Labs built a thorium reactor in the 1960's but nothing ever came of it. I'd like to see some more thought put into that, again.

Maybe, instead of a full fledged reactor, a radioisotope thermo-electric generator could be developed? Just take the heat generated by decay of some radioactive substance and use it to power a thermocouple. We already have them. They are used to power satellites and, sometimes, to power remote instruments in places where traditional power sources would be impossible to maintain. The Russians used them to power weather stations and other remote devices in the arctic circle where replenishing the fuel source every few weeks would be impossible. So, we know that radioisotope generators can be built. The problem is whether we can build one that will produce enough energy to power a car. Probably not likely unless there is some great breakthrough.

The problem with nuclear power sources is obviously the radiation hazard. I think that automatically makes them impractical for most mobile purposes, especially cars and aircraft. What happens if an atomic car gets hit by a train? It's like setting off a dirty bomb, no matter what the half-time is of the stuff that's being used, it will be an utter mess.

The Russians used thermal nuclear sources for heat and steam/electricity generation. Many of those "nuclear generators" using highly radioactive Strontium 90 as power source were deployed in desolate regions without any other power sources nearby. Those things are still a hazard, as they left many out there to rot in the field. A perfect example of how not to handle nuclear power sources.

The problem is that, regardless of how we get energy, it's limited. Even if we suddenly have a breakthrough that makes fusion a workable solution, we still have to move electricity from where it's produced to where it's needed to be used. Our electrical grid is approaching 100 years old and it's already falling apart. Even if we had enough energy, we won't be able to use it.

There is one solution and one solution, only: Use less energy and use the energy that we have more efficiently. Period.

The irony is, we have the technology to give almost everybody energy abundance. We've not yet solved the "car problem", but maybe a better city design will solve that to some extend, like you put yourself, there are plenty of examples around the world of how to design cities and urban living spaces where cars aren't needed for all-day living activities...

But, the sun provides ample energy and current nuclear technologies, if implemented correctly, could provide energy for eons to come. Solar panels have become cheap and can be manufactured from material that we have in abundance: sand. There is also enough sun and there is enough desert on the planet to put them.

We also have the means of electrical transportation. Modern, cryogenic high-voltage DC lines can transport energy efficiently over 1000s of miles. We successfully wrapped the world in fiber-optic cables, so there is no reason we cannot do the same with high-voltage DC power cables. With sufficient will (or maybe power?), we could build a global energy grid and transport the energy from where it's produced to were it's actually needed, no storage needed... The technology is there, the money to do so, should also not be the problem, but the problem is everything else...

[Randy Stankey]

I live less than a kilometer away from the place where I work. Occasionally, when the weather is nice, I walk to work.

We mothballed one of our cars and we only drive one vehicle. The grocery store, gas station and the local shopping plaza are a little more than a mile away from home. If we have to drive "downtown" for something, it's usually less than a twenty or thirty mile round trip. We do most of our grocery shopping and run most of our errands on the weekends. During the week, we probably drive about ten miles, total.

We don't use the air conditioning in our house unless it's extra hot outdoors. We have used AC in our house, maybe, half a dozen times during the previous summer. We don't turn the heat up in the winter, either, unless it gets cold. As a matter of fact, we turn the central air system completely off between May and September.

I'm not trying to say I'm some kind of hero for conservation. I'm just doing a little bit of thinking about my energy use and trying to do my part. It's really not inconvenient at all.

The problem is that I've got a neighbor who drives a honkin'-big pickup truck with a big, diesel engine. Every morning, precisely at 6:00 a.m., he uses his remote starter and lets the engine run, some days, up to an hour before he drives off and goes to work. I've got other neighbors who run their air conditioning 24/7, all summer long, even when the outdoor temperature is below 60º F.

All the energy I save during a year goes right out that A-hole neighbor's tailpipe! Those people aren't, necessarily, bad. They just don't get it. They think that energy is free.

People need to understand that they don't have to live like cavemen in order to conserve energy. Just think about it and do the little things. If we all conserve just a little bit, we can all have as much energy as we need and nobody will have to suffer any inconvenience. If we don't, we set ourselves on the path to an energy and environmental crisis and we could all end up living like cavemen, like it or not!

Like you say, we need to rethink our communities so that we don't have to drive everywhere we go, for every little thing. I like solar, wind and other alternative power sources but they are only adjuncts. There just isn't enough surface area on the planet to put up wind and solar energy farms to produce enough energy to power the world. I like nuclear power but we're going to have to double down on research to work out the kinks. I think it can be done if we put our minds to it. Like you, I think we do have enough energy to go around if we do it right. The problem is getting people to do it right...or, at least half-way right.

Until then, the only way is to use less energy and drive fewer cars. If we don't do it voluntarily, we'll be doing it involuntarily!