You kinda overlooked a few little things, such as the Hoover dam. Easy thing to do, really. Not quite as easy to overlook as electric trains, trucks, forklifts, buses, trolleys, and boats, but still those big old concrete and turbine contraptions are rarely noticed. It's the same with all those giant windmill farms, solar arrays, nuclear power plants (Japan has lots of those) and all those freaks who sell power to electric companies because they generate more than they use.

Ever seen anyone with an oil refinery in their back yard? I've seen people with their own generators that do not rely on any fossil fuel whatsoever. They use whatever low-density but plentiful energy source they have, such as water, wind or sun.

With electric cars, every house is a potential "filling" station, unless you were driving the GM EV1, which deliberately required non-standard connections and charging. The distribution system has been in place for several decades.

Electric vehicles are about 4 to 5 times more efficient than internal combustion engine powered vehicles. How can you pollute more by being more efficient? Well over 90% of lead-acid batteries are recycled, including the plastic cases. How much of that crud coming out of our exhaust pipes and dripping out of oil pans and power steering pumps and transmissions is recycled? I'm not talking about all the oil changes, even though a great deal of that is still not recycled.

Large electricity generation plants are very efficient and they are pretty darned good at cleaning up after themselves. Places like TVA squeeze as much energy as possible out of every drop of water that falls through a turbine and every grain of coal that is used to produce electricity. How much do you pay for electricity?

We drivers are still big time polluters and wasters of energy. By waste, I'm not talking about joy rides and burn-outs for fun. I'm talking about the inherent energy waste of an internal combustion engine. They toss gobs of energy out the tail pipe and gobs more out through the radiator or fins. They toss gobs of energy away just waiting at stop signs and lights, just keeping themselves ready for when you actually want to use some energy to go.

An electric motor doesn't have to idle at a stoplight. It doesn't require a radiator to dissipate wasted energy. It doesn't require a catalytic converter to convert some waste into some other waste. It doesn't require oil changes. It does provide gobs of torque even at 0 RPM. The main problem is simply carrying enough energy around with you for convenience.

Now for that part about ethanol. You can have my "medicinal" bottle of Jack Daniels when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. I will agree that corn is a heavy feeder, but I really can't see how making a little mash is going to damage our food supply. You can turn some pretty lifeless dirt into a wonderful, rich, loose garden in which even a broomstick will sprout just by grabbing up the by-products of whiskey distillers.

I guess I'm one of those "environmental freaks" you mentioned. I like air I can breathe without health warnings and filters, water I can swim in without growing a third eye, and dirt that kids can eat without developing new kinds of cancer. I have a little 4CV I'm planning to hotrod a little by converting it to an electric vehicle. It will have more power, especially torque, than it did with its gas engine. The clean aspects will be side benefits, just as not having to gas it up, change the oil, replace hoses and belts or fill it with anti-freeze.

The pollution laws have increased industrial productivity (more efficiency) while at the same time expanding the economy, especially in the area of recreation (check the statistics for how many billions are generated in that area).

Some resources for facts about EVs:

http://www.econogics.com/ev/evfaqs.htm
http://eaaev.org/index.html
http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/index.html
http://www.evco.ca/links.html

[Edited to add:]
Almost forgot about biodiesel:
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_vehicle.html
And a diesel Harley:
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/...ies/harley.shtm

Grouch, very well written response and good references for your point of view, Just a couple of questions to consider: How many hydro electric plants are going up to harness the power of stored water? How many Nuc. power plants are under construction? How are we going to deal with nuclear wastes? How are Japan and European countries dealing with their wastes? How many people are screaming for those giant wind generators to be installed in their neigberhood? What is the ratio of TVA Hydro Electric Power Plants to the Fossil Fuel Powered plants and why is it so close? How many acres of land is available to grow enough crops to provide the quantity of Ethanol to satisfy the demand if Ethanol were to be mandated (over and above what is required to meet our nationl food supplies)? How much increased engery demands and polution is generated when all this agriculture activity spools up? (our depleted soils require tons of chemicals and pesticides to produce in quantity and big time fossil fuel guzzling equiptment to conduct the operation)

Basically,in the enegery field, there are too much of the equations of computing gains and losses ignored and very errorenous decisions/claims being made based on "feel good" results.

Its been a long time since I studied/practiced thermo dynamics, but can not forget one basic rule drilled into my thick head: Matter can not be created or destroyed, we can only change it's form and to do that it takes or gives off enegery. To solve or predict processes, you have to correctly define the process and account for all events in the process. Enviromental freaks that I refer to have no clue or chose to ignore thes facts to justify their favorite agendas. That is why I stated that hydrogen is not the answer to our enegry needs. Production of lead acid batteries is a bigtime poluter of both the air and soil/water and even though recycling occurs, big time polution there as well. Now you want to expand that operation (assuming electric vehicles use lead acid batteries). What is the net savings in polution and fossil fuel?

I am still looking for an article written by a reputable Thermo Dynamicist that has addressed these issues extensively and balanced the equations that paints a totally different "big picture" than the arm chair enviromentalist with a PHD in Social Engineering with a back ground of science and math that stopped at Algebra I and Science in high school. If I find it, I will post or link it.

Trees

IMO ethanol is a feasable alternative fuel, more so in recent years with the advent of new technologies.
I won't repost this but check out post #7 attachment here - http://www.hotrodders.com/t48947.html&highlight=ethanol
It addreses the argument that there is not enough crop land for effective ethanol production and is fully referenced.
That crackpot Dr. Pimental has done a lot of damage to the idea of ethanol production without even doing current research. In a nutshell his argument against is based upon outdated technology.

heheheheh!!!!! nice avatar rhansen!! what'd it run?

Thank you but your subsequent questions indicate you did not read any of the references.



I don't know and don't care. This is a tangential argument not relevant to
alternative fuel hotrodding, in general, and electric vehicle hotrodding,
specifically. Electricity is available cheaply and cleanly.



Don't know. Not relevant to either electric vehicle use nor alternative
fuel hotrodding. Nuclear power plants are just one of many ways to
generate electricity. They are not essential for electric cars. On the
other hand, there are very few alternatives to fossil fuels to power
internal combustion engines.



What does this have to do with alternative fuel hotrodding? Another straw man argument. Three mile island kinda dampened the enthusiasm for nuclear power in the U.S.



Again, this is not relevant. I suspect not many people are screaming for the
giant wind generators to be installed in their neighborhoods, which is why all of those windmill farms are in hilly, remote, unpopulated regions.



What is the point? How is this relevant to alternative fuel hotrodding? Are
you trying to suggest that the large scale generation of electricity is less
efficient and therefore more wasteful and polluting than hundreds of millions of cars with engines averaging about 20% efficiency? If so, that is ludicrous on the face of it.



Who is doing this mandating and why are they so stupid?



Now you're stacking up a whole platoon of straw men so you can knock them down. You're the one who came up with the wild ideas that (a) a single magic solution must be found, (b) no single magic solution is available, (c) choosing ethanol as the single magic solution would deplete the soil, (d) depleting the soil by the production of crops to produce a mandated magic solution of ethanol will damage our ability to feed ourselves, (e) producing enough ethanol to be the single magic solution will require lots of petroleum consumption.



What claims have I made that are erroneous? Where are these "feel good" results? Where are you getting this, er, *stuff*?



The problem with hydrogen based fuel cells for cars has nothing to do with thermodynamics. It's a matter of distribution. There is no fuel distribution network in place that is comparable to the one that exists for gasoline and diesel fuels. The electricity distribution network is the only energy-related one that is comparable. It actually is much more wide-spread making electricity much easier to obtain and many more distribution outlets than gasoline, but it fails to be anywhere near as easy to haul large quantities away from those outlets.

No thermodynamics study nor physics degree is needed to understand that problem. You can haul a lot of energy around with you in the form of gasoline or diesel fuel. You can haul so much of it around so easily that it is not even a major inconvenience that your engine will throw away around 70% to 80% of the energy actually stored in your gas tank.

Your use of the word "thermodynamics" does nothing to validate your pseudo-science.



That's just plain old bovine fertilizer. Toss that on those corn fields with the depleted soils and you might just have bumper crops large enough to mandate corn whiskey as the single magic solution to energy problems.

There is more lead pollution from oil changes (you know, those things required by our internal combustion engines?) than from batteries. I can't bring myself to believe that the production of plastic cases for batteries and the assembly of those batteries will use more fossil fuels, and at a lower efficiency, than all of the internal combustion engines belching along at their typical 20% to 34% (for racing engines) efficiency.



Pretty darned big. According to a report in 1997 from the California Air
Resources Board:

"Between 1978 and 1987, the phase-out of leaded gasoline had cut its use
by 90 percent and reduced the overall inventory of airborne lead by
nearly 95 percent."

"Currently, aircraft fuel is the primary source of inorganic lead
emissions contributing about 149 tons of the metal to the state's lead
inventory each year. The next largest source of inorganic lead is metal
melting facilities which emit about 6 tons of inorganic lead to
California's air per year."

(Source = http://www.arb.ca.gov/newsrel/nr042497.htm )

Hmmm. That is just one state, yet the ratio of airborne lead pollution from ONE type of fossil fuel versus the lead pollution from ALL metal melting facilities is still 149 to 6. Now I'm no math whiz, but it sure looks like there's room in that ratio for a whole lot more battery production, even assuming the 1997 emissions hold today, while still reducing overall pollution.

Ok, so everyone knows California is a land of aliens (sorry, Californians, if nobody has pointed out this popular belief to you before). Let's see what the governments of the U.S. and Canada had to say, also in 1997, when they signed an agreement concerning air pollution:

"Alkyl-lead is released to the environment primarily through evaporative emissions from unburned gasoline retained in an engine's carburetor or fuel tanks and through evaporative losses during the filling of gasoline tanks, accidental spillages, and releases during production. However, alkyl-lead compounds combine with other compounds during the combustion process to form inorganic lead halides that are subsequently emitted as microparticulates in exhaust. Therefore, the human exposure pathways for alkyl-lead include inhalation of leaded gasoline vapors and dermal exposure to leaded gasoline. Unlike metallic forms of lead, alkyl-lead is easily absorbed through the skin. Additionally, the lead halides exhausted through combustion can be inhaled. Subsequent deposition of these lead halides contributes to exposure to lead through ingestion of lead contaminated soil or dust, and ingestion of lead-contaminated food or water.

"The use of alkyl-lead has been prohibited by legislation in on-road automotive gasoline, however, several authorized uses of alkyl-lead still remain. Currently, the largest use of alkyl-lead occurs in aviation gasoline for general aviation (piston-engine) aircraft. In 1998, the aviation industry used approximately 295.3 million gallons of leaded gasoline, which is estimated to contain 1.39 million pounds of TEL [tetraethyllead]. Other uses of alkyl-lead include automotive racing gasoline, and recreational marine fuel. These current uses, as well as trace amounts of lead in automotive gasoline, result in releases to the environment."

(Source = http://www.epa.gov/grtlakes/bns/lead/steplead.html )

Oops! Metallic lead, such as that in lead-acid batteries, is not easily absorbed, while organo-lead compounds are easily absorbed. Oops, again! The primary source of those compounds is our friend, the internal combustion engine.



I hope you find that article and it doesn't turn out to be one from some place like contrail.com. It would be nice if you would identify the "arm chair enviromentalist", now that you've given his/her credentials so very specifically. Since you have given no facts and no reference sources to support your claims, I must conclude that you're just trolling for arguments and I've been reeled in.

I've presented facts which are verifiable from multiple sources ranging from advocates of electric vehicles to governments and scientists. You've presented claims without any foundations.

The big question I have is not whether electricity production, storage (in chemical form as in batteries), hauling and use will result in higher rates of depletion of fossil fuels or higher pollution; those are false concerns easily dispelled by available facts. What I want to know is why there is an assumption that hotrodding cannot exist without a gasoline-burning, inefficient piston engine?

Certainly, a lot of the gains in performance of factory produced vehicles since World War II can be at least partially attributed to those factories' response to the popularity of hotrods. The pony cars, sports cars and muscle cars trace their roots ot hotrodders. You can see the influence of hotrodders in the style of many cars being produced today. I see no reason whatsoever for hotrodders to dry up and blow away just because the propulsion system changes. Every possible drive mechanism out there will be tinkered with and improved upon by hotrodders. Somebody will just have to make it go faster, turn quicker, stop shorter and cause the spectators to make 'ooo' and 'ahhh' noises while doing so.

Screw it.
Im buying a horse. HG

__________________
I was built with the body of a God! To bad it was buddah.

http://www.hotrodders.com/forum/jou...&journalid=2415

It was so slow the system timed out before it crossed the finish line (and no, that's not me riding it, just some tongue-in-cheek humor).

I think hybrids are the way to go, and I've been contemplating one for a long time.

Think about this...electric motors can provide their rated torque at 0 rpm. No winding it up to a cople thousand rpm to get int he torque band. Imagine the potential for acceleration with the ultimate in "low end" torque.

With a small, lightweight gas (or diesel) engine that runs at near-constant RPM (which is most efficient) to power a generator to keep the batteries charged, you'd have the best of both worlds.

Right now, the biggest downside is that conventional batteries are so darn heavy, even in a hybrid application.

I predict that a couple of people will finally put together a "performance hybrid" - something that is designed for acceleration that happens to get decent mileage - and then a lot of eyes will be open.

It would be great if this came from the hot rodding community.

NOT for me I like a big V8 with an annoying loud exhaust note.......... can ANYONE imagine a roundy , roundy race that hisses around the track. Or see a quarter run and all you here is wind , keep your electric power I might need a jump start someday. IMO I really think this is a lame subject at a Hot Rod forum.

Ethonal and gasoline mixes will be the near future. Ethonal is easy to produce and is cheaper than gasoline alone. Plus its compatable with engine systems when mixed with gasoline.

Oh and lets not forget it gives more power and burns cleaner than pure gasoline, AND you can run higher compression.

Check this out...

http://www.evparts.com/about/index....=roadster.ihtml

Electric Street Rod. Couple of years old.

This is my pick and the least talked about.

When Mr diesel invented his engine better the a century ago his intent was to liberate farmers, replace the horse with a machine that runs on fuel grown on the farm. Refracted vegetable oil. The companies that built the engines and equipment are the ones who started the fossil fuel craze before thy auto was past steam power. But little known is the fact that all diesel engines will still run on vegie fuel with out any conversions. I have long since lost the web addy but there is a couple touring the US in a toyo diesel powered RV pulling the machine behind them on a trailer that converts waste veggie oils from restaurants to usable fuel.

In Europe they are developing clean diesel motors that have low emissions with petro diesel. Put one of those in a hybrid electric instead of a gas motor and use bio. You are no longer looking at a net loss situation.

I have saved this for last. Soil leaching comes up quite often but is smoke and mirrors by those who stand to loose from bio tech. I am from Potato country in Northern Michigan, very poor soil to start with and potatoes leach the ground faster than any crop I know of. They use alfalfa as a rotational crop.
Here is why: Alfalfa is a very nitrogen rich crop that penetrates deep into the ground and brings nutrients to the top soil while not needing deep plowing to plant preserves the soil. It also produces a usable oil, so in essence the soil leeching is a mute point. I have seen potatoes farmers use sand plots that would not grow grass for potatoes after growing alfalfa in them for 3 years. The alfalfa is a valuable feed crop as well producing 3 cuttings a year even in as cold of a climate as N. Mi, harvest twice and plow under the 3rd is their system.

Only a matter of time before some one who is in the industry wises up to all of this.

Personally I would go with alcohol. Very hard to imagine old engine, which can work on fuel cells.Or somebody knows, how make it?

Hey nightrider good to see your still around

Yea, I'm returned,now I just can't leave us without "goodbye" word