Clever Car -- the future of automobiles

Well, full renewability in transportation is an engineering challenge. Suppose you only have the ability to displace 30 percent of current oil consumption with renewable fuel. Somehow you've got to come up with a way to keep the whole shebang moving. What can be done? I think reducing the weight of vehicles is the most direct route to solving the problem, instead of switching over to more efficient engines like we hear about all the time in the media. I suppose it's disappointing to alot of people that sometimes the solution is boring or doesn't satisfy the ego or people's need for a magical fantasy of the future.

Here's a line for ya: "Clever.... the car that will save your soul..." Dub over some ethereal new age music.

Does that work for you? It doesn't work for me.

 

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The "whole shebang" is going to come crashing down, like it or not.

 

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Sometime in the near future, people will have the choice to park their cars or to drive cars that consume less. Oil shortage won't be the end of civilization. There will always be a choice. And maybe there will be novel new technologies to serve as a distraction and people won't even notice the tradeoff.

 

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I'd love to own the new Renault Clio III
http://www.renault.com/renault_com/...ES/10_Vehicules/Catalogue/Clio_III/index.aspx

A fantastic and beautiful car. Maybe in two years if all goes well and no better ones appear.

 

I saw an item in a paper a couple of years ago about a Phillipino who took the engine out of his car, put in some sort of electrical battery and "ran it" on a bucket of water per day. Never heard anything else on it. It was probably bought up by an oil company and scrapped like all the oil free inventions of modern times.

 

No - He took out the "water battery" and replaced it with a "moon beam catcher" - now not only does he not need to add any water, but gasoline drips out of the bottom of the "moon beam catcher"

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Yes. No doubt the car used the water to extract oregon energy from a zero-point quantum field composed of magnetic monopoles and scalar electromagnetic waves, allowing the protons in the water to enter a hydrino state with fractional quantum numbers. They then used electrolysis to break the water into H2 and O2, then burned them in the engine to create an excess of energy.

Let's see...did I miss any?

 

No, but of course that was the first version of the "moon beam catcher" which was relatively simple compared to the present version. That first version only dripped horse piss, and did require some straw input, version 2 gave low quality beer after fermentation of the straw, but the current version gives high octane gas.

 

Very good Billy, I have an interesting idea, you design a car and call it the Model T. Edit: oh damn, its been done before

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Sorry, in these ridiculous consumerism days of "I must have the most recent and nothing but the best" type attitudes, I forgot one is able to buy a car for under $20k.

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And heck, no need for four seats when most people and their grandmother drive alone, even if going out partying with a buncha people, all taking their own cars, heh.

I've been waiting for non-motorcycle vehicle to exist that is meant for just one person. It annoys me seeing all these cars driving around filled with just one person with all that wasted space. This Clever Car is a cool little toy.

Hell yeah, that thing is just cool. It's like zipping around in the cockpit of a fighter jet.

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Eh, nothing too different compared to other vehicles such as motorcycles or fiberglass cars that are meant to be destroyed and absorb damage.

Either way, I'm gonna be buying one of these once they're available in the U.S. The Carver One is supposed to be released at the end of this year, but it only gets 40 MPG. I was hoping on it having the fuel efficiency of this Clever Car, but that won't be released for another few years. Ugh. Oh well, the Carver One will be plenty fun to play with.

- N

 

That's a major point that people seem to overlook. A new hybrid Civic goes for around $22,000, while an equivalent regular civic goes for around $15,000. You would have to burn through $7,000 in gas before you made up for the price difference! You're not likely to do that before you get a whole new car anyway.

 

Point well taken, but economics not well done as you have neglected the time value of money. I.e. you can put the $7000 in the bank and start to earn interest today, but the extra gas required by the cheaper car is a future expense. For example, assume you put the $7000 in bank CD at 6%, then at end of year you have gained $420.

If the extra cost of gas with the cheaper car is less than $420 you will never "break even" by buying the more expensive more efficient car. At $3/gas, that is you must save 140 gallons with the more expensive car to break even.

I do not know the MPG of the two cars, so leave it as a simple problem for someone who does to tell how many miles you must drive that first year to save 140 gallons. Hopefully they will do also the "typical miles driven" (at $3/gal gas remember) case to see how many years you must keep the car to recover the $7000 cost difference - just guessing, but I be that turns out to be about 40 years.

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The Clever Car is less expensive to buy AND gets better fuel economy than a hybrid car.

 

The future of transportation is personal air vehicles powered by laser highways.

 

What's probably going to happen is that our current car-obsessed culture will simply fall apart. As gas gets more expensive, people will have to move closer to work to be able to afford to live. The net result? Urban centers will fill up, while vast suburban ghost towns will replace most of our current infrastructure.

A very interesting idea.

 

This is a good example of thinking driven by the technically possible but economically unresaonable. - Unfortunately, a very common defect.

 

I agree with you.

For several months I have been pointing out that the 2D urban sprawl that is extreme in America is the reason why the infrastructure of the US is the worst suited in the world for the era of expensive energy. Public transport in US, as percent of average miles traveled per person must be by far the lowest percentage in the world. It will take more than a decade to move half of the private car commuters to a rebuilt public transit system (and the US and dollar will collapse before that can be done).

If you want a good long term investment, put some money in a company that makes buses - In a decade, your car will be up on blocks and a bus will circulate in some neighhoods, to take you to the rail station, etc.

Telecommuting to work via high capacity internet connections will also help some, but again the 2D infrastructure makes any hard wired system (cables) much more expensive than if the US had followed the examples of Europe and developed a 1D infrastructure (High density devlopment along rail lines, along district heating lines, with large fraction of population in high rise apartments or at least living in houses that adjoin each other and have relatively little or no yards. Etc.)

Thus, another good long term investment may be in systems that provide high band width capacity via radio waves over long ranges. What fraction of population has cable service already, despite suburan sprawl?

I do not know the data, but it would be interesting to know what is the average urban population density in various countries. One might define "urban population density" as the average number of office or factory workers per thousand square meters of land used for their residence. I.e. exclude the small part of the population that lives on large farms, but include the people living in suburban developments who drive into work each day from their nice, well-separated suburban homes. In my travels thru Europe, I have noted how many of even the relative well off still live in row houses with yards smaller that the floor area of a typical "ranch house" in the US.

This excesive 2D urban sprawl is why the US will collapse first and well before it can be changed to one suitable for the high energy cost era..

 

Unless.... everyone buys a Clever Car. Suddenly, no more apocalyptic energy crisis, and everyone can commute to work. Because single-seat cars are narrow, roads that were previously two lanes can be painted with three lanes. No more traffic congestion.

As for fantasies of the future: I like the one where superconducting cables are buried under highways, so cars can hover over them. Asphalt is replaced with grass, and highways become long low-maintenance greenspaces over which we fly comfortably from place to place. Grasses grown on them is turned into ethanol to fuel the vehicles.

 

I just like the idea of being able to walk through the decrepit ruins of our current suburban society to be honest.

Being able to see the end of an era.

 

Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that you must use 140 gallons in a year before you pay off the opportunity cost of buying the more expensive, fuel-efficient car. After that, you can keep driving to try to cut into the actual extra $7000 that you paid.