Electric cars are NOT a pipe dream. Fossil fuel cars are for greedy, selfish people.

Right. So the equivalent there would be outlets and power generating stations. We have them and they are proven.

The problem isn't the energy distribution system; it's the energy storage system. Batteries are still expensive.

Well, it has to contain energy; you can't get away from the laws of thermodynamics.

"Special nutrients" like . . . gasoline? Sugar? (more expensive than gasoline per calorie) Ammonia? (contains a lot of hydrogen; about as expensive as gasoline, and comes from fossil fuels)

 

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the starting material can be determined in the design stage, the only requirement is that the organism be able to extract energy from it.
the possibilities in this regard are almost unlimited.
the major problem i see with this is the organism/ metal interface.

 

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The problem is a car-based infrastructure, not so much how we run the cars. Have you ever thought about this? Maybe if we didn't build our residences so far from where we need to go, we wouldn't have to do all this driving in the first place!

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7/

 

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Well, no. Organisms can extract energy from almost anything - like hot sulfur and iron laden water - but only a very small amount. Carrying thousands of gallons of water around to get 100 watts of chemical energy from an organism isn't very practical or useful.

The problem is that cars need to extract on the order of 10kW of power from whatever they are using. It takes a tremendous amount of biological activity to generate that much power.

 

where do you get 100 watts?
i've never designed an organism from the ground up so i wouldn't know.

this assumes a few things, size and weight for example.
for personal short trips such an "organic vehicle" would ease our dependency on oil and it could use existing infrastructure.

semis, tanks, and bulldozers might be the last to go.

 

Using pognophores as an example. They use the thousands of gallons of hot sulfides that flow through ocean vents to generate power. I'm making the assumption that they use energy at about the same rate (pound for pound) as humans do, and there are generally hundreds of pounds of tubeworms around some deep ocean vents, meaning hundreds of watts of energy being generated. All this energy comes from symbiotic bacteria that use the sulfides for food.

They may use far less than that (mammals tend to use more energy than other organisms) in which case the energy output would be a lot lower. You also somehow have to get that chemical energy into a usable form i.e. divert it from the organism's usage to the car's.

If you prefer use people. A bicyclist can maintain about 200 watts output over time, so you'd need 50 bicyclists, each eating about 6000 calories a day, for a total fuel intake of 300,000 calories a day, to drive a car at 55mph for 8 hours or so. That's 1000 or so Pizza Hut pizzas, so call that 2000 pounds of solid food and a lot of liquids.

Of course it would no longer go 55mph if you have an extra 8000 pounds of cyclists.

 

So now this has become a thread about the technical aspects of electric cars... just like the other thread.

 

That article put it all out there very bluntly. I'll be lucky to live another 20 years, so will most likely miss all the suffering to come. Thanks for small favors. I just can't hardly comprehend what will happen to this world when 7 billion people start suffering a little more as each day passes.

The fact is what this article stated or should I say under stated what will happen is going to be very bad. The attitude of people on this and other forums is a good reflection of how the general public also thinks, from wishful thinking to absolute denial.

The article is a bit long for most readers on this forum, but the more people that <get it> the better. But it's always been my experience that people just won't change until the suffering and pain make it impossible not to change.

 

50 years ago a bunch of people thought the same thing you did and made lots of dire predictions about how the world would end Real Soon Now. I recall one such prediction made in the 1960's:

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate."

The author mathematically proved this by comparing arable land to population. Nothing could be done. And some did indeed give up - they figured "I'll be lucky to live another 20 years, so will most likely miss all the suffering to come. Thanks for small favors." Others did the work and improved farming methods, improved crops themselves, improved fertilizer production etc. Was it hard? Definitely. It took billions of dollars and decades of work to achieve the levels of production we see today.

Same thing will happen here. Some people today will give up. The majority will keep working and solve the problems we face, as they have done for the past 10,000 years or so.

 

Increases in farming production are tied directly to oil production. The fertilizer and pesticides are both made from oil. And the huge machines that plant and harvest crops on factory farms also run on oil. I don't doubt that industrious people will continue to work on our problems, but technology isn't energy. It all points to a change in our society which might not be smooth.

 

Fertilizer is made from ammonia, which is made from natural gas. Pesticides are made from both. Overall the amount of pesticides needed is many orders of magnitude lower than the amount of fertilizer needed on a modern farm.

No, but technology gets more out of the energy you have. As our easy energy supplies dwindle, ever-increasing efficiencies both make the most of the resources we have left and make better use of new resources (i.e. tight oil.)

 

I'm not predicting the world will end, just that life will not be as good as it has been. However it could be a lot better if people started planning and acting on what is coming. There are a lot of things that could be done to make a better future for everyone. I'm just saying human nature won't let it happen until enough people are suffering. If resources start getting scarce it will lead to more world conflict and the US has the biggest baddest military machine the world has ever known and that machine will kill people to keep people in this country driving their cars for as long as possible. If you think much of the world hates the US now, wait about 50 years as it's only going to get much worse.

 

You are right of course, I knew it was something like that. So the agricultural revolution was made possible by fossil fuels.

That's all well and good, but that is not the same as a growing economy. Which is a redundant phrase. If it doesn't grow, it's stagnation and hardship for everyone.

 

Definitely agree with you there. Planning for a world in which oil is much more expensive than it is now is critical.

I agree, although our definition of suffering is (fortunately) mutating a lot.

I think it's more likely that other countries will go after _our_ oil before that happens. We've been the biggest baddest country only for the past 100 years or so; it won't last forever.

 

>>No, but technology gets more out of the energy you have

>That's all well and good, but that is not the same as a growing economy. Which is a redundant phrase. If it doesn't grow, it's stagnation and hardship for everyone.

Two thoughts there:

1) Agreed that efficiency does not equal economy. But improving efficiency means more USEFUL energy, and that is a positive for an economy.

2) We've been living the "we need endless exponential growth!" meme for the past 150 years or so, and that's unsustainable. We might have to settle for simple linear growth, even reducing levels of growth. It will mean less money for investors but that doesn't equate to lots of hardship. "Stagnation" isn't so bad if you stagnate at a point where people can live reasonably well.

 

a human in top physical shape can generate at least a consistent 300 watts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Albatross

keep in mind this isn't the maximum.
all of the bodys systems are also using energy.
i have no idea what a slab of muscle that weighed 150 pounds could generate.

you know, we could solve a number of problems right here except everyone is applying stem cell research into the human side and GMO research is being applied to agriculture.
it seems no one is interested in the "oil problem".

 

That's a very exceptional human!

Well, you'd have to include the weight of the artificial lungs/heart/kidneys/liver/GI tract etc to support it.

True. Perhaps you could genetically engineer people (or apes) without heads (not needed) or arms (same thing) to propel cars. Or just legs, but you'd need all those artificial organs.

 

why?
the only things needed would be the muscle tissue and the artery/vein network to distribute/ remove material.
you would probably also need some kind of scrubber to remove useless stuff and add nutrients.
it might be more efficient to use a heart muscle to pump a working fluid instead.
that's it right there.
heart muscle as the prime mover and it would pump its own nutrients also.
the only thing left would be the scrubber (aka kidneys).
a 300 pound heart, that would be something to see.

 

I agree wholeheartedly. In 20 years, the Middle East will be dissipating into the desert sand and the US will be supplying more of the world's oil. Perfect reason to hate us even more -- but good to be an American!

Still, I think that the world was much closer to an Apocalypse 50 years ago than it is today.

 

How do you get oxygen to the muscle? Glucose? How do you remove waste products?

Like, say, a liver and a kidney?

Like, say, a GI tract?

OK, so we're back to a heart, a GI tract (might be much shorter) a heart, lungs, kidneys and liver. Probably a working immune system as well if you want it to last more than a day or so. A brainstem at least to control all this. A set of glands/chemoreceptors to regulate basics like electrolyte balance, blood pressure, glucose levels, O2/CO2 balance etc.