Let's see where the conspiracy lies in refrence to big oil.

Think about this angle:

Back when drag racing first started in the '50s- what was the top ET or mph in the 1320? just over a 100 at what 12 secs? now look at it, 4.4 seconds at 335 mph.

Think of the cumulative time and manpower used to make a vehicle go so much faster/quicker. Now imagine that brain trust used to make a vehicle become so much more efficient.

Though- I still like the smell of nitro-methane in the morning.

I think the grassroots area of the automotive world is beginning to investigate this as well. And that is where we will see real unadulterated progress I think.

It's all about efficiency.

If you can convert whatever energy/fuel into work more efficiently, you'll do better in energy/fuel economy. It's that simple.

Internal combustion engine has major problems with efficiency and that's where our problems lie with existing cars. If we could come anywhere near 100% efficiency(which we cannot) with our existing engines, we'd have alot less to be concerned about.

There are going to be conversion/transfer losses. That is unavoidable. The trick is to find systems that have lower losses which are possible to utilize for our intended applications.

There is alot of desire from people running around getting pulled into scams to get some kind of "free lunch". No free lunch. But, it is possible to cut your losses, and that is the sensible direction to follow. And cutting losses CAN mean new technologies that don't use fossil fuels. I don't mean to say that oil-based fuels are a requirement at all. All I'm saying is that whatever it is, it needs to have efficiencies much higher than we are seeing now, to get our step forward in the direction we want to go.

IF we could get our power requirement much lower, and still do what we need to do, then we could open up the use of alternative power generation to supply those reduced power needs.
A basic example that is strictly speculation might be if we could get a real good electric motor of about 1hp(746 watts) and direct drive the wheels of a very light and aerodynamic commuter vehicle, it could be possible to achieve decent road speeds AND generate enough electric power from body-integrated solar photovoltaic panels to run the system. Some new kind of lightweight batteries would really be nice for this, because we will need to store power, and today's batteries are heavy. It might not accellerate very fast, nor do any more than maybe 45mph max, but its a possibility.
It might not meet everybody's needs, and it might not be popular, and it might not meet all the road safety regulations for crash tests and stuff. But, it doesn't take much actual power to run a very streamlined small vehicle at 45mph. It's done with human power(hpv racers) all the time, which is alot less than 1 hp.
As technology improves for solar power generation, storage battery types, and electric motor efficiencies, it might become easier to accomplish this kind of thing with a somewhat larger and heavier vehicle for family purposes.

I built MK-48 torpedo's in the USN but I'm no motor head... Just some of the stuff AJ likes to tose out there?

http://www.runyourcarwith...

It is physically impossible for the electrolysis reaction to be self-sustaining. You will be battery limited. You might as well make a pure electric car.

However, your discussion of other efficiency concerns is (reasonably) valid. All internal combustion engines are limited by something called the Carnot cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/w...) Given our past discussion of physics, Oruval, I'm not going to get into it here.

However, I will say that unless we're talking about something that is making a fundamental change to the carnot cycle parameters of the engine, you're probably just pissing into the wind and spending millions of dollars on a fraction of a percent of thermal efficiency. That's not an oil company conspiracy, that's just thermodynamics.

As a mechanical engineer with significant project work in alternative energy, here's my two cents on what the future of vehicle power looks like:

--Short term (<10 years), hybrids are the best answer. They can use existing infrastructure and don't require significant re-writing of vehicle regulations or maintenance procedures.

-Mid term (10-30 years), we might start looking at electric. Two crucial developments have to occur to make electric cars viable. 1) We have to come up with a better source of electrical generation. It doesn't help any to take a gas burning car off the road if the power plant down the street just has to crank out more pollution. My money for solving this problem would be split between nuke plants (I happen to know the NRC is hiring lots of folks right now) and distributed generation (wind, roof mounted solar, etc). 2) Battery technology still has a bit of a ways to go. We've got to find a battery technology that is light enough to give us comparable performance to today's IC cars. It also has to be safe in a crash and not take up too much space (soccer moms don't want batteries in the way of their groceries). If we can get those two things taken care of on a large scale, electric cars become quite viable.

-Long Term (>30 years): Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles MIGHT be viable. I'm still not convinced, but they have a chance. There are a lot of roadblocks. Ones that come to mind are: infrastructure (gotta have hydrogen stations on every street corner), immaturity of fuel cell technology, safety of fuel cell/hydrogen storage, lack of "know-how" in fuel cell repair among car techs. Also, depending on how well we solve the electric car problem, fuel cell cars might never be needed.

So, there's my attempt at seeing the future. You'll notice a common theme there... in order for any new technology to get significant market penetration, it is going to have to be a "form fit function" replacement of current ICE cars. The rich moron isn't going to switch over to a hydrogen hummer if he doesn't think it has as much torque or acceleration as its gas-powered equivalent. I think that resistance to change among the American populace will remain firmly entrenched for quite a while unless there is some sort of paradigm shifting event. Short of $20/gal gas, I'm not sure what that event would be.

Well, its really not biodesiel. No convertion neccessary, its just vegetable oil and the secret ingredient....literally... and it goes directly into the furl tank of any diesel engine car,truck, boat, trailor... Is it real? I just discovered it about 2 weeks ago
Semper Fortis

"80% of the gas that runs through your engine is burnt in the Cat-Converter. So really only 20% is actually being utilized. In other words you really only use 2 gallons out of a 10 gallon tank with a standard midsized sedan in america that is getting 30 mpg."

I think what you are refering to is the standard estimate that about 20% of the energy in a gallon of gasoline ends up as motion of the car. My students always ask, What happens to the other 80%?

Answer...heat, electricity,noise, vibration

http://seattlepi.nwsource...