Cybertruck...or how NOT to build a vehicle

[Frank S]

Well there is always Brown's gas, which is a slightly unstable separation of the 2 elements of water.
2 guys used to rent a small out building from me where they were experimenting with a more sustainable way to create the gas.
I machined many of the parts for their catalytic converter they built. One time they were making the gas and using it in a torch to heat and almost melt steel with.
Eventually they had a small 4 cylinder car engine running on it by changing out the injectors.
I was going to build them a hydraulic dynamo so they could do some real world testing of their engine running on the stuff but Tom's grant money ran out and Chris had already sank his life savings in the project.
Tom had applied for several patents Not sure if he ever received any for his design to extract the gas from the water at much lower electrical requirements than anyone else had been able to do
He had the energy requirements down low enough that more gas was produced than consumed in making it but not enough to viably run or do much anything else.
Tom died under less than stellar circumstances one while giving a lecture on his designs a few years later.
Note I have most of the design sketches that Tom and Chris had made of their converter but none of the actual electronics involved
the converter is kind of simple just a boat load of thin SS plates perforated with small holes and plastic separating rings all housed in a PVC tube encased in a steel jacket with half the plates being the cathode and half being the anode there are several catalysts which can be used look up making hydrogen and oxygen from water with electricity.
Then you need a bubbler for the gas to pass through to prevent back flash.
The clean out refilling and storage is where the big problems come in.

[Hoosiersmoker]

So in order to charge the cars and trucks of today, we still use coal or gas fired generators or hydroelectric which requires a major disruption of waterways, and God knows what effect that has already had on the environment and plant / animals. Making the majority of components out of plastic props the fossil fuel industry even more not to mention battery production increases (more plastic). What's the real solution? Is there one? Does anyone have more answers than questions? Obviously not me!

[mklotz]

So in order to charge the cars and trucks of today, we still use coal or gas fired generators or hydroelectric which requires a major disruption of waterways, and God knows what effect that has already had on the environment and plant / animals. Making the majority of components out of plastic props the fossil fuel industry even more not to mention battery production increases (more plastic). What's the real solution? Is there one? Does anyone have more answers than questions? Obviously not me!

Horrendous tax penalties on any children after the first two would be a good step.

[Elizabeth Greene]

Horrendous tax penalties on any children after the first two would be a good step.

The second derivative of population growth is already sharply negative and is decreasing further as we put more resources into educating poor rural populations. It's a pretty big problem in the developed world, with many countries already breeding at less than replacement rates.

There is no need for a tax; the result you want is already happening.

[MeJasonT]

The west seems to have a weird way of taxing people.
Child support was intended to stop children being starved and ending up on the street and yet the benefit is now being used by middle class families to pay for Nursery places so that both parents can work so they can save up for 3 holidays a year. The majority of whom are employed in the civil service and are some of the best payed in the country (UK) as servants lets not forget. Meanwhile a single mum on benefit who can barely support herself is having to work 3 jobs to keep from slipping int debt whilst also having her benefits cut.
The same middle classes have good pensions to look forward to and many are able to retire early, The workers in society are expected to work until they drop and wont get much of a pension to speak of.

The NHS is overwhelmed with work (mainly working class sick people). The powers that be are either to stupid or just stupid to realise the failure of society in this day and age. Our election should have an element of using a taser which can be used on those you choose not to like the policies of the one left standing will have deserved to have the leadership position. Loads of talk but no listening - stuck on transmit as we used to say in the mob.

I don't think the greens have a clue either, they mobbed London for a march on climate change. all arriving by car/train (eg. not on foot from Scotland). The thing that was most evident was the number of the protesters with mobile phones, the latest model no doubt. where was their old phone. After the march the London borough council had to clean the streets of all the plastic bottles and food containers they had discarded.

Yep the climate is changing and yes its heating up but more research needs made into the planets life cycle as much as it does listening to head banger bleating on about mans destruction of the planet. Its funny how only organisations looking for evidence of mans impact on the planet are being funded, if you only research one solution you will only find the answer you are trying to predict.

The whole seasonal year has shifted, we used to have harsh weather in November December which is now more like January, February. The spring used to start late march, April which is now more like end of May. didn't the Indonesian tsunami jolt the earth on its axis as they reported at the time.
There has been an ice age every 50,000 years on average and the last one was due 17 years ago. Tell the scientists to shove it up their pipes, its obvious to me whats happening - why don't they try to debunk those facts. Oh that's right they are being funded by governments who have a vested interest as they are taxing us on the effects of climate change.

We could go 100% green tomorrow and gain 100% unemployment into the bargain = this needs managed not disorganised fire fighting.

back to electric cars, working class people tend to buy second hand cars with an average price of between £1000 and £5000. when will electric cars become affordable, when the batteries have expired?

[MeJasonT]

Completely agree.
when i was at school in the 70s and 80s the population of the UK was 58 million, it now stands at 66 million, 10% of which (6 million live in Scotland and apparently give them the right to decide Brexit - that's if 100% of Scots voted to remain). Makes their argument a little flawed don't you think. I digress.

And to think they wonder why the UK resources are stretched and that we (the Brexiteers) want to control immigration, amongst other things.
a major one being ran by Brussels, paying 18 billion a year to be a member of the Euro club and being starved out of manufacturing in favour of the land locked euro partners. who has ever heard of an island that is restricted on the number of fish it can catch or the number of ships it can build.

Frank we can easily point to the source of the worlds problems - capitalism.
so on that note who benefits from electric cars again. What happens when we get hover cars, our government is already crapping itself over diy Drones.

It may surprise you to know that the EU is looking to bring in legislation on the use of 3D/FDM plastic printers.

[MeJasonT]

@Elizabeth Greene

Hi Elizabeth,
i have always understood it that building a hydrogen engine was feasible and had in fact been accomplished in the 1980s but was snaffled by the oil companies to prevent such engines being developed. The issue of charging cars with gas is no longer an issue as many cars have been converted to run on gas (butane i think ?) which would be just as volatile as hydrogen one would imagine.
You appear to speak with a voice of authority on the subject so i'm curious what your credentials are and would very much like to hear your opinion on the retrofit idea i also posed.

[bruce.desertrat]

Looking up Brown's Gas on wii leads to this amusing sentence: "This mixture may also be referred to as Knallgas (Scandinavian and German Knallgas: "bang-gas"),"

:-)

I do think this should be an obvious means to manage the 'no solar power at night' problem; use some of the electricity generated by a solar installation to crack water, then burn the O2 and H2 back into water at night. This does run into some issues namely that the places with the best potential for solar power..tend to be the places with the least water.

Another stray thought...why has no one ever made a diesel-electric truck? It works really well for ships and trains, is there some lower bound of efficiency or power that would make it not useful for small vehicles? Even conventional hybrid cars, afaik, alternately power the vehicle via the gas engine and batteries.

[Frank S]

Looking up Brown's Gas on wii leads to this amusing sentence: "This mixture may also be referred to as Knallgas (Scandinavian and German Knallgas: "bang-gas"),"

:-)

I do think this should be an obvious means to manage the 'no solar power at night' problem; use some of the electricity generated by a solar installation to crack water, then burn the O2 and H2 back into water at night. This does run into some issues namely that the places with the best potential for solar power..tend to be the places with the least water.

Another stray thought...why has no one ever made a diesel-electric truck? It works really well for ships and trains, is there some lower bound of efficiency or power that would make it not useful for small vehicles? Even conventional hybrid cars, afaik, alternately power the vehicle via the gas engine and batteries.

Actually A diesel electric truck would revolutionize the transportation industry. Since you could have electric motors located in every wheel of both the truck and the trailer .
I used to have conversations with some friends of mine about this. The way I saw it since an electric motor develops near instant torque can be controlled through the RPM range from zero to what ever. electric motors can be used as regenerative braking as well so having a 35 hp electric motor in every wheel of the truck and trailer would be more available power than a 600 hp diesel feeding a transmission.
Loose the entire gear train and you have a significant weight savings. design the generator with 12 or 24 poles or even 36 poles design the diesel engine to run at 400 to 600 RPM for its best output and Idles at 100, ( I have one that runs at 600 wide open.) add a battery module to the tractor and one to the trailer. Let the engine just idle while driving on the batteries or rev up and cut in when needed recharging the batteries and adding the additional energy to pull the long hills. going down hill the wheels are going to charge the batteries.
Back when I used to have these conversations the capacitor battery cells were unknown where as now the same battery pack to power my idea would weigh less than 1/3 of what it would have then. I can visualize an 80,000lb rig getting as much as 20 MPG at times and 10 MPG at its worst usage

[MeJasonT]

just as i thought.