Falling price of Oil?

Nod said:
'Tis a law of physics.
--- friction causes heat which is where the extra energy goes.
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Excess energy given off as heat, so, we use that to heat a chamber of water and then use the steam from that to drive a turbine to create electricity to drive the car - simples :D
 
Cobra said:
See, we've already moved into the 1970's I wonder what another 40 years may bring in terms of advancement ?
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As people (including me) have been trying to explain, it may bring many advances but what it won't bring is the end of the principle of conservation of energy or Newton's first law of motion, both of which would have to be thrown out the window for your idea to work.

You want more than 100% efficiency, which means infinite energy. Think of it like this, use 1W to run a motor connected to a magic 200% efficient dynamo, get 2W out. Use that 2W to turn two dynamos and get 4W. Do that again with four dynamos, get 8W, and so on. You have solved the world's energy needs, forever.
 
Steep said:
Excess energy given off as heat, so, we use that to heat a chamber of water and then use the steam from that to drive a turbine to create electricity to drive the car - simples :D
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If only that system were efficient. Even the world's most efficient combined heat and power plant only manages 49% efficiency in electricity generation (about 90% if the hot water is used). So unless your car needs a lot of hot water (tea?) that's not going to help much.
 
Cobra said:
We've all done the school boy "tricks" of producing electricity by spinning wire through magnets etc. at schoolboy level.
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Not an isolated system as you are inputting energy by spinning the wire.
 
srichards said:
A lot of roads are in diabolical condition so road tax really needs to be spent on roads.
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But as the Pedants will tell you its Vehicle Excise Duty a "tax" that has to be paid before you can use the vehicle on the road.

But I agree 100% use the money as it was originally intended!

Steep said:
Excess energy given off as heat, so, we use that to heat a chamber of water and then use the steam from that to drive a turbine to create electricity to drive the car - simples :D
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Steam driven Vehicles, now that is a good idea (y)

:D
 
onomatopoeia said:
Think of it like this, use 1W to run a motor connected to a magic 200% efficient dynamo, get 2W out.
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No, that's not my point, there is energy being wasted as the car moves, be that mechanical parts or friction with the road.
Harness that and put it back into a charging system. (Somehow)
Come to think of it, stick a wind turbine on the roof, problem solved :)
 
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Cobra said:
No, that's not my point, there is energy being wasted as the car moves, be that mechanical parts or friction with the road.
Harness that and put it back into a charging system. (Somehow)
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Friction with the road isn't being wasted, it's what's pushing the car forward.

If you could harness the heat that is already being generated, you could use that to recharge the batteries. But if you assume that all power generation is 90% efficient, you'd be turning the 10% of waste from the engine, into energy, so you'd recharge the battery by 90% of the 10% output. So you'd edge towards 100% efficiency, but the battery still wouldn't be charging, it just wouldn't be draining as quickly.
 
And now I'm imagining someone trying to invent frictionless tyres, lol.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Only if it's pointing down a hill
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With a following wind?

Oh hang on though the wind turbine will be causing drag, and slowing the car down, at least it'll be charging the batteries though (y)
 
srichards said:
Diesels will be taxed off the roads in other ways. The London ULEZ doubles the congestion charge on most diesels more or less.

A flat rate VED really had to be introduced as it was noticed in the second hand car market the higher tax cars were basically being scrapped when they weren't that old. Which is what a lot of people said would happen. First owners are well off. By the time you get to the average 4th owner they aren't. Having a £500 car which costs £500 to tax is never going to be anything other a drive to a scrapyard or get driven illegally. £140 is reasonable. It will be interesting to see how long it stays at that and whether it is increased over time and whether EVs also end up paying VED.

A lot of roads are in diabolical condition so road tax really needs to be spent on roads. Most journeys are by road and most goods arrive by road so it needs the money to be spent.
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Fair comment about the new tax scheme. Sadly this will also dampen any interest in the like of Tesla S, BMW i8 and even Mistubishi PHEV. That means in 5 years poor folk like us will have a far better choice of cheap to tax gas guzzling SUVs rather than cleaner progressive vehicles. I really don't mind a cheaper X5 or Land Cruiser, maybe even a RAM but the whole deal should incentivise me looking at PHEV instead...

I have to say London ULEZ only covers a tiny area most of us never go near, and it had to be pedestrian / EV-only zone long long time ago. It is basically a car park most of the time. Maybe you don't like diesel and prefer to get poisoned by petrol vapour and its incomplete combustion products - pretty harmful stuff if you ask me as a chemist - then that is your choice, but it serves no real purpose polarising discussion based on this alone. We are a long long way before any of that goes mainstream, and by then Euro 6 will be the prevailing standard and we are back to square one trying to shut down a technology that has come a long way. Instead of that a progressive way would be to incentivise future technologies, EVs, etc for a start, and get cars off the road and into the air. Now that will make some serious improvement.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
But to drive any form of generator, will lose more energy than not having one, it's simple physics.
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A turbo charger is a form of generator. I don't see any reason why it's not possible to use the turbo to produce electrical energy instead of compressing air and producing more engine power.
 
Jules B said:
But future costs should be a fundamental element of their base pricing structure. I used to be a taxi driver and if after driving one car for 18 months I started adding 10% to the fares to save up for the next car I'd have very soon had no customers.
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Does a new car cost 12Billion Dollars (as some Platforms do), Of course they build in future costs but like a lot of things costs rise, dig a hole in Saudi and oil pours out (not quite but almost), sink a platform off the coast of Russia and you're looking at a massive investment. Trouble is no-one is exactly sure where the next oilfield will be, so how do account for those costs?
 
nilagin said:
A turbo charger is a form of generator. I don't see any reason why it's not possible to use the turbo to produce electrical energy instead of compressing air and producing more engine power.
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But you're using the exhaust, so the wasted energy from the fuel. So yes you could, but that would still be generating a fraction of the wasted power.
 
philoldsmobile said:
The Chinese already have, sold under dubious names at very low prices.
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hah really? They might call them that, but clearly, a frictionless tyre is not only an impossibility but also, would mean the car couldn't move under it's own power, couldn't slow down if it was push started and certainly couldn't steer.

Gotta love marketing speak though..
 
KitsuneAndy said:
hah really? They might call them that, but clearly, a frictionless tyre is not only an impossibility but also, would mean the car couldn't move under it's own power, couldn't slow down if it was push started and certainly couldn't steer.

Gotta love marketing speak though..
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I think that was a tongue in cheek reference to how awful some of the Chinese ditch finders are.
 
bass_junkie83 said:
I think that was a tongue in cheek reference to how awful some of the Chinese ditch finders are.
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I might have some of them on my car, I have no idea about tyres :)

I assumed it was just some of the stupid marketing names that chinese brands tend to throw at things. Surprised no one has made High Definition tyres yet, they seem to claim everything else is HD.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
hah really? They might call them that, but clearly, a frictionless tyre is not only an impossibility but also, would mean the car couldn't move under it's own power, couldn't slow down if it was push started and certainly couldn't steer.

Gotta love marketing speak though..
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Think you''ll find phil was joking about the poor quality of chinese tyres. (y)

EDIT, too slow.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
But you're using the exhaust, so the wasted energy from the fuel. So yes you could, but that would still be generating a fraction of the wasted power.
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But you are underestimating how much extra power a turbocharger can provide. Even on a small turbo fitted to an engine, you are limited by the pressures the intercooler, boost pipes, inlet manifold, combustion chambers, etc., can withstand for long periods of time. Basically a turbo is a wind turbine, except it's a wind turbine that can happily rotate at speeds in excess of 240,000 rpm.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
hah really? They might call them that, but clearly, a frictionless tyre is not only an impossibility but also, would mean the car couldn't move under it's own power, couldn't slow down if it was push started and certainly couldn't steer.

Gotta love marketing speak though..
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It was a tongue in cheek reference to their complete lack of grip [emoji12]

Gotta love Chinese ditch finders!
 
nilagin said:
But you are underestimating how much extra power a turbocharger can provide. Even on a small turbo fitted to an engine, you are limited by the pressures the intercooler, boost pipes, inlet manifold, combustion chambers, etc., can withstand for long periods of time. Basically a turbo is a wind turbine, except it's a wind turbine that can happily rotate at speeds in excess of 240,000 rpm.
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And the turbo charger enables the engine to burn more fuel each second, thus increasing power. But the key part is, that it's providing more fuel, more potential energy, and converting it into kinetic, it's not getting more power from the same source.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
I might have some of them on my car, I have no idea about tyres :)
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They are mostly black with bits cut out. The cut out bits go on the outside, HTH (y)
(I wonder what they do with all the bits they cut out? )
 
Cobra said:
They are mostly black with bits cut out. The cut out bits go on the outside, HTH (y)
(I wonder what they do with all the bits they cut out? )
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I put my wheel through the big cut out bit, did I do it wrong?
 
KitsuneAndy said:
It's hard to tell on a thread where someone's trying to turn a car into a perpetual motion machine :/
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The originol posts were about how can "they" justify a price hike of 6p a Litre against the failing price of oil,
especially when oil has been a lot more expensive and fuel a lot cheaper.

However many great inventions were spawned serendipitously (y)
 
KitsuneAndy said:
I put my wheel through the big cut out bit, did I do it wrong?
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No that's fine as long as the pretty cut out patterns remain on the outside (y)
 
KitsuneAndy said:
And the turbo charger enables the engine to burn more fuel each second, thus increasing power. But the key part is, that it's providing more fuel, more potential energy, and converting it into kinetic, it's not getting more power from the same source.
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Wrong, a turbo charger enables an engine to burn more of the fuel, that means they will actually use less fuel. So it is getting more energy from the same source, than a naturally aspirated engine.
 
nilagin said:
Wrong, a turbo charger enables an engine to burn more of the fuel, that means they will actually use less fuel. So it is getting more energy from the same source, than a naturally aspirated engine.
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It's burning more of it, that's where the energy is coming from, the turbo itself isn't creating energy, it's enabling the engine to burn more fuel. Whereas to produce excess energy enough to charge something, you'd have to extract more energy from the same amount of fuel.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
It's burning more of it, that's where the energy is coming from, the turbo itself isn't creating energy, it's enabling the engine to burn more fuel. Whereas to produce excess energy enough to charge something, you'd have to extract more energy from the same amount of fuel.
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Turbo chargers and the intercooler system leads to a denser air charge entering the combustion chamber. This enable more power to be extracted from the same amount of fuel that a naturally aspirated engine will produce. Aside from other engine advancements, that is part of the reason my 250PS turbo charged car with a 2.0 engine does pretty much the same mpg as a 2.0 naturally aspirated 130PS engine car I had 8yrs ago, the latter car is bettered by cars with half the engine capacity, both in terms of power and mpg.
 
nilagin said:
Turbo chargers and the intercooler system leads to a denser air charge entering the combustion chamber. This enable more power to be extracted from the same amount of fuel that a naturally aspirated engine will produce. Aside from other engine advancements, that is part of the reason my 250PS turbo charged car with a 2.0 engine does pretty much the same mpg as a 2.0 naturally aspirated 130PS engine car I had 8yrs ago, the latter car is bettered by cars with half the engine capacity, both in terms of power and mpg.
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Yeah, but we're actually agreeing with each other :)

It burns more of the fuel that is in the chamber, it cannot extract more energy from the fuel than is potentially there though.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Yeah, but we're actually agreeing with each other :)

It burns more of the fuel that is in the chamber, it cannot extract more energy from the fuel than is potentially there though.
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But you could install a secondary turbo/wind generator solely for the purpose of producing electricity, just as you could incorporate air ducting into the car bodywork to drive additional turbines, to generate more electricity to recharge batteries, none of which will be detracting from the energy already produced, but increasing the range of the battery packs.
For over 10yrs, cars alternators no longer recharge the battery all the time. Thus not sapping engine power. There are many ways, that if combined would go a long way to maintain a battery charge and increase the range.
 
nilagin said:
you could incorporate air ducting into the car bodywork to drive additional turbines, to generate more electricity to recharge batteries, none of which will be detracting from the energy already produced
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So the extra air resistance that such ducts will cause isn't detracting from the energy?
 
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