Originally Posted by Helmet Head
First, how do you measure "efficiency" for method of transportation?
In particular, are you including door to door time-to-travel, where taking more time is less efficient?
How are you measuring the cost of transportation for each method in order to determine relative efficiency?
We've made tremendous advances in battery technology in the last 25 years. Who's to say what the next 25 years will bring?
GM's EV-1 did not work out, but take a look at the advances in just the 7 years since:
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/
http://www.zapworld.com/
[url]http://news.com.com/Zap+teams+with+Lotus+for+electric+sports+car/2100-11389_3-6154854.html[/url
Who's to say what we'll be looking at in 10, 25, and 50 years with respect to electric cars, much less 100 or 200 years from now.
And, given the hydrogen transport problem, the promise of hydrogen might ultimately be to use it to generate electricity to recharge batteries.
Every generation has its contingent of doomsayers. I suppose it's human nature. I'm just glad I didn't get enlisted in the doomsayer contingent of my generation. But it sure seems like an inordinate percentage of other cyclists have been sampling the Kool-Aid.
I was talking energy efficiency, I read something recently, that the amount of energy to move a bicycle (plus rider) 5 miles, will move a small car (with driver) less then 50'. So the biggest issue is that you need to make a car that uses a lot less energy, before it really becomes long term practical, because, in the near term future, we are working on borrowed energy.
Electrical energy comes from something else, that can be solar, water, oil, coal, nuclear. Much of our energy today, comes from oil, and oil is quickly running out of time, we have about a 300 year coal supply, at current usage rates, and about 100 - 200 year nuclear supply, again at current usage rates. So, if we switch to coal, and start using coal at 10 times the current usage rates, 300 years becomes 30 years, same for nuclear, if we start burning through Uranium at 10 times the current rate, we can use up that supply in 10-20 years. Not to mention that both coal and nuclear, currently have serious pollution issues.
There are tar sands, and shale oil, but they use a lot of the energy to produce, at a small scale they are not bad, but to try and come anywhere near the 80MBBl per day we are using, would burn through that supply fairly quickly as well.
The key is conservation, and while I don't expect boomers to understand it, Gen-X is starting to, and the generation following X (now in early grade school), will start to fix much of the mess that us boomers created in earnest. The real question is, will they expect someone else to develop technology to solve their problems, or will they take a simple approach. Will a city at the turn of the next century look like a city today, or more like a city at the turn of the last century.