Blogging For Today

The auto industry has suddenly decided we need hybrids and electric cars. Well, electric cars are useless for most people, and don’t help preserve our reserves of oil, nor do they reduce CO2 emissions. Why? Because the production of electricity from fossil fuels is inefficient, and more energy is lost as the electricity is sent round the country.

On top of that, the energy is then put into a battery – more energy lost – and then is used to drive the car. A pretty silly idea, unless you want nuclear power, which is one more way that the world will become uninhabitable in the future.

So what is worth having? Bio-fuels made from non-food sources and fast-growing crops that cannot be used for anything else. Bio-fuels, methanol and diesel are suitable for high-performance cars.

The makers of supercars, exotic cars and sports cars are already designing their cars to run on bio-fuels, so their future can be assured.

We also need a new type of hybrid. No, not the Toyota Prius or Honda Insight because these cars have very large and heavy batteries, which will need replacing surprisingly quickly – in a few years. They are so expensive to buy and replace that many people will just junk their cars – they will be worth less than the cost of the batteries. No-one mentions that of course, because the idea of these hybrids and electric cars is to impress politicians.

The real hybrid that will work is one that has a fairly small electric motor and alternator between the engine and gearbox – it needs to be fairly small to go into front-drive cars. First, this can be used to start the car after it has been stopped automatically at traffic lights, for example, saving fuel.

Secondly, if there is a battery that is much larger than a normal car battery, but not so large as those in current hybrids, then the car can use that electricity to accelerate. It can also generate electricity under braking. In other words, the hybrid is an auxiliary, not intended for use as an electric vehicle in towns, but which will have much better fuel consumption than normal. This is here already on a new supercar power train. This system will become common in the next few years as the auto companies find ways of reducing CO2 emissions. Incidentally, the auto industry is a scapegoat in this matter, as most CO2 emissions come from factories and the production of fuels, etc.

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