Will this be tomorrow's transportation?

[JamesHW]

Had a chance to ride in the Goodyear blimp a few years back.......went all over LA and flew over the Rose Bowl two days before the game......beautiful on a calm day. You are right......takes a big landing area and a big crew.

Actually these new designs are not unwieldy on the ground like the airships of old where ground lines had to be manhandled or tractored to position the airship. The design allows the ship to move around on a pad of air like a hovercraft.

Here's a vid that explains the COSH (Control of Static Heaviness) technology, in this case the Aeroscraft: AEROSCRAFT World's Most Advanced AIRSHIP First Flight Commercial CARJAM TV 214 - YouTube. The Aeroscraft has internal cargo loading via cables that can winch containers into the hold, even while hovering. They have versions planned that will achieve over 100 MPH, 12,000 ft ceiling and a 500 ton capacity.

 

[MultiMow]

Shoot, why didn't anyone tell me, I want my free liberal arts degree now!

I think one thing important thing that hasn't been considered is reducing our dependency on foreign energy sources. The electric car is perfectly suited for this since you can drive generation from solar, natural gas(which is much cleaner than coal and currently transforming the energy generation industry), etc. Heck, I know more than a few people who run their electric cars 100% from the solar panels on their roof.

In my mind Tesla could be the modern American muscle car. You have a car designed in America, built in the US and growing the number of manufacturing jobs domestically. It's a company that has entered in incredibly difficult market and yet now builds one of the fastest production cars in the world. How can you not love a car that can put down over 1,000hp and is also a great family car(seriously they're incredibly roomy). Yes they had help from the government, but what industry hasn't? All of the things they used were available to other companies and today the ZEV credits/etc make a pretty small portion of Tesla's overall profits.

Sure, battery prices are high now but what many people don't consider is that batteries are a technology, not a resource. When economies of scale kick in they get orders of magnitude cheaper rather than more expensive due to scarcity. Just look at the price of HDTVs over the last 5 years. All of the physical components are readily available, it's the precise manufacturing process that's expensive. Just like the chip in your modern computer starts out as sand just(silicon) same with Li-Ion batteries.

To me they're a marvel of American thinking and engineering. I think that's something we could use more of these days, I'd much rather take that then companies that are moving production out of the US.

Another great point is how Tesla (aka Elon Musk) has driven down the price of batteries. Tesla motors has all but forced the other OEMs to start producing electric vehicles... QUADRUPLING the economic investment in high capacity batteries, and driving down the price per kWh hr by nearly 80% of what it was ten years ago. This has also driven technology to develop smaller/lighter packs as well.

In the next 20yrs, we are likely to see electric energy storage density increase by a whopping 1,000%. Just to give you an idea... that would be the equivalent of advancement we accomplished from the period of the Baghdad battery (around the time the Great Pyramids of Giza were built) to the mid-90s (NiCad rechargeable batteries). That's THOUSANDS of years in advancement in only two decades.

Another valid point is lifespan and renewability. Thanks to all this development, we're looking at carbon/air batteries being a realistic achievement within the next 12yrs. Carbon/air batteries are 100% recyclable... but that won't matter, as they also have lossless charging cycles.... meaning they lose no perceivable capacity over the course of 10,000 charge cycles (a battery that will NEVER need to be replaced in your lifetime). All this, plus they're lighter, AND can be carbon negative... meaning the various oxides of carbon can be removed from our polluted atmosphere and condensed into the material for their construction.

All these people who look at just the gross emissions per mile of electrics don't understand exactly how far reaching the effeciveness really is of all this investment and subsidy.

For decades, we have invested TRILLIONS of dollars into developing the internal combustion engine. The absolute best efficiency to be had from a gasoline engine of today is 50%... and that particular technology isn't viable for passenger cars (yet). The best diesel efficiency is 76%... and that will NEVER be viable for passenger vehicles OR road truck, simply due to the scale required to obtain such efficiency. Basically, we've all but hit a terminal plateau.

Even if you could devise a way to directly catalyze diesel into free electron energy... the gross yield would only be 80%. Even at that, we've already reached a point where any amount of progress would be miniscule at best, in terms of return over investment.

Electricity has made HUGE gains in capacity, efficiency, technology, density, and clean collection. One such promising technology is nano-carbon conversion. A team at Arizona State University has already developed a carbon nanostructure, that when exposed to light and water yields a LOSSLESS conversion of the solar energy DIRECTLY to hydrogen gas. This technology alone would make the solar capacity of an average home equal to a 250,000 square foot factory covered in our best current solar panels.

Want to know what funded nearly 10% of that development? Elon Musk (aka Tesla Motors, aka US tax dollars, aka PEOPLE BIYING ELECTRIC CARS).

 

[jerrybob]

Actually these new designs are not unwieldy on the ground like the airships of old where ground lines had to be manhandled or tractored to position the airship. The design allows the ship to move around on a pad of air like a hovercraft.

Here's a vid that explains the COSH (Control of Static Heaviness) technology, in this case the Aeroscraft: AEROSCRAFT World's Most Advanced AIRSHIP First Flight Commercial CARJAM TV 214 - YouTube. The Aeroscraft has internal cargo loading via cables that can winch containers into the hold, even while hovering. They have versions planned that will achieve over 100 MPH, 12,000 ft ceiling and a 500 ton capacity.

Very interesting......you're right......much different then the Goodyear Blimp I rode in back in the 80's. Back then.....my first scheduled ride was cancelled due to wind.....that blimp was spinning around like a teatherball. The hovercraft idea would be a big plus.

 

[vvanders]

I wish I could link to the ultra-con anti-green bunch who insisted that if enough wind turbines were erected they would stall the Earth's rotation.

Of course we know (most of us, anyway ) that there will always be more trees than turbines, and that their moving and waving will maintain our existing wind patterns and our planet's 24 hr rotation. After I'm dead, who cares? :laughing::laughing:
(... Are we done with wood-gassification internal combustion so soon?? Aww....)

Seriously:

Vvanders, thanks for sharing real experience for those of us who often just listen to each other. There's always two
sides.

I'm just glad some people have an open mind. A lot of the issues around EVs devolves into politics rapidly. I think there's advantages on both sides that most people don't consider. There's no reason that is has to be exclusive and I fully understand there are some applications where EVs don't make sense.

Besides the engineer in me can't help but geek over some aspects of them. The efficiency gains alone are incredible and the thought of dumping 1200 amps into your powertrain in a fraction of a second, uf da!

 

[Egon]

I'm just glad some people have an open mind. A lot of the issues around EVs devolves into politics rapidly. I think there's advantages on both sides that most people don't consider. There's no reason that is has to be exclusive and I fully understand there are some applications where EVs don't make sense.

Besides the engineer in me can't help but geek over some aspects of them. The efficiency gains alone are incredible and the thought of dumping 1200 amps into your powertrain in a fraction of a second, uf da!

Perhaps change and alternates are just a fixture of today's world. Technology seems to be increasing at an almost exponential rate these days making so much possible.

 

[the old grind]

'Technology' is like 'enlightenment', an intangible, so like many things it has its followers, and like fine art there are those who would have more of it if they could afford it. There are also those of us with diesel tractors, manual metalworking machines, and various hand-powered tools who are getting along fine with 20th Century stuff and saving today's bucks vs counting on 'saving' the checks we don't yet have in hand to cash. Just as with so many things we buy these days, the way to 'save' money begins with spending it.

My favorite pitch is how consumers will automatically 'save money' with 'technology' ... after they wait for the price to come down, and after subsidies and profits are accounted for. Just like enlightenment it's something to look forward to getting someday.

"You have to believe", and it'd help if you're still young enough to have several decades to 'support the economy' and turn your labors over to gadgetry. When it's about 'technology' we're just potential customers who will reward someone else's work, while dreaming of having our chores done by remote control.

Personally, I'd like to see an automatic set-preparer and trap-setter. I don't have a heated cab on my basket, and it's darn cold to run my line .. just when I need more furs to keep warm.

 

[adventure bob]

"one thing important thing that hasn't been considered is reducing our dependency on foreign energy sources" this would be a blatantly uniformed statement. How much do you think we depend on "foreign" sources and what's your definition of "foreign?" If its Canada, then your close to correct. Our electricity production in 2015 broke out like: Coal: 33% Natural gas = 33% Nuclear = 20% Hydropower = 6% Other renewables = 7% Biomass = 1.6% Geothermal = 0.4% Solar = 0.6% Wind = 4.7% Petroleum = 1% Other gases = <1%. Coal natural gas, nuclear and hydro aren't foreign, unless again Canada is foreign. That makes over 75% of our electrical production domestic. For transportation, oil specifically, less than 20% comes form Persian gulf countries, Africa and tiny countries we've never heard of. The rest comes from the US (~40%) South America (~20%) and again Canada (~15%). ll give you that the south American countries are foreign so why do we buy it from them instead of getting it here? Cause its cheaper that way. Its the make or buy decision. If its cheaper to buy it than do it yourself, you buy it. It has strategic advantage to leaving our natural resource in the ground and buying the foreign stuff at rock bottom prices. wouldn't u rather have a potential future enemy without an oil reserve? Could we cut off foreign inbound oil today? Yep. Would that benefit us economically or strategically? Nope. The foreign energy fear is a scare tactic used by the media, in the words of Chuck D: don't believe the hype.

 

[dickfoster]

Another great point is how Tesla (aka Elon Musk) has driven down the price of batteries. Tesla motors has all but forced the other OEMs to start producing electric vehicles... QUADRUPLING the economic investment in high capacity batteries, and driving down the price per kWh hr by nearly 80% of what it was ten years ago. This has also driven technology to develop smaller/lighter packs as well.

In the next 20yrs, we are likely to see electric energy storage density increase by a whopping 1,000%. Just to give you an idea... that would be the equivalent of advancement we accomplished from the period of the Baghdad battery (around the time the Great Pyramids of Giza were built) to the mid-90s (NiCad rechargeable batteries). That's THOUSANDS of years in advancement in only two decades.

Another valid point is lifespan and renewability. Thanks to all this development, we're looking at carbon/air batteries being a realistic achievement within the next 12yrs. Carbon/air batteries are 100% recyclable... but that won't matter, as they also have lossless charging cycles.... meaning they lose no perceivable capacity over the course of 10,000 charge cycles (a battery that will NEVER need to be replaced in your lifetime). All this, plus they're lighter, AND can be carbon negative... meaning the various oxides of carbon can be removed from our polluted atmosphere and condensed into the material for their construction.

All these people who look at just the gross emissions per mile of electrics don't understand exactly how far reaching the effeciveness really is of all this investment and subsidy.

For decades, we have invested TRILLIONS of dollars into developing the internal combustion engine. The absolute best efficiency to be had from a gasoline engine of today is 50%... and that particular technology isn't viable for passenger cars (yet). The best diesel efficiency is 76%... and that will NEVER be viable for passenger vehicles OR road truck, simply due to the scale required to obtain such efficiency. Basically, we've all but hit a terminal plateau.

Even if you could devise a way to directly catalyze diesel into free electron energy... the gross yield would only be 80%. Even at that, we've already reached a point where any amount of progress would be miniscule at best, in terms of return over investment.

Electricity has made HUGE gains in capacity, efficiency, technology, density, and clean collection. One such promising technology is nano-carbon conversion. A team at Arizona State University has already developed a carbon nanostructure, that when exposed to light and water yields a LOSSLESS conversion of the solar energy DIRECTLY to hydrogen gas. This technology alone would make the solar capacity of an average home equal to a 250,000 square foot factory covered in our best current solar panels.

Want to know what funded nearly 10% of that development? Elon Musk (aka Tesla Motors, aka US tax dollars, aka PEOPLE BIYING ELECTRIC CARS).

The problem with electrics isn't the electrics but where the power to run them comes from. Today that is mostly fossil fueled plants that aren't any more efficient than the internal combustion engines that the electric motors are supposed to replace. Then you have to add in all the losses from transmission and energy conversion. Every time you change energy from one form to another you loose something to conversion loss. In the end electric cars are actually environmental disasters and it's dictated by physics which can't be overcome. Before electrics can make any sense at all you have to begin with something that makes sense. You have to begin at the beginning, not at the end of the chain. Once you have a real source of cheap, clean energy many more things are made possible but not until then.

 

[MultiMow]

The problem with electrics isn't the electrics but where the power to run them comes from. Today that is mostly fossil fueled plants that aren't any more efficient than the internal combustion engines that the electric motors are supposed to replace. Then you have to add in all the losses from transmission and energy conversion. Every time you change energy from one form to another you loose something to conversion loss. In the end electric cars are actually environmental disasters and it's dictated by physics which can't be overcome. Before electrics can make any sense at all you have to begin with something that makes sense. You have to begin at the beginning, not at the end of the chain. Once you have a real source of cheap, clean energy many more things are made possible but not until then.

Carbon sequestered plants are now emitting 90% less airborne pollutants... although their carbon emissions are hiegher in ratio to the net yield per kW, the pollutants are contained, managed, and have shown promise in alternative uses.

The carbon "cake" byproduct of sequestration has shown a great deal of promise in the form of alternative building material, AND synthesized soil.

Things WILL get better for electricity and electric vehicles... but not if we continue to depend on privatized/corporate research without the benefit of retail product funding.

Unless you can somehow devise a way to crack the hydrocarbon molecules of gas/diesel immediately before combustion, isolate/store/repurpose the carbon byproduct, and convince people to buy three to four times the gallons of fuel to net the same power... gas/diesel is not going to see any significant progress without expensive, exotic, and EXPENSIVE materials.

We have to push electric to further development, as there is MUCH more headway to be made in both production and application efficiency.

I agree with your point. Even hybrids are not the environmentally friendly alternatives they are made out to be...

...but continued advancement where it can be made is FAR more viable that throwing TRILLIONS of dollars toward R&D for gas/diesel technology... where progress is sparce, negligible, and and decreasingly available.

Sure, advanced efficiency in gas/diesel technologies are available... but they all have tradeoffs that simply aren't viable. Most engines that show any reasonable improvement suffer from one of four problems: 1- EXPENSIVE MATERIALS (requiring materials such as ceramics to combat wear/heat/etc.) 2- POOR RESPONSE (many new gas diesel technologies can be more powerful, compact, and efficient... but their throttle response is too slow for transport applications) 3- WEIGHT (the most advanced diesel engine on the market today, does so by being HUGE... as in, nearly three football fields huge... and it's only 76-78% efficient at full load) 4- ANCILLARY DEPENDENCY (more efficient power in the same packaging requires more cooling... which translates DIRECTLY to compromised aerodynamics)

Say what you will... but with our population growth rate and addiction to power (to the point that a country's potential is baselined by their power consumption per capita).... we MUST start developing other means of technology. Without public retail market funding, it'll NEVER happen in time.

If you don't want to see a systematic, world encompassing reduction in population, that is.

 

[adventure bob]

Oh, just heard on the news that the American avg life expectancy went down, the population reduction is starting...
If you add in the Baby Boomer end of life reduction, we wont need to do a thing here soon.