Why electric and hybrid cars suck.

Here is the real fuel issue.

Environmentalist and motor companies have been wetting themselves over electric and electric hybrid cars for many years now, yet the biggest environmental problems are more urgent than just pissing around with burning brown coal to feed some heavy little battery carrier that causes more pollution to manufacture and dispose of than it saves in a lifetime!

Even Honda built a hydrogen powered car, which uses most of it's passenger space housing the huge fuel tank required to drive any distance and a bankers income to fill. I realise they all have to look like they are doing something, but Honda of all people building this ridiculously expensive and useless fuel carrier is out there!

Having put the position firmly allow me to expand.

With all the bull-dust around "new" fuels pushed by a mainly bone ignorant motoring press, even the most conservative manufacturers have felt the need to design at least one completely pathetic vehicle based on some future technology which needs impossibly expensive infrastructure to work as every day transport does today.

The technical issues are passed over as if they don't effect outcomes. It may be convenient to forget that primary electricity sources such as brown coal and nuclear power stations are not pollution free ways to run your car, but as always, "out of sight out of mind" works at soothing the soul of the ill-informed.

The problem.

• There are 600 million vehicles In the world running around polluting the environment now with 5 gas emissions pouring out their collective exhaust pipes.

• Even if we find a free fuel in abundance next week that does not cause any pollution at any part of it's cycle, it will still not save the environment from those 600 million vehicles unless they can be run on that fuel.

• Most of the world fleet of cars and trucks could remain on the road for another 30 years with some lasting much longer, like 60 years!

• Many people in the world do not have the means to buy another car. What should they do for fuel. Does every car owner need to take his car to the rubbish tip?

The whole motoring world is nuts if it thinks it can keep making cars without someone finding an alternative to petroleum for the current world fleet.

Internal Combustion Engines, hereinafter referred to as ICEs are the car and other vehicle engines or motors the world has had since the very beginning of vehicle manufacture.

They started life as slow turning or revving engines with low compression ratio's and longer con-rod stroke than bore size. eg Bore x Stroke.

Although inefficient at first they quickly became the cheapest form of transport by far. The ICE has come a very long way since then. Most modern ICEs are very fuel efficient and long lasting. All the engine management is computer controlled and they go a long way on one litre of fuel.

The solution.

The cheapest and best replacement fuel will be the fuel which is usable for early cars with carburettors and injection right up to and including the latest high tech cars on the market with fully computerised fuel delivery.

Petrol does just that, with only 2 products. Lead replacement or un-leaded.

Natural Gas conversions work well on ICEs that were using petrol, there is a lot of gas in the world, but current conversion to gas is way too expensive at least in Australia.

Our government gives a massive $2,000 towards your private car conversion and it is paid for by taxes of course.

Pyrolysis can be used to produce fuel from cellulose rich plants like hemp. but stupid law makers who apparently can't tell the difference between marijuana and hemp have stopped this being used in much of America.

Hemp has the best biomass and is a logical top contender as an alternative fuel to run in ICEs, but moral madness prevails..

ICEs will run on alcohol base fuels very well with little or no modifications. I do not know what may be a valid way to produce these fuel, but so far plants other than hemp seem more troublesome than petrol.

We need our land to grow food and if we are to grow fuel as well, it will need to be somehow complimentary to food crops or non invasive.

The world has got a lot of intellectual property and locked in someone's head is a solution.

This seems a good place to say all the fuel saving devices are total bunkum as I have shown clearly on another hub.

Maybe we could grow all our fuel. Holland was growing 16% of it's fuel needs last time I looked.

This hub will be updated with any decent ideas if I think of or hear of any.