[kuros_taken]

People who say we absolutely need cars have misplaced values. Why locate yourself so far away from the things you need in life to necessitate the need of a car? It is just an excuse to feel like you are at liberty to do what you want when you want, but then why make those things miles and mile away? The only reason cars still have clout in this day is because we have not realized how incredibly expensive and wasteful they are, and they are marketed to us as our only hope to get what we want.

[josephdphillips]

People who say we absolutely need cars have misplaced values.

What makes their values "misplaced?" Merely because they don't comport with yours?

Why locate yourself so far away from the things you need in life to necessitate the need of a car?

What I need most in life is privacy, solitude and time. You can only have that with a car.

It is just an excuse to feel like you are at liberty to do what you want when you want, but then why make those things miles and mile away?

The distance is not a problem because my private transportation (I own three vehicles) is paid-for, inexpensive to maintain and cheap to drive.

The only reason cars still have clout in this day is because we have not realized how incredibly expensive and wasteful they are, and they are marketed to us as our only hope to get what we want.

You're so amusingly naïve. The poorest of the poor can afford to drive (I bought my first car making minimum wage), and they're not wasteful at all given the inferior alternative.

It isn't marketing that persuades people to drive automobiles. It's the obvious advantages that private transportation has over public.

[kuros_taken]

What is the inferior alternative?

[josephdphillips]

The inferior alternative is to sit in a dirty, unsafe bus surrounded by strangers, many of whom have criminal records.

[kuros_taken]

And this, a rather 'naive' interpretation of public transit, is the only alternative to owning three cars you know?

[QatzelOk]

Commuter trains arent a lot more efficient then cars.

Metal wheels, electric wires, low weight of vehicle/passenger ratio. What are you babbling about, Thund? Are you comparing an empty train to a one-passenger SUV? Common sense should be enough to convince you of the falsity of this statement of yours.

People don't LIKE living in crowded cities. They don't LIKE being forced to use public transportation when private transportation is so much more convenient.

Plans for high-density living always exist and are rejected. People do not want to live that way.

people like outdoor malls and box stores a lot better

Who told you what people like? Do you know people, and they told you "I like suburban malls and low density?" I moved to a high density city because I hated low-density sprawl. It was like a kind of social death for me.

You seem to be saying the government should be ignoring the desires of its citizens in favor of what the elite wants for them

The elites loved suburban sprawl. While the "people" worked a quarter of their lives to pay for them, and spent hours in traffic, the overstuffed elites counted their money and spent a lot of it on advertising and television to convince viewers that THEY LOVED THEIR NEW UGLY AND BORING SUBURBS.

TV was like the best Potemkin Village for Consumerism. But please, Joseph, don't confuse those smiling kids in sitcoms for "what the people want."

[Thunderhawk]

Metal wheels, electric wires, low weight of vehicle/passenger ratio. What are you babbling about, Thund? Are you comparing an empty train to a one-passenger SUV? Common sense should be enough to convince you of the falsity of this statement of yours.

Commuter trains run on a schedule, and though running empty commuter trains is undesirable by the company that runs them, there are times when commuter trains are barely occupied as it maintains a level of service that is required to be an alternative to the car.
One has to consider a whole day's worth of people-km and total train travel when looking at the emissions/passenger ratio and other efficiency barometers.

[U184]

Adrien, why is compressed air a joke? I have several forklifts and a very nice little jeep that all have compressed air engines.

As for your other points on my post the part you left out was this:

New and innovative technologies are bought and kept away from development because the "TAR-PEOPLE" (Oil Companies) know once they lose their grip its all over for them.

<ME

So of COURSE other lines of relative production are behind in development, that was the whole point.

Lastly, are you really seriously saying that you think that we have not been past combustion engine technology for some time now? Cause you said this:

When I saw that I was like "oh another conspiracy theorist"...

and if that is how you see things I could provide some examples.

[Thunderhawk]

why is compressed air a joke? I have several forklifts and a very nice little jeep that all have compressed air engines.

How long do they work before they need a recharge?
What is the peak pressure in the accumulator/air pig, and the operating pressures for the lifts and wheels?
capacity?
Are air blasts from a rupture dangerous? (aside from debris being thrown out - just the air blast itself)

The various compressed air vehicles Ive seen (youtube clips, some webpages) all have low range of operations, require high pressure refills (beyond the standard gas station accumulator) and operate in niche environments.

[Adrien]

It's cheaper to live closer together and transport things by train, and we no longer have the money (or environment) to screw around with cars and the lies that keep them on our roads.

**thread comes to a stunning conclusion**

This is not a conclusion. It amounts to say "It's greener to produce our societies' energy with wind turbines". You are stating the obvious, with no consideration for the feasibility or the current situation. That is what I have been reproaching you with since the beginning of this discussion.

Most people in this thread, Adrien and my self included, support trains and LRT.

Indeed. If anything, since we're debating infrastructures and feasibility too, trams, although as I've noticed in Paris the past few years, require a lot of work and destruction in downtown areas, but they can more easily adapt to roads made for motor vehicles. Also, one alternative that looked very interesting to me too at some point was what we call trolley-buses, hastily converted buses that run on the road, but that are powered by power lines that they reach with cateners.

But then, is anything green?

Well I'd say nothing ever will be, but construction sites can now be very "eco-friendly" even if it costs usually a bit more. According to an architecture exhibition I went to see a few years back in Paris, it seems costly mostly because the vast majority of construction companies now are just not trained or equiped to lead eco-friendly, zero-pollution construction projects.

The horse represented private transportation in its day. Now the car does. Sounds pretty logical to me.

Indeed.

They don't LIKE being forced to use public transportation when private transportation is so much more convenient.

Well I'd say people when it comes down to it would like having a cheap, modern, efficient way to get to work provided to them. But, in my opinion, because of reasons I've evoked earlier, the quality of public systems has also plummeted as funding was cut or reduced. And that always brings people who wanted to try public transit back to their own means of transportation. I'm not even speaking of strikes, even though for many conservatives here the employees are the key of these systems' failures, which they are not, but old, old equipment, insufficient number of trains, lack of line extensions, lack of inter-modal solutions...

Plans for high-density living always exist and are rejected. People do not want to live that way.

Exactly, a lot the high-density projects have been failures, it needs to be rethinked. Again the coverage of the Prince Charles' 'new towns' by the National Geographic was very interesting in analysing that.

You forgot to mention that people like outdoor malls and box stores a lot better. They can park, buy what they want, get back in their cars and go back home. They don't need to walk blocks through a crowded downtown to find what they want and then have to schlep it home on a crowded bus (like my grandmother did).

Mmm. Well people don't buy stoves everyday. I think people would gain a lot in quality of life if they were provided with small shops, local boutiques, family business, etc. The thing is that many people, in the US but elsewhere too, have never even got to try it. It's not that funny to have to take the car to go buy the slightest thing you need or want. So ideally one could try to work on that, and then for bigger objects throw a couple of incentives on some efficient means of delivery.

People who say we absolutely need cars have misplaced values. Why locate yourself so far away from the things you need in life to necessitate the need of a car?

Because they have no choice! That's what I've been trying to explain with the example of the development of cities and new settlements throughout the history of the US. Being able not to have a car is a luxury, it's not the other way round.

Metal wheels, electric wires, low weight of vehicle/passenger ratio. What are you babbling about, Thund? Are you comparing an empty train to a one-passenger SUV?

Electricity has to be produced and conveyed just like fossil fuels. The former means that there will be pollution and/or very expensive investments that can't be recouped before a long amount of time which in turns limits the investments made for the maintaining and upgrading of the train system, and the latter just means investments. Add on top of that the required number of trains etc.

Plus as Dave said you have to build them too. And finally, your problem is that you are unreasonnable and keep comparing good trains with evil SUVs while forgetting everything in between too.

Commuter trains run on a schedule, and though running empty commuter trains is undesirable by the company that runs them, there are times when commuter trains are barely occupied as it maintains a level of service that is required to be an alternative to the car.
One has to consider a whole day's worth of people-km and total train travel when looking at the emissions/passenger ratio and other efficiency barometers.

That too of course. I take this opportunity to remind Qatz that while some people take their SUVs out while being the only person on board, the problem if anything lies in the fact that they take a big vehicle to do it, not that they need to go alone someplace. That is something that does arise, the need to go on your own to a specific destination without being able to take someone along. But that can be done in tiny cars too. Like it is done very often in Europe.

Adrien, why is compressed air a joke? I have several forklifts and a very nice little jeep that all have compressed air engines.

See Thunderhawk's reply, that's what I had in mind. For the past ten years really, at every motor show here people have presented concept-cars equiped with compressed-air engines. So I'm not saying it does not exist. The thing is, every time they concede that the technology is limited by range, by not really responding well to the way a car engine works (changes of speed and needs for torque), etc. as Thunderhawk underlined.

So they ask the media and all to meet them at the next auto show. And even then at the next event it's the exact same discourse. These days the few industrials (Bollore in French was one I believe) who pushed and pushed for that have given up and went to developed EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicles).

I do believe that, unless a gigantic breakthrough is achieved, this technology is not viable for the automobile, the same way steam engines had to be left aside too.

Lastly, are you really seriously saying that you think that we have not been past combustion engine technology for some time now?

I do believe what you said is a conspiracy theory worth some of the unfounded deliriums we see in the CT sub-forum here on PoFo. Some people try to justify the shortcomings of their theories by inventing powers that hinder the plans of the good people from the shadows. I just wanna say "bollocks".

I do know that oil companies make an amazing amount of money on today's situation. But that's a consequence, and like I said many of them invest in alternative energies by buying or creating the societies that develop and manufacture batteries of hybrids or EREVs. They are making the most of their business in a very capitalist way, the same way in the past companies made the most of triangular trade, the Gold Rush, etc.

But if you look at the state of our motor technology today, as in technology that can be applied to mass consumption and in a popular way:

-Compressed air? Fail.
-Steam? Fail.
-Solar power? Not miniaturised enough yet.
-Electricity? Hybrids are pretty advanced, but EREVs are just starting to reach a mass feasibility.
-Ethanol? Very polluting in its fabrication, would require tremendous amounts of land.

Do you see anything else that can challenge the combustion engine?

[Thunderhawk]

It amounts to say "It's greener to produce our societies' energy with wind turbines"

There is a limit. Conservation of energy still holds. If your getting energy out of the wind, that means there is less energy in the wind. Current wind turbine usage is tiny, but if we were to switch over all our energy needs to wind turbines that would be a huge amount of disruption to air flow. Polination, migration and air circulation (which is very important for many reasons) would suffer.

trolley-buses

Electricity good, buses still bad (due to road damage).

eco-friendly, zero-pollution construction projects.

Concrete which uses, rather then releases, CO2 is subpar.
Steel smelting is not nice either.

I think people would gain a lot in quality of life if they were provided with small shops, local boutiques, family business, etc.

Cost.
It is notably cheaper in terms of money and time to go to a big box outlet then it is to go to the various local shops (which often sell the exact same products), so much so that it offsets the cost of transportation and it is still cheaper. Untill such economic realities are changed big box stores will remain.

[QatzelOk]

You are stating the obvious, with no consideration for the feasibility or the current situation

The reality of the current situation is that people are not seeing the obvious. So I'm re-stating it in the hopes that a few heads pop out of the text sand - even if it's just for a second or two.

It is notably cheaper in terms of money and time to go to a big box outlet then it is to go to the various local shops

It's only cheaper to go to a suburban big box because of the economics of cheap oil. Once the price of oil (and cars) has gone out of range of most people, they will rediscover the economics of local and small-scale.

This doesn't mean large volume shops will disappear, it just means they will become slightly smaller and serve a more localized market - they will be walking distance from your home, rather than driving distance.

(no one in this thread has demonstrated the efficiency of the car)

[Thunderhawk]

It's only cheaper to go to a suburban big box because of the economics of cheap oil. Once the price of oil (and cars) has gone out of range of most people, they will rediscover the economics of local and small-scale.

I agree.

(no one in this thread has demonstrated the efficiency of the car)

Because generally they arent efficient.
But efficiency and usefullness are different things.

[Damien Walters]

I think we can go the way of the birds and be happy. Damn the cost of petrol! Thanks to Mr Moller at MOLLER INTERNATIONAL : The family seater OR the one man seater.

[Todd D.]

I think we can go the way of the birds and be happy. Damn the cost of petrol! Thanks to Mr Moller at MOLLER INTERNATIONAL

Are you an idiot?

There's a reason that Moller's bullshit has never gotten off the ground (pun intended). First, any vehicle that needs to overcome gravity is going to be less fuel efficient than a vehicle that doesn't. Second, you'd turn routine fender benders in to kamikaze death falls. Third, I'm fairly certain that air traffic control isn't going to allow you to zip around like a Flying DeLoreon, so you're still going to have flight paths and air traffic anyway, so what problem have you solved?

Oh, and did I mention that nothing Moller ever invented has actually, you know, FLOWN? Yeah, the only time he's ever even been up in the air with one of his stupid machines is when it's been tethered to a crane, and even then was only capable of hovering about 10 feet above the ground. Probably why the SEC sued him for fraud.

Basically, you're talking about a personal airplane that's less fuel efficient and more dangerous than the cars on the road today. Good job.

[QatzelOk]

First, any vehicle that needs to overcome gravity is going to be less fuel efficient than a vehicle that doesn't.

Any vehicle on rubber tires will be less efficient than one on metal rails.

Any single-passenger motor vehicle will be less efficient than a multi-passenger one.

Any suburban infrastructure will be less efficient than urban infrastructure.

---

So let's get going and get rid of all the inefficiency that is choking our civilization to death!

[Adrien]

My letter in defence of Detroit has been published in the French publication Automobile Magazine. Hehe, looks I am going public and should try to get a job at the Big Three I'm sure they hire for low wages right now.

It's only cheaper to go to a suburban big box because of the economics of cheap oil. Once the price of oil (and cars) has gone out of range of most people, they will rediscover the economics of local and small-scale.

It's actually not that cheap to go to a big box even, given that you pay for gas to go save a dollar or so at Walmart. But like I said the car inserts itself in a broader picture of an economic model, of a large scale urban plan of a certain kind etc. That being said now, the price of fuel goes up but also goes down, it sometimes goes out of range but it is in everybody's interest that it comes back to normal.

As to the price of cars, they are precisely going down rather than up. Of course Qatz is gonna give us the price of Escalades, Bentleys and Lamborghinis but that is being dishonest and forgetting the new low cost offerings such as the Tata Nano, the Dacia Logan its derivatives, as well as the base models of every city cars from Japanese and Korean carmakers.

Also, throughout the line-ups, the cost of development are being reduced. The new Taurus is still, I believe, based on the same platform for instance. The new Seat Exeo is even the previous generation of Audi A4, they just transfered the tooling to Seat and changed the trim. Manufacturers are trying to bring the car back to a useful means of transportation, leaving the excess to the happy few who do excesses in everything anyway.

Any vehicle on rubber tires will be less efficient than one on metal rails.

Tires have evolved a lot to reduce friction, as well as emissions of particles as they degradate on the road. The former is being for this model year generalised across the industry in eco-friendly trim levels in Europe (EcoMotive, iBlue, Econetic, DrivE, BlueEfficiency, etc.), the latter is still in development from what I read, you can see them as the green-coloured tires of concept cars sometimes.

But I think they're still to expensive and still have issues in traction and control.

Any single-passenger motor vehicle will be less efficient than a multi-passenger one.

But you forget to take into account that single-passenger trips are sometimes necessary. That's why fuel efficient and emission efficient cars, that are smaller and more accomodating of single and two passenger trips (the Smart ForTwo is the greenest car in Europe) are appearing on the market.

[Thunderhawk]

Any vehicle on rubber tires will be less efficient than one on metal rails.
Any single-passenger motor vehicle will be less efficient than a multi-passenger one.
Any suburban infrastructure will be less efficient than urban infrastructure.

What efficiency are you measuring?
If its energy cost (or emisions) per person moved per unit distance, then you are generally wrong on point 2 with point one being dubious.

Tires have evolved a lot to reduce friction,

They were evolving for decades to have more friction, is this low friction concept a new development?
Or an alternative concept Im unfamiliar with?

[Adrien]

Yes, I remember the first applications of low friction tires were in the late 90s on a couple of concept car, when it was already trendy to present a concept that was recyclable (the big thing back then). Usually the low friction capacity was coupled to the "green" recyclable rubber, whose marks on the tarmac were also supposed to be non-toxic.

But now in Europe *every* manufacturer has an eco-friendly label (the ones I mentioned above were respectively from Seat, Hyundai, Ford, Volvo, Mercedes, but you can add EcoFlex from Opel, BlueMotion from Volkswagen, and I forget BMW's name as it hasn't been launched yet) that includes small engines, aerodynamic tricks and low weight, a new setting of the gearbox's ratios, and these low resistance tires, among other ideas.

Kudos to Ford who came up with the idea in the second half of the 90s here with a special version of the Fiesta of then, but it was too early, people weren't ready to pay a premium for what was then expensive to build due to a low diffusion.

Now, when I meant low friction I meant low resistance (as in, the physics term), as opposed to traction that is the grip the tire gets on the road. The idea is I believe that traction is function of the 'carvings' in the tire, while resistance to the road is function of the material, size and profile of the tire, and that is more expensive and must end up affecting traction as well, so it's not widespread across the line-ups today.

[Thunderhawk]

Now, when I meant low friction I meant low resistance (as in, the physics term), as opposed to traction that is the grip the tire gets on the road. The idea is I believe that traction is function of the 'carvings' in the tire, while resistance to the road is function of the material, size and profile of the tire, and that is more expensive and must end up affecting traction as well, so it's not widespread across the line-ups today.

Are you talking about rolling resistence?
That can be done with stiff tires, which you can cause by over pressurizing (not advisable). Nothing special is needed. But increased stiffness usually results in less traction.