[Mark Housel]

With all that thinking.

First off Hydrogen does not occur naturally anywhere on the planet.

Next Hydrogen and Oxgen bonds in water are very strong.

Meaning, it takes 4 times the energy that you get out of hydrogen to liberate it from water and that is where the whole thing falls apart.

Until the price of oil or gas equal the price of liberated hydrogen, the concept is going nowhere.

Maybe in time newer technologies will get past this, but currently, we aren't there.

Ark!

THIS ^^^^^^^^^

[Eurisko]

Guys, it's been fun. I respect all those who shared their opinions, and also learned a bit. Now I'm going back to work on the longest router build in history.

If only I could afford to make this a "green" project. I have 20 Megawatts of solar power available. (( 5 acres / 1 sq. meter ) * 1000 watts )

Should need only a fraction of that

[Ark1]

The sun has to shine to produce Electricity and if it doesn't what do we do, go home, take a nap and wait? We are not there yet.

Ark1.

[fizzissist]

If the sun stops shining, and the wind stops winding, you just turn industry off and go sit in the yard and wait. Dine on some grapes and cheese, and enjoy the life you've mandated for yourself while the chinese and indians burn every bit of coal they can buy from Australia and get from their own mines.....
....and run rings around you productively.

Their products will necessarily be less expensive, they'll have more customers, and whatever it was you were making for a living won't get sold. The best part is that YOU will be forced to by from them.

Unless it's a level playing field, it ain't.

[Ark1]

This carbon cap and trade for Global manufactors is a big game. Canada, the USA and Europe would abide by it, but China and India will sign on and do nothing. They will rape whom ever and whatever to benifit and when the rest of us call foul, they will say, what are you going to do about it. By then all of the jobs are gone and we will struggle to find a job. Our standard of living will go down.

Ark1.

[zoransimeonov]

I would not worry about the oil companies. The have developed strategies that go 50 years ahead. They scanned the earth for minerals and oil deposits ages ago and already have invested in the future energy resources like solar and wind and god knows what else. Take BP for example. They are major player in producing Solar panels.

[skippy]

"Their products will necessarily be less expensive, they'll have more customers, and whatever it was you were making for a living won't get sold. The best part is that YOU will be forced to by from them."
Well said Fizz! We're about to find out if you are right which I believe you are. Carbon Tax was passed through parliament today here in Australia.

[asuratman]

We still far a way to use renewable energy as long as some countries producing a lot of oil, coal and gas in big capacity. If we want to have more renewable energy, we shut down some productions, not all or sudden but little by little. Like in here Indonesia, we have a lot of geothermal, but now oil and gas still cheaper. So government still using more oil gas and coal. To drill geothermal well, it is far more expensive than drilling oil and gas. So here people still using oil and gas. And also for transportation oil and gas is far more efficient and practical to use rather than geothermal that we have to convert it first into electricity then charging the car.

You can imagine that some countries will be no exist anymore if oil and gas is no more produced or less produce since any other energy is to difficult to be transported or converted and no renewable energy available.

Small country like in pacific or atlantic or even Singapore or Fiji, they will be no more existense if no oil. and gas produced. Some countries will live with charcoal, no boat or aeroplane to come. Tooo expensive. Or like fully built country where no more wood to burn like singapore, with alot of elevator, you can not go up to your room when you getting old.

So if not from now people not decreasing on using oil and gas, it is far to have renewable energy like hydrogen. Its still too expensive.

[Kigiru]

We still far a way to use renewable energy as long as some countries producing a lot of oil, coal and gas in big capacity. If we want to have more renewable energy, we shut down some productions, not all or sudden but little by little. Like in here Indonesia, we have a lot of geothermal, but now oil and gas still cheaper. So government still using more oil gas and coal. To drill geothermal well, it is far more expensive than drilling oil and gas. So here people still using oil and gas. And also for transportation oil and gas is far more efficient and practical to use rather than geothermal that we have to convert it first into electricity then charging the car.

You can imagine that some countries will be no exist anymore if oil and gas is no more produced or less produce since any other energy is to difficult to be transported or converted and no renewable energy available.

Small country like in pacific or atlantic or even Singapore or Fiji, they will be no more existense if no oil. and gas produced. Some countries will live with charcoal, no boat or aeroplane to come. Tooo expensive. Or like fully built country where no more wood to burn like singapore, with alot of elevator, you can not go up to your room when you getting old.

So if not from now people not decreasing on using oil and gas, it is far to have renewable energy like hydrogen. Its still too expensive.

They may or may not seem to fail, dunno if they'd bother, fellas are really too rich to need to throw the people any bread and games anymore, or rather the Chinese will work for half the bread and no games Either way, we've still got a more or less unlimited supply of oil; the whole show about biodiesel being inefficient is only partially true; as you may know it works perfectly well with certain crops; sugarcane, palm, even corn and some of our other standard workhorse crops b/c ofc one way or another we're using them for the energy given to them by the combustibles tied up in their structure. Obviously oil's a lot easier if its already decomposed, but its also a lot cheaper on the other end when you don't have to ship it around the world, use any complicated or expensive equipment to produce it (I've never studied super low cost bioharvest systems; I think ususally for mass from low-yield plants they do something along the lines of putting a bunch of it in a silo sized pot above a flame/bonfire (with or without water or some other compound? Perhaps without if you composted it first? This could save some evaporation, tho I suppose straining out the toughest fibers that won't break down cheaply might require something more dilute to not clog your filtering system?) and basically reduce it or make a tea. Its been a bit since I learned about this process (I think science channel then some internet searching? Probably a few years back) so I don't remember the details, but the main thing is on the large scale they did it with old, simple equipment, nothing that a bunch of the guys up here couldn't produce in their sleep, or put together from scavenged junkyard picks and a few custom fittings. If I started listing all the possible heat sources that could lower the price... heh.

Oh dhur. Gasifier. ANd I was just reading about them the other day, I just forgot that I'd seen the less fancy version on television already that made a diesel-consumable fuel rather than pure methanol, leaving in a lot more of complex carbons; even if you made it sloppier than heck tho you could ionize the fuel to offset the drawbacks, saw a cheap ionizer made of a standard filter and a bunch of metal trimmings the other day that looked pretty workable on the instructables site, some old hippy living out in the phillipines. Either way how much you refine it is up to you, but the long and short is that with the right plant, OR (not, from what I understand which admittedly isn't a lot, and, but or) in a system where neither of the products are subsidized by the government, most any biomass even with the simple systems (not counting perhaps using the waste heat from gasifying garbage for instance).

But yeah, the proper plant for everywhere other than the tropics is hemp, and it's a real pain in the arse to get a license to grow it even where its legal (the 'industrial' hemp, though of course this is a much less oily and therefor much less worthy candidate for climes such as the us, I can only imagine that not having to produce all the oils it produces to run off insects (make medicine, get kids stoned, or make the densest bulk of the oil) would mean less nutrients consumed, and since the plants can grow in rather cold climes I suppose if you hit the right growing season when it was a bit too chilly for heavy bug problems but not for the scragglier plant to grow (I think I read about some sub-arctic one too that is still good and oily but just extremely low thc, more or less naturally evolved for the supposed requirements of an 'industrial' hemp, not capable of getting anyone stoned on anything the gov'ts not taxing without them getting emphysema from the garbage bag full of the stuff it would take to even give them a headache, not sure what explanation there is for a strain being bred that sacrifices a lot of the positive industrial uses of the plant (the seeds compare favorably with soy for healthy food, bit lower on protein but its supposedly perfect for flour/bread, and ofc the good ole days when your favorite beat up old work shirt was also your grandfather's favorite beat up old workshirt when he was your age, and his fathers and so on, were thanks to the amazing aging and tensile properties of the plant's fiber; the info on the arctic plant looked pretty legit, and on its use as a source of fuel, but while I don't remember a particular bias I'd imagine the articles I read bashing the bred industrial strains were written by smokers who were ticked off about having to look over their shoulders all the time, so it might not actually be as terrible or they might not have decreased the potency by decreasing the amt of oils only like these people seemed to indicate) other than to keep it from being used.

But yeah, once the oil companies either can't get their subsidies pushed up enough to keep making the same profits or just plain run out (there's still the shale, and we've hardly touched NG) I imagine they'll have the drug prohibition laws modified so that they can grow the most oil-rich and industrially useful strains of this, they'll set up great gigantic plants to process it, and do the same old same old. I don't see why they can't get the law passed, near as I can tell from looking up the history it was mostly the petro interests that had the stuff banned in the first place. They didn't ever talk about it when I was in school, but from what I understand it was basically what petro is now before petro came around. People were entrenched in using the crop and while the fossil fuels could produce the same stuff cheaper at the time (for, ofc, a limited time) people are always slow to change, and I imagine the petro companies wanted to get things locked down while they were ahead of the curve. Either way, it was their boys who did most of the work, who crafted the reports and news articles that got teh AMA to sign on (thats actually a funny one if the story is true, funny in the 'god i wish we could still be Americans without being called terrorists' sort of way; supposedly the AMA made their testimony at the trial not knowing that the dirty Mexican drug that caused immigrant workers to steal and loot and blacks to rape white women (ain't we a wunderful, lovely species?) that went by the slang term Marijuana was in fact the cannabis oils they had been proscribing to patients forever for mild aches and pains that didn't warrant the dangers of opiates heh. If it really happened that way you really do have to laugh, just the balls of it, and it isn't like we can complain when it was people just like us who jumped on the bandwagon, us in a world where information flow was restricted, some mangled sense of honor still clinging on amongst the populace, and politicians saving their lies (and the effort of talking across the country) for the real big whammies because of it), and of course they were the ones who profited the most (yeah it gave them somewhere to throw Anslinger and his gestapo where they wouldn't be embarassing to the nation, hunting users of an obscure drug that almost noone used recreationally because alcohol was cheaper and more potent and opium as well if they were in for the smoke, but they could'a just pushed them off the bridge as well, Anslinger had political friends but he was still just a dog on a chain to scare the questioners) so there's not a lot of chance it wasn't them.

So yeah, it works out rather nicely if you've got an oil company job, at least if you're irreplaceable to them, b/c you never know they might fake going under just for convenience (could just brazenly violate all the new sanctions to up their revenues on whats left of the easily accessible fossil fuels and then escape any resulting legal trouble in this way for instance, but I can't imagine they wouldn't hire any useful folks back at their new outlet). Sucks if you have any interest in ever getting free of them, ofc, because it ain't gonna happen. Another aspect of the concept 'too big to fail,' or perhaps a more honest examination of it; they're not too big because theyd drag down the whole economy with them, or at least that concept is antithetical to the whole idea that started this country, the freedom that allowed them to go out and build their neo-monarchy, the belief that society will advance quicker when each person is free to generate his own wealth rather than giving it to his master or lord or what have you, but then the lords don't tend to see it that way, neither do the masters (always got another one of those rage-choked giggles over that, that we call the people we work for and give almost all the wealth we generate (just the value of what we output, subtracting the cost of the machines which would be rather affordable if they were the main cost of such ventures and not the regulations and dum-dum safety measures we gave the giants, or at least that the greedy and blind and the lawyers they hired gave them, punish 'em with kindness I guess, but yeah to make a long story short it comes from the the fact that Americans didn't want to call their masters masters so they called them a variation of the dutch word for it (also have heard that this originated from the latin word for slave master, not so sure about that tho)), so we're probably sol on that one. Mebbe the kelp thing will play out tho, who knows? If so I suspect Kelp Jelly will probably find its way onto the controlled substances list one way or another tho heh (wedge)

[Coxsteve]

Run out of Oil didn't we do that back in 1971,Seriously what a crock of scamming BS,Anyone aware of just how huge the Oil and Mineral wealth plays are that are currently going on in Mongolia.
See back in pre WW2 Days the Russians discovered huge reserves of Oil in Mongolia at easy to acess drilling depths,They left it untouched because they had easy acess to Oil in The Caucasas regions and that Oil was the prime aspect behind Hitlers Eastern Front Offensive that stalled at Staningrad,They were after the Oil as Germany had to use mainly synthetic Oils and Fuels for much of WW2,Yes they were the pioneers of modern synthetic Oils.

Anyhow Mongolia did not gain it's freedom from the Communist Yoke until 2000 and it has taken a number of years since then to set up a stock exchange and International banking presence in Ulann Bator the Capital,For without those aspects there is no MultiNational Oil or Mining Companies operating in any Country.
Mongolia has reputedly from contacts on the Ground Oil reserves greater then the whole Middle East and abundant Coal,Uranium,Iron Ore,Copper,Tin and Gold.
We of course haven't taken into account much of South America,Africa and lots of other places and did I mention all the Capped unused Oil wells in Australia let alone the whole centre of the Continent was one vast sea in ancient times and therefore should hold abundant Oil if actaully searched for.

Running Out pf Oil, yeah right pull the other leg just another excuse for price increases or some form of Political Action.
Be that a push by the UN for World Government where we of the Western Nations are outnumbered by the Third World and hence outvoted in the General assembly,Hence the UN IPCC push for Climate Change and take money from "Bad" Western Nations,Nigeria are not the only Scammers out there.
There is also China and the Group of 77 who are not our Buddies either

[loneengineer]

I only gave the most briefest scan-read of the rest of the thread before posting, just sharing a few tidbits of my own.

Hydrogen is not currently a viable energy source. It's a battery. It's a way of storing energy - the energy has to be stored somewhere. It's possible algae producing hydrogen could work in the future, but that's just a better way of turning sunlight into, what is again, just a battery storage. The energy still comes from the sun.

Electric cars are not currently environmentally viable, the rare earth minerals required for the high output batteries and motors are more damaging to extract than oil.

Methane might be an alternative, on the seabed there is lots of it, but it could be 'dangerous' to actually mine it because of what could happen with a catastrophic release of methane. No commercial way to do so currently exists, but it might be figured out better in the future. One downside is that under UN Law of the Sea Treaties the methane basically belongs to global government then, whereas oil is on the land of many continents.

The oil isn't running out, I have friends in the petro industry. Were practically swimming in oil, even in the US alone. Peak oil was just created to justify the massive raise in prices to make it more profitable for them.

The oil might even be abiotic. It's a theory more prominent in russia where they talked about not only due to the volume (there's too much discovered oil to even account for every living thing that has ever been on the earth apparently) but due to wells naturally refilling and such, apparently it bubbles up from deeper levels in the earth just like methane can and does. In short, it may very well be a renewable resource, not dinosaur bones.

Thorium reactors have a chance for being less dangerous than uranium and plutonium based reactors, that provides centralized electricity for storage in some other battery - electric cars or hydrogen vehicles for instance.

There really is no alternative to oil right now, the problem is not necessarily oil, but the pollution from it. Better catalysts and formulations can help with that. Better urban design can massively reduce pollution in the cities. (Personal Rail Transport which I brought up elsewhere could run electrically very easily) Better rural transport as well, running everything by truck is alot less efficient than rail for one. Large spread out sprawling cities are bad for energy use, there are better ways to plan everything we have to not only massively reduce energy needs, but also certain infrastructural ways of providing those solutions better suited towards preventing real pollution. (a single hydropower plant powering an electrical PRT grid would be radically more efficient than petro powered cars, even before talk of the benefits of eliminating traffic congestion, the option to shrink roads even if you don't shrink the city, which you should probably also do, and similar)


We don't really have an oil shortage problem, we have an industrial and civic design problem. Or more accurately a political problem disregarding solutions that would work better because of established oligopolies invested in various sectors like oil and automotive and urban construction that don't want their profits reduced. No one wants to lose the job they have and no businessman wants to lose their profit stream, even if unfair or damaging or destructive to everything else. Therefore no politician goes unbribed or uncontrolled and they dont want their lobbyist-paid for lifestyle to stop either, so they keep voting to keep things the way they are. To be honest a redesign of society as we know it, even with 7 billion people with no change in lifestyle (just changing methods of heating/cooling homes for instance, such as a widespread shift to Annualized Geo-Solar, and methods of transportation to Personal Rail Transit), could provide for ALL our energy needs just off renewable energy alone.

Hell you could bring up the lifestyle of the other 6 billion too on a fraction of the petroleum currently used. I dont think everyone could be brought up to western standards just off renewable energy so far, we'd still need petro for that so far until mass arrays of additional renewable power were provided, but i'm pretty sure even 7 billion people living at first world standards could get in with less petro than we are using now under our current mindblowingly wasteful system IF we designed for the biggest factors to work well from the ground up. We have in no way reduced our energy needs to the minimum necessary for our lifestyle, the vast majority of energy is wasted to make someone somewhere more profit.

[TarHeelTom]

There really is no alternative to oil right now, the problem is not necessarily oil, but the pollution from it.

I disagree with the first 7 words above, but the next two words make it correct.

This country has found both huge quantities of natural gas recently, and an easy means of getting it out of the ground. They claim that we have vastly more natural gas in the ground than Saudi has oil.

Problem is, at the moment, that we don't have an easy way to use it to replace oil in semis, for instance.

But natural gas runs fine in lots of vehicles now. Most of you have seen many natural gas powered fork lift trucks in your factories.

Lots and lots of local truck and bus fleets are starting to run on LNG, or liquid natural gas.

But to use it in long haul trucks, we need four things.

1. A supply of natural gas, where we want it. Natural gas pipelines already crisscross this great county.

2. We need plants to cool the natural gas to around minus 276 degrees, thus turning it into a liquid. There are already some of these plants, and more are planned, and some are already under construction.

3. We need a large networks of filling stations which can dispense LNG. There are about 100 stations being built in 2012, with more planned for the future.

4. We need vehicles equipped to run on LNG. There are already lots of trucks and buses running on LNG, GM is building a few in the US, and lots more in South America. Cummins Engines is already partnered with a company to develope the hardward to build new versions of Cummins existing engines which run on LNG. There are already Ford trucks on the road, running LNG.
FedEx and UPS are already running local trucks on LNG, and have many more LNG trucks on order.

The forecast is for there to be enough liquid plants and filling stations in ten years that all semis could run on LNG.

Moving all the semis to LNG saves enough diesel fuel to allow us to stop importing oil completely.

One company has 8 natural gas import docks in the gulf now. They have already started converting the first of these 8 docks into an export dock.

The demand for oil in trucks is going to decrease drastically in the next ten years.

Consider this. A truck running now on natural gas (at the current price) is about the same cost as a truck running on $2 diesel fuel.

Tom

[TomB]

I disagree with the first 7 words above, but the next two words make it correct.

This country has found both huge quantities of natural gas recently, and an easy means of getting it out of the ground. They claim that we have vastly more natural gas in the ground than Saudi has oil.

Problem is, at the moment, that we don't have an easy way to use it to replace oil in semis, for instance.

But natural gas runs fine in lots of vehicles now. Most of you have seen many natural gas powered fork lift trucks in your factories.

Lots and lots of local truck and bus fleets are starting to run on LNG, or liquid natural gas.

But to use it in long haul trucks, we need four things.

1......
4. We need vehicles equipped to run on LNG. There are already lots of trucks and buses running on LNG, GM is building a few in the US, and lots more in South America. Cummins Engines is already partnered with a company to develope the hardward to build new versions of Cummins existing engines which run on LNG. There are already Ford trucks on the road, running LNG.
....

Tom

Point 4 is good but that’s only for new vehicles and semi’s are on the road for 20 years. Your explanation of converting semi’s from diesel to NG leaves me with a question. I’ve seen lots of lift trucks and utility company vans that were converted but I believe they were Otto cycle engines, i.e. standard car type engines with a carburetor and spark plug. Since the carburetor vaporizes the fuel converting to NG which is already vapor is easy. But Diesels Cycle engines use injector pumps and compression based ignition. I have no background that leads me to believe that NG would inject with the same type pump and ignite at the same compression ratio. Given that processes typically differ in critical parameters I would expect that a diesel injector pump would not handle LGN and that even if it did the NG might not detonate at the required compression rate if at all. (I also wonder if the specific energy of LNG is comparable with diesel? I know NG has lower specific energy than gasoline since utility vehicles do not have the driving range of standard autos but where does LNG fit in?)

Since replacing all semi diesels with Otto Cycle equivalents would be terribly expensive you should provide a more technical based explanation of the conversion if you want to be convincing.

You should also be aware that synthetic diesel fuel is possible but today it does not compete economically with natural diesel. However it probably would compete economically with the cost of LNG plants. I point that out because your scheme even if it worked might not save money so it would have to be sold totally on how it impacts pollution. That sale is very hard to make.

Tom

[TarHeelTom]

Point 4 is good but that’s only for new vehicles and semi’s are on the road for 20 years. Your explanation of converting semi’s from diesel to NG leaves me with a question. I’ve seen lots of lift trucks and utility company vans that were converted but I believe they were Otto cycle engines, i.e. standard car type engines with a carburetor and spark plug. Since the carburetor vaporizes the fuel converting to NG which is already vapor is easy. But Diesels Cycle engines use injector pumps and compression based ignition. I have no background that leads me to believe that NG would inject with the same type pump and ignite at the same compression ratio. Given that processes typically differ in critical parameters I would expect that a diesel injector pump would not handle LGN and that even if it did the NG might not detonate at the required compression rate if at all. (I also wonder if the specific energy of LNG is comparable with diesel? I know NG has lower specific energy than gasoline since utility vehicles do not have the driving range of standard autos but where does LNG fit in?)

Since replacing all semi diesels with Otto Cycle equivalents would be terribly expensive you should provide a more technical based explanation of the conversion if you want to be convincing.

You should also be aware that synthetic diesel fuel is possible but today it does not compete economically with natural diesel. However it probably would compete economically with the cost of LNG plants. I point that out because your scheme even if it worked might not save money so it would have to be sold totally on how it impacts pollution. That sale is very hard to make.

Tom

Hey, guy, I don't know all the answers to your technical questions. But I do know that (most, if not all) of the answers do exist.

From what I read, LNG today, at today's LNG prices, competes very well with regular diesel fuel at $2.00 per gallon. But regular diesel fuel is selling in my area for around $4.00 per gallon. So, running a semi on LNG today would cost about half the cost of running it on diesel.

I'm not a pollution expert, but I'm led to believe that engines running on natural gas have much lower harmful emissions than gasoline or diesels.

But I believe that straight cost is the biggest advantage to using LNG instead of diesel fuel.

But the side effects of switching to LNG in semis stagger the imagination. Build all our semis to use LNG, and in about ten years we've reduced the crude oil demand to the point that we no longer need to import crude oil.

I agree with your point that a current diesel injector pump wouldn't work with LNG, or propane, or other similar fuels. But that's NOT to say that a purpose built LNG injector pump wouldn't work. But people like Ford, Cummins, Navistar and Caterpillar have already signed contracts with Westport to develop the bits and pieces necessary to run diesel engines on LNG.

The plants to convert NG to LNG already exist in a few areas, and more are being built. About 100 more LNG "filling stations" (usually at existing truck stops) are being built and installed this year by Clean Energy Fuels.

Here's a recent article in Forbes: 6 Stocks to Benefit From Truckers' Switch to Natural Gas - Forbes

Tom

[Antonn]

ya it seems like oil will be replaced soon by some other resources that can work as a replacement for the oil and oil companies are working with total dedication to save their future by finding some good replacement for the oil.

[fizzissist]

Hi Today i want to ask something which is that Is it true that oil companies buy or ever have bought the patents of inventions that would increase gas mileage significantly, such as some type of a new carburator. If so does anyone have credible proof????

from a practical standpoint... even if Evil Big Oil did buy the patent for a "200mpg" carburetor... the patent would have expired years ago when they first were announced, and someone would have figured out an alternative.
But the reality is that you need a certain amount of fuel, atomized to whatever degree, at some volume of air and compression to deliver any given amount of combustion energy.

I'd be hard pressed to believe that between Honda, Toyota, GM, or whomever there wouldn't be a race to get a 200mpg car on the market ASAP? We still have competitive markets for cars the world over, and with gas prices at $10/gal is some regions.....

A bigger question is why, and I know this first hand, can you NOT buy a motorbike here in the U.S. of the kind that is ridden all over southeast asia....
Hondas that are 125cc, electric start, automatic trans, get over 55mpg, reliable, can easily haul 3 people (I know, I rode on one with 2 other guys!!), and do up to 55mph.... for $1250US??????? Don't tell me it's smog, or airbags. It ain't.

[RIN]

from a practical standpoint... even if Evil Big Oil did buy the patent for a "200mpg" carburetor... the patent would have expired years ago when they first were announced, and someone would have figured out an alternative.
But the reality is that you need a certain amount of fuel, atomized to whatever degree, at some volume of air and compression to deliver any given amount of combustion energy.

I'd be hard pressed to believe that between Honda, Toyota, GM, or whomever there wouldn't be a race to get a 200mpg car on the market ASAP? We still have competitive markets for cars the world over, and with gas prices at $10/gal is some regions.....

A bigger question is why, and I know this first hand, can you NOT buy a motorbike here in the U.S. of the kind that is ridden all over southeast asia....
Hondas that are 125cc, electric start, automatic trans, get over 55mpg, reliable, can easily haul 3 people (I know, I rode on one with 2 other guys!!), and do up to 55mph.... for $1250US??????? Don't tell me it's smog, or airbags. It ain't.

The Honda 125 can haul 4 people (I have picture somewhere) and I think does much better than 55 mpg. I asked my Indian friends and they told me it is closer to 190 mpg. So I looked that up. 2012 Hero Honda Super Splendor - Top Speed

[fizzissist]

The Honda 125 can haul 4 people (I have picture somewhere) and I think does much better than 55 mpg. I asked my Indian friends and they told me it is closer to 190 mpg. So I looked that up. 2012 Hero Honda Super Splendor - Top Speed

Sorry, but I'm not buying the 190mpg. The physics of how much fuel at optimum ratio/rpm/mile/cc doesn't sound right. I haven't bothered with running the numbers, but from experience and having had to refuel the one I rode, 75mpg would seem pretty much the max..... And I think it might drop some with 4-up...
I did ride 3-up, full size males mind you, on a motorcycle taxi, and I have seen a full on 5 member family (and maybe a chicken or two) going down the road...

Checked out that Honda... I think $47000 is a little outside of my budget, even if it got 300mpg. That and the 9hp would mean it takes you awhile to get it too!

[RIN]

1 gal of gas contains about 44 kWh energy. If 9 HP is required to propel the bile 90 kmh (55 mph) it will take 1/8th or about 0.845 kW to propel the bike 45 km/h assuming 20% efficiency the bike would travel 44*0.20/.845*45/1.6=292 mpg.
I think that 180 mpg is possible provided low speed. Low speed is the rule in India. If you have better estimation what it takes to propel the bike at 45 kmh and /or efficiency you can better numbers.
For comparison Honda Rebel 250 ccm has 75 mpg rating so for 125 Honda it could be double mpg.

[night owl]

1 gal of gas contains about 44 kWh energy. If 9 HP is required to propel the bile 90 kmh (55 mph) it will take 1/8th or about 0.845 kW to propel the bike 45 km/h assuming 20% efficiency the bike would travel 44*0.20/.845*45/1.6=292 mpg.
I think that 180 mpg is possible provided low speed. Low speed is the rule in India. If you have better estimation what it takes to propel the bike at 45 kmh and /or efficiency you can better numbers.
For comparison Honda Rebel 250 ccm has 75 mpg rating so for 125 Honda it could be double mpg.

Hi Guys,
My physics is a little rusty, but as I remember it, doubling the velocity requires roughly 4x the power, not 8x.
Cheers,
night owl