I'm tired of the Car Companies promoting themselves as such good environmental advocates. One in particular is GM. First, they make a big deal out of Flex Fuel, E-85, which was a joke.
Now, on the back of my Discover Magazine is an ad promoting their Fuel Cell car program.
Since we have to buy a vehicle at the end of the year, I would love to get away from Oil and Gas. Can you buy a Fuel Cell car from GM? NO! Are they slated to go on sale any time soon? No!
What good is a car that saves gas and oil if I can not even get my hands on it.
GM, stop F'ing us and stop patting yourself on the back. While your at it, fire the pricks in Marketing that keep pushing BS our way. We have enough, thanks.....
With enough money, anyone can buy anything... That said, I don't think that you, me and the rest of GRB could pool enough money together to buy this type of car right now 🙁
I am with you in this boat on the seas of expensive gas... I want to buy a new car so I don't use my Durango as my primary means of transportation.
Sadly, I see you and I buying whatever small car is available that provides the best bang for it's buck. I still dont see it being Hybrid unless they drop the prices to make them more affordable. Spending more on a car to save money on gas is just evening out with what have without Hybrid.
I wish us luck in the field of car shopping... Should be a headache...
There are some non-hybrid vehicles out there that get pretty good mileage. The civic for instance gets high 30's/low 40's if my memory serves me correctly. You could also look at the volkswagon Turbo Deisel Injection cars. The rabbit gets mid-40's if my memory serves me correctly. On the flip side, diesel gas is more expensive than regular.
GM has been touting their fuel cell cars for years without actually having built any for production, and that's pure crap. I've also been hearing radio ads for the oil industry lately of all things! Promoting safe, friendly, oil 😱
My problem with the small cars is I don't feel safe. A midsized car is ok, but with the number of SUV's, Pick'em Up Trucks and Semi's down here in Dallas, its like playing the car pancake lottery.
ephil, we are going to take a look at the Saturn Vue Hybrid and used Toyota Highlander Hybrids. The Toyota gets 32 in the city and 26 on the highway. We need something we can load the kiddo and dogs into and still fit luggage, toys, etc when we take trips to see our family in Oklahoma.
The cool part is this is for the wife and she mainly drives all city to an from work.
Personally, I would consider a Camry Hybrid, but I've been a fan of Camry for almost 10 years after I had one as a loaner when I was getting my Jeep worked on.
I've had several of the older compact models. Got excellent mileage with a Pinto, Chevette, and not so good mileage with a MG, mustang, or VW. The chevette pulled 35 hwy, but it was an ugly ass'ed car.
I'm not too keen on a hybrid just yet. Too many extra parts to almost equal the mileage from those old compacts. It probably boils down to the bs extra emissions your paying to pump around your engine. I can wait until they are out another 4/5 years to see a track record.
I'd suggest you buy your wife whatever she needs for work, and if you have to, just rent a car for vacations and family trips. Wifey uses a nisson for work, we take the truck w/cap for everything out of town.
Also factor in the difference of insurance, depreciation of new vehicle, etc. You may find its not cheaper buying a new car before you really need it.
The new Honda Pilot has an interesting engine tech that reduces from 6 to 3 cylinders to save on gas. You might check them out if you are looking in the SUV arena.
We went for five years with just one vehicle and it worked pretty well. We got a second vehicle about a year and a half ago mostly because it was a really good deal from my brother-in-law and we were getting scattered enough that one car was difficult. I've only put 4000 miles on it in the year and a half, so in some ways it seems hardly worth it.
Dangit, we had a gem slip through my hands. My wife before we got married, let her car go back. It was a 2005 Malibu LS with a 3500 V6. When i drove it I got upper 30's in miles per gallon. (she got mid 30's 😛 ) I even topped it over the 40 mark on trips to Kansas a few times. Oh if i could get that car back. I think it was one of those rare (perfectly tuned) gems you find from time to time because i don't see anyone else getting the same specs.
We are kind of committed to buying something else. We did a dumb thing 3 years ago and leased her vehicle. We don't want to keep it, so it's time to find something else.
I'm a little skeptical about the above video. I'm guessing he's converting a little water into a little hydrogen and oxygen, and feeding it into the piston with the gasoline mist. It might increase mileage some. . .when he can convert water to hydrogen and oxygen, and get more energy out of it than he puts into it, THAT will be impressive. Still, if he can get the same mileage boost that a hybrid gets, not require an outside energy source to do it (extra electricity from a wall socket), and eliminate all the batteries that hybrids use, that will be a very useful product.
Batteries, the weight they they add to a car, their added expense, the cost & materials they require to make them, and the problem of adding all those extra batteries to landfills are the major downsides to hybrids, as I see it.
I also doubt he's running that torch on gas he's making real-time. I'm guessing he has it converting constantly, and sends it to a holding tank.
I sure do hold out hope that we can find a way to cheaply and easily convert water to energy (electrolysis). As we've found out, gasoline is a really effective, compact energy source that will be difficult to replace.
I think the catalyst is electricity. There in lies the problem. How do you make the electricity.
Did you notice the torch was turning back to water? Capture the output of water and put it right back in. You get a cycle of power without ever having to fill back up.
Why doesn't anyone ever mention rust when talking about water and engines?
Atomm wrote:I think the catalyst is electricity. There in lies the problem. How do you make the electricity.
Did you notice the torch was turning back to water? Capture the output of water and put it right back in. You get a cycle of power without ever having to fill back up.
Why doesn't anyone ever mention rust when talking about water and engines?
Well, AFAIK, electricity, and a considerable amount of it, is always used to convert water to hydrogen and oxygen. Wikipedia says platinum is often used for the anode and cathode, as other substances often react with the oxygen, instead of releasing the oxygen to be stored or used (iron would rust). It would be a GREAT help if another substance were found to help catalyze the process and reduce the electricity needed, but I'm not sure that will happen.
I'm really confused by the conversion back to water in the video. . .makes me think the torch is not combusting efficiently, and hydrogen gas is escaping to react with atmospheric oxygen. . .or maybe some oxygen is escaping too. If the hydrogen is burned to create energy, it can't be combining with something - it's gone, no?
Huh. Hydrogen EXPLODES when reacting with oxygen across a large range of proportions, according to Wikipedia. No match or sparker needed for that torch 😱
The wife and I bought a civic hybrid. We get about 44-48 mpg's with a combination of highway and city. Driving. We got a really good deal on the hybrid that really only cost us about 3k more than a normal civic. We knew when we bought the car that that we may not make our money back on gas savings, although with the sky rocketing costs it's looking more and more like we may actually come out ahead. I wouldn't classify my wife and I as hippy's or anything, but we do try to recycle and save water and electricity etc etc...not always because it saves money 🙂
I've been happy with the performance of the car. It drives like a small 4 cyl car does. But with all the city driving we do, it's not really worth having anything more powerful. The service at Honda is awesome and they really take care of us.
And Atomm, don't worry about a truck hitting you, they are all to busy filling up their 24 gallon tanks every 15 miles to worry about hitting anything.
Atomm wrote:I think the catalyst is electricity. There in lies the problem. How do you make the electricity.
Did you notice the torch was turning back to water? Capture the output of water and put it right back in. You get a cycle of power without ever having to fill back up.
Why doesn't anyone ever mention rust when talking about water and engines?
Actually people use water-injection today to cool the air coming into an engine. (turbos/superchargers heat it up) It atomitizes (SP) and actually cleans out an engine of all that oil/sludge residue. You of course have to add more fuel to the mixture for it to play nice.
I saw an invention quite a while ago (that I'm sure someone bought and shelved) that could solve the electricity issue from that video. Magnets! Some guy created a way to use the opposite polarity of magnets to self propel themselves within a ball to run on it's own power and actually produce electricity from a small generator attached!
Judge_Mental wrote:I saw an invention quite a while ago (that I'm sure someone bought and shelved) that could solve the electricity issue from that video. Magnets! Some guy created a way to use the opposite polarity of magnets to self propel themselves within a ball to run on it's own power and actually produce electricity from a small generator attached!
I think we saw that invention as well, and talked about it in an old thread. He said he couldn't get any scientists to look at it. I suggested he should just get some engineers to look at it. That should be easier than getting a scientist to believe what they know about physics is wrong, and if the engineer could verify there's something working to increase efficiency, maybe then someone will dig into HOW it does it. At any rate, it's probably BS, but I like to give ppl the chance to prove themselves. . .if someone DOES find something helpful, even one time, it will more than make up for all the crackpots and frauds.
He was able to get a Physicist at MIT to look at it. The Physicist said he couldn't explain it, but he believed what he was seeing was real. Of course, if he can't prove how it works, it will be hard to put any faith into it.
Atomm wrote:He was able to get a Physicist at MIT to look at it. The Physicist said he couldn't explain it, but he believed what he was seeing was real. Of course, if he can't prove how it works, it will be hard to put any faith into it.
That's the first step. . .having someone reputable agree something unusual is going on. After that, some serious inquiry and study can start. They weren't gonna figure it out when everyone was refusing to look at it.
Let's hope something even slightly useful comes from it.