Gasoline Cars are the Film Cameras of the Future.

[Paul T.]

Completely correct. The blather about ‘electrification’ ignores basic physics . If you are burning coal to generate electricity to send over a grid to charge an electric car, might as well burn gas or diesel at the end point.
.

Except that many countries are now producing 30-40% of their energy from wind or other renewables. And even if a power station is gas-fired, there are not the same emissions of oxides of nitrogen that are harming or killing our children (and adults) in our most populated areas.

In the long run though, let's say 15 years, hydrogen cells are the only way to go. We can make the hydrogen from sea-water, using renewable energy. As mentioned earlier, all we need is to convert our gas/petrol insfrastructure.

 

[besk]

Question: If we had thousands of hydrogen cars on busy streets,
how much water will be on the streets?

 

[DennisM]

Gasoline - Film?

Gasoline - Film?

I thought this was RFF, not Motor Trend.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

If this is to come from seawater, what are we going to do with all of the salts to create the distilled water prior to cracking into H & O? How much energy will be expended cracking one of the strongest molecular bonds to create stable molecular hydrogen that can be safely stored and used by the average consumer? Right now propane is reasonably well regulated for safety purposes but hydrogen is far more hazardous, requiring lower temperatures for storage (more energy consumption), and increased regulation so not the average Joe can get their hands on a large quantity of hydrogen. Go try getting liquid nitrogen these days, it's not easy. Liquid hydrogen is all but impossible unless you're speaking of HP gaseous hydrogen, which just creates a situation of everyone driving around with a little Hindenburg inside their automobile. If we're talking of putting water into our tanks then using electricity to crack it into Hydrogen and Oxygen, then burning it, we're starting to get into some Rube Goldberg dominoes. What happens to the ions of oxygen that go around bonding to things left and right or turning into their own not so stable molecules like Ozone, which happens to be a fantastic oxidizer, to the point of decomposing explosively. Surely some hydrogen peroxide will be created as well which is pretty nasty itself. If we're to stick the water directly in our tanks, what kind of huge power will need to be used to do this cracking? What kind of reactors will be in our cars themselves? And what about the cathodes and anodes which will erode away into salts, then where do they go? The same place the nuclear waste from spent reactor cores goes?
In the end, it seems like this is a zero sum academic exercise that winds up with one kind of pollution becoming another.

Here's a photo of my 1972 Mercedes-Benz 220D, to keep this within the realm of photography...
http://gallery.leica-users.org/d/373204-2/220d_Fogs_E.jpg

Phil Forrest

 

[DennisM]

Gassoline - Film - Physics?

Gassoline - Film - Physics?

I thought this was RFF, not Scientific American.

 

[markjwyatt]

Autonomous vehicles are full of cameras, rangefinders, and other optical sensory apparatus. They also contain digital image processing software. Sounds like a [stretched] fit to me 🙂

 

[oftheherd]

It seems that here in the US, there is no longer the desire by teenagers to get their driver's license that there used to be. Any number of reasons for that, including overprotective parents who are willing to drive their kids everywhere, but it does seem the dream of getting your license and getting your own car isn't as strong as it used to be. Seems to go along with the younger generation's reduced interest in "stuff" -- don't want to own a house; want to not be tied down by a job, or a house, or possessions (like a car). It goes with the general trend toward increased mobility (and decreased financial expectations).

My daughter, my wife, and my self are still trying to figure that out. My grandson has no interest whatsoever in getting the Corolla I had been babying for the last 9 years so he could have it to drive.

What's the world coming to? 😀

 

[besk]

My oldest granddaughter has no interest in driving or getting a license either.
Hope the younger one does in 2 years.

 

[Guth]

There has been quite a bit of interesting discussion in this thread. As to the original question:

Sound like Film?

I'd say not really. Whatever has become of film photography has basically been the result of consumer preferences, whereas legislation will likely be the main driving force when it comes to the future of the internal combustion engine (ICE).

Even though I've grown up in love with ICE-powered vehicles (starting with motorcycles way back when I was in grade school), it isn't the decline of the ICE that I will lament the most. No, what I will miss is the driving/riding experience that is currently afforded me by my current vehicles and the level of involvement involved in either case. Every single motorcycle that I've owned and almost every single car/truck I've owned has featured a manual transmission. That'w what I both like and prefer, but I realize that I'm the odd man out.

While I don't know what the answer is to our current woes, I do realize that something has to change and I try to remain as open-minded about this as possible. But I'll definitely be feeling melancholy if I'm around long enough to see cars and motorcycles evolve to the point that they are nothing more than purely utilitarian objects designed to get people from point A to point B as efficiently as possible and nothing more. It's not like we're all that far away from this reality today with all of the CUVs and SUVs that rule the road today.

We are slowly headed towards an "auto-everything" reality. I can still remember taking our son to see the movie titled "Wall-E" many years ago. While entertaining, that movie actually scared and depressed me at the same time. To tie this back into photography, much as I enjoy my all manual film cameras, so it goes with my current car and motorcycle. But the majority of people want convenience rather than involvement and soon enough our vehicles will likely all be point-n-drive while our cameras will likely all be point-n-shoot. In my mind, in either case there is very little personal involvement or satisfaction that comes from this later set of options. But it is what it is as the saying goes.

 

[JeffS7444]

My grandson has no interest whatsoever in getting the Corolla I had been babying for the last 9 years so he could have it to drive.

I hope you aren't also saving fine china, fur coats or silverware, because I don't know if you can give that stuff away except for the value of the metals.

 

[markjwyatt]

Quote: "That to me is the main advantage of electric vehicles- mechanical simplicity. Now that we have tuned gasoline engines to highest degree with computer controls, etc., we are abandoning the technology for something simpler."


I also predict that ev's will last longer or eventually, at least, will be kept longer.

Quite possible, but battery costs need to continue to come down. Also, as the massive computer systems lot of these cars use start failing, replacements could be costly. Maybe they will come out with more manual electric cars without all the computational goodies (maybe analogous to the Leica digital rangefinder- see this discussion is relevant to RFF).

I think lot of the safety sensors and things (lane change warnings, rear view cameras, etc.) will not go away, and may become regulated. There is some potential for a much safer fleet of transportation to emerge from this (and not just because the cars are eV, but because of the safety systems, communications, IoT, etc., all which can work on gasoline and other cars also). Of course privacy will be compromised.

 

[phrons]

Quite possible, but battery costs need to continue to come down. Also, as the massive computer systems lot of these cars use start failing, replacements could be costly. Maybe they will come out with more manual electric cars without all the computational goodies (maybe analogous to the Leica digital rangefinder- see this discussion is relevant to RFF).

Again, this is completely untrue. Currently ICE vehicles have sensors for everything, controlled by one main computer. It isn’t much different. In fact currently ICE cars have more sensors than EV.

The reason why it is more expensive to make EV vehicles is because the manufacturing power behind it is limited. Whereas for ICE you have so many more factories, oem and third party, creating parts for decades.

Once this changes producing EV will be cheaper.

It is the way of the future for manufacturers because it will end up being cheaper to produce in the long run, which leads to greater profits.

 

[markjwyatt]

Again, this is completely untrue. Currently ICE vehicles have sensors for everything, controlled by one main computer. It isn’t much different. In fact currently ICE cars have more sensors than EV.

It may depend on the car. But some higher end eVs are drawing so much power for their computer arrays that it is significantly affecting the range of the cars. Fully autonomous vehicles with full 3-D imaging real time (LIDAR, RADAR, etc.), plus imaging in multiple directions as well entertainment systems, etc., require a super computer to handle the processing needed. This is driving the development of low power drain chips so range can be restored. For some functions some data processing may be able to go to the cloud, but that depends on having constant data transmission at high speeds, and in order to maintain operability much if not most of the processing needs to be done onboard. So, I would not say this is "completely" untrue. Maybe for the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt, but not for high end Teslas and newer vehicles coming out, again, especially with automated driving functionality. Of course ICE cars and hybrids with fully automated driving capabilities will also face this issue.

The reason why it is more expensive to make EV vehicles is because the manufacturing power behind it is limited. Whereas for ICE you have so many more factories, oem and third party, creating parts for decades.

Once this changes producing EV will be cheaper.

It is the way of the future for manufacturers because it will end up being cheaper to produce in the long run, which leads to greater profits.

Agreed. Numbers for eVs are currently limited. As this changes, costs will come down. The infrastructure for ICE engines, and the quality and reliability of the product today is excellent. That is why I do not believe eVs will necessarily take over that quickly (unless regulations such as in California force it). By the same token I argued similar things about analog vs. digital photography in the very early days of digital, so I will not be surprised if in fact it happens much faster than most people expect.

 

[Archlich]

I like my galaxy s5 but can I find a non dead battery for it?

Try Aliexpress.

 

[Paul T.]

If this is to come from seawater, what are we going to do with all of the salts to create the distilled water prior to cracking into H & O? How much energy will be expended cracking one of the strongest molecular bonds to create stable molecular hydrogen that can be safely stored and used by the average consumer? Right now propane is reasonably well regulated for safety purposes but hydrogen is far more hazardous, requiring lower temperatures for storage (more energy consumption), and increased regulation...
If we're talking of putting water into our tanks then using electricity to crack it into Hydrogen and Oxygen, then burning it, we're starting to get into some Rube Goldberg dominoes. What happens to the ions of oxygen that go around bonding to things
Here's a photo of my 1972 Mercedes-Benz 220D, to keep this within the realm of photography...
http://gallery.leica-users.org/d/373204-2/220d_Fogs_E.jpg

Phil Forrest

Nice car. But your chemistry is a bit dodgy, if you're worried about oxygen but not NOx.

We electrolyse H20 to create H2, and the byproduct is O2. Most of us like oxygen.

Hydrogen is reasonably safe to use as it dissipates rather than pools like gasoline. It delivers lots of energy per kg too.

If we electroyse it in countries with lots of sunlight and water, the cost of production would plummet. All we have to sort is the supply chain (which will take time). Likewise, where the main problem of wind power is reliability, it doesn't matter when we produce hydrogen as it's efficient to store, so we're making it with essentially free energy once build costs are earned out.

Minimal toxic substances out, compared to gasoline or battery. The main by product is water. It will happen.

 

[Evergreen States]

I think in some ways, the thing which will (or should) make the internal-combustion automobile obsolete isn't the electric car, but no-car: One or two people per privately-owned vehicle was never an efficient means of transportation, especially when the support infrastructure is considered: There's a lot of real estate which currently does nothing more productive than provide storage space for cars when they're not being used, which is probably 95% of the time.

This. So much of these kinds of conversations are about just swapping our ICE cars with EVs. As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this is also resource-intensive in different ways: how carbon-free EVs are in use depends on how your power plants generate, and also the minerals needed to build the components are often extracted from the Global South through pretty ugly environmental and humanitarian effects. There are the resources involved in the manufacture of these cars. Then there’s the disposal after the lifespan of the EV components. We should get fewer cars off the road and instead promote public transit, cycling and walking.

Unfortunately large parts of the US have developed in such a way that owning a car is the only practical way for a person to get around. Part of it is due to absurd minimum mandates for parking spaces, part of it is due to how we use zoning to make it impossible and unsafe to even walk to a corner store, part of it is our federal road and highway letting cities not have to think about the costs, how developers get used to low density… the list goes on. Most cities throughout human history were not built this way and have even lent themselves to efficient public transportation. Cities built on a grid need to make a comeback. They don’t need to have skyscrapers or bustling metropolitan centers, but they do need to scale back to human needs as US small towns used to. And we need to invest in public transportation and bike infrastructure. There is robust evidence that more traditional layouts with slower traffic speeds are safer, friendlier and more economically prosperous for small businesses. What’s perhaps most striking of all is that American suburban developments fail to even bring in enough tax revenue to pay for their road maintenance, let alone other utilities. With strip malls and cookie cutter houses cut through by highway-sized roads, they’re also unbearably ugly. For this last reason alone, this is a topic that I would defend as relevant on a forum for street photographers.

If you are interested in learning more on this subject, here are some resources. All pretty entertaining and informative:

Why suburbs are tax insolvent:
https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

Economics of city planning broken down by the square foot:
https://vimeo.com/290728463

History of traffic engineering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oq0u2i4iHc&frags=pl%2Cwn

 

[Bill Clark]

I like your idea with electric cars. Our daughter drives a Nissan Leaf. Maybe some one can design solar panels that are on the roof of a vehicle. Some of the SUV’s I see have pretty large roofs.

Trouble is there is a lot of oil left here on earth. I know about climate change. It’s hapoening now with humans here on earth and it’s been going on since the beginning and it will go on long after humans are gone. If you’re interested, drive less and grow more green plants like trees.

If folks were really interested in climate change why are so many SUV’s sold?

Filled up with gasoline yesterday & it cost 1.849 per gallon. Take out the federal and state taxes and gasoline is cheaper than bottled water! I have stock in a few energy companies and the amount of energy we derive from oil and natural gas is, well, it’s out of this world!

How much lithium is there on earth to be mined for battery use?

What needs to be produced a lot less are people.

We certainly have climate change here in Minnesota as we have had record snow here in Minnesota in October and record lows and highs temps. Heating degree way up over last year here.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Another, proven, fact about fuel powered cars is more maintenance. Many fancy films cameras are in the same pit. While digital cameras are in electrical cars category.
And just as with film getting too expensive (another Kodak price hike in Jan 2021 is coming), fuel prices in many countries are also getting too expensive. Not sure if 50K Suburban is less expensive than 70K Tesla anymore. Higher mileage goes, more expensive fuel car gets.
It looks like film is getting under the same math. Feel good, rave about with ten rolls per year is not photography. Taking pictures daily and without limit is. Film just can't sustain productive photography anymore. Just like my family can't get to minivans anymore. They feel good, but fuel consumption is nowhere near reasonable for daily use.

https://downtowncamera.com/shop/bra...30cc-0138-7f60-00163e90e196?variation=2126724
In my productive film photography times I was needed at least four of those per year. Up to six per year. Plus some other odd rolls, ends.
In Jan 2021 each in the link is going to be near 200 CAD. Four of them is next to new RP price.
One year of film supply is equal to new FF digital camera. Which will lasts ten years easy. And could be still sold for one third of the price after it.
Film is getting as old and non-sufficient for photography as Suburban for urban life .

 

[Solinar]

Analog / Hybrid / Electric Only

Analog / Hybrid / Electric Only

Due to Covid - I no longer ride the city bus. My solution, was to build my own hybrid vehicle. It will do an easy 20 mph / 32 kph on the flats and is able to carry a camera.

GlobeTSDZ2work by Andrew in Austin, on Flickr

Analog versus hybrid versus electric only. The battery is in the seat bag.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Due to Covid - I no longer ride the city bus. My solution, was to build my own hybrid vehicle. It will do an easy 20 mph / 32 kph on the flats and is able to carry a camera.
GlobeTSDZ2work by Andrew in Austin, on Flickr

Analog versus hybrid versus electric only. The battery is in the seat bag.

I won’t last on it at this speed in coming winter, nor it will last in the ocean of road salt. I’m thinking about 2.5 ratio fixie conversion of cheap, used aluminum frame with stud tires.