–A few quick words about the new Volt from GM. Hybrid cars are important because they could most immediately affect the demand for transportation fuels. More hybrids, roughly speaking, should equal lower oil prices. And part of that is because the Volt, for example, does not use oil to power the car’s engine at all. According to the New York Times, “the Volt’s gas engine is not connected to the wheels. It turns only a generator to charge the battery pack, a design typically called a series hybrid, and operates in a narrow r.p.m range for maximum efficiency.”
–“In the Volt,” the Times continues, “the E-Flex drive system consists of a small three-cylinder gas engine, a 53-kilowatt generator and a long lithium-ion battery pack that forms a spine down the center of the car’s floor. The battery supplies electricity for the 120-kilowatt (160 horsepower) motor that drives the car’s front wheels. To maximize battery life, the engine that drives the generator automatically kicks in when the battery’s charge falls below 30 percent of capacity and shuts off when the battery charge reaches 80 percent of maximum; at that point E-Flex reverts to pure electric mode.”
–So the gas engine exists solely to charge a generator which then provides juice to batteries that actually power the car. And there is one small problem with the Volt concept, that batteries don’t exist yet! We’re not even sure the picture of the car we posted below is of a real car. You be the judge.
–Something cannot come from nothing. Between the power of the sun and your blender is a complex path of inputs and outputs. Thus is the strange life of electricity. It has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere usually involves a fossil fuel. Even hybrid technologies cannot divorce themselves fully from the stored solar energy that fossil fuels represent. at least not yet. But those clever Europeans are working on it.
–An AP article this morning tells us that, “The European Commission will call next week for ‘a new industrial revolution’ in the energy sector to boost competition, protect the climate and ensure security of supply…the draft strategy call[s] for cutting carbon dioxide emissions further, increasing energy from renewable sources and curtailing the powers of large energy companies…This means transforming Europe into a highly efficient and low CO2 energy economy by catalyzing a new industrial revolution, accelerating the change to low carbon growth and, over the period of years, dramatically increasing the amount of local, low emission energy.”
–Revolution by centralized decree. That’s a new kind of revolution to us, one hierarchy calling for the destruction of another. But we see what the Europeans are up to. We face a problem, how to continue the cheap generation and distribution of power for industrial society. Is electricity generated from fossil fuels, nuclear plants, wind, solar, waves, or geothermal the answer? See below for more thoughts…