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Chevron Ad

luxintenebris jokingly says...

sure...

...or...

...necessity is the mother of invention.

just the plethora of inventions the Nazis came up with to appease their desire for war, serves as examples [i.e. SERIOUS Government edict].

bad examples - but still.

also, why is the average soccer mom driving vans that outmuscle classic muscle cars? mandating higher MPG made for lighter cars. the drive for better fuel efficiency led to more power. more power in lighter vehicles.

almost like the popular conservative belief: things will work themselves out - if they have to - is halfway true.

so...

...the idea is if the U.S. taxes carbon emissions, companies will find a way to reduce them. the oil industry agreed it would work.


so there's that...if you like to be more knowledgeable after you leave the room than when you came in.

bobknight33 said:

Idiots -- all who believe this shit. Oil is the life blood of any economy.

Change to Green is coming. But it has to come when market forces make it mainstream. Not by Government edict.

Porn for fossil fuel industry

jimnms says...

What does end of life mean? Are they not capable of producing electricity or something? It's like people who buy a new, more fuel efficient car thinking they're doing the envoronment a favor, but fail to realize that most of the environmental pollution from a car is from building it.

newtboy (Member Profile)

StukaFox says...

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

Why Ford And Other American Cars Don’t Sell In Japan

eric3579 says...

I think poorly made cars that get horrible gas mileage and are not the right size is more than enough reasons why they don't buy American cars. Also Japanese cars ARE fuel efficient, the most reliable cars made, and the right size. I think pay back for American protectionism seems far fetched when all the above reasons are so overwhelming, but just my opinion of course

psycop said:

My understanding was that this is an example of American automotive industry protectionism coming home to roost.

Why Ford And Other American Cars Don’t Sell In Japan

psycop says...

I just tried to find any source for this and failed, so take the following with a pinch of salt, but...

My understanding was that this is an example of American automotive industry protectionism coming home to roost.

There was a time where the Japanese cars were viewed as more reliable, cheaper and more fuel efficient (as mentioned in the video). American companies became increasingly worried about competition so settled on the plan of changing American consumer preferences for ever larger cars through aggressive advertising.

This gave American companies a price advantage over foreign producers, as larger cars cost much more to transport, and created an unofficial import tariff. Other companies also did not have designs for big cars, as they are domestically unpopular and fuel is usually prohibitively expensive in their regions.

Now the same industries are calling protectionism as their designs don't match the preferences and fuel efficiencies expected by non US consumers.

Like I say, not sure about this, but if anyone knows something about this either way, I'd be interested to hear.

Chrysler Hemi FirePower Engine Rebuild Time Lapse

newtboy says...

Nice.
I wish they paid more attention to the combustion chamber. Most people don't know what a hemi is beyond a powerful motor. The hemispherical combustion chamber produces far more power than a normally shaped one. Even partial hemispherical combustion chambers (semi-hemi) can seriously increase the power of most motors....but also decreases the fuel efficiency.
I use a semi-hemi cut 1776 VW motor in my race buggy, and it outperforms much larger motors.

Why Flying is So Expensive

entr0py says...

During that section at the end he was comparing the cost of air travel 40 years ago with the cost today. You're right that if air travel is going to get substantially cheaper, it won't come from fuel efficiency this time around.

transmorpher said:

I'm confused. He starts with saying that fuel is not the reason why flying costs a lot, and then he concludes with: "flying is getting cheaper because airplanes are more fuel efficient"

Why Flying is So Expensive

oritteropo says...

Perhaps it would have been better to say that fuel isn't the only reason. The Airbus A320 in this example has roughly 55% better fuel efficiency than a pre oil crisis Boeing 707, although as Jimbo's big bag'o'trivia points out, that's barely better than the 1950s era prop planes like the Douglas DC-7.

Better automation has also allowed the A320 to reduce the staffing requirements, the 707 required 3 or 4 crew to operate the aircraft, but the A320 only requires 2. The DC-7 also requires 3 crew, but only seats half the passengers (doubling the flight crew costs per passenger).

Greater competition is probably a larger factor. Talking about airline profitability and competition, Warren Buffett joked that had a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk for the Wright Brothers' first flight, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.

transmorpher said:

I'm confused. He starts with saying that fuel is not the reason why flying costs a lot, and then he concludes with: "flying is getting cheaper because airplanes are more fuel efficient"

Why Flying is So Expensive

ChaosEngine says...

Didn't think it was that confusing. Back in the day, planes used way more fuel, so it was a large percentage of the ticket cost.

These days, they use much less fuel per passenger, so the cost of flying has gone down.

His whole point is that flying doesn't actually cost that much these days. In addition to increased fuel efficiency, low-cost carriers have driven prices down to the point where there's almost no margin on flights; hence, why so many airlines are struggling these days.

transmorpher said:

I'm confused. He starts with saying that fuel is not the reason why flying costs a lot, and then he concludes with: "flying is getting cheaper because airplanes are more fuel efficient"

Why Flying is So Expensive

transmorpher says...

I'm confused. He starts with saying that fuel is not the reason why flying costs a lot, and then he concludes with: "flying is getting cheaper because airplanes are more fuel efficient"



How to Land a 737 (Nervous Passenger)

spawnflagger says...

Just watching this video made me nervous, but I think I could do it in real life, assuming a pilot was giving instructions over the radio.
---
I had a conversation with a commercial pilot before (at dinner, not in a flight) and he had flown both Boeing and Airbus and said they feel much different. Boeing spends a lot of time with the force-feedback so the planes behave much the same as their older analog counterparts, and lays things out based on pilot feedback ; whereas Airbus feels more like a video game, and they only care about fuel efficiency of the plane.

Either way, all pilots require hundreds of hours of training on a particular model (of large commercial airplane) before they get to be captain.

Payback said:

I realize all planes are different and why, but you'd think the FAA and other organizations would demand some sort of standardization if for no other reason than it would be easier and safer to switch out ACTUAL pilots on a day-to-day basis, let alone in an emergency.

I was also noticing how they design the different knobs and levers to be COMPLETELY different than each other. I'm sure it's for a tactile "oh hey, that's not the heading dial" feel when a pilot is grabbing onto the altitude dial.

Duke Engineering's new four stroke "axial" engine

newtboy says...

Revolutionize, probably not. Be an improved option over 'regular' internal combustion in (apparently) weight, size and efficiency, maybe. This seems to be a great option for a hybrid. Being smaller and lighter is what you want in an energy efficient vehicle, as is fuel efficiency. Since fossil fueled vehicles will be the norm for the foreseeable future, any step towards making them more efficient is a good thing (although not the end goal, true enough). This seemed to have many advantages of Wankel motors (rotaries) without the efficiency problem due to low compression/incomplete combustion. 14:1 on pump gas is INSANE! My offroad race motor is only 12:1 and it needs trick racing fuel.
Also, as far as simplicity, this had no valves and assorted crap, just inlet and outlet ports (from what I understood anyway) like Wankels. That's a HUGE jump in simplicity, with an entire system eliminated, so there's far less to break/wear out/need tuning. IF manufacturing cost can be reasonable, I see this as a great step forward possibly making hybrids more acceptable to many more people.

zeoverlord said:

Sure, yea, right now it is, but the way things are going it's not far of that a majority of new cars are going to be electric or at least partly electric, especially since this technology is still a bit off.
I like the Free Piston Engine Linear Generator better since it's literally only one moving part (save for the myriad of pumps, valves and other assorted crap all engines have) and has a small size, but it will also be a stopgap measure on the road to pure electric.
And sure this might end up in a few specialized vehicles, but it won't revolutionize anything.

Transforming Formula One: 2014 Rules Explained by Red Bull

oritteropo says...

Yes. The naturally aspirated v8 engines were increasingly irrelevant for road car technology, so the aims of the new engine rules were to introduce the types of technology that are relevant to road cars (turbo, regenerative braking, fuel efficiency).

Two less-intended side effects are that these are the most expensive engines ever (in an era when everybody is talking about cost reductions!) and that everyone is wondering whether anyone will finish the first race...

They actually had the battery packs last year, but this year have reduced the fuel allocation by a third but without reducing the power output of the power units.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Inside-the-2014-Renault-F1-engine

notarobot said:

Cool *animation. Can anyone explain why they need such big battery packs and use regenerative breaking? Are they driving hybrids or something?

Life Size Lego Car Powered by Air

oritteropo says...

I don't actually know, but I assume there is a cylinder of compressed air somewhere running the engine... this doesn't really make it useless, although the practicality of air cars in general is... well... usually limited:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/vehicles/air-car.htm

Shepppard said:

I'd really like to know what "Powered by air" means?

Is it pressurized air? if it is, then the engine is totally useless, and is only there for show because the compressed air is doing all the work.

Or is the engine somehow pushing air through it in a pneumatic system to move the car, but that would likely require a form of electricity to do, thus making it not powered by air, but moved with air.

How Inequality Was Created

kevingrr says...

@Trancecoach @enoch

Enoch's questions:

1. People should be producing something if they are getting paid for it - whether that is a good, service, etc. If someone else pays them to create or perform they are owed exactly what they have been promised to be compensated.

2. Enoch I think you are misunderstanding what a free market is. A free market is not a marketplace without regulations. A free market is not anarchy - there are still rules. Instead a free market is a market without a centralized or directing authority. To clarify a free market is one in which government policy does not set pricing.

3. You don't believe or disbelieve in democracy. It isn't a religion, it is a form of government. There is nothing inherently wrong with regulations. The devil is in the details. Regulations can be good or bad for a marketplace.

4. Enoch, I think that is a gross oversimplification of why corporate profits have been as high as they are. Many things have led to large corporate profits including globalization, expanding markets, etc. Yes, here in the USA corporations exercise influence on government, but its only one part of the bigger picture.

5. Completely incorrect. A free market has nothing to do with the existence of copyrights or patents.

6. Democracy is a form of government. A Free Market is a type of market structure. You could have a dictatorship and a free market. A monarch and a free market. A republic and a free market. A Theocracy and a free market.

Furthermore you could have a "Free Market" for automobiles but a "regulated" or "controlled" market for electricity within one country.

For example:

In the USA I would argue automobiles operate in a "Free Market". Yes there are certain standards the government sets (safety, fuel efficiency, etc) but the pricing is determined by the automakers. You can argue about the restrictions. Do they go far enough? Do they go too far? etc.

Conversely, most electric companies prices are regulated by the government and they are required to provide services to certain areas.

Lastly, a free market does not mean the market operates without laws. Copyright and patent law being just a small part of those laws.

I hope this clarifies some of these questions for you.


Best,

Kgrr



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