Let me preface this post by saying first that I am a car person. Those of you who know me well, know that I grew up spinning wrenches with my dad and dreaming of being a rally car driver. Racing in the SCCA and growing up to be a decent mechanic. I've worked for Land Rover as a driving instructor and Mercedes as a chauffeur, and my longest lasting job was based on long distance delivery driving. Two of my big hobbies, taking rides on nice days and off-roading, revolve around cars. But I recognize that these are all unsustainable and that we are facing a grim problem because of our dependence on automobiles.
We all remember the oil crisis of 2008 and the events that followed which crippled our nations, and the worlds, economy. The after effects of the oil crisis are still being felt and will still be felt well into the this century. Private (as in personal) automobiles are the largest glut for oil in America, accounting for over 40% of the total oil demand in 2004. (www.eia.doe.gov) This HAS NOT, and WILL NOT decline significantly unless our society changes on a massive scale.
So what does this mean for a nation faced by the end of a oil and fossil fuel based economy? Here are some questions we need to be asking ourselves in all seriousness as we enter the second decade of this millennium.
Can we even maintain the roads we drive on without oil?
Can we keep our cars on the road without oil?
Do we stand a chance of maintaining the thousands of 18-wheelers roaming our highways that deliver our products and petroleum on-demand and on time?
Do hybrids, electric cars, and alt-fuel vehicles stand a chance of saving our auto-industry?
In short, no, ladies and gentlemen, we are fucked.
Before we even get on the road we need an infrastructure born, raised, and maintained on fossil fuels. From the electricity that drives the pumps at the gas station, to the asphalt that paves our streets and highways, all of it is based on a fossil fuel economy headed by cheap and easy to obtain oil.
Lets start with roads. Roads are paved by equipment, massive diesel machines and trucks that GUZZLE fuel. My father would know more than me about this as he is a master mechanic and welder for a local trucking and heavy equipment company. He has told me, on many occasions, about the enormous thirst that these machines have and how on a good day a driver can visibly watch the needle on the gas gauge fall when they are driving hard. These roads are further maintained by a fleet of similar equipment. Most of the road surfaces currently use are partially MADE of oil. The asphalt used to pave a road is a byproduct of crude oil, and in its natural form is highly difficult to work and in a refined state is as difficult to manage requiring temperatures of hundreds of degrees to even stay in a usable state.
Apart from the roads themselves the automobile industry relies, like any other industry, relies on raw materials. Plastics, glass, sheet metal, various electronics, engine parts, ad infinitum. On average there are 10,000-20,000 parts in a car. A great deal of which are direct descendants of oil (plastics and vinyls), others take a great deal of fossil fuel energy to produce (metal products), and all of it has to be shipped from suppliers (sometimes across continents and across the globe) to assembly plants which dot the land scapes of many industrial towns in North America. Now tell me with a straight face that this production method is sustainable if oil becomes scarce.
How about maintenance? Even a hybrid has to go get its oil changed. Parts need to be lubricated. Your old ripped and faded faux-leather vinyl seats eventually will need to get replaced. Where are these products going to come from if we cant obtain the oil from foreign shores? When you think about the average car on the road, something that takes 4-5 quarts of motor oil and has to have it changed regularly, for this argument we'll say every 4,000 miles (about 1,000 miles over when you should change it), and has a lifespan of 150,000 miles. You will need to drop about 188 quarts of oil into that engine, almost 50 gallons!!! That's a lot of oil considering that as of 2006 there were 469,851,833 registered passenger vehicles (cars, trucks, and SUV's) on the roads.
We all love to go to the store and by groceries, ipods, lawn chairs, craft supplies, etc etc from our local big box store. but do we ever consider where and how those products get to the shelves? There is a fleet of semi-trucks(18 wheelers, tractor trailers, whatever you prefer to call them), about 10 million, constantly buzzing around the country at an average of 6mpg logging an average of 150,000 miles a year. This adds up to 250,000,000,000 gallons of low-sulfer diesel fuel a year. That is a LOT of zeros, and represents an industry which cannot survive AT ALL without oil. And remember that there is no centralized pipeline that supplies gas and diesel to the pump, no that is the job of semi-trucks to deliver it to the pump on time and on demand. Meaning without a trucking industry there is no happy motoring to be had. Does anyone remember the 1973 oil crisis? The gas lines? The odd and even plate number days? That was a relatively small disturbance compaired to what might be coming down the pipeline, or should I say not coming down the pipeline...
Since we NEED our vehicles in the worst way. Indeed we need them in every way from going to work in the morning, to the sports activities of our children, to going grocery shopping, and traveling to see family. With this in mind many of our countries automobile manufactures have begun exploring alternatives to our current gasoline powered, internal combustion driven autos. Indeed leaps and bounds have been made in efficientcy and even alternatives. We all know and love the Prius hybrid, or maybe you Ford fans prefer the Fusion Hybrid. We have seen ethanol make it to our gas pumps in increasing percentages. Diesel has come back with a bang. Hydrogen and electric cars are the wave of the future according to many. And lastly there has been a great resurgence of human powered locomotion, yes the bicycle. but will these efficient and alternative replacements for the current fleet make a difference? Will we solve the problem? Will we only accomplish to replace that problem with another, and possable bigger, problem?
The MPG craze has hit everyone. We all love our efficient cars from all over the globe. Toyotas and Fords alike, as long as they return a combined average economy of over 30mpg... But does this replace the problem, no! All that these efficientcies do is prolong the inevitable, a life-support machine for our terminally ill standard. The technology we are implimenting will only serve to make oil last a few years longer. And in from a realistic point of view it might not even matter at all given the increasing number of motorists in Asia and India. So sqeezing every last bit of efficientcy out of a gallon, while noble, will probably be futile.
Alternative fuels are huge and for a time even I was swayed by their attractive and green properties. But it was not long before the shiny green luster wore away to reveal a deeper dingyer path to motoring. Lets first examine the hybrid electric car. Mating a gas or diesel engine to a electric motor is a awesome idea from many perspectives. The increased MPGs, greater engine longevity, futuristic styling are all wonderful and the looks you get from impressed green-loving ladies sure is nice too. But behind all the flashy new technology is a history that you might not consider.
Like the normal gas or diesel car, that hybrid has thousands of parts, the latest and most expensive being its battery pack, normally lead acid, nickle metal hydride or lithium based. These batteries are toxic, for starters, and wear out after an average of 100,000 miles. So within ten years or so we can expect to see thousands of battery packs wearing out and being scrapped, and, if industry will be industry, with a likelyhood of there being little consideration for the environment. A Prius batter costs about $3000 to replace, do you want that repair bill after 100,000 miles of normal motoring? Then lets look at the ingredients. Lead is one of the greatest carcinogens we have in the auto-world, formally seen in our gasoline and paint, now religated to our car batteries and hybrid packs. The NiMH batteries are less toxic but more prevalent in hybrids. All those original and second gen Prius' had them and so do many current hybrids. Lastly lithium has to be combines with another metal to make a good battery, some of those like cobalt are pretty toxic and harder to recycle. Then you must consider something that has made news lately, the reserves of lithium and other rare precious metals in the world. China, holder of the lions-share of our national debt, owns most of the lithium we know about and they might not want to give it up. Lithium mines aren't too pretty either, you could equate them to the environmental train wreck that is our nations coal industry. So do these hybrids really make a much greener scene? And with this knowledge of batteries does it make the argument any better for battery electric cars?
So what about alternatives like corn ethanol or switch grass ethanol or (insert plant name here) ethanol? Well we love our corn in this country, we produce 259,273 thousand metric tons a year, more than double that of the next largest producer China. (www.nationmaster.com) That being said we must have a lot of corn to brew up into ethanol right? Wrong. If we shift our corn industry from producing for the food industry to the fuel industry the price of corn and corn based products (everything from soda and candy to canned foods and baked goods) will go sky high. We have already seen the prices of food go up and up and up in recent years. Do we really want that to continue? Moreover can we afford to? No. And what about ethanol from other sources? Well we have a lot of airable land left in American, no where near what we need to support our current population but we have land, and that land is dissapearing in the thousands of acres every year. So can we switch our land use from producing food and crops vital to our survival to crops vital to our gas tanks? do I have to answer that?
So what about alternatives like corn ethanol or switch grass ethanol or (insert plant name here) ethanol? Well we love our corn in this country, we produce 259,273 thousand metric tons a year, more than double that of the next largest producer China. (www.nationmaster.com) That being said we must have a lot of corn to brew up into ethanol right? Wrong. If we shift our corn industry from producing for the food industry to the fuel industry the price of corn and corn based products (everything from soda and candy to canned foods and baked goods) will go sky high. We have already seen the prices of food go up and up and up in recent years. Do we really want that to continue? Moreover can we afford to? No. And what about ethanol from other sources? Well we have a lot of arable land left in American, no where near what we need to support our current population but we have land, and that land is disappearing in the thousands of acres every year. So can we switch our land use from producing food and crops vital to our survival to crops vital to our gas tanks? do I have to answer that?
How about hydrogen? Time for a chemistry lesson, and you thought I hated chemistry!Hydrogen is a gas. Hydrogen fuel for cars is a liquid. It take INCREDIBLE pressure to keep hydrogen a liquid and that takes an enormous amount of energy. Most of that electricity comes from coal. Now coal is one of the largest emitters of green house gasses such as CO2. Switching to hydrogen is going to require a terrible increase in CO2 and green house emissions. Serving only to kill us quicker with climate changes and to destroy some of the last wild places in America which contain our coal. So unless our electricity comes from clean sources, we wont be able to produce a viable hydrogen economy and given the amount of pressure needed to keep hydrogen a liquid I don't know if I would want to drive one in case of an accident. Boom!
So are there answers to this problem? Can we keep our cars on the road? Well the answers that I know, are not the answers you want to hear. Our understanding of this problem as a nation is limited and misguided at best. Few people understand or think about the far reaching roots that all transportation technology has. We only have a couple of decades to figure this out and after that it might be too late to mobilize some sort of disaster/crash plan to fix the system. A good idea to pursue is the expansion of mass transit via rail and bus. But these things need to be considered in terms of overall efficiency and what we have the ability to do in the time frame we are looking at. But it is already beginning. Our road based infrastructure is crumbling and becoming ever more expensive to repair. Lets begin to think about things in new ways. Lets shrink our supply lines, live/move close to your job, buy local and rejuvenate our local economies, plan our shopping outings, drive economically or "greenly", share rides and carpool, ride our bikes, and in any other way possible begin to wean ourselves off long range vehicle travel. Good luck America.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment