Charlie Young said the following to Alec Cameron on the subject of
Electric cars (06 Oct 97  19:45:00)
 MR> Gas/electric stations could store energy by trickle charging large
 MR> underground flywheels. Then quickly charge a customer's car without
 MR> any heavy drain to the grid. Thus no need to upgrade the electric grid.
 > Wrong. There is a need, notably at the
 > generating stations 'cos if you
 > consume increased energy at the load centres,
 > then you gotta burn more coal/
 > gas/ oil whatever in the generating stations.
 CY> ALEC
 CY> I wonder what the total efficiency would be for an electric
 CY> car vs. the traditional gasoline powered car?
 CY> You would have to calculate the energy used digging up the coal,
 CY> transporting it to the power station, transporting it around
 CY> the coal yard, and crushing it.  Then there are blowers and
 CY> other energy hungry devices.  Also you would need to add in
 CY> the losses in the transmission grid.  That is not to say that
 CY> gasoline is the perfect energy source, but maybe not as bad
 CY> as some would have us to believe.
Maybe not so bad? Stick your nose to the tailpipe of a running car and
take a whiff. Lock yourself in an unventilated garage for 45 minutes and
see if you live to tell about it. Not so bad you say?
Speaking of "not so bad", I just saw a news snipet about a company
called Flexilogic (not sure I got the name right) in Rock Forest,
Quebec, Canada (near Montreal) which has developed a fuel
pre-conditioner system for regular gasoline which results in the car
having virtually zero emissions.
Though not exactly 0, the claim was the prototype car apparently had
about the same amount of emissions as that of a single burning
cigarette.
The process uses an undisclosed method of pre-misting the fuel in a
chamber called a Casper (because the white fuel mist looks like the
famed cartoon ghost). This mist is then fed into the car's conventional
injection system.
I can't wait to hear more details as the system prototype will be
presented officially at some auto conference in Europe shortly. In any
case it looks like a breakthrough. It was just amazing to see the CO2
emission analyzer read 0 with the probe in the tailpipe.
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