Appotus Dominus

xereau · Joined: 24 Apr 2005 Posts: 669

Check this out.

In 1975, a couple of guys came up with a 1950's Opus T-1 that got 378MPG.

The industries' modern hybrids get 1/6th this mileage for a ridiculous cost; you need to drive the vehicle for 6 years before the savings you get in gas even out to the extra cost of the vehicle vs a non-hybrid.

Now you can NOT tell me that the industry could not improve upon a couple back woods grease monkeys in 33 years, let alone offer at best 1/6th the efficiency in the best hybrid on the market?

There is clearly something very wrong with this situation.

Can you say corrupt oligarchic monopoly, anyone?
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Hzath · Joined: 31 Mar 2007 Posts: 686 Location: Purdue

I can say, Canadian.

Auger · Joined: 25 May 2006 Posts: 174

Fuel saving devices, cars etc. have been around for ever.

People design the item and then apply for patient. Most inventors (unlike Ron Popel) are usually strapped for cash. Once the item has been patiented the inventor needs to find a market and buyer for this idea.

Who do you think has all the money. Yep, the oil companies. Now why on earth would the oil companies buy these items.... yup, so they dont ever hit the market.

Lichlord · Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 68 Location: Silverthorne, CO

My dad was an oil and gas consultant. He said he has even seen designs for 80+ and upwards of 100 mpg cars...but what the last poster said is exactly correct.

Oil companies see these, offer the designers a ton of money and buy the patent...then file it away.
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Teklan · Joined: 11 Mar 2007 Posts: 1511 Location: NC

This is what I don't get. What is the difference between having 20 billion dollars and 21 billion dollars? You'll never be able to spend it all unless you are a woman (joking). Even if oil companies got diminishing profits if they boost MPG in cars, they'll still be fucking rich as hell. And recognize that oil is a limited resource, so they don't actually lose profit - it is just spread over a longer period of time. Corporate world doesn't make sense to me.

dnief · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 357

I saw a special on cable recently about the electic car. California made a law that the car companies needed to find alternate solutions. The car companies built an elecric car that could have easily been made to compete witht he oil guzzlers but the law was lobbied against and dropped and the car was recalled when leases were up and destroyed.

We are truly suckers to big business and who knows where the end will be and how bad it will get.

dunnodoncare · Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 320

Plenty of missing information in that link. They don't mention the speed (or weight)... any car gets vastly greater miles per gallon if it runs at near idle. Doesn't do you much good to get 300+ mpg if you are only going 5 mph, for example.

As for fuel saving devices, and the paranoia around them.. in general they don't work. The mathematics aren't that complex if you know some thermodynamics... there is only so much energy in a gallon of gas, and many of these devices make claims so ridiculous that it amounts to getting 3 times the energy out of gas as the gas itself contains... that is called over-unity, or in physics terms 'make-believe.' The most efficient way of delivering the gas to the cylinders is fuel injection.. no carburetor (none, ever) will match a fuel injection system, its just not possible.

As for oil companies buying these patents and hiding them.. its ridiculous. The patent information is freely available to the public. Hiding a patent is impossible without military intervention, and anyone who wants information on a patented fuel saving device can find it. No oil company, no matter how rich, can hide a patent once it is granted.. or even once it is applied for. No car company, when presented with a device that they and they alone could sell to the consumer for many years, and which would grant them near complete dominance of the automobile market world-wide would EVER hide it. It would be the difference between being the 100th largest car producer in the world to the #1 producer, for the duration of that patent. Hiding it would be foolish, since that would cost their company and their investors incredible amounts of money. Even Citroen could dominate the world automotive industry if there were some magical device to grant incredible fuel savings, and Citroens fucking suck.

There is no conspiracy to hide fuel saving devices and methods because to take part in such a conspiracy would cost the investors in any given automobile company vast amounts of potential profits, and hiding the patents for those devices is impossible. If you can afford a patent attorney, you can have him search for those patents. The do not disappear when they change ownership.

The mileage is interesting, but don't take this at face value with so much information missing. My bet is the vehicle was stripped down to minimum weight, adapted for low rolling resistance (hard tires, as rolling resistance is greater than wind resistance at low velocities) and running at very low speed, probably near an idle.

As far as I know, the most efficient way to get energy out of gasoline and to turn it into motion (mechanical energy) is to use a gasoline flame to heat a Stirling engine, and use that engine to produce electricity to drive small motors on each wheel, as well as using resistance braking to turn braking energy back into electricity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_Engine#Efficiency
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy

Medding.

Mandaar · Guild N00bert Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 6389

Here is why it wouldn't work.

1. The car that got this kind of mileage would have a huge cost and a very short life without HUGE amounts of money and repairs. Why? because it would require not cooling the engine, but ADDING heal to it in order to have the fuel enter the system already perfectly vaporized - resulting in no need for a fuel injector or sprayer.

2. The car would be SLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW. Most people could get better mileage instantly by driving 55 or even lower. Just the lowest speed that has about 2.5k rpms in your top gear. They drove that car at 30 mph.

3. It had 1 seat, the roof ripped off, all excess weight pruned. It wasn't a car. It was altered to go as far as it could go on a gallon of gas.

This was nothing but an engineering gimmick with one gallon of gas. A self-contained system could not come anywhere near that.

Fuel-injectors spray heated fuel in the form of a vapor. They had a gallon of fuel in perfectly vapor form. They had a specialized way of supplying it. It essentially wasn't a car. If you heated an engine component, insulated the tubed, etc with all that heat, your car would break down in a day.

Gillaian · Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 3:50 pm Post subject:

I think it all comes down to energy conservation. Conventional combustion engines are extremely inefficient when it comes to heat dissipation.

All you really need to do is set up a heat exchange whereby you are capturing the energy (heat) output of the fuel combustion and using it to preheat your fuel delivery system.

When you think about the amount of heat that is created by a car you are seeing the wasted work of these engines. The problem is that people don't WANT to be fuel efficient, they want to have SUV's that they never take out of the city. They want fast cars that can do 0-60 in 5 seconds. These types of vehicles will never be a smart solution to the upcoming energy crisis.

I am very familiar with alternative fuels since my father created a generator that runs off of wood chips, sure it's not handy in the city but for the forest service they love it.

Teklan · Joined: 11 Mar 2007 Posts: 1511 Location: NC

dunnodoncare · Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 320

Most efficient would be to use an external combustion engine rather than internal.

Medding.

Mandaar · Guild N00bert Joined: 22 Apr 2005 Posts: 6389

You could somewhat isolate those areas of the engine and make this more efficient by making the related parts out of titanium or some space-age alloy.

But, then the car would cost a lot. And trust me, people are more interested in cheap than efficient. We all know that the majority of the planet is fine with destroying our atmosphere for future generations, as long as they have it good now.

dnief · Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 357

How can you say the electri car wouldnt work when the people who owned them loved them and they were made to fail. The car companies wanted the electric car to fail beasue right now they have a firm grasp on the market.

there have been people who have made electric cars that go 300 miles before needing a charge and they were able to go 80 mph.

You mean to tell me a guy in his garage can make a car like that but the car companies cannot make a decent electric car with thier billion dollar quarter profits.

The electric car was made to fail and all other alternatives to oil guzzling machine will be made to fail unless we take a stand. Don't let the wool continue to be puled over your eyes America.