What is the future of transport post-oil?
Hydrogen?
Other?
Answers:
Bio-fuels are only a stop gap solution, if all the worlds farmland was given over to growing crops to produce bio-fuel then they wouldn't cover the energy use from oil, so that is impractical.
Hydrogen is currently only produced by refining petroleum products, yes you can produce it by reverse electrolysis but that is very energy inefficient, hydrogen isn't a good way of storing energy, I think it just came into vogue because of it's low emissions quality at point of use, makes sense for smog bound cities like LA, for the rest of us it's way too expensive.
Electric cars offer the best hope I think, but unless huge advances in battery technology are made in the next few years we'll be stuck with 40 miles journey capacities,so the cross country personal transport machine will be a thing of the past =(
There will soon be a new soloution to this i think the boffins have already found it but do not want to tell us about it yet Bring Back Tomorrows World
There lies a great future ahead but hydrogen fuels are damn expensive.
Bio fuels i think. the problem is while there is still oil available the car manufacturers will not be willing to upset there share holders by bringing out a car running on sustailable fuel, i think this is because there is a pretty big connection between oil companies and car makers.
doom if the status quo remains. we r in in the IT age making the world smaller while Iran is thinking nuclear power, whether or not it is for war-heads remains under debate. some say hydrogen, well, - maybe for atomic bombs. frankly speaking we still hv a long way, perhaps electricity is the next most economic means of power next to bio-fuel. hw we r goin 2 fully replace the pros of bio-fuel is a question Japan is workin on.
You can forget about the private car except for wealthier people.
There is not likely to be a complete exhaustion of oil, just steadily increasing prices. There will be less cheap plastic packaging around and the price of all consumer goods will rise. Food prices will increase too as farmers have to pay more for fuel for tractors, harvester etc. More use of walking, bicycles, buses and trains. less use of airplanes. Companies employing people will have to move to where people live, not 40 miles away or people are going to have to move closer to where they work.
Hydrogen and biodiesel are high cost options.
I agree with the other poster that battery technology will be important to future energy uses. i've seen a couple of articles about carbon nano tubes being a potential break through in power storage as far as recharge time, so perhaps we wouldn't need a huge battery pack in vehicles, just something that could go the typical 300-400 mile trip and recharge quickly similar to process of refueling with gasoline today. Those are my dreams at least, I think someone would be well paid if they make it happen.
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