

Los Alamos says it can manufacture gasoline from CO2 in the air at a price of $4.60 a gallon - nickb
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/federal-lab-says-it-can-harvest-fuel-from-air/index.html?ref=science

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BrandonM
Does this really make sense? Nuclear processes are used to generate power to
drive a process which produces gasoline from CO2 in the air. That gasoline is
then used... to generate power. Why not just cut out the middle step?

I don't think fully-electric cars are too far off, and when that is the case,
the nuclear energy will be able to power the cars directly (or at least their
batteries), along with solar power or whatever else.

Electricity is simply much more flexible since it can be produced and used in
so many ways and distributed relatively cheaply. Gasoline only works for
combustion engines, and it has to be manually transported. Our current
infatuation with gasoline is going to look pretty stupid when we finally get
to the point that it's hardly used anymore.

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Electro
Agreed. Electric cars need the high performance Li-Ion batteries, the 3
minutes charge = 3 hour play kind that you get in MP3 players. I mean, if they
merely got it to the point where you could go to a fuel station, plug it in to
charge and go in to grab a coke and by the time you get to the cashier your
car is charged.

I mean, combine this with regenative braking and thin-film solar cells (so as
not to add unnecessary weight and lower mileage), you could greatly improve
over most current full-electric cars.

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dkokelley
I assume that you guys have seen the Tesla Roadster
(<http://teslamotors.com>).

What I'm hearing from them is that the critical feature that is holding
electric cars back is the power system. This field is pretty experimental but
someone who could come up with the magic battery that charges in 5 minutes
would probably have a valuable system on their hands.

Another angle would be to have cars that run on batteries that can be swapped
out at gas stations as needed. There are a bunch of issues that need to be
considered for this approach but it's still a neat idea.

~~~
Electro
Yeah I've seen the Tesla Roadster, and all electric cars need to be
manufactured like that. I have a Li-Ion drill, it takes 30 minutes to get a
full charge yet it takes me over 4 hours to run it down with constant use, so
I don't get how some electric cars can barely get you around town and take 8
hours to charge on a night.

I'd accept 2 hour charge time for in city driving, but most of my driving with
work isn't in a city, and thus electrics are useless until they're as fast to
charge as a petrol is to fill.

~~~
kschrader
Maybe because moving an electric car takes slightly more energy than turning a
drill bit. It's not really the same class of problem.

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mixmax
How much is $4.60 a gallon in $ per liter?

And when are you going to convert to the metric system like any other sane
country?

~~~
bayareaguy
Google says about 1.21519144 U.S. dollars per litre

[http://www.google.com/search?q=4.60+USD+per+gallon+in+USD+pe...](http://www.google.com/search?q=4.60+USD+per+gallon+in+USD+per+litre)

