Ferrari: When is enough, enough?

I couldn't agree more. While I and everybody on here will miss the roaring sounds of the engines and those sounds will indeed become the legend of the cars of the past century this is indeed the future. I think that there will be a long time to come where people will have two cars one electric purely for getting from point A to point B and then a combustion engine for fun rides. I actually would love that day to come sooner than later everytime I take a breath in LA. That smog has to go in cities like this.

Helmut

 

I find it somewhat strange that in the 21st century we are still not able to come up with a source of energy that is better than burning fossilised critters. If solar panels would make the jump in price downwards as computers did during the 80's then it would be very logical for every house to have a roof and wallcovering with photovoltaic properties. I mean the pentagon is currently pumping millions into developing a invisible "cloak" a true way of bending light all around an object so it is truly invisible, why? because it would be very useful to the armed forces. A Nuclear bomb can be developed in a matter of 3 years back in the 30's, I can not believe that its not possible nowadays to develop cheap and very efficient photovoltaic roofing for example, or even a almost free and clean source of energy altogether. But there simply is not enough interest from the big corporate side.
Lets assume solar panels cost the same as computerchips and everybody has them, that would mean that at least in california one could power a electric car pretty much for free. Maintenance is nothing compared to combustion. There must be a jump into such a direction at one point.

Helmut

 

Here, it is all about energy density. The energy density of fossil fuels are so great that we can throw away 74% of the energy and still have an "efficient" vehicle. The best batteries are at least a factor of 10X lower than this kind of energy density.

Secondly, unless ignited, the liquid fuel is relatively safe to leave lying around. So that 500 gallon tank yu left last winter is still 500 gallons today. Try that with a battery that you charge once and then leave it for a year.

Solar cells have made a big showing comming up from 0.5% efficiency in the 1960 to 13% today. If and when they get to 25% big things can happen.

The Invisibility cloak can be spotted with millimeter wave lenght "radars" as the cloak bends visible light around. So, its just invisible to human eyes. In fact the cloak is rather "bright" in mm wave receivers--that is an easy give away.

 

I thought they'd got way beyond 13% today? - Graph below from Wikipedia - OK, it's "best case research", but they're getting there, and fast it seems.....

Ahh, nice! We can't see it, but fire radar at it (something the "bad guys" have presumably) and all bets are off.....

Cheers,
Ian
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Indeed! - I don't think many people realize the enormous energy contained in a gallon of gas.... Peter Egan did a great (as always!) article wherein he was shovelling snow because his blower died - Went and bought a new blower, cleared his property of much snow and still had much gas left in the tank.... That's some pretty serious "work" being done and which we simply don't get a "feel" for when pushing air around with our automotive bricks....

Cheers,
Ian

 

I think the big breakthrough is going to have to be a departure from the 'gas station' paradigm, where you deplete a car's energy store over several hundred miles and then replenish at a fixed point. It's an infrastructure issue, and an expensive one. If your electric vehicle could be efficiently recharged continually, or by parking over recharging zones, then we could perhaps stop being held hostage to current battery efficiency characteristics.

This really isn't even a 'Ferrari issue', because like most of us here I can see the fun and value in having a loud internal combustion car as a hobby. But maintenance and pollution on even 'normal' cars like my Audi is really more expensive than it should be -- both for my checkbook and, as a California resident, my lungs.

 

Okay, in combat of the doom and gloom, dark possibilities and at risk of getting political I'll bring a lighter, upbeat idea to the table.

"Man Made Global Warming" officialy disproved...
Green movement out the window...
NO emissions requirements
New oil sources discovered, gas is cheap
ethanol takes a hike
gas and diesel motors thrive

 

Exactly, it's a way of thinking. We live in a world where we are trained to think that energy is expensive and can only be acquired through the given channels.
We now may think that our Ferrari 3x8's etc are vintage but how vintage they will be when combustion engines start to disappear. It's gonna be like that first electric car that Jay Leno has in his garage from the 1910's Then the 3x8's will be true exotics (and very valuable )

Why would you even want to store energy for a year or so?, I don't think it is necessary. Fire is the most ancient way of extracting energy and compared to e=mc2 it's efficiency certainly pales in comparison. I am not saying that nuclear power is the only powersource worth while but considering that we have a huge nuclear fusion reactor sitting right above our heads pumping energy down on us on a daily basis that is greater every hour than what we could use within a year then why not put all our government research into that one for a few years and see what happens.

There is no reason why a battery should have to hold a charge for a year when you can potentially recharge it constantly for free, a battery has to be able to hold a charge long enough to bridge the time when the sun isn't accessible. The problem with batteries is their environmental impact as they don't last long enough as well as their price. Technology needs to make a jump and it can. Look at computers, about 15 years ago the going rate per gigabite of storage was 1000.- US$ and it came in a huge box, now my computer has 4000 Gigabites and its all inside the computer ; had I told the salesman that this is what I will have in 15 years he would have laughed at me and explained to me that this is simply impossible because of blah blah blah... Technology has no limits, at least for thousands of years to come, we are just scraping the bottom of the barrel of technology.

Helmut

 

In my opinion it doesn't really matter if global warming is manmade or not, I am tired of breathing exhaust and when you look at all the trouble the iron fist of the oil industry is causing, like wars and huge expenses related to them etc. then it is crazy to keep the course. It's antiquated and dated and it will move aside and it will be even more fun to drive my 308 then on weekends, when I am 100 years old

 

Sometimes it's nicer to see a car that was designed to look good more than for outright performance.

Look at the Alfa Romeo Brera. As Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear has noted, it's not the best performing car due to too much weight, but it is the most desireable in it's class, based on looks alone.

I remember reading when Ducati introduced it's 916 superbike, they admitted that the twin exhausts under the seat weren't the best solution performance wise, but they were aesthetic wise. They said something along the lines of : "Sometimes it's more important to look good than to perform the best". That struck Me at the time as being so Italian when it comes to design, something that would make no sense at all to German designers.

 

Increase the amount of mass transit systems rather than widening and building new roads. When I lived in Maryland, I took the high speed MARC train into DC for work (125mph top speed on the Penn Line). Then you can Metro anywhere in the area from Union Station. ZERO need for the car except to get to the train station. If I lived near a Metro stop, I would just use that. My sports car was used for weekends and recreational use mainly.

Not sure I understand all of this bio-fuel or electric mumbo jumbo most in the US think is great. Yeah, let's chop down all the forests to plant switchgrass or other plants to make bio-diesel or alcohol to run off of. Makes no sense. Or we can waste a lot of energy making inefficient and heavy batteries that end up polluting the environment during the mining and refining process.

The only viable solution is to have people that can't afford McMansions in suburbia anymore to move into a major city and build mass transit that works off of nuclear energy. You can thank Carter for limiting how much we can enrich our reactors enough (to last longer) and not recycling (dump it in mountains in Nevada?). The solutions are so clear is boggles me why we haven't done it sooner.

Oh yeah, CSX even put up an ad where they said they get 400 miles per gallon per ton of freight on their trains. That's incredible. We also need to add a gas guzzler tax to SUVs. Manufacturers that make a model line with less than 2,000 vehicles annually shouldn't be penalized like the rest.

P.S. Classic Fcar owners must love these new models that are coming out. They're so ugly they make their vintage cars keep going UP and UP in value!

 

Traction is an issue already. Engines can produce far more torque than can be applied to the road, so perhaps development could utilise additional wheels underneath the car to put extra rubber down on the road?

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Totally agree! I'm still into the slots, though.
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My take on this:

I think that in the future whether it be 15 years from now or 50 years from now Ferrari's will still be around and they will be quite like the ones of today.

There will probably be many other sorts of energy that the "normal cars" will use, as well as many alternative options for transportation. Thus we will have less people driving cars and more people using the new solar powered hyper-train or whatever. The normal cars on the road will be powered by other means than petrol, maybe hydrogen fuel cells or something. What ever the fuel source is, it will be a lot cheaper than petrol and the cars that run on it will also be cheaper/ whatever the normal price for a normal car is. These cars will become the normal cars that the majority of people will have and the gas burning cars will become more expensive to own and thus the more luxurious high end cars.

So the F-Car owners of today would have there normal everyday car that doesn't use oil, but still have the same Ferrari that still runs on gasoline and still makes all the right sounds and still has all the right looks. I think that Ferraris of the future won't necessarily be much faster, there is a performance threshold that is yet to have been met. But when we do get there it will all be about who can make the truly better car.

We won't be worried about if the Lamborghini has more power and can go faster because all cars will go "that fast". Car manufacturers will care more about about looks, and feel, and sound, and all of the other things that car manufacturers should worry about when making an exotic car.

This is just what i think will happen, just my 0.02 cents

 

Also their weight. The new Audi e-Tron being shown in Detroit this week weighs 3,000 lbs, of which 900 lbs is battery. It's exciting to think of how good cars could be without all that weight. (Internal combustion cars haven't done well, either -- the Ferrari 599 is a bloated ~2 tons.)

But you're correct, the ultimate goal isn't to store energy. The need to store energy is the great inefficiency in the entire energy-source-to-car chain. And we're stuck on it because that's how cars have been powered for the last century.

Agreed. I suspect that China will figure out the solar technology conundrum (how to make it cheap and available) and will determine the future of mainstream transport here. I haven't yet heard a cogent defense of smog.

It's really about owning the future energy technology instead of fighting over dino-fuels. We should be all over this. We're finally doing something about the Smart Grid for energy -- at least it's a start.

 

The Evolution is upon us.
Look at the percentage of auto tranny's versus manual G boxes..

Whats next Oval ceramic Pistons ?