I have some friends that have a very large family farming operation.
They run a lot of pickups and big tractors, mostly on diesel. They have
a lot of gasoline 4-wheelers that their employees use. Their biggest
fuel use is for irrigation- they run large gasoline engines and diesel
engines to power their pumps, but they run all of them on natural gas.
(They have converted large diesel engines to run on natural gas.)
I think in the future we will need different fuel/power solutions for
different vehicles and different uses. We may need to make use of as
many alternate fuel sources as we can get. Trucks, tractors and
combines can be run on natural gas, or on some form of synthetic diesel
that is probably derived from some bio source. I think some families
may have a vehicle that is primarily electric, and another vehicle with
an internal combustion engine for backup or longer trips.
But I've got another use that might be more difficult- what about
airplanes? We probably won't do those with electricity, or natural
gas. They will need an easy to handle liquid fuel. Maybe a synthetic
bio fuel can work for this.
> Electric vehicles are an interesting exercise but they will be an oddity for
> many more years before the technology is sufficiently developed.
>
> Think about the farmer who feeds you all.... Picture a guy out here on the
> High Plains who raises the wheat for your bread and the beef for your
> burger. On average he lives about 30 to 40 miles from the nearest Coop where
> he hauls his grain and about 60 miles from the nearest cattle auction and
> feed lot where he takes his beeves to be sold. He hauls a couple of 800 lb
> round bales a week a distance of about 50 miles to feed your burger. He
> hauls 20,000 lbs of wheat about 40 miles to the elevator to make your bread.
> He runs a large tractor about 3 days a week and during harvest, a $220,000
> combine which runs about 18 hours a day for a week to cut the wheat for your
> dinner plate and the corn for your ethanol.
>
> There isn't an electric vehicle in the world that can even begin to touch
> doing all of this. Long story short, stop thinking about driving your car to
> work and start thinking about all the other vehicles that would also need to
> be electric. When you do the obvious conclusion is that we are a long way
> from being there yet..... ;-)
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