Times up for Petrol cars.Where does that leave Boats

[seabug]

Time's up for petrol cars, says GM

THE world's biggest car maker believes global oil supply has peaked and a switch to electric cars is inevitable.


With the diminishing supply of crude oil,and millions more cars to be sold in Russia,China+India the price of petrol is going to increase sharply.

Will the development of electric cars see technology transfer to boat engines?

While the price of oil has soared against the dollar it has remained stable to the price of gold.
For the last 50 years 3 grams of gold would buy a barrel of oil.

Finance sources say that the rise in gold has just began

Lets hope they are wrong.

Regards
seabug

[JEWIENEWIE]

Maybe a hybrid is the start. You can turn her on to petrol for crossing bars, rough seas etc then turn her over to electric for cruising or trollin. The electric acn be charged while crossing the bars or cruising, via a small turbine attached to the hull . A bit of a compromise so to speak.
We will have to start somewhere, so lets get the ideas rolling and who knows where it may end up. Great ideas have come from far more strange places than a bunch of fishos havin a yack!!
Jewie

[Chris Ryan]

Why not power them from a turbine/wheel attachment that acts like a hydro generator to charge as you drive/drift etc too? Add solar input and you are away.

the motors are basically available, just the mechanics and the electrics need to be sorted out. Imagine, a 350hp Minn Kota sort of get-up

[Noelm]

while a turbine generater to charge as you drive sounds like a great idea, the amount of power needed to turn the turbine far exceeds to power it outputs, other wise we have perpetual motion and we are all rich!! but indeed perhaps some new power source may spring up soon out of necessity, not too keen on a Nuclear power centre console though, but it would be nice to never need to refuel untill the boat or your life span is up.

[JEWIENEWIE]

Why not power them from a turbine/wheel attachment that acts like a hydro generator to charge as you drive/drift etc too? Add solar input and you are away.

the motors are basically available, just the mechanics and the electrics need to be sorted out. Imagine, a 350hp Minn Kota sort of get-up

Thats what i am talking about. Would it have the power when needed is the question.
Jewie

[Chris Ryan]

Thats what i am talking about. Would it have the power when needed is the question.
Jewie

dunno mate - but my country northern rivers of NSW couriosity of makin something has kicked in...........

OK, gunna need some 12V batteries, some kyocera solar panels and regulators, a decent DC motor, some props, stickytape, bubblegum, a couple of cases of bundy & cola, a large roll of paper and a few pencils.

Imagine a nuclear powered 7m platey on the high seas.....trim tabs ahoy boys!

Chris

[JEWIENEWIE]

Now where talking, dont know about crossing the bruns bar with a nuclear powered weapon behind me though!
There will be no smoking on that baby either.
Jewie

[Chris Ryan]

Battery weight is an issue here.

I found an electric motor that can do over 100HP - but with a smooth powerband would be equivilant to 130-150hp in a petrol 4-stroke.

The motor costs approx $4k. Batteries (13x 226A/hr), guages, controllers, chargers are about another $10k. Adds about 150kgs of weight over the motor.

The 13x 226amp/hr batteries is a lot but gives a range of over 120k's and if it was installed in a hilux for example, a top speed of 105-110 kph so they are fair dinkum motors.

This gear is all the ducks nuts in gear - can be cheaper. Also doesn't include gearbox, prop, casing, etc. Wonder if I can retrofit an old outboard?

Wonder if I can get some interest in a 'green' power boat and have it funded as a project?? Hmmm

[smiley_doobinator]

I'm a novice when it comes to electrical technical stuff what gives you the horsepower amps or voltage or a combination of both?

[tunaticer]

The world is about to change for the better......the new fuel.......salt water!!!! NO BULL!!! it burns at 1500c.

Jack.

[hungry6]

I vote hydrogen fuel cell boat.... uses the charge to get you out there while you"re fishing the solar panels recharges and refills the tank and back you go. Only probs is we would have to wait until hydroen fuel cells get perfected by a car comp. and it's all on for young and old... $10 to the shelf anyone?
Everyime I see higher oil prices I have a quiet chuckle as all the middle east ppls are doing is shfting the point of viability closer for hydrogen fuel cells closer to reality..
Of course our boat and car are still going to be making all the right noises..

[Lovey80]

The world is about to change for the better......the new fuel.......salt water!!!! NO BULL!!! it burns at 1500c.

Jack.

Thats gold mate. Solves the debate on what rod to get next...... All of us trolling around moreton with water boiling behind us waiting for the fish to float

Cheers Chris

[Camo]

In Europe they are experimenting with compressed air powered engines. They intend to start production soon and the performance is said to be close to petrol engines, They are also thinking about using the same technology for outboard engines. http://www.theaircar.com/

But I'll stick with petrol thanks. GM is just jumping on the environmental bandwagon. I bet the new cars they will produce will be a lot dearer than their petrol counterparts. The fact is oil is not running out and people who say that it is are just running a scare campaign. This scare campaign has been around since the early seventies, and is called peak oil, and it's a load of crap.
Estimates of the world’s total oil reserves have continually grown faster than we can pump it out of the ground. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis. In 1920, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that the world’s total endowment of oil amounted to 60 billion barrels. By 1950, the estimate had increased to around 600 billion barrels. The most recent estimate was of a 3,000-billion-barrel endowment.
By 2000, 900 billion barrels of oil had been produced. If world oil consumption continues to increase at an average rate of 1.4 percent a year, and no further resources are discovered and no improvements are made in the technology used to recover oil, the world’s supply will not be exhausted until 2056.
These estimates do not include unconventional oil resources that require additional processing to extract liquid petroleum. Oil production from tar sands in Canada and South America would add about 600 billion barrels to the world’s supply and rocks found in the three western states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone contain 1,500 billion barrels of oil. Worldwide, the oil-shale reserves could be as large as 14,000 billion barrels — more than 500 years of oil supply at year 2000 production rates.

Camo

[Chris Ryan]

Good post Camo.

I guess I am looking at this as a challenge to do something different.

To answer Smiley's question the voltage increases so does the kilowatts. As we know the higher the kw the higher the horsepower. Well that is my understanding

[Chris Ryan]

The world is about to change for the better......the new fuel.......salt water!!!! NO BULL!!! it burns at 1500c.

Jack.

Is this the one where you need a radio wave generator operating at close to 4Ghz to separate the hydrogen out to burn it?