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how long until the gasoline engine is useless?

S

Soybomb

Diamond Member
Every day millions of cars hit the road sucking down gasoline, among other items that use gasoline powered engines. How long will it be until these engines are worthless? Will we run out of gas? Will ther ebe a synthetic gasoline made? Considering most gas engines are only about 25% efficient, will we come up with a more efficient way to propel cars? What will eventually happen to cars? Will we have junkyards full of useless cars or will they be retrofitted to run on a new fuel?

Personally I think that within 15-20 years we'll see alot of cars being sold that are no longer based on gasoline. I'd like to see hydrogen cars or something 🙂 I think we'll still have gasoline powered cars on the road, although they'll mostly be for those who are sort of into older cars as a hobby since gas prices will be more expensive. I also expect to see some revolutionary battery and solar cell designs tha would allow us to easily harness the power of the sun for our cars.

What do you see in the future?
 
The gasoline engine will be useful as long as there's Oil/Gas to run them. The Oil companies will ensure it. Buy Oil Stock for more reasons than one.
 
I see many people that invent things, that compete with the Big Oil companies, will become missing persons or will die mysteriously.

Like the people that invented the 100MPG carburator(sp?)

The oil companies won't let it happen.
 
Ohhh c'mon 100 mpg carbs are a myth older than my grandmother. Fuel injection is way more efficient than a carb and the best tuning won't touch that. The deisgn of a carb is so basic that I don't ever think that would be possible on your run of the mill car. I wouldnt say its not possible in a highly tuned setup with a high zoot carb, but that setup probably wouldnt be able to start on teh street even. Using an oxygen sensor to determine fuel mixture at say startup is 100x better than just using a choke until it runs, etc. Thats all conspiracy stuff.

Like I said I don't doubt that there will always be some people wanting to putter around in gas cars. You'll pry my turbo cars from my lifeless stiff fingers, but you don't see there being an option in 15 years. It might not be developed initially for automobiles, but for say power generation in areas that are low on juice like cali. Its not that I think we'll be running out of oil as much as that at 25% efficiency there has to be a better way of doing it.

neo: you've got a cool bike, but some of us like our cars 😉
 
I asked this same question in the 50s. Afraid all the gas would be gone before I got my liscence.

Just read the Oil sands in Canada surpass all that OPEC ever had untapped so I guess we will be OK for a while. That is why Im always nice to Canadians. 🙂
 
Given the current state of oil consumption, estimates have ranged from 20 years all the way to 50 years. But basically, its a self stablizing thing. As gas becomes more scares, alternate fuel sources begin to look more attractive. Manufacturers, seeing this market, will begin to spend more r&d in these forms of energy. So in the end, everything works out.

-The reason everyone uses gas today is that gasoline is the cheapest most readily available form of energy to power automobiles in existence.
 
I read a news article about a year or so ago that claims that if the population continues to expand at its current rate and we don't make any more progress than we currently are in exploring alternative energy sources, we will have exhausted the worlds supply of fossil fuels within the next fifty years. That's not very long at all.

Things have gotta change... And soon...
 
Road and Track May, 2001

"Estimated that there are 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil in a 250 mile radius of Ft McMuray, Alberta. 40 times larger than the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge, 15% greater than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia."

"Canada is already our largest supplier of imported crude."

Above slightly paraphrased for ease of typing
 
Its not just the amount though. We might have enough gasoline to last forever, but sonner or later shouldnt we make the internal combustion engine obsolete? Its like taking socket 7 pentium 133 and upgrading to a pentium 200. Sure it performs better, but isn't the architecture its based on getting a little long in the tooth? Time to change out the basis of it and get something that works better. The gas engine hasn't really changed much since its creation. What if you couldcomeup with electric and eliminate some of the millions of sensors, the cooling system, and the exhaust? You've saved alot of money. S ure at first figuring out how to put in like solar charging provisions, and batteries will be expensive, but in time it should be better than gas. I think the residents of L.A. woulnd't complain if you swapped out 80% of the cars there for something that didn't pollute. Sure you might still be able to run a gas car, but wouldn't electric or hydrogen or something be an evolution in other senses?
 


When I was a tech for Dodge, I had heard that Chrysler was working
on Hydrogen cars and had heard rumors that they were getting close
to marketing them.

But that could just be rumors.


DD
 
Fuel cell cars should come out in a couple of years, just as electric cars did a few years ago. A couple of days ago I saw a commercial mentioning Honda's new fuel cell car (looks like a POS IMHO). The problem is that no one wants to buy them, as long as gasoline cars run farther, faster, and cheaper.
 
Every time someone is on the brink of a new discovery for a more efficient or less-polluting engine, the oil companies buy them up and stick it on a shelf. They don't care about the fate of the earth - just the almighty dollar.
 
So blame the oil company? How about blaming whoever sold out to them. It's they who are after the "almighty dollar" otherwise they'd continue their research and give oil companies the finger.
 
So how do you get the hydrogen to run a car? Electrolysis? Where does the electrticity come from? Burning fossil fuels? Or is there another way to get hydrogen?
 
There is a certain amount of hydrogen already in the air, and you can also obtain hydrogen through various reactions between chemicals. Electrolysis is pretty inefficient actually.
 
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