# Tool Talk > Wheels >  Cybertruck...or how NOT to build a vehicle

## jdurand

I'll give him a little slack and assume he ordered "bullet proof" windows meaning "crack proof". Executives have a hard time understandifferences between things like that.

Bullet proof = a bullet won't penetrate it, says nothing about how it looks after the first bullet or if it will stop a second one.

Crack Proof = something like polycarbonate. Will bounce the steel ball back into your face but a bullet (or flame or chlorine bleach) will defeat it.

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## Jon

Your browser does not support the video tag.

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## bruce.desertrat

As one wag on twitter put it: It's the truck fro when you gotta move these refrigerators, you gotta move these color teevees

https://twitter.com/Zeddary/status/1...-cybertruck%2F

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## Frank S

Somebody needs to tell Elon the Elcamino and Ranchero era lapsed decades ago along with the fast back. Only the yuppie's pups and kittens would want one and the children of millennials will never be able to talk their failed to lunch parents still living with the grand parents into buying them one.

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mwmkravchenko (Nov 28, 2019)

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## TrickieDickie

I think the vehicle is butt ugly.

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## clavius

On some level I have to believe that was planned. Whatever else they may be, these are not stupid people. Materials like "bulletproof" and "unbreakable" glass are pretty well understood technology and hardly new. If they threw a rock at the window and it bounced off leaving no damage, it would not be getting replayed and discussed here or any of the 10,000 other places it's being rehashed. My guess was this was a publicity stunt calculated to get media attention and it seems to be working pretty well. 

And I agree, that is a seriously goofy looking truck.

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HobieDave (Nov 26, 2019),

jimfols (Nov 28, 2019)

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## wolfpaak

Nope, not for me. All the pickups that he used as examples were WAY better looking to me. But I'm an old fart.

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## Elizabeth Greene

It doesn't say "truck" to me, but I like it and I want one. I've turned down scrap runs because of the cost of gas. Jumping to electric would be a 10/10 win. Autopilot is a plus too. Between it and me we might make one decent driver. 

Want.

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## Jon

A perfectly fair  :Wink:  comparison of a Tesla Cybertruck and a Ford F-150.



Your browser does not support the video tag.

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Andyt (Nov 29, 2019),

Dragonhand (Nov 28, 2019),

Miloslav (Nov 28, 2019),

Rangi (Dec 1, 2019),

stubb (Nov 29, 2019),

YOUCARS (Nov 28, 2019)

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## desbromilow

is it fair when the tesla is the one which takes up the slack, then is rolling for the start?
would they have got the same results with the same tyres on the F150, and the F150 had the rolling start?

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high-side (Nov 30, 2019),

Miloslav (Nov 28, 2019)

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## mwmkravchenko

I grew up when a truck was for work. It hauled 4 x 8's and laughed at heavy loads. Heck we could haul 4 x 8's in the stationwagon to!

What I see getting called trucks these days is a joke. Four doors that cover more vehicle length than the box. Oh well. I can put a 9 foot long board inside my Toyota Matrix. And my "little" Toyota Tacoma has a 6 foot box. Larger than most full size trucks. Trucks! hah. Time to grow back into working vehicles and leave the pretenders with their overgrown mini station wagons be. Most everything else is going to pot so why not trucks to !

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suther51 (Nov 28, 2019),

will52100 (Nov 28, 2019)

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## suther51

Thing looks like another SUV, suburban unutility vehicle, did they totally miss the chevy avalanche with a nearly unusable bed that they had to copy the same bad design?????? To think outside the box, first take it off your head!!!

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## will52100

Not a fair test at all. One thing I know from personal experience with fords is that they are light on the rear. Put a bit of a load in it and see what happens.

And I for one am of the belief that they stopped making actual trucks when International stopped making pick ups.

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mwmkravchenko (Nov 30, 2019)

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## jdurand

Our current car is a 1999 Suzuki Grand Vitara with a piece of industrial carpet runner covering the back. MANY times that's been filled up with bags of cement, boards, bricks, ... 

Hardly ever have had the rear seats set up for humans.

Now that we're moving we'll be getting one of these
https://ladarymco.com/cars/4x4/5dv/about.php

Since "move in" on our house follows local custom, it will still need finish work. We'll need to put in floors (tile and laminate), railings for the all the stairs and balconies, wood tread & risers for the inside stairs (cast concrete), etc. Plus, the big warehouse store (Metro) is 48km away, so monthly trips to fill up with supplies.

On shopping trips we will normally be taking a friend with us, she doesn't drive and loves Metro. So, probably leave one back seat in human mode.

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## neilbourjaily

Recent articles compare the elon-pickup to a F-450 as far as towing is concerned.

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## bruce.desertrat

> is it fair when the tesla is the one which takes up the slack, then is rolling for the start?
> would they have got the same results with the same tyres on the F150, and the F150 had the rolling start?



Probably not. Electric vehicles have phenomenal low-end torque. A Fairer test would be "Hault the typical load an F-150 is called upon to do" then dump a half ton of cinderblocks and 10 bags of mortar in the back of the F150. The Tesla owner would forfeit in a heartbeat, it might scratch his pretty truck...

 :Wink:

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Jon (Nov 28, 2019),

mwmkravchenko (Nov 30, 2019)

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## Scrounga

People dont seem to realise that unlike internal combustion engines that develop their maximum torque at at certain revs, electric motors develop their maximum torque at 1 RPM. Thats why they invented diesel-electric trains. The Diesel engine drives a massive generator for the electric motors. 
The slack and rolling start had very little to do with it. The F150 has to build revs to get to maximum torque at say 1500 rpm and get that to the ground without breaking traction. The Tesla can apply maximum torque without the revs so has much more control as to how the torque is applied. Also you need to look at the weight distribution of the 2 vehicles. How much weight is over the rear axle of each vehicle as the F150 has very little weight on the back it has a very high chance of breaking traction. If you want to compare apples with apples put the Tesla drivetrain into the F150 and do it again or stick a ton in the back of the F150.

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Jon (Nov 28, 2019),

mwmkravchenko (Nov 30, 2019),

Rangi (Dec 1, 2019)

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## cmarlow

I have no idea how much the Tesla battery pack weighs or where is sits, nor do I know how much each vehicle weighs. 
Anyhow, a truck is not a tractor and is not really meant as a machine for towing. A truck is meant to carry a load and any extra weight on the rear axle robs the truck of payload capability. This means an empty truck has quite low traction. A truck towing a trailer is supposed to be carrying some of the trailer's load on the hitch. Even a tow truck is designed to lift at least part of the load it is hauling, either on the crane or on the stinger.
It would be more fair to compare how much weight they can carry as well as how large of a volume they can carry instead of how good they are at pretending to be tractors.

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## jdurand

image found on Peters Suppe

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cmarlow (Nov 29, 2019)

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## old kodger

to say nothing of just where the batteries are in the tesla truck. If they're over or around the rear wheels,and with drag tyres on the tesla, I wouldn't call that "fair" at all.

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## MeJasonT

Fake news - the tesla's windows would have popped out and everything. must be get at tesla day.

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## cmarlow

or if the Tesla is 4wd and the Ford is 2wd.

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## ncollar

That reminds me of power braking and old station wagon I had in the 70's. If the Ford rolled of it would do the same as the Tesla. I agree sick!

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## ncollar

> I grew up when a truck was for work. It hauled 4 x 8's and laughed at heavy loads. Heck we could haul 4 x 8's in the stationwagon to!
> 
> What I see getting called trucks these days is a joke. Four doors that cover more vehicle length than the box. Oh well. I can put a 9 foot long board inside my Toyota Matrix. And my "little" Toyota Tacoma has a 6 foot box. Larger than most full size trucks. Trucks! hah. Time to grow back into working vehicles and leave the pretenders with their overgrown mini station wagons be. Most everything else is going to pot so why not trucks to !



Pick ups are not made for work they are made to appease the women buyers.

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mwmkravchenko (Nov 30, 2019),

will52100 (Nov 30, 2019)

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## Duke_of_URL

DC motors have almost infinite torque. There's almost no way for the conventional truck to win that battle. That said, the Toyota can go places you'd never take an electric, like off-roading, that is unless you take your own big solar panels and don't mind being out there for weeks charging up your truck to get back home.

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## old kodger

And the river crossing might be interesting also

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## jdurand

> And the river crossing might be interesting also



Of course the river could be used to put out the Tesla.

Elon needs to come up with a new car using a sodium battery. And to make it light, a magnesium frame. MUCH more "thrilling" to drive. For a body, use nitrocellulose, worked great for model airplanes and the Hindenburg.

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## MeJasonT

@jdurand
, I have a sneaky suspicion you work for Tesla, I heard a rumour that was there next design.

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## old kodger

NITROCELLULOSE, is gun cotton, yup could make all the difference, if you could also introduce a detonator, TNT= tri-nitro-toluene. how to blow yourself from a..hole to breakfast time? play at dissolving paper hand towels in nitric acid.

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## jdurand

An ignighter would work better than a detonator, nitrocellulose is't a high explosive. Actually, a weak form was used to paint model airplane wings to pull the skin tight. It's also known as single base powder for those who partake of shooting sticks, when in need of some NC lacquor with none to be found I simply dissolved some single base powder in acetone. Presto, flammible paint. 

I should probably mention that I was at an ATF approved facility with my explosives license in my pocket. Do not try this at home without proper permits, wavers, personal safety equipment, $42,000,000,000 insurance, and your own bunker.

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## wizard69

I actually liked the presentation. As for the windows everything eventually breaks. 

as for the truck itself, I love the concept of an electric truck. The problem isn’t the motors and really comes down to one thing, that is the batteries. They currently are not suited for long trips and might never be. What we need is a truck with a small nuclear reactor for a power source. That would solve the battery problem. 

what this truck would be good for is the contractor handling local jobs day in and out. In that regard this truck would put money in the bank for anybody using the truck. The savings in maintenance and fuel would be huge.

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## old kodger

JUST SO! AND THEY GET PICKY ABOUT IT TOO

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## Hoosiersmoker

The truck on the left has no chance. It could have had a 5 mph rolling start and the Tesla would have ripped it backwards instantly. The pickup has to get to RPMs to generate the necessary torque to pull hard. The Tesla has 100% torque at 0 motor rpm. Not to mention the weight transfer advantage. You can see the Tesla "squat" as soon as it took the load. The pickup being a Ford was the biggest problem though  :Lol:

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## animal12

probably not

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## old kodger

To make it fair, maybe it should have been a contest between a similarly weighted steam vehicle they also turn out max torque at zero revs

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## krefior

I think not even being in 4 wheel drive on the Ford is probably the biggest unfairness, The Tesla is truly all wheel drive, and the front Axle is not even engaged on the truck, so 1 wheel drive. 

But maybe that's the point, the Tesla is always true 4 wheel drive. I wonder if I'll ever be able to get past the fact it looks like something from a video game...

I really rue the day where there's a Tesla supercharger close to my favorite camp ground, no let's not do that. Wonder how much a "I ran out of juice" tow is from 13,000' up on Mosquito pass? Probably more than a years worth of Gas...

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## rallen

I (an electro-mechanical tech) watched the unveiling video with my brother-in-law (a real manufacturing engineer), and both of us thought the same things: they saved production/sale costs by making it planar, stainless (no paint), aero (fugly shape), and light (military grade minimalism). I've seen some breakdowns on projected operating costs compared to a Ford F-150. Worst case the Cybertruck saves $18K over 5 years, best case over $19K. With those savings, I forsee a lot of companies buying these by the carrier load for their fleets. 

Elon did tweet later that they will have an option for solar cells, so just sitting in the sun they will charge up about 16-19 miles a day. For a work truck on the farm, or camping in the mountains, that's not bad.

Yes, I know the aesthetics aren't for everyone, but the first vehicles were eyesores to people used to horse and buggies, too.

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## Frank S

I doubt if more than 15% of the F150s were ever sold to anyone who uses them as work trucks in the rural farm type environment most are sold to fleets used a company trucks and are just driven around or to people who have no idea what a truck was designed and built for, mostly just weekenders and city dwellers who will use them to go hunting or to haul their play toys around with. Any truck sold to farmers or companies that use their trucks as work trucks opt for the heavier duty F250s and the super duty 350 through 550s While it is true enough that a 150 size class of today has a higher load and towing cap. then many 250 class truck of 30 years ago and more than the 350 size class did of the 60's, everything else has upgraded as well. 
I have an old 1963 Dodge D300 that in its day was the boss hoss, but by todays standards the F150 or the Tesla Comino would walk it to the edge of the field and leave it in a ditch 6 ways from Sunday and back again. 
The engine in my 93 F350 is in its 4th truck and has at least half a mill miles on it My 91 F250 has 244K on it both are those noisy diesels and really aren't all that powerful but they will go on forever, Will the Duracell in the Tesla last that long?

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## cmarlow

A lot of modern cars are pretty ugly too. I don't quite know why everything on the road has to look like it was an escaped extra from a Transformers movie.

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## rallen

I do know how a lot of you feel about the looks of the Cybertruck. When the new "aero" vehicles started coming out I couldn't tell them apart at all. But when I started to learn about physics, and aerodynamics, and how most of the horsepower of a vehicle is used up just trying to push through the air once it's going over 40 MPH, I realized why aerodynamic design is so important. 

There is a 100 mpg car, The Aerocivic. It has NO distinguishing features save that it's the only one like it on the road.

As for the specs on the Tesla truck, they are almost twice that of my sisters Durango. Electric motors can usually be rebuilt, and battery packs can be replaced, as can motor controllers. So unless there's some real damage done to the chassis, rebuilding it shouldn't be that bad, cost wise.

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## Frank S

I still can't tell one melted Hersey bar car form another 
As for Aero designed cars look backwards to the 30s & 40S Their main problem was drive train technology and braking technologies the coops were sleek while the luxury models had just about everything a person would want or need.

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## Frank S

As far as pickups are concerned I haven't accepted or learned to like the sloped low forehead look of any pickup built after 1999 and wont own one of the newer ones unless I buy it to resale That is providing if I buy one I can get enough of the cheesy electronics functioning long enough to sell them.

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## old kodger

Franks said,
"The engine in my 93 F350 is in its 4th truck and has at least half a mill miles on it My 91 F250 has 244K on it both are those noisy diesels and really aren't all that powerful but they will go on forever, Will the Duracell in the Tesla last that long? "

I'm with you frank, I still run an old 1985 Nissan MK 3.3ltr diesel, .....wouldn't pull the skin off of a rice pudding, but it'll still be going when I;m not.

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## MeJasonT

Does anyone see the next green disaster here.
They want us to switch to electric vehicles to save the planet, they want to protect the worlds oceans.

So the best idea they can come up with is to mine a carcinogen off the sea ocean floor to make batteries

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49759626

The battery enclosure will undoubtedly be made from plastic and the whole unit is going to be non recyclable
coming from an Engineering background i think the whole idea is **** (poop, punji, excrement, turd here we go again trying to overcome the foul language spell checker) - oh thank the heavens for narcissists and millennial's the future is so safe in their hands - NOT


@rallen
 the sleek aero design has been around for decades and last saw success with Delorean, i some how got a whiff that it was supposed to have an electric variant capable of time travel. I say Whiff as the third generation of time travel vehicle did its own composting for power (in back to the future 3).
Sir Clive Sinclair also tried to produce electric vehicles so unfortunately Elon its not an original idea. Oh where would Microsoft be today without stealing ideas and semiconductor architecture from Sir Clive. It is for this reason i'm actually an avid supporter of Elon Musk's inventions even if they do end up in failure - its not as if other great inventors haven't led the way in some shape or form. Now where did i put my apple star trek tricorder.

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## Hoosiersmoker

So in order to charge the cars and trucks of today, we still use coal or gas fired generators or hydroelectric which requires a major disruption of waterways, and God knows what effect that has already had on the environment and plant / animals. Making the majority of components out of plastic props the fossil fuel industry even more not to mention battery production increases (more plastic). What's the real solution? Is there one? Does anyone have more answers than questions? Obviously not me!  :Smile:

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## mklotz

> So in order to charge the cars and trucks of today, we still use coal or gas fired generators or hydroelectric which requires a major disruption of waterways, and God knows what effect that has already had on the environment and plant / animals. Making the majority of components out of plastic props the fossil fuel industry even more not to mention battery production increases (more plastic). What's the real solution? Is there one? Does anyone have more answers than questions? Obviously not me!



Horrendous tax penalties on any children after the first two would be a good step.

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## MeJasonT

The west seems to have a weird way of taxing people.
Child support was intended to stop children being starved and ending up on the street and yet the benefit is now being used by middle class families to pay for Nursery places so that both parents can work so they can save up for 3 holidays a year. The majority of whom are employed in the civil service and are some of the best payed in the country (UK) as servants lets not forget. Meanwhile a single mum on benefit who can barely support herself is having to work 3 jobs to keep from slipping int debt whilst also having her benefits cut.
The same middle classes have good pensions to look forward to and many are able to retire early, The workers in society are expected to work until they drop and wont get much of a pension to speak of.

The NHS is overwhelmed with work (mainly working class sick people). The powers that be are either to stupid or just stupid to realise the failure of society in this day and age. Our election should have an element of using a taser which can be used on those you choose not to like the policies of the one left standing will have deserved to have the leadership position. Loads of talk but no listening - stuck on transmit as we used to say in the mob.

I don't think the greens have a clue either, they mobbed London for a march on climate change. all arriving by car/train (eg. not on foot from Scotland). The thing that was most evident was the number of the protesters with mobile phones, the latest model no doubt. where was their old phone. After the march the London borough council had to clean the streets of all the plastic bottles and food containers they had discarded.

Yep the climate is changing and yes its heating up but more research needs made into the planets life cycle as much as it does listening to head banger bleating on about mans destruction of the planet. Its funny how only organisations looking for evidence of mans impact on the planet are being funded, if you only research one solution you will only find the answer you are trying to predict.

The whole seasonal year has shifted, we used to have harsh weather in November December which is now more like January, February. The spring used to start late march, April which is now more like end of May. didn't the Indonesian tsunami jolt the earth on its axis as they reported at the time.
There has been an ice age every 50,000 years on average and the last one was due 17 years ago. Tell the scientists to shove it up their pipes, its obvious to me whats happening - why don't they try to debunk those facts. Oh that's right they are being funded by governments who have a vested interest as they are taxing us on the effects of climate change.

We could go 100% green tomorrow and gain 100% unemployment into the bargain = this needs managed not disorganised fire fighting.

back to electric cars, working class people tend to buy second hand cars with an average price of between £1000 and £5000. when will electric cars become affordable, when the batteries have expired?

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## Frank S

1963 was the first year the Earth's population increased by over 60 million 1967 the increase was over 70 million 1982 80 million then the highest increase per year happened in 1988 with an increase of over 92.9 million then the increase began to decline slightly with the lowest increase being in 2001 of 79.1 million back up to 79.9 and 80.7 in 2005 reaching an increase of 84.7 again in 2013 and a slight steady decrease in the increase ever since in 2018 the increase was 83 million with 2019 being on par to be slightly less than 83 million. 
But that still brings the global population to over 7,7 billion.
Even with all of the wars famine and other carnage through out history there has never been a significant decrease in the global population 
It took thousands of years to reach 1 billion in 1804 then 123 years to reach 2 billion 1927, only 33 years to reach 3 billion 1960. 14 years after that 4 billion 1974,n13 years to reach 5 billion 1987. 12 year for 6 billion 1999 the 7 billion by 2011 and most likely 8 billion by 2022. Even though the increase and the population goes up every year the % of increase rate is much lower than ever being only around 1.08% but that is like compounded interest the highest %age increase being back in 1968&69 of 2.09% 
However none of this takes away form the fact that the greener everyone tries to do things the browner the world is going to be eventually.
All of these green technologies are still going to contribute to consuming natural resources which may have taken millions of years to produce.
The planet has been around for billions of years life on it as far as we have been able to determine a mere few dozen millions How many times during those few dozen millions has the planet self corrected? or undergone a catastrophic change from outside? 
If today tomorrow 10 or 100 years from now another complete make over were to happen and I believe it will. It is going to take place no matter what.
if the human and other life forms population were to be reduced to less than 1% of what it is today in a few 1000 years or less the world will be right back where is now

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MeJasonT (Dec 6, 2019)

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## MeJasonT

Completely agree.
when i was at school in the 70s and 80s the population of the UK was 58 million, it now stands at 66 million, 10% of which (6 million live in Scotland and apparently give them the right to decide Brexit - that's if 100% of Scots voted to remain). Makes their argument a little flawed don't you think. I digress.

And to think they wonder why the UK resources are stretched and that we (the Brexiteers) want to control immigration, amongst other things.
a major one being ran by Brussels, paying 18 billion a year to be a member of the Euro club and being starved out of manufacturing in favour of the land locked euro partners. who has ever heard of an island that is restricted on the number of fish it can catch or the number of ships it can build.

Frank we can easily point to the source of the worlds problems - capitalism.
so on that note who benefits from electric cars again. What happens when we get hover cars, our government is already crapping itself over diy Drones.

It may surprise you to know that the EU is looking to bring in legislation on the use of 3D/FDM plastic printers.

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## MeJasonT

Im still gob smacked that no one has thought to retrofit pertrol/derv cars with electric motor and battery packs, wouldn't that get dirty fuel cars off the roads quicker.
Why have Hydrogen cars been shelved in favour of battery ones, no money to be made from the average Joe perhaps

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## Elizabeth Greene

> Im still gob smacked that no one has thought to retrofit pertrol/derv cars with electric motor and battery packs, wouldn't that get dirty fuel cars off the roads quicker.
> Why have Hydrogen cars been shelved in favour of battery ones, no money to be made from the average Joe perhaps



There are several reasons. The biggest one is that Hydrogen isn't a green fuel. Hydrogen made from water with electrolysis _could be_ low emissions if the source for electricity was clean enough, but the vast majority of hydrogen today is cracked out of natural gas. Combine that with difficulty in compressing and storing it, much lower energy density per volume than gasoline, and lack of lubricity in the engine and it's not a promising technology. The biggest advantage of it over electric is that you can refill tanks faster than you can charge, and the physics of compressed gasses make that tricky.

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MeJasonT (Dec 6, 2019)

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## Elizabeth Greene

> Horrendous tax penalties on any children after the first two would be a good step.



The second derivative of population growth is already sharply negative and is decreasing further as we put more resources into educating poor rural populations. It's a pretty big problem in the developed world, with many countries already breeding at less than replacement rates.

There is no need for a tax; the result you want is already happening.

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## MeJasonT

@Elizabeth Greene


Hi Elizabeth,
i have always understood it that building a hydrogen engine was feasible and had in fact been accomplished in the 1980s but was snaffled by the oil companies to prevent such engines being developed. The issue of charging cars with gas is no longer an issue as many cars have been converted to run on gas (butane i think ?) which would be just as volatile as hydrogen one would imagine.
You appear to speak with a voice of authority on the subject so i'm curious what your credentials are and would very much like to hear your opinion on the retrofit idea i also posed.

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## bruce.desertrat

Hydrogen cars have largely been shelved because it's a much bigger infrastructure project to deploy a hydrogen distribution system than to build out an electric recharger system. After all the 'last mile' of electricity is a solved problem; getting chargers in place merely requires the manufacturers to settle on a %!$@#** standard. Hydrogen requires new infrastructure *everywhere*.

Making plastic from the 'fossil fuel' industry is not really a huge environmental problem, it's the 'fuel' part that's the problem. Building a new Solar energy plant is now vastly cheaper than building a new coal plant and gaining on if not cheaper than natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_o...city_by_source

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MeJasonT (Dec 6, 2019)

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## Frank S

Well there is always Brown's gas, which is a slightly unstable separation of the 2 elements of water. 
2 guys used to rent a small out building from me where they were experimenting with a more sustainable way to create the gas.
I machined many of the parts for their catalytic converter they built. One time they were making the gas and using it in a torch to heat and almost melt steel with. 
Eventually they had a small 4 cylinder car engine running on it by changing out the injectors. 
I was going to build them a hydraulic dynamo so they could do some real world testing of their engine running on the stuff but Tom's grant money ran out and Chris had already sank his life savings in the project. 
Tom had applied for several patents Not sure if he ever received any for his design to extract the gas from the water at much lower electrical requirements than anyone else had been able to do 
He had the energy requirements down low enough that more gas was produced than consumed in making it but not enough to viably run or do much anything else.
Tom died under less than stellar circumstances one while giving a lecture on his designs a few years later.
Note I have most of the design sketches that Tom and Chris had made of their converter but none of the actual electronics involved 
the converter is kind of simple just a boat load of thin SS plates perforated with small holes and plastic separating rings all housed in a PVC tube encased in a steel jacket with half the plates being the cathode and half being the anode there are several catalysts which can be used look up making hydrogen and oxygen from water with electricity. 
Then you need a bubbler for the gas to pass through to prevent back flash. 
The clean out refilling and storage is where the big problems come in.

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MeJasonT (Dec 6, 2019)

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## bruce.desertrat

Looking up Brown's Gas on wii leads to this amusing sentence: "This mixture may also be referred to as Knallgas (Scandinavian and German Knallgas: "bang-gas"),"

:-)

I do think this should be an obvious means to manage the 'no solar power at night' problem; use some of the electricity generated by a solar installation to crack water, then burn the O2 and H2 back into water at night. This does run into some issues namely that the places with the best potential for solar power..tend to be the places with the least water.

Another stray thought...why has no one ever made a diesel-electric truck? It works really well for ships and trains, is there some lower bound of efficiency or power that would make it not useful for small vehicles? Even conventional hybrid cars, afaik, alternately power the vehicle via the gas engine and batteries.

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MeJasonT (Dec 6, 2019)

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## old kodger

> Im still gob smacked that no one has thought to retrofit pertrol/derv cars with electric motor and battery packs, wouldn't that get dirty fuel cars off the roads quicker.
> Why have Hydrogen cars been shelved in favour of battery ones, no money to be made from the average Joe perhaps



Hi MeJasomT,
Some 25 or so years ago, a man in Gosford (a small town north of Sydney Australia) was running a small one man business converting Subaru Foresters from petrol to electricity.
A very close associate of mine actually went as far as buying a new Forester, expressly to have this man change it over, unfortunately before that could happen, the "black hats" informed the guy doing the retrofit, that if he did not cease and desist with his business, they would see to it that he ceased and desisted with his life.
He went out of business overnight, and would not speak further about it, leaving my friend with a Subaru that still ran on petrol.

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MeJasonT (Dec 6, 2019)

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## MeJasonT

just as i thought.

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## Crusty

If he were to put the Mr Fusion reactor from Doc's Delorean in it maybe at 88 mph it would turn into something other than a charging station.

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## krefior

If you're just storing energy (which is what you are doing with Hydrogen, Browns gas, etc.) it's hard to beat the power /weight ratio of Lithium technology.

Gasoline, Diesel, even Coal are true fuels. Most everything else still requires more power in then out, so just storing.

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## jdurand

re: Hydrogen, I explain it as hydrogen in this case is just a battery. You either crack water with electricity given to you free by unicorns or you get it from fossil fuel.

IF you could get pure hydrogen out of a well, then it would be a fossil fuel.

Mentioning natural gas, the new Russian gas fields provide a nice service to their customers... The natural gas supplied for burning is pretty close to pure methane. All the non-burnable impurities are removed before the gas goes in the pipeline.

Of course Russia then has a nice supply of these things (like helium) if you wish to buy them...separate from the fuel gas.  :Smile:

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## old kodger

The question of fusion, (or fission) reactors in cars leaves us with a real problem in the direction of terrorists.Why blow up one building when you can delete the whole damn district.

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## Frank S

> Looking up Brown's Gas on wii leads to this amusing sentence: "This mixture may also be referred to as Knallgas (Scandinavian and German Knallgas: "bang-gas"),"
> 
> :-)
> 
> I do think this should be an obvious means to manage the 'no solar power at night' problem; use some of the electricity generated by a solar installation to crack water, then burn the O2 and H2 back into water at night. This does run into some issues namely that the places with the best potential for solar power..tend to be the places with the least water.
> 
> Another stray thought...why has no one ever made a diesel-electric truck? It works really well for ships and trains, is there some lower bound of efficiency or power that would make it not useful for small vehicles? Even conventional hybrid cars, afaik, alternately power the vehicle via the gas engine and batteries.



Actually A diesel electric truck would revolutionize the transportation industry. Since you could have electric motors located in every wheel of both the truck and the trailer .
I used to have conversations with some friends of mine about this. The way I saw it since an electric motor develops near instant torque can be controlled through the RPM range from zero to what ever. electric motors can be used as regenerative braking as well so having a 35 hp electric motor in every wheel of the truck and trailer would be more available power than a 600 hp diesel feeding a transmission. 
Loose the entire gear train and you have a significant weight savings. design the generator with 12 or 24 poles or even 36 poles design the diesel engine to run at 400 to 600 RPM for its best output and Idles at 100, ( I have one that runs at 600 wide open.) add a battery module to the tractor and one to the trailer. Let the engine just idle while driving on the batteries or rev up and cut in when needed recharging the batteries and adding the additional energy to pull the long hills. going down hill the wheels are going to charge the batteries.
Back when I used to have these conversations the capacitor battery cells were unknown where as now the same battery pack to power my idea would weigh less than 1/3 of what it would have then. I can visualize an 80,000lb rig getting as much as 20 MPG at times and 10 MPG at its worst usage

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## Frank S

> The question of fusion, (or fission) reactors in cars leaves us with a real problem in the direction of terrorists.Why blow up one building when you can delete the whole damn district.



I don't remember which Clive Cussler novel it was in but in one of the books the Japanese had installed nuclear bombs in the Air-conditioning compressors of a freighter full of cars which they had planned to detonate once the cars were circulated through out the cities Either Dirk Pitt or his replacement Steve Austin and crew saved the day as usual. Of course the book is fiction, but think of how real it could be with a million fission reactors running around in a few major cities at the same time especially with so many features in cars today completely controlled by their computers and most are even connected via wifi now days

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## MeJasonT

Frank, Clive Cussler is purely fictional never mind his books.
He is supposed to be a world renown salvage expert as well as a writer, I have never heard so much poop come out on one man. Bob Ballard is another. They have both made ridiculous claims regarding how ships have sank and where they would be found only to be proved wrong on more occasions than I can remember. They are both made out to be hero's by the tabloids when it comes to locating wrecks and both treat their teams really badly giving them no recognition at all - just saying.

My favourite quote at the minute is one an old boy in Ohio when he was interviewed by John Saunders at NYCCNC. The guy said "its like a turtle on a fence post, you just know it didn't get there on its own". He was describing how he had built his business from scratch having escaped Germany's concentration camps during the war and now manufactures more than 1 billion part a year - yep that's right 1 billion machined parts. They make contacts and clips for electrical isolators and contactor's.

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## Toolmaker51

> is it fair when the tesla is the one which takes up the slack, then is rolling for the start?
> would they have got the same results with the same tyres on the F150, and the F150 had the rolling start?



The Tesla probably has far greater weight over rear tires [battery pack], plus electric motors once energized are producing torque. 
Battery pack of an Model 3 model weighs about 1800 pounds...also unknown if the Tesla 2 or 4 wheel drive model.

I'm not a particular fan, but I admire pure nerve and the scale he operates at. Where would we be, sans innovators and rebels?

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