The Story of Peak Whiskey

The comment I got on yesterday's post about the 150th birthday of oil makes me think I have to talk about it one more time. The comment says the idea that the Earth will stop producing oil is nonsense. And the comment is right. The Earth will not stop producing oil. Except that is not the problem either.

Let me tell the story of peak whiskey. A hundred or so million years ago some guys set up a still that can make 1 barrel of whiskey per day. Then they build a giant glass to hold all this whiskey with a spigot down on the side to get it out. But something happens and it never gets used. Just stays locked up somewhere with the still on. Each day for a hundred million years that still pumps another barrel into the glass.

Until now. Now is when a down on his luck barkeep finds that giant glass of whiskey, holding billions of barrels of whiskey and that old still churning out another barrel every day. So he sets it up in the attic of his bar. When he opens the spigot just a little bit, a geyser of whiskey comes shooting out. Remember that the fuller a tank, the higher the pressure at the bottom and the more liquid will come out per second from a spigot.

So that old barkeep starts selling whiskey on the cheap. It is good whiskey but he has more supply than he can sell, so he sets the price low. People come and buy that whiskey up. Every year there are more and more people wanting that cheap whiskey. Now two things happen. As the demand goes up, the amount coming out the spigot per day is not enough. So the barkeep just cracks the spigot a bit wider and he meets the demand again. But over the decades as the whiskey glass starts to drain, the pressure at the bottom drops and the rate out the spigot drops too. But again the barkeep just cracks it a bit wider to compensate.

Decades go by. The pressure slowly drops more and more as the level in the glass goes down. The demand keeps going up and up. The spigot opens wider and wider. Until one day, the old barkeep goes to open it up a little more, and he can't. The spigot is already open all the way, far as it can go. The still up top is still pumping in a barrel a day. But the demand is now 80 million barrels a day, so the production rate is just too small to even notice. There is still lots of whiskey in the glass. It is about half full, so there are still billions of barrels of whiskey in there. It is just that he can't get it out faster than 85 million barrels a day.

His customers start wanting 90 million barrels a day. And every day the pressure is slowly going down. He has a bigger and bigger demand, and his supply per day is dropping. So what does he do? You got it. He raises the price. Because now he is not in a market where the supply is way more than the demand. Now there is more demand in the market than supply. Over the next decades, there is still whiskey to be had, millions and millions of barrels a year, but not enough to satisfy everybody. So the price just goes up and up and up.

Now the situation with oil is about the same. The Earth is still making oil as fast as ever, but that is only barrels a day. May as well be zero. We have billions and billions of barrels of oil still in the ground. But the rate we can get it out is flattening and will probably begin going slowly down. We will extract 80 million barrels a day for a good while still.

Now the idea is this: beginning about now, the supply of barrels per day is not going up any more. It will probably start going down. At the same time, China, India, Brazil and the rest of the world want to use more of it. A lot more. The result is going to be like with the whiskey: higher prices for oil and therefore gas. Even though the Earth will not stop making it and we still have billions of barrels of it. The shortage we are going to have is extraction rate.

These phases are common. Once you get a little older, you see that things come and go. A good example is with computer speed. Fifty years ago there were no computers. Then they invent them, and for about 30 years they got faster and faster. Remember in the 80's fast machines were a couple of Megahertz? That constant increase lasted a long time, but now it has stopped. Have you noticed how for about the last 5 years the speed hasn't gone much above 3 GigaHertz? That's because the engineers hit a wall ... making chips much faster than 3 GHz is not technically feasible right now.

But notice what happened. The computer industry changed course. When they couldn't make their chips faster, they made them smaller and put more than one together. Now you can buy quad core chips. Four chips, all at the same 3 GHz speed of five or six years ago. The lesson here for the auto industry is that times can change and they do change. The times of cheap oil and gas are on their way out. But that doesn't have to mean the end of the auto industry.

They have to adapt to the new course, like the computer industry did when chip speed stopped increasing. Any software company in the year 2000 that was developing a program that would only run on a 10 GHz single core chip would be out of business, because they were wedded to a course that stopped running. I think that is what is happening to Detroit. Detroit has always played by the rules that oil is cheap, and those rules are changing. If Detroit can't adapt to the new rules, they will vanish like the software company that needed 10 GHz single cores.

Happy 150th, Oil! So Long, and Thanks for Modern Civilization

August. 27, 1859 the first oil well in the world was sunk in Pennsylvania. Over the following 150 years, the energy provided by oil has allowed the development of cars, highways, plastics and and modern agricultural revolution. Now we are facing the end of that era. It looks like global oil production is now at an all time high - a phenomenon known as peak oil. From now on, the total oil produced every day will go down. Whether the decline is fast or slow remains to be seen, but down it will go. This means we will be forced to find a different path for the future. Either we must find new energy sources or learn to use less. In a time of concern over rising carbon dioxide levels we must make sure that any future change in energy sources is not a big CO2 producer.

I think the recently passed 150th birthday of oil is something we should all be aware of. The role that oil and modern fuels play in our lives is enormously important and despite that it is all to easy to not be aware of their impact. Better to at least know by name what you depend on!

NItrogen in Your Tires

The picture shows liquid nitrogen being poured ... that super cold stuff you see in science demos. Air is about 80% nitrogen. Why would you want it in your tires, and how would you get it in there?

Both nitrogen and oxygen as found in the atmosphere form biatomic molecules. However nitrogen molecules are larger than oxygen molecules. The idea is this causes nitrogen to leak more slowly meaning you can go longer between tire refills without problems. Also because natural air has water in it and pure nitrogen does not, the nitrogen filled tires are effected less by heat. Finally, the oxygen in air can over time degrade the tires.

It is possible to find tire shops that offer pure nitrogen fills if you just look. To read more about nitrogen in your tires, follow the link!

Guest Post: Adventures in Hypermiling

Hello everybody! I´m Gen.

Geoff had to deal with an unexpected power outage and subsequent disasters so he asked me to do a guest post. I hope you all bear with me, because I´m not the expert that Geoff is. In fact I´m pretty much an all-around car disaster, as you´re about to see.

This is the story of the first (and last?) time I ever hypermiled.

I was 16 years old and plain old crazy just like all 16 year-olds get when they first get their driver´s license. My dad lent me the car to go to band practice but I decided to visit my best friend instead. Of course Dad probably knew that I would be tempted to step out and run away from band after signing the attendance sheet, but as the tank was basically on empty he thought he could trust me. Little did he know to what extent I was prepared to go.

The first couple of miles I tried to go really easy on the gas pedal, but that meant that the car went Slow, way to slow for a girl on the move like me. Teenagers do not like to go slow. Slow is neither cool nor gratifying.

Then I came upon the insight that coasting through intersections would really cut down on the stopping and starting. It worked like a dream for the first few stop signs in a quiet residential neighborhood. The highlight of my ride was when I successfully stared down an elderly lady driving a minivan. She might have technically had the right of way, but I obviously ruled the road.

The next tactic I tried was shifting into neutral and coasting down some hills. That was good but it didn´t really save that much gas, and by now the gas gage was alarming. So I turned off the engine on the next hill. Now that was gratifying. Thanks to the rolling hills in my home town I was able to coast for almost a minute before turning on the car.

A mile before my friend´s house I had to turn off onto a steep gravel road. Everything was working fine, and it looked like I would be able to reach my destination before the tank ran out. I should have counted my blessings and left it at that. But teenagers never do.

Inspired by my god-like powers of fuel economy, and gifted with a mpg that would make hybrids weep, I tried coasting down the gravel road with the engine turned off. To my credit it did work until the first switchback turn, when I used up the hydraulic pressure in the brakes. Then I tried to start the car, and the engine wouldn´t turn on. Then I had to take another switchback turn and realized that the steering wheel didn´t work so well with the engine turned off.

Fortunately the crash wasn´t so bad for me, the car or the tree. With the help of my best friend, her brother and his friends we managed to get me and the car home. However, explaining to my Dad how on earth I managed to get wood chips into the front bumper and why there were pine needles in the back seat was quite a task.

To summarize I highly recommend that all of Geoff´s readers think twice before using advanced hypermiling techniques, especially on switch-backed gravel roads.

TTFN!

Aerodynamic Wheel Covers

Fancy wheel covers with swirls or spinny things can look nice, but they have a fuel economy cost. At higher speeds, the dominant friction force that your vehicle has to spend gas fighting against is air resistance. Cars with big open wheel wells or wheel covers that are not smooth and flat are generating extra turbulence and drag. If your car already has pretty smooth covers, replacing them may not make much difference, but if you have something tricked out and drive fast a lot, you could improve your fuel economy a couple of percent by switching to something smoother. This thread has a fellow claiming a 4% improvement after replacing his wheel covers with large pizza pans!

Check Your Tire Pressure

Try to always keep your tires inflated to the recommended pressure. Under inflated tires will suffer premature wear and need to be replaced sooner. They will degrade the handling (and thus safety) of your vehicle. And of course, they will lower your fuel economy. This video clip from Edmunds shows how you can easily keep an eye on your own tire pressure. The most important lesson? You can't tell by looking if your tire pressure is slightly too low. You have to check the pressure using the right gauge.

Could a Motorcycle Be an Option?

If you are looking to save on gas, why not consider a motorcycle? Due to their low weight, they have potential to use much less fuel. Two things working against motorcycle fuel economy are the fact that most have very high power to weight ratios and run their engines at RPMs much too high to be efficient. Also motorcycles have a bad aerodynamic profile. But if you get a bike with a small engine (say 50cc) and drive it slowly to avoid air resistance, you can easily get close to 1.00 gallon per hundred miles.

They are riskier to drive though. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2006 the fatality rate per mile was 3 times higher for motorcycles than cars. Also the cargo and passenger capacity is much less. There is also the inconvenience of uncomfortable weather, like rain or extreme cold.

If you find yourself making a lot of solo trips without cargo or passengers in good weather and calm traffic you might be able to save a lot on gas by making them driving slowly on your small bike. You could buy the bike in addition to maintaining your old vehicle. You have lots of used scooter and small bike options for under $3000. Why not think about it?

Smaller Vehicles Designed for Maximum Utility

We are at the last in our series. The purpose of a car is to move passengers and their cargo. If we can design the smallest, lightest car that does this, we will get better fuel economy. However to meet standards of comfort and provide sufficient cargo capacity it is not possible to just miniaturize everything. The idea is to rearrange the interior space of the car to make the space inside as usable as possible while keeping the overall shape as tightly fit to the interior as possible. Some of the techniques that can be used are illustrated in the Mazda Washu concept.

The Washu has features such as steer by wire, which allows reduction of the steering column. Additionally the steering wheel can stow away to provide even more space when parked. The beltline is widened outwards to give more interior space. The feel of roominess is enhanced by putting windows everywhere possible. The rearmost seats can be efficiently folded down to carry long cargo. The rear cargo door consists of a combination of a hatchback and a tailgate that slides straight down vertically (instead of swiveling on a hinge to be parallel with the ground) to make it as easy as possible to load bulky freight. The cabin roof is arched to open up a little more volume.

Design attention like this can open up more space for passengers and cargo without needing to make the overall vehicle larger. This means that there is less structure per usable functionality, and that in turn means carrying around less metal with you. The result is a savings on gas.

Lighter Construction with Composites and Lighter Metals

Here is number six in our series looking at fuel economy technologies. If a vehicle can lower its weight it will be able to run with less fuel. There are two main reasons for this. One is that the mechanical friction suffered by the vehicle is proportional to the weight. A heavier vehicle has to spend more fuel fighting more friction. Note that this does not apply to the aerodynamic air resistance friction that begins to really bite at higher speeds. The air resistance does not increase with vehicle weight, assuming the shape of the body stays the same. The other is the investment in kinetic energy to speed up the vehicle. The amount of kinetic energy needed to reach a given speed is proportional to the mass. So to speed up a heavier car, you have to burn more fuel. Then when the car slows down or stops, all of this energy is lost, mainly as heat in the brakes. Heavier car equals greater loss in this way.



The video above explains the Rocky Mountain Institute's Hypercar concept. It is a car made of only fourteen panels of carbon fiber composite. The carbon fiber has half the mass of steel. Because there are only 14 pieces the overall strength of the body is greater than if it were made of steel. The result is a much more fuel efficient vehicle.

NuVinci Continuously Variable Planetary Transmission

The transmission is the connection between the speed of the engine and the speed of the vehicle. Conventional transmissions provide a series of gears. Each gear has a fixed ratio between engine speed and vehicle speed. If you wish to go at a given speed and your transmission has for example five gears the engine has to run at one of five speeds. Each engine is most fuel efficient at exactly one specific RPM. If none of the five speeds is at that RPM, your engine will not be able to drive you at your chosen speed as efficiently as possible.

Continuously variable transmissions provide a range of ratios between engine RPM and driveshaft rotation (vehicle speed). This allows the engine to always run at its most fuel efficient RPM. Changing vehicle speed is accomplished by changing the transmission gearing ratio instead of the engine RPM.



There have been many implementations of continuous variable transmissions using a variety of techniques. Good old Wikipedia has a list of automobiles using them. Although automakers have only really been getting serious about their use in the last five years or so. Fallbrook Technologies has recently been developing a new type : the NuVinci. Watch the video above to see how it works. I think it is an ingenious mechanical system. This is a planetary continuously variable transmission. The name comes from Leonardo da Vinci, who first invented continuously variable transmissions 500 years ago. And Detroit has only seen the value about 5 years ago. Oh well, better late then never.