[ExI] Automotive problems

[hkhenson]

At 09:40 AM 2/1/2009, Mirco wrote:
>Il 30/01/2009 18.27, Henrique Moraes Machado (CI) ha scritto:
>>Painlord> Germany, USA, France, Italy all they want help/bail out their
>>car sector
>>>so it will survive the crisis. The problem is overproduction but if
>>>they all do the same, the overproduction will continue.
>>>So, herd mentality is not only in the market, as BillK said, but also
>>>in the government.
>
>>The problem with the auto industry is not overproduction but
>>underselling. The production volume was ok until people stopped buying.
>
>The problem is people have not and had no enough money to buy the 
>same number of cars and home and all other stuff.
>The housing bubble gave them the impression (an illusion) to be able 
>to buy homes, gain money from them and be able to afford the new 
>cars (and other stuff).

snip

The oil bubble (to a large extent based on the reality of peak oil 
production) is a major reason things came apart.

I know how to fix that, but it's a hard sell.

You can make liquid fuels out of water and air at a cost of about 100 
MW/1000 bbls/day.  (Conversion capture is about 56% of energy in to 
liquid fuel out.)

So an installed 100 GW would make a million bbls of synthetic oil a 
day.  Since the US uses about 20 Mbbls a day 2000 Gw or 2 TW would do 
the job.  The US is roughly 20% of the world demand, so 10 TW would 
replace it all--make that 20 TW for energy growth in China and 
India.  (World energy in all forms now is about 15 TW.)

The only source that scales to this level is space based solar 
power.  Installed at a TW or two per year, it doesn't take long.

I have been talking about the engineering details here and other 
places for a year but there isn't much interest.  People up to 
working or even checking chemistry/physics/math problems are hard to find.

The "Cosmic Engineers" have been disapointing.

Keith