Peak Oil vs. Flying Cars
 

I was sitting at the top of a hill the other day that overlooks a country road. There's probably a car that passed every minute, and I got to thinking about peak oil, but also about flying cars. I remember reading Popular Science magazines a few years ago and always being so amazed by the technology and what might come in the future. The typical futuristic concept has been flying cars for decades I think.

But now, with oil production peaking/peaked, and some people believing that cars will be a thing of the past, I wonder what the future will look like. I don't think that cars will necessary cease to exist, but their future must be different. I am an environmentalist, and I don't know if most people on this site are too or just like saving gas, but what do you think?

1) Hydrogen is an obvious bust - at least for now. Takes way more energy to convert coal/nuclear power to split water than we can currently get from the hydrogen. The only good options are renewable sources generating the power, which will be difficult in large scale.

2) Biofuels are similar. We use more petroleum growing corn than energy available by using it as fuel. Unless it was organic corn and the gas is made nearby, it's not energy efficient.

3) Driving efficiently will certainly be a must. There's no way huge horsepower-hogging cars will be for personal public use in the future. I'm pretty sure future vehices will be equiped with so much computer controlling that hypermiling will be as easy as stepping on the gas. More like pushing the "Go" button.

4) I foresee highways become a completely different system. There won't need to be speed limits if gas costs $50/gal and the cars are made for hypermiling techniques.

5) I predict the price of gas will change as better cars are made. $3 a gallon seems like a lot, but what if you get 500mpg? Then it sounds dirt cheap.

Just some ramblings and thoughts. What do others think of those predictions?

Ehm, manufacturers can and likely will scale efficiency and present alternatives such that it'll keep as many people paying as much as possible. No worries, at least any more worries than normal.

You're right, I keep forgetting that we have a shortage of people... wait...
I've been helping a freind of mine build a jet turbine engine for a personal flying machine, and he's hoping that it will catch on to help out with natural selection, people have life styles that are simply to safe, I would rather see a nice spike in the center of your steering wheel insted of an air bag, it would make everyone more carful.

I personally look at peak oil (I must admit I don't like the event having a label, but oh well...) as being something that will wipe out everything we know. As in, there will be no more jobs. There will be no more schools. There will be no more driving. Everything that you and I have come to accept as normal in life will simply cease to exist.

There will be a total and complete fallout of society on a worldwide scale. I think that people REALLY miss the whole point about how tied together our global economy is with oil. As in, without one (and I will let you guess which that is), then the other simply cannot exist.

Learn how to farm, hunt, and survive the cold winters. These are the only basic skills you will need to survive. Oh, and it might not hurt to try to start chumming around with some general practice doctors.

Ethanol from corn is a crappy source of bio fuel. It's being pushed because there are already plenty of corn growers in the US, and thus enough money to fund lobbyists. The politicians like it because they can look like they're doing something about the environment to the average joe.
Soy bean oil as diesel perhaps? I seem to recall reading something about algae engineered to produce oily compounds that could be extracted for fuel.

I think that nuclear power would have to replace oil. Maybe just launch spent waste into space.

The Moller Skycar was an invention that was started in the 50's and still hasn't emerged as a way of travelling as it was thought by now it would be. Those electronic highways just haven't been develloped but it would have taken the driving responsibility away from the cell phone yapping, texting, eating, drinking, reading, shaving, make-up applying, yelling at the kids, CD changing general public!

how much energy does it take to get anything into space? not a very good option, also a bit shortsighted becaus it just shift the problem,to the future...there will be nucear power although where i live all nucleat power plants will have to be closed be 2015 although there's a lot of political debate about it. we'll just have to face there's no alternative to focil fuel, so we'll just have to learn to be more energy efficient...

as for flying cars at the time i really enjoyed "back to the future", but, lets face it, flying cars already exist, they're called planes and helicopters. with the curent technology they're not really adaptable to economic and efficient short distance personal transprotation.

i think the problem with cars is that they're used as personal transport, while they're build to carry at least 4-5 enven 7people. so roughly cars could be 4 times smaller and 4 times more efficient.

without trying to change but rather admit this very individualistic use of the car that's so embedded in our culture, we could still make a huge step forward if people could see the benefit of owning a one-two seat car perhaps capable of towing/connection to, a "trailer" unit capable of carying an additional number of people. this could have a great number of benefits especially if you could rent a trailer to suite your needs... things about going on a holliday, or that one time when most people actucally could use a pick up... than again people might just be driving abound with emply trailers.

What most of the doomers refuse to accept is the viability of our electric transport infrastructure in a post peak-oil world. We had it right in the early 1900s before Ford and GM killed it all by buying up and destroying local EV transit systems and rendering electric cars obsolete for the time by offering cars that ran on this cheap oil crap.

As far as transportation is concerned, this world will adapt just fine.

Nuclear is dangerous garbage IMO and the NIMBYs need to get over it and just deal with wind, solar, and tidal generators in their back yards. The environmental impacts of those are far outstripped by every other option we use today. They don't kill fish, destroy the atmosphere, or threaten to lay waste to hundreds or thousands of square miles through radioactive waste/nuclear accident.

Yeah, I know birds are killed by wind generators, but they reproduce in far better numbers than salmon and will survive in generatorless areas without difficulty.

I think that the corporatocracy of Amerikkka and the oil industry will ensure that oil is being used as much as possible until they run it dry, and then they'll have all of the patents on new technology so that they will milk it for every penny that they can get out of it.