Jimmy Carter 2nd Term; renewable energy

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Please note that 51mpg is based on the old mpg test. The First gen Prius would get over sixty based on that test. I'm willing to bet that the test model had a clutch.

Not only that but outside of Honda fanboys nobody wanted it. Not enough for Honda to keep it around.

That's not even mentioning collision standards.
 
That's not even mentioning collision standards.

The 1984 CRX scored 5 stars for Driver safety rating and 4 stars for passengers with the NHTSA When next tested in 1989, the scores swapped for 4 stars for the driver and 5 for the passengers. 90% is not a car with poor collision standards. Please try again.

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Delta Force

Banned
Also, small cars are somewhat naturally going to perform worse in collisions than larger cars, as they have less space and mass to dissipate the end energy.
 
The 1984 CRX scored 5 stars for Driver safety rating and 4 stars for passengers with the NHTSA When next tested in 1989, the scores swapped for 4 stars for the driver and 5 for the passengers. 90% is not a car with poor collision standards. Please try again.

Torqumada

I don't have to because you just said it yourself. This isn't 1989. :rolleyes:
 
I don't have to because you just said it yourself. This isn't 1989. :rolleyes:

You're right, it isn't, but you were the one talking about the collision hazard the CRX was without any proof. I just provided proof that it wasn't, so of course you're a bit put off at being proven wrong.

I will concede that the CRX wasn't a run away seller, but it was still a successful vehicle. It was folded it into the main Civic line that has sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of vehicles in the US and consistently been in the top 10 of vehicles sold for several years. It is, however, proof that you can sell a sporty vehicle that gets good gas mileage in the US.

Torqumada
 
Also, small cars are somewhat naturally going to perform worse in collisions than larger cars, as they have less space and mass to dissipate the end energy.

While that is generally true, current small vehicles handles vehicle impacts much better than older vehicles.

Watch this video. As someone who has studied vehicle crashes as part of my job, it really surprised me.

Torqumada
 
You're right, it isn't, but you were the one talking about the collision hazard the CRX was without any proof. I just provided proof that it wasn't, so of course you're a bit put off at being proven wrong.

I will concede that the CRX wasn't a run away seller, but it was still a successful vehicle. It was folded it into the main Civic line that has sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of vehicles in the US and consistently been in the top 10 of vehicles sold for several years. It is, however, proof that you can sell a sporty vehicle that gets good gas mileage in the US.

Torqumada

I'm not talking about sporty cars. I'm talking about everyday cars for everyday Americans. We drive more powerful cars and most of us don't realize that our normal cars could be considered sporty internationally.

What I'm talking about is that you can't have a car like the CRX pass modern safety standards and still be light weight plus affordable. That's what made cars so heavy compared to a few decades ago.

When it comes to saving fuel and emissions what you drive isn't as important as how you drive. Encouraging(maybe tax breaks) things like public transportation, car pooling, working closer to home (or even better at home), and not driving like an asshole would do more.

Changing habits takes a long time but if it started in the 80s maybe it could have a large impact by now.
 
What about LA, Dallas, Mexico City, Cairo, São Paulo, Jakarta, etc. More people live in areas with better insolation than Buffalo then don't.

For every doubling of solar capacity Solar energy prices drop 20 percent. It's know as Swanson's law. So a mass investment in the 1980s could significantly reduce solar energy prices. Right now it's competitive in areas with high insolation. In 15 years Spain is hoping to have solar thermal plants that can provide base load without NG back up. Perhaps this development could be moved up.

Almost anything drops in price when you double the capacity, that is how you get rising real PCI. You get economy of scale and learn how to make things more efficient. The problem is that it is far easier to go from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 than from 256 to 512 to 1024. Also coal, oil , NG and nuclear also get more efficient over time as well. A modern coal plant is more efficient than one built in 1973. The big problem is land area needed to provide it which can't really be solved.
 
Only with other cars, with solid objects small cars aren't any worse.

Mass and volume is mass and volume no matter what it hits. A car that is has more mass and volume is going to hold up better than a car that uses the same technology than one that has less mass and volume no matter what it hits if it is the same object for both.
 
It's kind of ironic how people think that 50 mpg vehicles are something new or high tech. There were cars sold in the United States in the 1980s that had mileage around there using gasoline engines.
I originally wanted to write 'a 100mpg car', but I didn't want to appear to gregarious as we only started to see 50+ mpg cars on the road in sizeable numbers 7-8 years ago. So that would be 25 years after Carter's second term.

But my main tenet still stands: We might see some investment in research of renewable energies, but a lot more efforts to make cars, homes, trains... even refrigerators more efficient.
 
Mass and volume is mass and volume no matter what it hits. A car that is has more mass and volume is going to hold up better than a car that uses the same technology than one that has less mass and volume no matter what it hits if it is the same object for both.
More volume can help, but running into a wall at 30 mph isn't necessarily more survivable in a saloon than in a hatchback.
 
If Jimmy Carter was reelected for a second term, would it have made may difference toward US energy policy and renewable developments?

I don't know how much of a difference there might've been, if Carter gets anything done for renewable energy developments in a second term, it would've been in '81 or '82 and even then I have to question how much he would've gotten done. After '82, Carter wouldn't get anything done with regards to US energy policy as I think he would've had trouble maintaining control of congress, the senate in particular in the '82 midterms.
 
But my main tenet still stands: We might see some investment in research of renewable energies, but a lot more efforts to make cars, homes, trains... even refrigerators more efficient.

Something else that halted were government regulations to make things like appliances of all sizes more efficient. Keep those in place an electricity use could drop a great deal.

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Delta Force

Banned
Perhaps wind energy, geothermal, and biomass could have seen development. For some reason solar energy was essentially the sole renewable energy technology pursued at the time. Wind power only saw major development in the 1990s in Europe.
 
You can't store electricity efficiently so the average during the day doesn't matter. Your rooftop solar panels won't help at 12AM. Batteries are extremely inefficient and using the energy to make liquid fuel is as well.
Electricity to gas gets you about 50% efficiency (to lower heating value) - that gives you interseasonal storage using current infrastructure. It isn't economically sensible because of the current very low prices of fossil natural gas, but if we got serious about not using fossil fuels it is eminently practicable.
 
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