Capacitors won't advance enough in our lifetime for this to work, and likely not in the SR timeframe either. You can get some serious voltage, but they just can't provide enough current to drive a car. A purely field-driven approach just won't work.

The solution is going to have to involve a chemical reaction of some kind -- batteries, fuel cells, combustion, etc.

From an electrocution point of view, it's no more unsafe than existing power lines. In the SR universe, GridLink uses AC power and coils underground to induce a voltage on a matching set of coils in the vehicle above ground.

From an overall health point of view... well, electric fields are suspected of causing cancer, and the effect of large magnetic fields on biological forms isn't exactly known. Passengers could be shielded from this, but pedestrians... I dunno.

Because it wastes a lot of energy. It's a viable means of creating portable power, but requires infrastructure in place to generate the additional power (say, nuclear power plants or suchlike).

~J

It's like this... you start out with water, and add energy via electrolysis, and get hydrogen and oxygen:
2*H2O + (energy in) => 2*H2 + O2

Then you put the hydrogen into your gas tank, and burn it (combine it with oxygen), to release energy:
2*H2 + O2 => 2*H2O + (energy out)

Notice that these processes are the exact reverse of each other. If you look at this like an algebra equation (water + energy in = water + energy out), it'll become obvious that "energy in" and "energy out" are equal. You get no more energy out of burning the hydrogen than you put in via electrolysis.

But it's worse than that. These steps don't - can't - happen with 100% efficiency... there's a "waste heat" factor stealing energy from you at every step. So you end up with less energy stored in the hydrogen than you put in by electrolysis, and still less coming out in usable form when you burn it. It's a losing game.

Of course, everything is a losing game. You don't lose too badly at this one, and the products at each step are pretty safe, even desirable, so, as Vaevictis points out, it makes a decent battery. But it doesn't solve the question of where you're going to get that "energy in" to make the whole process work... and you have to keep adding more, 'cause you're losing some to waste heat on each pass through the cycle, and however much of your "energy out" you're spending doing actual work with your hydrogen engine on top of that. So you still need some other method to actually generate your power... nuclear fission or fusion (either artificial or leeching off that huge nuke in the sky), hydroelectric, burning oil or coal or wood, or whatever.


Of course, in Shadowrun, the answers are easy. You get a mage to whip up a sustained version of Lightning Bolt and Quicken it onto your power mains (or use Magic Fingers to turn a generator, or whatever... there are plenty of ways), and just suck your power out of the Astral or whereverthehell spells are powered from. Sure, maybe it'll trash the place, but no one lives there besides spirits!

How come nobody else noticed this? My next game will have orbital cattle ranches. And if a player's character gets out of line? You got it! OCB.

The notion that global warming is caused by human activities is popular because it plays to human arrogance and vanity. The accuracy of that belief is questionable however, since we lack the temperature records for most of the world's history it is impossible to know what the natural temperature cycle of the Earth is.

What is known, however, is that the Earth experiences rather extreme temperature fluctuation over time. It is probable that so called global warming is just a natural part of the Earth's temperature cycle and that mankind's influence upon it is minor.

Humans being have only existed for a tiny fraction of Earth's "inhabitable" history. Considering that the thermometer was invented in 1714, we don't even have accurate temperature records for the majority of human history, much less the majority of the Earth's "inhabitable" history.

Also, logical fallacy Post Hoc and Complex Cause

Yes.

No. The water isn't the fuel. The water is the fuel tank. That "energy in" factor is the fuel. The water is just a convenient way to hold that energy until you want to use it.

You can actually keep recycling the same water through the system forever, break it up and put it back together again and again. It's just that every time you break it up, you have to pull energy in from somewhere else - probably as electrical power from the power mains - to do it. You don't fill it up at the tap. You plug it into the wall.

Well, plugging it in for 20 hours was ment to be a comical exaggeration of the problem facing purely electrical cars. Still, it isn't much of an exageration. Electric cars require many batteries that drain far too quickly.

Hybrids are a different animal altogether.
Were't discussing hybrids. We were discussing cars that use onboard battery power to split water into into hydrogen and oxygen and that then burn the hydrogen in an internal compustion engine.

I'm sure we can all agree that that is insane.

The fact that hydrgen is a highly flamable lighter-than-air gas is fairly well known. This makes storage of hydrogen more complicated and more dangerous than storage of gasoline. It is on par with storage of propane, so it isn't that bad. In fact, outdoor hydrogen leaks are less dangerous than outdoor propane leaks because propane pools on the ground waiting for a spark while hydrogen quickly rises toward outer space. Indoor hydrogen leeks are another matter.

Well, yeah. That's why you don't do it that way. Using offboard mains power to charge a battery, and then using the battery power to split the water adds a totally unnecessary extra step to the process, and internal combustion engines make a fairly inefficient way to extract the energy from the hydrogen.

The idea is to use offboard mains power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell, and then have the fuel cell turn the hydrogen and oxygen back into water and electrical power on demand and use it to spin an electric motor. Thinking of it as a higher energy-density battery for an electric car is closer than thinking of it as an alternative fuel for an internal combustion-powered car.

Actually, I thought we were discussing a car that used outside electricity to crack the water, not internal batteries. I'd just bypass the battery step.

At a power connection with sufficient power input (several hundred kilowatts), you could reprocess all the waste water from the power plant back into hydrogen and oxygen in a few minutes. (And, personally, I'd dump the oxygen. You can get more from the air and don't have to bottle it in the car.)

This seems to be what Shadowrun's fuel cell cars do: use a self-contained hydrogen (or water) supply that is recycled when outside power supplies fresh PFs.

Congratulations on introducing irrelevant information and drawing a totally spurious hypothesis from it.

No thermometers necessary.

(I overestimated how far back we have, but it's still a meaningful time period for analysis.)

~J

The problem with 'clean' sources is, when they're effective, they're generally very space or price inefficient. Where I am now I could get solar panels installed for about $15,000 (if I had a house to put them on, and I don't), which, if I'm lucky, would cut down my electricity bill to just about nothing. But seriously, I'd have to run them, without having to pay for repairs, for about 150 years before I start making a return on my investment.

To run New York on solar power, they'd have to take up about 60% of the island in regards to space constraints. For wind power I believe it was closer to 40% (National Geographic did an article on this just last month). Of course, we'd want to put that on shore to save the valuable space, but that means loss of power as it travels through the power lines, and it's not like the surrounding NY/NJ area has giant tracts of land just begging to be harvested either.

Hydroelectric dams have serious environmental impacts. Tidal power sucks horrible and isn't even in the running. Wind power is limited in where it can be implemented, and is still far more expensive than coal or gas unless you're out in the boonies. Nuclear is the closest competitor in regards to the 'clean' energy sources, and even that is more expensive than a good coal power station. Once we get fusion, things may change, however.

I suspect this is not the case. I drive a little Nissan I keep in excellent condition and I get 35 miles to the gallon, which is very good. My friend just got a new toyato hybrid and he gets closer to 60. I can tweak all I want, there's no way I can double my fuel efficiency, even though I'm using one of the smaller engines on the market. I can, however, say that my repair costs are likely to be a good deal lower, and certainly when you compare the cost of the cars themselves (I was limited because my bank limits my maximum withdrawal amount per day from ATMs. He was limited because he had to take out a 5 or 10 year loan.) I saved a LOT more money.

What we have here is a difference of opinion on what resolutions could be considered accurate. Personally, I find even annual resolutions to be wanting in precision. Without being able to take into account daily temperature fluxuations is it impossible to get a complete picture.

Of course, I would measure weights to the nearest picogram if I had the equipment for it, so my standards of percision may be somewhat extreme.

I've had reports of people getting the quoted mileage or slightly more, but it involves significant changes to driving style (slower acceleration/deceleration, etc.).

Excessive? 100,000 seems very low…

Depends on what you're transporting. If the answer is one to two people, you're right, the sedan probably isn't that much less polluting (or perhaps somewhat more). If the answer is three or four people with luggage, you're saving (one car vs. two or two trips). It will depend heavily on who is driving and what their needs are.

~J

Actually, there's a couple of good reasons why this doesn't happen in canon. I looked into it for an IC project a character worked on.

1) The number of magicians with Quickening is, globally speaking, very low. And people tend to charge very high for their 'essential energy' (i.e. Karma expenditure).
2) Creating a permanent version of a spell that creates energy that can be harnessed results in prohibitive drain unless the net effect is very, very small.
3) A non-'permanent' (in terms of game-mechanics 'duration') spell that is sustained via quickening or such and is stationary in location causes background count. Eventually, this count seems to build to the point where mana warping occurs,* thus creating an astral hazard whose effects may eventually bleed over into the real world.**

* References to this include certain bits in Aztlan, MitS, et cetera. There are no rules for it, but ICly this seems to happen.
** Again, no mechanics, but the emotional resonance of the area turns 'darker', rather like the crappier areas of Aztlan, and some of the more spooky areas of the Arcology - though the Arco areas were just that way because of Deus' experiments.

Give it time. As fossil fuels become harder to get and more and more scarce with consumption, the two forms will achieve price parity. It may take a long time, but it will eventually happen.

Actually, it's not as bad as you think. In sky-scraper prone areas, there's probably *more* vertical surface area (on buildings) available for photovoltaic windows than there is actual acreage on the ground; all you have to do is get them installed and hooked up to the grid (which is, of course, easier said than done).

On the lower-lying buildings, you'd probably install solar cells on the roofs, and on higher ones, you'd probably install wind turbines.

Good point, it's worse than I think.

Remember, we don't care about surface area, we care about surface area with direct sunlight! New York's jagged skyline makes solar energy incredibly inefficient, because buildings keep casting shadows on each other. A solar panel might be perfectly placed at 8am and in full darkness at 10. With the exception of spots atop sky scrapers (and perhaps down the sides of a few), the ROI is quickly halved as buildings block each other out. Wind power, however, becomes MORE efficient, since you have natural wind tunnels along streets. The only problem there is the fact that you're talking about putting giant fans above busy streets, which cause some major safety concerns.

What are a few decapitated, minced, chopped and pureed, levitating mages among friends? Of course, if I had to wash my car I'd be P-Oed.

Except for the hype on the page, what's news about that? It's a system that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, then burns them in a hydrogen-oxygen torch.

It's not a WATER torch or water fueling the car, it's burning hydrogen. Hydrogen cars (with hydrogen from oil or water, your choice) are not new at all. The real trick - which this wiz-bang invention doesn't address - is storage of sufficient hydrogen to make a decent hydrogen-fueled car.

Yeah - and how many gallons of gasoline?

Geez. "HHO gas." If the hydrogen and oxygen are actually mixed during storage, that's a fireball waiting to happen.

Don't be silly. It says right in the article, "the stability of water"! How could it possibly be dangerous? And since they said it on the intraweb, it MUST be true.

I'm sure after the "HHO" gas is done energetically reverting to water, it will be very stable.