I had no idea these were actually made in significant numbers.
>even a modern woodmobile requires up to 10 minutes to get up to working temperature
That was my first question, and I can't imagine it would be great to have a parking garage of these things warming up / outputting gasses for 10 min each.
You don't run these inside enclosed spaces, because the carbon monoxide would kill you.
It's nowhere near as convenient as gasoline--there's plenty of minding and care required--but during hard times it's much more efficient and convenient than hauling a truck load of stuff by horseback, or walking. A wood gas spark engine runs much more efficiently than an equivalent steam engine, for example.
The difference back then is everything was carbureted and switching over to wood gas was relatively simple. With today's extremely complex fuel injected vehicles it will be a whole different story.
Converting the wood to charcoal before use has been found to be the most reliable method of burning wood by most users, with lowest contamination/fouling risk, although the owner of the http://www.driveonwood.com forum (a guy from Springville, Alabama) runs his truck on straight hardwood and has put many miles on it like that.
When in good tune, a full size pickup truck will go about a mile per pound of wood.
Well I didn't. I just spent years reading others' accounts, and am reporting from my own experience also. (Shocker, I know.) Now you have two people telling you the same thing, I guess.
I remember John Cohn, an IBM Computer Engineer, was on some TV show called The Colony and built one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkH6mFlfH3o and I seem to remember it getting much further than this clip.
I didn't know about this, and initially suspected the article was an LLM-generated prank (photos and all). Now I entered the rabbit hole of water gas, wood gasification, Gustav Bischof, Lowe's gas... HN is such a great place of the Internet!
I think it would, the only problem being smaller row crop farmers who would be mostly likely benefit to implement it or want to implement it have been pushed out of agriculture more and more over the decades and struggle to survive at all. Which makes spending time and money on experimental work like this far less likely.
Check out http://www.driveonwood.com to see plenty of examples of both. A wood car or truck can be amazingly practical for any use involving long steady state (i.e. highway driving), not so much for city use.
EVs are better than ICE in term of local emissions, however they do not solve all environmental issues.
The answer is fewer cars and more shared transportation. People always mention lack of public transport possibilities, affordability and rentability but the offer would develop immediately and would be much more efficient than what we have now if private passenger motorized vehicles weren't allowed as it would reduce the overall traffic significantly if only emergency, public and good transports were allowed.
Vast majority of worlds population doesn't live in places where cold weather range is a problem. Even where it is, cold weather range is a 3 month inconvenience of having to charge more often.
Yeas sure there are use cases where gasoline is more convenient than BEV. But just because the usecase is relevant for you doesn't mean it's globally relevant in the big picture.
Also how much people are ready take inconvenience depends how much they have to pay for the luxury of using gas. Even ignoring the global warming aspect, the EROI of oil drilling is plummeting. We'll never run out oil, it will just get more and more expensive as the easy sources of oil are all used...
It will be a non-issue with the inevitable additional (charging) infrastructure roll-outs along with mandates for on-board heat-pump battery management.
Not only in cold weather. Good luck trailing something big for a long distance even in the summer. In my model X the range is reduced to hardly 150 miles. Really inconvenient.
I had no idea these were actually made in significant numbers.
>even a modern woodmobile requires up to 10 minutes to get up to working temperature
That was my first question, and I can't imagine it would be great to have a parking garage of these things warming up / outputting gasses for 10 min each.
You don't run these inside enclosed spaces, because the carbon monoxide would kill you.
It's nowhere near as convenient as gasoline--there's plenty of minding and care required--but during hard times it's much more efficient and convenient than hauling a truck load of stuff by horseback, or walking. A wood gas spark engine runs much more efficiently than an equivalent steam engine, for example.
The difference back then is everything was carbureted and switching over to wood gas was relatively simple. With today's extremely complex fuel injected vehicles it will be a whole different story.
Converting the wood to charcoal before use has been found to be the most reliable method of burning wood by most users, with lowest contamination/fouling risk, although the owner of the http://www.driveonwood.com forum (a guy from Springville, Alabama) runs his truck on straight hardwood and has put many miles on it like that.
When in good tune, a full size pickup truck will go about a mile per pound of wood.
Well yes, I did read the article ...
Well I didn't. I just spent years reading others' accounts, and am reporting from my own experience also. (Shocker, I know.) Now you have two people telling you the same thing, I guess.
A turbocharger/blower would dramatically improve everything, assuming you could get it to survive the operating conditions.
https://youtube.com/shorts/4MQGP5MME2A
Related, Colin Furze experimented with using wood gas to run an IC engine, somewhat successfully: https://youtu.be/FK2qK-NCQH8
I remember John Cohn, an IBM Computer Engineer, was on some TV show called The Colony and built one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkH6mFlfH3o and I seem to remember it getting much further than this clip.
I didn't know about this, and initially suspected the article was an LLM-generated prank (photos and all). Now I entered the rabbit hole of water gas, wood gasification, Gustav Bischof, Lowe's gas... HN is such a great place of the Internet!
Some more terms for your enjoyment:
* Blau Gas
* Fischer-Tropsch process
* Bergius process
I wonder if a wood powered tractor for farming would be more practical than a wood powered car for transportation
I think it would, the only problem being smaller row crop farmers who would be mostly likely benefit to implement it or want to implement it have been pushed out of agriculture more and more over the decades and struggle to survive at all. Which makes spending time and money on experimental work like this far less likely.
Check out http://www.driveonwood.com to see plenty of examples of both. A wood car or truck can be amazingly practical for any use involving long steady state (i.e. highway driving), not so much for city use.
A tractor can certainly work well on wood gas.
> If, one day, the availability of (cheap) oil comes to an end, the omnipresence of the automobile will be history.
I think the years since this was written has shown this to be false. BEVs are steadily replacing ICE vehicles and we have more cars than ever.
EVs are better than ICE in term of local emissions, however they do not solve all environmental issues.
The answer is fewer cars and more shared transportation. People always mention lack of public transport possibilities, affordability and rentability but the offer would develop immediately and would be much more efficient than what we have now if private passenger motorized vehicles weren't allowed as it would reduce the overall traffic significantly if only emergency, public and good transports were allowed.
Electrics won’t replace ICE until the range issues in cold weather is figured out.
Vast majority of worlds population doesn't live in places where cold weather range is a problem. Even where it is, cold weather range is a 3 month inconvenience of having to charge more often.
Yeas sure there are use cases where gasoline is more convenient than BEV. But just because the usecase is relevant for you doesn't mean it's globally relevant in the big picture.
Also how much people are ready take inconvenience depends how much they have to pay for the luxury of using gas. Even ignoring the global warming aspect, the EROI of oil drilling is plummeting. We'll never run out oil, it will just get more and more expensive as the easy sources of oil are all used...
It will be a non-issue with the inevitable additional (charging) infrastructure roll-outs along with mandates for on-board heat-pump battery management.
Just look at what Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N... has done in just 20 years and let's just say it's not known for its warm climate.
Tell that to the Norwegians.
Then it looks like it is figured out because BEV is replacing combustion at an ever increasing rate.
Not only in cold weather. Good luck trailing something big for a long distance even in the summer. In my model X the range is reduced to hardly 150 miles. Really inconvenient.
What do you mean by trailing? Like, driving on a trail? Like an off road one? Why would you do that in a Model X?