What do you expect for 2019?

[Schoenfeld]

I predict that by 2019, only "classic cars" will have gearboxes. By then, all cars with an internal combustion engine will use a generator and electric motors instead of the mechanical gearbox.

Computer-wise, we'll see more integration, wider data paths, and despite all the integration (gfx, cpu and memory controller all on-chip), the distributed computing approach will be followed, resembling what nature teaches us: the world is designed as a parallel thing. Parallel computing is the logical step. Object-oriented programming is already going into the direction: Every piece of data has it's own piece of code that works on the data. This transformed to hardware will mean that memory and CPU power will melt, so in layman's terms, the data knows how to operate on itself.

You might guess it already: Such hardware is re-configurable, based on what FPGAs are today - with the slight difference of much more logic cells, partial real-time re-configuration and way higher frequencies. We won't have CPUs any more, but myriads of execution units that can either team up to work on a single thread (resembling the classic "central" processing approach), or work in extremely simple threads in parallel on their own local memory.

Privacy will be a thing of the past. Encryption will be totally illegal. If you don't already own a mobile phone, there will be some law that forces you to have an electronic device - for your protection of course. You must be trackable, in case you need medical help or your beloved ones need to contact you. Leaving the trackable zone, for example on a weekend trip out in the country, is a felony if you don't announce it on a social networking site two weeks in advance.

Since Asian and middle eastern countries are sitting on so many US Dollars, the federal reserve bank has found a clever way of de-valuing those foreign assets during the transition from the US Dollar to the "Amero", the American equivalent of the Euro. Foreigners are not allowed to buy land in the US, and foreign stockholders are taxed extreme premiums in order to slow down the rate of the US economy being bought up by non-US citizens.

Oh, did I mention the electric car revolution of 2015, that brought the US car makers into extreme problems, because all the import cars run for a third of the cost per mile?

Jens

[Schoenfeld]

tone007 wrote:
I dislike your vision, Mr. Schoenfeld.

I can totally understand that, but being a science fiction fan, I try to think into the direction that current&past happenings suggest.

I think you don't dislike the technical stuff, as my visions on cheap-to-operate-electric cars and computers way faster than what we have today are not all that negative. I can't back it up with any "myriads of execution units"-research, but to me, it's a logical step.

Cars: 2015 is the date when the Nickel-metal-hydride patent, which is held by Chevron, is void. That type of battery is IMHO the only type that can be used on an electric car, as lead-acid is too heavy, and Li-Ion doesn't live long enough to justify an investment of 15-20k USD into a battery pack, as such an investment would have to last "a lifetime of the car". Li-Ion fades away after a few hundred charge/discharge cycles, but Nimh has no memory effect.

Gearboxes: Look at the Volvo ReCharge concept (based on the C30 platform). It runs, and it takes 30% less gas, just because the engine is always running at ideal RPMs and there are no losses in a mechanical gearbox.

This leads over to my economic forecasts: All the innovations in the automotive sector come from Europe, so the US auto makers will either have to license technology, or quit keeping your own engineers down, like they did with the EV1 (just watch the documentary "who killed the electric car").

Encryption and tracking: Read the "patriot act" and check what your "Real ID" is about. Biometric data from every citizen, your home can be searched at any time, your communication can be watched any time, and you can even be held for god knows how long with just the suspicion of being a terrorist. If it's not coming, you might as well say that it's already there. We have the same here in Germany: Biometric data in our passports and RFID chips embedded in them, and a law that requires telecommunication companies to make an encryption-free access to their telephone switches for our secret service. The interface is even described in the law.

Currency: There once was a gold standard, frequently established, then lifted, as "required". Last time the gold standard was lifted was after the French had deliberately reduced US influence on their economy in 1971. Read all about the Bretton Woods system on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

Transported into today, it's the most logical thing to anticipate that the US invents a method of de-valuing the US Dollars that all the exporting nations (exporting to the US) are sitting on. It's already being done with inflation (extremely low interest rates), but since the "Amero" is hardly known and not covered by the media, I expect this to play a major part in ripping foreign investors off, like it has been done before.

The Amero is currently a hypothetical currency of the North American currency union - read all about that on Wikipedia as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_american_currency_union

As for a timeline, 2019 might be a little early for the Amero. A key figure in the architecture of the Euro was former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl - first elected in 1982, served 4 terms (16 years) and in 2002, his (partial) work became a reality with the introduction of the Euro. From the EU contracts (Maastricht 1992) to introduction of the Euro, it was only 10 years. However, the first European contracts have been signed in the 1950s, so it might take a little longer for the Amero to become a reality. It's still worth some thought about what might happen, and what would be the best strategy not to be among those who are affected in a negative way, as any transition like that has winners and losers.

Jens

[Schoenfeld]

FrenchShark wrote:
There is something better than NiMH : the aluminium battery, check that out:
http://www.europositron.com/en/index.html

There has not been a proof of concept, the battery has not been demonstrated yet. The technology has not been described, so scientists cannot comment on it. The patent is only available in Finnish, which keeps peope from clicking on it. When clicking on it, the link is dead. My guess: Investment scam. The page talks too much about patents, business plans and licensing. There is no product!

Combine this battery with a fuel burner and a combustion chamber covered with very efficient thermo-electric chips
from Borealis: http://www.powerchips.gi/ and you have a 1L/100km car.

Powerchips promises 40% efficiency, yet, didn't ever show anything that works anywhere close to a fraction of that. Sure, there's solid-state effects that produce electricity from heat, but they cannot be used to havest usable amounts of energy.

I also do hope that we will have solved the energy crisis thanks to Mr Eric Lerner and its amazing dense plasma focus fusion device : http://www.focusfusion.org.

Another of those investment scams. If you read about the research fusion reactor located in Jülich, Germany (about 50km from where I live), they are using about the same approach: Catch a plasma in a magnetic field and compress it with the magnetic field. Let the fusion happen, reduce magnetic field and harvest the excess heat.

Problem 1: The toroid ("donut") must be HUGE in order to have a good volume/surface relation. TEXTOR is already a two-story building, but needs to be at least five times as big in order to output more energy than you put into it.

Problem 2: The machine will be instable, as the speaker also suggests. In other words: It'll be a huge ratteling box with the danger of wearing out, setting radioactive material free.

Problem 3: FocusFusion suggests not to use the excess heat, but the moving ions in a kind of "high tech transformator" to produce electricity. At a few million degrees, there are limitations to magnetic transfer of energy.

Question: If building a big unit is really only a few hundred thousand dollars, then why don't they get a loan on their house and build it?

The only answer can be that they do not believe in their own ideas. The speaker in the Google video mentions all the problems (which sound not solvable to me, as for example there is no path for the energy to be harvested), yet suggests that other people put money into it. Hell, the speaker even draws wrong conclusions - he says that the difference between the estimated and the measured values of the magnetic field effect is 10%. Yet the numbers SHOWN are about 6keV estimated to about 4keV measured. Back to class, I'd say. What does he expect investors to do - trust his words or trust his numbers?

I trust in existing technology:

- solar
- wind
- water
- geothermal

As a transition from fossil fuels to completely renewable energy, combined heat and power is a good way of using a good 95% of the energy content of fossil fuels (compared to about 25% use in the average car). Combined heat and power is available today, you can buy such a unit for your house with 10kW heat and 5.5kW electricity out (German company Senertec, product is called Dachs).

If any investor wants to put money into something, then think economical: Buy up one of the failing car companies and re-model their engine plant to build stirling engines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine

Stirling engines can be scaled down and up. They don't care about the heat source: Solar, burned waste or geothermal. There are model engines that run from the heat of your palm (numerous videos on utube). The principle is almost 200 years old, no patents involved (any more). Build a unit with 20kW heat input and 5kW electricity plus 15kW heat output, and you'll have millions of homes as your customer. This might be something that really happens until 2019.

Jens