This letter was written by a very good friend of mine;

Duane Card

www.duanecard.com

Honorable (Senator,)

Subject: Balanced Energy Solutions

Thank you for the mailer pertaining to energy, and sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute. In review of this I will make some hopefully rational comments.

In review of the present social, financial, employment, and auto industry conditions, It is apparent that common threads connect all of these things. The first indicator that became widely publicized was the price of oil reaching $150 a barrel. Now gasoline goes from $1.50 a gallon to over $4.00 a gallon. The results of this ripple across all industries from banking to consumer to housing to employment. I realize the oil price as of this writing has returned to $40 a barrel, but the horse is now out of the barn, the damage has been done.

Let's look at two industries to compare the results of technology advancements:

Computer Industry:

Fifty Years ago, the computer technology consisted of IBM Mainframes, using Mylar tape and tape readers for memory. They used cumbersome, inefficient, power hungry, bulky vacuum tubes for computer power. It took an air conditioned room to house a contraption that wouldn't do what a common laptop will do today.

Auto Industry:

The reciprocating engine, being used today, is one hundred year old technology, twice the age of the mainframe computers. In other countries, like Japan and France, now in existence, are Magnetic Levitated trains, which use no gasoline or diesel fuel. They are exceeding 200 mph. The aircraft industry has moved away from reciprocating engines decades ago. The helicopters are all using turbine engines today. This is influenced by Horsepower/weight ratio which would also influence the mpg in an automobile. Turbines are being used in large electrical generation plants presently furnishing power for the country's power grid, not reciprocating engines.

A reciprocating engine is only 30% efficient. That means the energy available in the gasoline is only using 30% of it's BTU's to propel the car down the road. The other 70% is lost in heat generation. In one hundred years of manufacturing and developing automobiles, this is nothing more than a disgrace in technology achievement or an example of capitalistic control by the oil companies through the lobby and apparently, some kind of control of the auto manufactures development of new vehicle propulsion systems, maybe through the patent office. This is equivalent to IBM forcing the mainframe technology to continue and killing the PC technology.

Let's look at Hydrogen a little closer:
It has the highest BTU energy/pound of all fuels.
It can be used to drive a turbine by combustion.
It can create electricity using a Fuel Cell.
The Fuel Cell can charge batteries.
It is used to propel the space shuttle to orbit.
It is no more dangerous than propane.
It creates no noxious or poisons gases, only water which can be recycled.
It can be produced from water through electrolysis using solar panels.
This is exactly what's happening in every satellite in orbit.

After all this, maybe we should consider:

Turn the auto company assets over to a new division of NASA and start to get out from under the capitalistic greed and political control of the evolution of transportation engineering and development of 21'st century vehicles. Let's develop a Microsoft (Bill Gates) approach to transportation and energy thinking and let the dinosaurs die with the old age. Or, draw on the science developed by NASA and the Pentagon, also done from Tax money, and make it available to the auto industry. The public has all ready paid for this science once. Is it really necessary to subsidize the development of this technology the second time by the auto industry?

Consider the design of a new propulsion system which includes electric, solar, hydrogen, small turbine, hydraulics, and magnetics all combined in harmony, for a new super efficient transportation vehicle propulsion system. When I hear about a seven hundred billion dollar handout to a banking system, that virtually disappears into the ether's, and contributes no input to advanced technology, which is the final answer to the dilemma presently faced, I begin to question human logic. The parasites are killing the host.

One more thought about this situation is that if the US automakers don't pursue very advance technology for auto propulsion, another country will, and probably are now. If this hits the international market, the US automakers will be done regardless of welfare payments from the US taxpayers.

In conclusion, I hope this provides new or encouraged thoughts for progress, with our present predicament.