Bromleyisms: Automobiles

Why the World Is Not About to Run Out of Oil
Despite the victory, petrol's future seemed uncertain back then. Internal-combustion vehicles were seen as noisy, smelly and dangerous. By 1900 the market was still split equally among steam, electricity and petrol—and even Henry Ford's Model T ran on both grain-alcohol and petrol. In the decades after that great race petrol came to dominate the world's transportation system. Oil left its rivals in the dust not only because internal-combustion engines proved more robust and powerful than their rivals, but also because oil reserves proved to be abundant.

This is, btw, a fabulous article with insight not to be denied but for a fool: peak oil ain't, and, besides, technology will resolve shortages, just let oil be oil and its prices be its prices:

...the global oil industry is on the verge of a dramatic transformation from a risky exploration business into a technology-intensive manufacturing business. And the product that big oil companies will soon be manufacturing, argues Shell's Mr Van der Veer, is "greener fossil fuels".

The race is on to manufacture such fuels for blending into petrol and diesel today, thus extending the useful life of the world's remaining oil reserves. This shift in emphasis from discovery to manufacturing opens the door to firms outside the oil industry (such as America's General Electric, Britain's Virgin Fuels and South Africa's Sasol) that are keen on alternative energy. It may even result in a breakthrough that replaces oil altogether.

A most simple problem: just depends on the price of extracted oil:

So with little argument with the author's conclusions, I still gotta scream about his automotive history. Back to where we began:

Despite the victory, petrol's future seemed uncertain back then. Internal-combustion vehicles were seen as noisy, smelly and dangerous. By 1900 the market was still split equally among steam, electricity and petrol—and even Henry Ford's Model T ran on both grain-alcohol and petrol. In the decades after that great race petrol came to dominate the world's transportation system. Oil left its rivals in the dust not only because internal-combustion engines proved more robust and powerful than their rivals, but also because oil reserves proved to be abundant

Ok, so the market of 1900 was "split equally among steam, electricity and petrol" -- see this Edison film of an 1899 NYC automobile parade that featured these competing technologies -- except there were so few automobiles that none of it mattered. "Market"? There was no market. A few hundred automobiles did not a market make. That's like saying that 1972 was a great year in personal computers. It existed, but it weren't no market.

Worse is this, that the Model T "ran equally on both grain-alcohol and petrol." Exqueeze me, but that ain't and weren't so. Gasoline, also known as "naptha," was a little used by-product derivative of the distillation of heating oil from petroleum. Until the stationary and mobile small-unit petroleum engines proved themselves reliable and powerful, naptha was used mostly as a solvent (for such uses as dry cleaning, for example). Other petroleum derivatives, such as kerosene, was used for lanterns and steam engines. The more stable gasoline proved the better tool for the internal combustion engine, which proved the more useful for moving carriages and carts. Alcohol was never a factor, not even in a 1906 craze that was endorsed -- to no avail -- by the President of the United States. The early 20th century, as its latter partner, was not ready to run on corn or cane.

It was a simple problem to which gasoline proved the best answer: stability, compactibility, power, octane, reliability, and efficiency. Gasoline had it, and it has it still.

So what good does the historical correction do for this article? That gasoline was the inevitable winner of the early 1900s ought signal that it should not be so easily denied but a hundred years later. There was no real competition in 1900 between the technologies. Steam, electricity, and alcohol had their chance against the new boy, naptha, and they were kicked out of the rnig. All those had distinct advantages over gasoline (for example, steamers were banned from hill climbs and races because they won the races with no mercy). But the general advantage fell to gasoline, and it shall remain so.

Sorry folks, gasoline aint' going away.

Not even here:

Ethanol: Myths and Realities
Ten questions -- and answers -- about the fuel that's supposed to save the economy

Read and weep. And put some money into Agribusiness.
Just in case.

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