Well, if you reduced electricity costs be 1/3rd their current costs, then carbon fiber would be, basically, 3 times cheaper, as would lithium ion. Since Rayon, and Nylon, which carbon fiber is made from (actually usually PAN, which is made from these things), which 1/5th the weight of steel but around the same strength, if the cost was 3 times cheaper (from 15 dollars per pound, to 5 dollars per pound), which most of it's cost is in electricity, then you could replace the steel of cars with it, and be around 3-5 times more fuel efficient. If that was the case, you would also reduce the cost of gasoline, essentially, by at least a third, to a fifth, depending on the steel content (there's glass, aluminum, plastic other stuff etc.), perhaps even enough to make electric cars have considerable range.
Lithium ion is made from pottasium chloride and lithium chloride, through electrolysis, which is incredibly inefficient. Both of these materials, industrially, are less than a dollar per pound, yet lithium ion is around 30-40 dollars per pound. So, most of the cost is in energy; that is, electrocuting the crap out of and ionizing salts.
So, if you reduce the cost of electricity, you basically lower these costs. Your average american spends a few thousand dollars on utility bills and gasoline, so this would be around 2000-5000 dollar annually for your average American. But they also spend another 9% on manufacturing and another 10% or so for transportation; cut that out, and now stuff is like 20% cheaper. Obviously a 2/3rds is only about 12% but.
Things will all be slightly cheaper, and we won't be spending as much money on electricity. Let alone if it was 10 times cheaper, lithium ion would be the same price as knickel metal hydride and whatnot, and carbon fiber could be even cheaper than steel.
Since your average lithium ion car battery is about 10-15,000 dollars, the price of a car itself, and needs to be replaced about every 6 years, lowering it to more managable costs will make it more economical. Obviously, with the price of electricity lowered, the cost of transportation would be even lower. With carbon fiber, you'd have a considerable range and be even safer, the safety issue possibly making medicare less expensive.
But you also need to recharge quickly. There are variants that recharge quicker, such as "carbonized" ones, that also use a crapload of electricity, and are even more expensive than lithium ion, or lithium titanate, which recharges quicker and has a longer cycle life (1000 compared to about 20,000). Both of which would be cheaper; so, by reducing energy costs, they could become more economical. Since, most of the costs come from energy, and both are made from lithium ion, if it was oh, 10 times cheaper, cars would recharge faster too, and not be any more expensive, probs cheaper. So, 5-20,000 dollar quickly rechargeble, extremely efficient, long range electric cars. At the very least, 60 mpg+ regular cars. If we kicked 65% of our oil usage, we wouldn't need foreingn imports or crazy amounts of new drilling, which would lower the cost of gasoline, and not require us to quickly sap out oil, which could damage the environment, on top of the already reduced costs.
If your average american had thousands of more dollars and 10% shaved off the price of almost everything? Some things drastically?
We'd basically be out of this reccession. Which would give the governmeant more moneysz as well. But, would it be enough?
Maybe, maybe not. But, I do know a huge bulk of the cost of social security is energy costs, since most old people have their bills paid off and stuff. And I know the same is true with the production of expensive medical equipment, like MRI scanners, which need super conductors and liquid nitrogen. Nitrogen in it's own right is pretty cheap, it's the condensing it part that's expensive. So, liquid nitrogen powered MRI scanners indirectly depend on energy costs, almost exactly. Reducing these costs basically reduces expensive medical equipment and procedures by the same amount. Ultra sonar, MRI scans, X-rays, even expensive materials mostly depend on energy costs. You could shave off hundreds of billions of dollars from governmeant spending, and lower medical bills and whatnot.
2/3rds the amount would be enough to be okay.
But there are ways to make it even cheaper. If the interest costs, that is long term bank loan repayment costs, for uranium were reduced, uranium would be 70% cheaper as is. Coal, a long time ago, was down the same way which reduced it's cost, among other things. By reducing over-all downpayment costs, say on solar panels even which take 20-30 years to make back their investment, and therefore have huge interest costs, you can reduce costs to relativley easy levels.
Let alone utilizing more efficient proccess. Your average car is only 20% mechanically efficient; your average steam turbine is around 40%. With say, a 60%, or 80% efficient steam turbine, which newer ones promise 90%, you could become more efficient with your fuel source. If that happened, you'd reduce the cost of energy just by utilizing a more efficient engine. Since electric cars are 80%+ efficient you wouldn't have much of an issue there. With algea, you could capture all the exhuast, reducing the emissions close to 0 and creating ethonal to burn, increasing your fuel effiency even more (essentially, adding 10%+ free fuel to your gasoline mix, which 10% of gasoline is already ethonal).
There's a lot of stuff; like idk, Thorium. Or putting solar panels on the poles, or just Antartica. Would reduce energy costs signifigantly.
There's a lot to go in to and I am writing stuff about it.
Also a national bank. If interests, just for homes, were reduced to say, 15% over 30 years, instead of 105%, we would all be better off. A non profit, altruistic, just enough to run the facility bank, starting off with oh say, hundreds of billions of dollars (dah gubermeant), could be created, and since the U.S. already is the bank to the bankers (if everyone withdrew, right now, the banks would need to borrow money from the governmeant to fill in the gaps, to avoid a banking crash), we really wouldn't lose much other than ridiculously high interest rates. Cut out the middle man. These people literally profit off of... well, having profit. By starting off with money they can lend it out and make more money.
But 105% on houses? Really? The housing companies, who had to build the damn house, design it, get workers to do it, pay for equipment, who only make 10% off of a 200,000 dollar home etc., make less over-all than the banks who make money just for... having money. It's pretty much bullshit. You could easily reduce it. And, since the three biggest costs are college loans, cars, and housing, you basically just doubled the money in the economy over night. That also means double governmeant money in taxes, basically. Talk about being out of a reccession. Since banks aren't taxxed very much you basically would gain from market, sales taxes, etc., corporate taxxes when we're all buying new stuff. Presumably, predominately, from the U.S. That's also 200 in governmeant spending annually just on interest, and problably a lot more (say, in medical stuff), but yeah.
Edited by Manoka, 27 February 2013 - 12:54 AM.
