What will happen WHEN We run out of oil. What will happen to all of the cars.?

Question

What will happen WHEN We run out of oil. What will happen to all of the cars.?

Answer 1

Run on water, veg oil, ethanol, etc

Answer 2

road-side decoration.

Answer 3

CHAOS! The rich will capitalise on our need for food etc.

There will be wars. All the cars will rust in peace...

Answer 4

Homes for immigrants.

Answer 5

Think Mad Max....

Answer 6

I think we will have to put peddle,s on them.

Answer 7

hopefully our earth will still be here. can you imagine when everything disappears? I hate pollution!!!!! our lake is already gone!!!

Answer 8

Well, since it's not going to happen suddenly, market factors, car designs will gradually change as the availability of oil declines.  It is highly unlikely that we will ever run out of oil, but it will eventually become very scarce and too valuable to burn as fuel (in maybe 2-300 years).

Answer 9

Nothing, we'd replace them with electric cars.

Answer 10

There is enough coal for thousands of years. Coal can be made into synthetic petrol [gasoline] for about the same cost as oil is now.  Germany used synthetic petrol [gasoline] in WW II, so it is a well proven technology.  Coal can be liquefied and used for power, or it can be converted to a gaseous form.

While bio-fuels made from plants are the ultimate in use of solar energy they will continue to be a bit expensive unless made from vegetable wastes or plants which have been bio-engineered to grow where food crops cannot grow. Ethanol, vegetable oil and fuels made from biomass are limited somewhat by the need to grow food.  Their main advantage is that they are a renewable resource and are CO2 neutral.

Electricity for electric cars doesn't magically come from an outlet, the electricity must be made in a nuclear plant, a coal-fired plant or by a hydroelectric dam.  No environmentalist will stand for building more of those.  They already protest the materials used in the expensive batteries needed to make them perform like Internal Combustion cars.  Electric cars would reduce the number of cars simply by being so expensive that only the rich could drive.  The pollution is simply moved to the generating plants.

Hydrogen costs even more than gasoline and requires electricity to make it, build more power plants and have the pollution there.  H is also extremely difficult to use in a vehicle that would have the same range between refuelling as IC gasoline powered cars.  Perhaps someday they will solve the problems with H, but it may take centuries.

The world wants personal mobility because public transport does not take you when you want to go, or directly where you want and with whatever you want to take, conveniently.  Environmental nuts want everyone to be living in cities, where they can be forced to use public transport and no one to be allowed to live in the rural areas. Everyone must be forced to live near their work and forced to move if they change jobs.

No one fuel will replace petrol [gasoline], instead as its supply decreases other fuels will find their niches.  Multi-fuel capable autos, hybrids with Electric Vehicles, will become common.  The most easily built, least expensive would be a steam-electric hybrid.  It would be a plug-in EV for about 80% of your driving, using only electricity, then if you had to drive farther [the other 20%] a small, high efficiency, low pollution, steam engine would start running a generator to recharge the batteries.  It could use any liquid or gaseous fuel and conversion from one fuel to another for a length of time would be simple when needed.

Answer 11

A lot of them will become garden ornaments, luckily America & China are doing there best to bring that day a lot closer

Answer 12

We will never run out of oil, but the world production of oil will peak - this is when demand outstrips supply - the latest date I've read is 2011, but some say it won't happen until 2030 but seeing oil prices have gone up by $35 in the past month who knows when...

Personally, I think the days of the car are numbered, they are too resource intensive, resources that the Earth has a limited supply of.  We cannot have the same number of cars on the road now running on hydrogen cells, there is not enough platinum on this world.  

Bio fuels - to meet demand we will have to use masses of space, cutting down forest areas for farming land, destroying animal habitats then there is the ethical point of putting 'food' in cars when so many people are starving.  The crops will have to be grown using fertilisers and when the fuel is finally burned loads of poisonous nitrates will be released into the atmosphere.  

Finally, you need energy to build cars, lots of it, currently oil is the cheapest fuel that gives the industry the most power, if oil supply starts tailing off the price will skyrocket and many industries will struggle.  The whole western economy runs on oil, everything we do depends on it, uses it and consumes it.  Without it we will be lost. So, America has 2 trillion barrels of oil in the form of oil shale deposits  which is a very dirty, polluting oil that requires large amounts of energy to extract and refine which would cause loads of damage to the Earth - so you know we will start extracting that to keep ourselves going.  If we do, personally I think that will seal our fate and put a date on the end of human activity on this world.

If we want to survive I think economies and life will go back to a more local scale, globalisation will tail off and the human population will decrease - in order to sustain such a large world population farming has to use oil.  We will still have technology and fuel for heating and some form of public transport and we won't have the luxury of being so wasteful anymore. ~ Well, that's what I think!

Answer 13

coal liquefaction, or hydrogen, all those biodiesel and ethanol ideas are bullshit.

Answer 14

Those who say don't worry are wrong unless we do something about it now.  Our economies depend on oil for many products (for example plastics) as well as fuel.  Burning oil in cars is the worst use for it and so we need to develop public transport and local activities (work, entertainment, shopping) that do not need cars.

The alternative fuels will all be more expensive and oil too is getting more expensive as the extractors turn to more difficult sources so it is essential we start reducing car use quickly.  This needs individual action as well as governmental action.  Walk or cycle when you can.  It will be good for you as well as good for future generations who will not thank us for burning the family jewels (oil).

Answer 15

They'll get very cheap.

Answer 16

They'll finally let the designs out for the car that runs on water.. then probably charge us to convert our old cars.

Answer 17

They can run on vegetable oil, looooooooooooool

Answer 18

Gas powered cars will be converted to Ethanol, which can be produced from numerous kinds of plants.  Diesel cars can already run on biodiesel.

Answer 19

They will all be rusting under water by that point, it won't matter.

Answer 20

They will all be parked in lines along the M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, etc., etc., etc..

Answer 21

Any gasoline engine can be made to run on propane. And there are a lot of other methods as well.

Answer 22

By that time we will all be driving hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or electric vehicles. They are already trialing them in the states, check out the Chevy Equinox.

Answer 23

Well I for one will be peeing in the tank of my Lamborghini to make it go!

Answer 24

Synthetic oil

Answer 25

There will be many more scrap yards.

Answer 26

it's already happening - what do you think Iraq is all about - control of the diminishing oil reserves - thats what.

I'm sorry to say it, but there will be more wars caused by high oil demand.

As for the cars, they will be melted down and turned into tanks.

Answer 27

this has allready been discussed

we have made a car that can run on cooking oil

and we have also made a car that can run on eletric like a monerail i wouldent worry about it they have got it sorted

Answer 28

Not to worry. We have other options...

Ethanol is produced domestically from corn and other crops and produces less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels.



Biodiesel is derived from vegetable oils and animal fats. It usually produces less air pollutants than petroleum-based diesel.



Natural gas is a fossil fuel that generates less air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Propane, also called liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), is a domestically abundant fossil fuel that generates less harmful air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Hydrogen can be produced domestically from fossil fuels (such as coal), nuclear power, or renewable resources, such as hydropower. Fuel cell vehicles powered by pure hydrogen emit no harmful air pollutants.

www.fueleconomy.gov/f*g/current.shtml