Photo: edited by autoevolution
Well, if you're in the future right now reading this, it might be because humanity failed at some point with other alternative ways of powering vehicles, like hydrogen fuel cells or other great-sounding methods, and the dinosaur juice that powered and created our modern society is almost gone.
I'm not really sure what year you live in, but the world there must be a desolate arid place with people fighting over the last remnants of oil, gathered in small autonomous communities, farming crops, raising animals and trying to make the most out of everything. Of course, there still must be rich influential people living in the luxury quarters of once nourishing metropolis, still greedy and extorting the poor for a handful of rice to do the work for them, but we can make our system work without them.
So, basically you are now stuck to around three or four methods of moving a car – the full electric way (which stinks for long distances), gasoline-electric hybrids and cooking oil burning diesels, or even diesel-electrics if Citroen survived that long.
Taking your car for a ride just for fun is now a long forgotten concept. Basically every trip now needs a purpose and you have to carefully plan it ahead so you won't get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Now, I'm not going to preach you a lesson on how humanity was doomed to its extinction by itself and the logarithmic technology expansion that only held to just one point. It's useless now and you need to get moving, travel cross country, scavenge for resources and find new opportunities. With that in mind, let's move on and see how you can use energy as efficiently as possible to get you going in the wasteland.
First of all I should mention that you need to find a mechanic, or science geek around your camp to help you with your vehicle mods... my time is limited and I cannot write a whole book about these things here.
The first thing you need is a hybrid vehicle of course. Don't know which automakers made it to your time but you definitely need to find a hybrid car. In my opinion, the best thing you can get is a diesel-electric plug-in one. The reasons are obvious – you can charge it from a wind mill or solar panel array at any camp and the diesel can burn a range of oily bio fuels if modified properly. Citroen might have such a combination so look for cars with the two stacked arrows on the grille.
Strip any unnecessarily commodities out of your vehicle to make it weight less. Things like air conditioning (including the compressor), rear seats, door panels, sound system, trimming panels, insulating materials and other things. You need the dash instrumentation though, especially the gizmos showing you the battery and fuel level as well as the range calculator.
Equip your car with additional energy recovering systems. Back in my day, they were talking a lot about regenerative suspension that converts the up and down wheel movement into electric current you can then store in the vehicle's battery. The technology surely must have survived to your day so check around for it and then look at bumps and potholes with the same admiration as towards a generator. Also make sure you have enough wheel travel. Fitting such a suspension to a slammed car would be stupidly useless.
Solar panels. If they work pretty well back at the camp, why not have that free energy on the go. The roof and hood are the perfect places to fit these things so what are you waiting for? It doesn't necessarily needs to be pretty but functional.
A set of skinny well inflated tires is the solution to go forward with less resistance. Don't worry, you'll have enough stability for the trip... you're not going to race on the track after all.
Constantly look for opportunities to recharge your batteries. It will be perfect to equip your vehicle with some sort of grappling hook that can be deployed towards other vehicles. Find one of those trucks delivering goods for the rich men and hook up to them on the highway. Then gently apply the regenerative brakes to refill the batteries.
Even better is to do this with a train. They're much larger and they won't feel a thing when you're using their inertia to recharge the batteries. So try to work out your route along the main railways.
Mount some sort of man-powered electric generator for the passenger seat and put it to good use when riding with someone else. You can also change turns between driving and pedaling.
You can use the weight you saved by ditching unnecessary things by installing more batteries. However, try not to overdo it.
Don't forget your shotgun and always try to use more electricity than liquid fuels along the way.
So, basically you are now stuck to around three or four methods of moving a car – the full electric way (which stinks for long distances), gasoline-electric hybrids and cooking oil burning diesels, or even diesel-electrics if Citroen survived that long.
Taking your car for a ride just for fun is now a long forgotten concept. Basically every trip now needs a purpose and you have to carefully plan it ahead so you won't get stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Now, I'm not going to preach you a lesson on how humanity was doomed to its extinction by itself and the logarithmic technology expansion that only held to just one point. It's useless now and you need to get moving, travel cross country, scavenge for resources and find new opportunities. With that in mind, let's move on and see how you can use energy as efficiently as possible to get you going in the wasteland.
First of all I should mention that you need to find a mechanic, or science geek around your camp to help you with your vehicle mods... my time is limited and I cannot write a whole book about these things here.
The first thing you need is a hybrid vehicle of course. Don't know which automakers made it to your time but you definitely need to find a hybrid car. In my opinion, the best thing you can get is a diesel-electric plug-in one. The reasons are obvious – you can charge it from a wind mill or solar panel array at any camp and the diesel can burn a range of oily bio fuels if modified properly. Citroen might have such a combination so look for cars with the two stacked arrows on the grille.
Even better is to do this with a train. They're much larger and they won't feel a thing when you're using their inertia to recharge the batteries. So try to work out your route along the main railways.
Mount some sort of man-powered electric generator for the passenger seat and put it to good use when riding with someone else. You can also change turns between driving and pedaling.
You can use the weight you saved by ditching unnecessary things by installing more batteries. However, try not to overdo it.
Don't forget your shotgun and always try to use more electricity than liquid fuels along the way.
Google News