It's Friday: a peek at the truck stop of the future
What's the price of gas going to be in 2021? Specifically, what will the gamut of transportation fuels cost on March 16, 2021? WIRED recently published one of its artifacts from the future: a truck stop 12 years from now. As you can see in the imaginary scene, a full tank of hydrogen will cost a hundred bucks. Plugging in your EV will cost you $75 a kWh (but the first five minutes are courtesy of GM). Also on tap: methane from Oscar Meyer and Uncle Willie's Kind Green biodiesel. In fact, this refueling station offers so many types of fuel (13!) that they promise a free car wash if you can't fill up your rig. Check out the full image at WIRED. Yes, I know they posted this back in February, but some of us still read the paper version and have a slight backlog of unread magazines sitting around. [Source: WIRED]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Steve-O 3:07PM (4/24/2009)
That looks really cool, but the pricing kinda sucks :)
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meme 4:03PM (4/24/2009)
Yeah, I don't know who came up with those numbers. Electricity is more like $75 a *megawatt hour* presently. Are we going to have 800x inflation in that time period? Let me tell you, if electricity is that expensive, everything else is going to be even more expensive.
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Chris M 4:39PM (4/24/2009)
Yeah, that's way off, considering that the prices of gasoline, diesel, and even hydrogen are about 10x current prices, it should be about $1.10 per Kwh.
But then again, this is all wildly speculative and not to be taken seriously.
BlackbirdHighway 4:33PM (4/24/2009)
Hydrogen won't be widely available in 12 years. It's ten years away from today, and in 12 years it will still be ten years away.
For electric vehicles, a 50 kWh charge in 45 minutes will be available for $10, with $3 off if you buy lunch while you wait, or a 5 minute quick charge for $20. People will grumble about what a ripoff the quick charge is, but most will pay it anyway.
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3PeaceSweet 7:27PM (4/24/2009)
$75 a kWh!! you can get electricity from solar panels today for about 25c/kWh
You might pay 3 times that for a 100kW quick charge, but not 300 times more.
If they are selling diesel at 40c a litre, you could make electricity from that @ about 10c a kWh
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jharlan 2:48PM (4/25/2009)
One thing I can guarantee. That view of the future won't even be close to reality. It's much more likely you will have an alcohol based fuel, CNG, biodiesel of some kind, and An EV recharge station and the cost to refuel when indexed to inflation will be very similar to what we pay today, unless you let the politicians instead of the free market be in control. Hydrogen will just be one of histories blunders.
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Rick 2:17PM (4/28/2009)
I seriously doubt in 12 years prices will be that astronomical and completely unaffordable to a vast majority of the planet.
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