Is ethanol the answer?

 

Grow corn for food or fuel?

Oil prices are in a free fall right now.

While it’s a refreshing change at the fuel pump, it’s not a free pass to forget about alternate fuel sources. Hydrogen, natural gas and ethanol (in its many forms) are top contenders right now.

We’ve all heard about the much hyped Honda GX and FCX Clarity, the company’s dip into natural gas and hydrogen-powered vehicles. What’s a little less known is their work on ethanol-powered vehicles.

In 2006, Honda announced that they’d be releasing vehicles in Brazil able to run on either gasoline or a 100% bioethanol, derived from sugar cane.

Ethanol as a fuel source is nothing new. For a number of years now, Ford has offered vehicles with a cute little leaf icon on the front fender, symbolizing that the vehicle can run on E85, a corn-based ethanol fuel. There’s been a pretty heavy PR push behind that leaf, but it seems a pitiful attempt at claiming to be at the forefront of the alternative fuel race.

The controversy with E85 is that it means growing corn for fuel rather than food, resulting in soaring prices. Plus, E85 delivers fuel economy that’s about 30% less than gasoline. (Honda’s ethanol vehicles deliver equal MPG to gas.)

Compare with Honda, who has stepped up and brought hydrogen, natural gas, hybrid and bioethanol to the table. The U.S. automakers have given us: corn.

It’s tragic, really. I’d like to see ethanol as a fuel source abandoned, and focus our collective resources on more promising long term solutions, such as hydrogen and electricity.

Have you driven an E85 vehicle? What do you think?

-tgriffith

Related posts:

• The time for housekeeping has come for General Motors.
• Scion xA and xB to be Replaced in Spring 2007
• Give the Mercury dealer some extra cash and you'd roar out of the showroom ...
• The Least Expensive Cars to Insure
• Should we be thinking about standardized everything for plug-in vehicles?

Related posts:

• Scrapheap, or, you can’t save them all
• 2007 Gumball 3000 - Metacafe Video Contest
• 2009 Hyundai Elantra SE: Here It Is
• Ferris Bueller 1960 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California Replica
• FinalGear Mini-Meet: July 11th In NYC With Garage419

The Pickens Plan and natural gas vehicles

 

 

Are natural gas vehicles the answer?

Have you heard of the Pickens Plan yet?

Keep an eye on a YouTube near you, because it’s exploding there.

The idea being pushed by T. Boone Pickens is fairly simple to understand, and I’ll simplify it even more here: To reduce our use of foreign oil, we take our domestic natural gas production and divert it to powering our automobiles. We use wind energy to make up for the loss of natural gas on our national energy grid.

This plan wouldn’t free us from importing foreign oil, but Pickens argues it would bridge the gap until hydrogen or electric powered cars are a feasible option.

As good as this plan sounds, it seems like there’s a fundamental problem with it. It’s the same problem that’s keeping hydrogen from becoming mainstream: places to fill up. See many natural gas stations on your last road trip?

The logistics and infrastructure required to add natural gas filling stations is only slightly less intimidating than building hydrogen filling stations. At least there are already vehicles, mostly in the public transportation domain, that are running on compressed natural gas. Honda even has a CNG car in the Civic GX,  but the car doesn’t deliver any better MPG numbers than a standard Civic LX.

I admire Pickens’ drive to create sustainable, domestic fuel for our cars. But this plan is only somewhat plausible in the coming years, when we need a solution that is feasible today.

And so far, nothing I see beats plain old conservation in the form of lighter, more fuel efficient gas and diesel cars while we wait for the next generation of clean auto fuel, whether that be CNG, hydrogen, electricity or something else entirely.

What do you think: Is Pickens a genius or a nut job?  

-tgriffith

Related posts:

• Honda Race 2025 - LA Design Challenge 2008
• Color us stunned: Big-time media turning their backs on cash for clunkers
• 2009 Toyota Corolla Will Get More Power and an Edgier Design...Lets Hope!
• Let’s change how often we change our oil
• Should we be thinking about standardized everything for plug-in vehicles?

Related posts:

• Insight Hopes to Eat Prius’s Lunch; Fusion Waits in Line, Drooling
• $1,000 to Woo Sedan Owners to Chrysler Sebring
• Which Toyota model will become a hybrid next?
• Ikea UK to use hybrid vehicles
• Flat-panel LCD Technology Opens Up Gauges

The Japanese car maker says that the new Prius and Lexus HS250H on display ...

Toyota executives foresee the future of the company engaged in the production of more hybrid and electric cars. They disclose that by the end of 2009, they will release the plug-in version of the Prius. Around 10 more new models of hybrid vehicles will be introduced by 2010. An electric car in 2012.

The concept cars from Toyota are results trying to come up with solutions for possible problems in the future. They talk in reference to the $4 per gallon fuel price last summer and treat it as a preview of what things may come.

An electric car concept, the FT-EV, will be unveiled during the Detroit Auto Show. This vehicle shares the DNA of the iQ which is an urban commuter already on public sale in Japan. The non-electric iQ is said to land to the US soil as a Scion.

The core plan of Toyota on the long run will be to focus on the development of non-plug-in vehicles like the Prius.

Toyota aims to sell a million hybrid cars by early 2010. The Japanese car maker says that the new Prius and Lexus HS250H on display in the Detroit Auto Show is a glimpse of what’s to come in the future.

The company shares information that the new gen Prius will come into production by late 2009 earlier than the plotted 2010 schedule. The new prius will be built to run on a NiMi battery for the hybrid version and lithium-ion cells for the plug in.