Recent Comments:
Not Done Yet: Hummer H3, H3T get biofuel capability, new colors for 2010 {Autoblog Green}
Nov 8th 2009 2:20AM Also, well over 2,000 filling stations in 44 states across the country offer E85, up from only 300 just a few years ago.
It's true that only a small portion of cars can use E85, but that's no fault of the fuel or a reason to reject it. If we just mandated that alcohol compatibility be a normal feature like seatbelts, that issue wouldn't exist. Even now there are dozens of flex fuel models from various automakers.
Not Done Yet: Hummer H3, H3T get biofuel capability, new colors for 2010 {Autoblog Green}
Nov 8th 2009 1:46AM What does mileage matter if the fuel is clean burning, renewable, and affordable?
Not Done Yet: Hummer H3, H3T get biofuel capability, new colors for 2010 {Autoblog Green}
Nov 8th 2009 1:44AM Joe, thanks for your comments. I understand your point that even if alcohol compatibility were a standard feature, alcohol would still be a niche player, since biodiesel compatibility is already a "standard" in diesel cars but has not displaced biodiesel.
But is biodiesel a commercially sold product? Is it price-competitive with petro-diesel? When mixed with 15% petro-diesel do its cold weather problems go away, as alcohol's do when mixed with 15% gasoline (hence E85 and M85)?
Look at what happened to the price of gasoline in 2007-2008, when it topped $4. At the time, methanol was selling unsubsidized for $0.80, or $1.60 in energy equivalent terms. I have a hard time believing that if we had mandated any-alcohol compatibility back in the early 1990s when the technology first emerged, and thus had nearly all cars on the road being compatible by 2003 or so, that such a price disparity would not have caused a massive shift toward methanol. Gas stations would be in a race to offer it, to undercut each other or to avoid being undercut.
Not Done Yet: Hummer H3, H3T get biofuel capability, new colors for 2010 {Autoblog Green}
Nov 6th 2009 3:29PM Great stuff.
If only GM had adopted flex fuel across the board earlier, then perhaps people wouldn't have been as leery about buying the highly profitable and popular vehicles - roomy, powerful, heavy, and fast SUVs, minivans, pickup trucks, and performance sedans - they really want. And it wouldn't have had to go into humiliating and ruinous bankruptcy, shedding iconic brands and handing over control to politicians.
If the auto industry as a whole had adopted flex fuel (especially FULL flex fuel including methanol and all other alcohol fuels) earlier, whether as a result of legislative mandate or simple farsightedness, then OPEC would not have been able to spike the price of petroleum from $10 a barrel in 1999 to an economy-crushing $140 in 2008, since alcohol is competitive at around $50.
It remains to be seen whether Hummer's new Chinese masters, not known for their tender environmental sensitivities, will retain flex fuel capability. Recalling Beijing's smothering smog and this emerging nation's need for cheap fuel that cannot have its price jacked up, they'd be wise to do so. Indeed, given China's relative lack of local oil and need for imports crossing US controlled sea lanes (and the Mideast-funded separatist movement in its northwest), it is probably even more urgent for China to go to alcohol fuel than it is for us.
Toshiba BDX2000 Blu-ray player coming November for $250, gives HD-DVD the final cold shoulder {Engadget HD}
Nov 6th 2009 11:36AM Oops, drat. Screwed up the analogy.
I meant
TV : HDTV :: DVD : HD-DVD
Stupid, primitive, non-editable Blogsmith/AOL comment system. Catch up to 1996, guys!
Toshiba BDX2000 Blu-ray player coming November for $250, gives HD-DVD the final cold shoulder {Engadget HD}
Nov 6th 2009 11:35AM There I agree with you. I've had to explain what Blu-ray is over and over to people, who respond with blank stares. They just don't retain it - it's not self explanatory.
People know HDTV. Thus the analogy TV : SDTV :: DVD :HD-DVD would have been very clear and intuitively obvious.
I also wish that HD-DVD - like combo technology had won and become standard, to simplify adoption. It's just horridly clunky to buy a Blu-ray that throws in a redundant DVD disk of the same movie so you can play it in your minivan or whatnot.
And I say this as a Blu-ray guy who bought a PS3 during the height of the format war, never bought an HD DVD player, and strongly advised a friend NOT to buy HD DVD (he ignored me, to his regret).
I simply saw Blu-ray's victory as inevitable due to PS3, more movie studio support, and greater hardware selection.
Perennial wishes: Auto industry execs calling for higher gas tax yet again {Autoblog Green}
Nov 5th 2009 3:22PM Unless fuel choice is a standard feature in cars, taxing gasoline is simply punishing human movement, activity, and aspirations, especially blue collar workers who need to drive to work or for whom driving is part of their work, because people are locked in and have no choice but to buy gasoline regardless of the price. Gasoline demand is highly inelastic and price-insensitive; usage continued to rise throughout the 2000s despite the price having risen severalfold.
Only when there's a critical mass of cars on the road that can run on alternative fuel rather than just gasoline will a gas tax help push people to using alternative fuel.
That critical mass can be achieved by a simple government mandate that all new gasoline cars sold in America be fully flex-fueled, able to run equally easily on any alcohol fuel (methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol) as on gasoline. This technology has existed for over a decade now and is rugged, refined, and reliable. And it costs only $130 per car for automakers to add.
With alcohol compatibility a standard feature like seatbelts, THEN comes the time to start heavily taxing gasoline - at that point people will just start buying alcohol fuel in droves, which will become routinely available as gas stations race to undercut each other or avoid being undercut.
Until then you're just brutalizing the helpless.
Chrysler to cut weight of next-gen Jeep Liberty by 600 pounds! {Autoblog Green}
Nov 5th 2009 2:55PM Matt, thanks to CAFE, average fuel economy went up a whopping 65%, from 13 MPG in 1976 to 20 MPG in 1990, a huge increase. But gasoline usage did not fall 65%, nor by a lesser amount, or even break even. Instead it rose 14%, from 89 to 103 billion gallons a year. By 2004 it hit 140 billion.
The pressures on gasoline demand are too great for increased efficiency to match. Growth in population produces more drivers. Economic growth causes increased per capita and overall wealth which produces more drivers - it's consistent that as soon as people can afford cars, they buy them, and it doesn't stop at one per household. There are other factors as well such as continued flight from crime-ridden high-tax cities and decaying inner suburbs into suburbs and exurbs.
Now look at China and India. The USA has 800 cars per 1,000 residents; China has 8, which is a quadrupling in just the last several years. China's growth in car ownership is likely to be explosive.
America has 3% of world oil reserves and 25% of demand. Now imagine a player the size of the US walking into the room.
Now recall that OPEC has 70% of world oil reserves, including all the cheapest and easiest-to-drill stuff, and having as the very reason for its existence the goal of deliberately under-producing relative to demand so as to produce artificial scarcity and high prices. While non-OPEC oil production has roughly matched world economic and population growth since the late 70s by doubling, OPEC produced no more oil in 2008 than they did in 1978, despite huge increases in efficiency and techniques that make oil extraction far cheaper and easier.
What did your vaunted increases in fuel efficiency avail us when OPEC spiked the price of petroleum from $10 a barrel in 1999 to a world collapse-inducing $140 in 2008? Not at all.
Continuing our suicidal passivity in permitting millions of cars to be produced and sold each year that are needlessly locked in to petroleum-only, when adding alcohol compatibility costs a measly $130 per car, is folly beyond words.
Chrysler to cut weight of next-gen Jeep Liberty by 600 pounds! {Autoblog Green}
Nov 5th 2009 2:41PM why not the LS2LS7?,
Alcohol fuel emits significantly less NOx. More importantly, alcohol fuel in vapor form in the atmosphere (released, like gasoline vapor, through imperfect combustion or leaks in the refueling process) reacts to atmospheric NOx at less than a tenth of the rate that gasoline vapor does. Finally, unlike gasoline vapor, alcohol vapor is washed out easily from the air by rain. The net effect is that of a dramatic reduction in NOx and especially in its negative effects such as ozone smog.
BP prepares output of new biofuels - algae diesel and butanol - starting in 2010 {Autoblog Green}
Nov 5th 2009 2:32PM Butanol is a good and interesting fuel, especially given its apparent ability to be swapped in for gasoline in some "gasoline-only" cars.
However I hope that it doesn't stall the drive to make full flex fuel capability a standard feature in cars. Full FFVs can run on any alcohol fuel, including methanol, ethanol, propanol, and butanol.
That sort of flexibility is what we'll need to provide too many targets for the oil cartel to be able to squash.
I haven't seen recent info on butanol's pricing but I suspect it is quite high. Ethanol is at least in gasoline's ballpark (if we dropped the tariffs on cheap imported ethanol it would be even more competitive), and methanol is often far cheaper.
The future I envision would have butanol as a premium, high-mileage fuel and a gasoline substitute for antique cars from the bad old monofuel pre flex fuel days, with methanol being the bargain fuel and ethanol being the mid-grade offering.
