No one drives more than Texans do. Our cities are huge and sprawling, with downtown business centers located huge distances from where people live in suburbs or exurbs. My observation on Dallas is that no matter where you live or where you are going it always takes 45 minutes to an hour to get there, and the same is true for most of the state. Here in Texas we literally live in our cars. I keep a laptop in my pickup because it's easier to just sit in the truck and work for a few hours than to take the time to drive home to my office after having driven all the way into town. In fact, I'm parked at a McDonald's using their wireless internet right now.
With the time we spend in our vehicles we like to get large and comfortable ones, like SUVs or fancy pickups or large luxury cars. Even with the new, higher fuel economy standards, they tend to guzzle gas, and at current prices that can be pretty painful. Plus, when you're driving 2 to 3 hours a day, you start to feel guilty about all the pollutants your car is spewing out, no matter how warmly you feel about the Texas oil industry.
The answer to this is alternative fuels and higher fuel economy vehicles. Hybrid engines are the main answer to the fuel economy problem, but progress on hybrid trucks and SUVs has been painfully slow, and the selection remains limited to either very expensive foreign SUVs like the Toyota Highlander, cramped little SUVs like the Ford Escape or the idiotically designed line of GM hybrid pickups which get the same gas mileage as their non-hybrids.
None of these gets enough better gas mileage to justify the higher cost you pay for a hybrid over the life of the vehicle. To get decent return on your investment your hybrid really needs to be a compact or sub-compact car like the Prius, and no one wants to drive 3 hours a day scrunched up like a pretzel in one of those microscopic deathtraps.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Lumpy
Are there any cars that can run on 100 percent ethanol right off the assembly line?
2 - Mr. Real Estate
I'm seriously considering buying the new Camry Hybrid. Ethanol and hybrids are definitely the way to go.
3 - Dave Nalle
If you want an Ethanol Hybrid hold out a bit longer for the Saab which is going to run on E100 with a hybrid engine. It sounds phenomenal.
And as for cars that can currently run on E100, I'd recommend a Model T Ford if you can find one that hasn't been converted for petroleum. But seriously, it may be possible to run FlexFuel vehicles on up to E95 and the manufacturers just aren't admitting it. But don't take my word for it and try it. Do some research. There are message bases with discussions from people who've done this sort of experimenting.
Dave
4 - Bliffle
"And as for cars that can currently run on E100, I'd recommend a Model T Ford if you can find one that hasn't been converted for petroleum."
IIRC, all early Fords were designed to run either alcohol or petrol: a lever on the carb switched between the two. Alcohol was used for most early cars because it was cheap and easily available in most communities without shipping. The "octane" rating is based on alcohol as octane 100. The switch to petrol occured because it was cheaper, in spite of the greater hazard of fires and explosions.
Back in the 60s sports car racers of my acquaintance lobbied to get the SCCA to switch to alcohol for closed course 'modified' race cars to reduce the danger of being burned badly in a crash. I believe that the Indy 500 is run on alcohol (tho NASCAR is still gasoline), in spite of my local newspaper reporting once that a car powered by alcohol couldn't go over 60 MPH.
5 - RJ Elliott
"Are there any cars that can run on 100 percent ethanol right off the assembly line?"
I can't answer that for certain, but my tentative guess is no. The reason they call it E85 is that it's 85% ethanol, and 15% gasoline. And this isn't some random percentage pulled out of some scientist's ass. Anything less than 15% gasoline runs the serious risk of causing problems for driver...like not starting on cold days, and not starting after a few days of being idle.
So, 100% ethanol is probably not the way to go at this point...but maybe in a few years!
6 - JR
Bliffle: I believe that the Indy 500 is run on alcohol
The alcohol used in Champ Car and (I think) the Indy Racing League is methanol.
7 - Dave Nalle
The two problems with E100 are the cold weather issue mentioned earlier - which is also an issue with Biodiesel - and the volatility of the fuel. The more Ethanol in your mix, the harder it is on the engine and the better designed and 'tighter' an engine it requires. Ethanol burns faster and produces more power than petroleum does and not all engines are up to the additional stress.
I don't know if the cold weather starting issues can be addressed with an engine warmer as they are in diesel engines. I plan to find out more about this new Saab which has apparently solved all these problems.
Dave
8 - Bliffle
Methanol (methyl alcohol), sometimes called "wood alcohol" is a suboptimal fuel because of it's corrosive effect. Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) "grain alcohol" is more benign. It used to be that Methanol was cheaper and easier to produce, thus making it more desirable, but I'm not sure of relative costs now.
9 - Dave Nalle
There's some concern over corosive effects of Ethanol too, but mainly because of the small amount of water which it contains. MTBE which was just eliminated from gas nationwide and replaced with ethanol was a methanol derivative.
BTW, methanol is also the key chemical used in processing biodiesel.
Dave
10 - Dan
Very nice to see even in the Great Oil State of Texas ..E85 making it's way.
E100 ..yes the biggest problems would be cold start .. some people use a "pre-heater" heating the fuel for better cold start..not something I'd recommend !
E85 Conversion.. extremly simple ..
11 - Hoggle
Saab E100 Concept Car
Saab E100 Hybrid Car prototype
Of course, the long-term solution is to design our lives to need less travel, with compact villages containing all our daily needs, work-from-home, and cheap, clean mass-transit to and from retail and commerce centres.
12 - Dave Nalle
Thanks for the links, Hoggle. But your suggestion of redesigning everything so we live more compactly seems to be the opposite of what's happening here in Texas where the exurb phenomenon with ever longer commutes seems to be the trend. Rather than more urbanization I suspect that virtual offices with people working from home are a more likely solution.
Dave
13 - B
Pssst... The Prius is classified as a mid-sized sedan, not a compact or sub-compact vehicle. If you're going to write, fine. Just get your facts in order beforehand!
14 - Lumpy
What kind of retard classified the prius as a midsize? Does that mean my blazer is a 18-wheeler?
15 - Jet in Columbus
No, maybe they classified the V W beetle as an SUV so it'd qualify for lower MPGs?
16 - Joey
Indy is shifting to eth in 2007. They blended this year with meth.
Hybrids: Big dollar battery-bank change out at year 3 or 4. And your type of driving plays into the purchase decision. If you are doing a lot of city driving, you would very rarely kick into the electric mode. That mostly occurs at highway speeds.
Eth: Why denature it? Is the denatured product causing the cold starting problems. or... employ turbine technology. It will burn it, no problem.
Japanese Imperial Air Force: Flew the Mitsubishi Zero on distilled pine sap, exclusively. This was, of course after the U.S. had effectively stopped imports (oil) from arriving back into Japan.
Japanese Imperial Navy: Ran their ships (boilers) on straight crude oil. That's why they turned into inferno's when torpedoed. Crude has a lot of other ingredients besides the slippery stuff. Things like Methane, natural gas, varnishes etc... creating a much more volitile mix. But the Japanese figured it was cheaper to NOT refine the fuel, and burn it straight from the well.
17 - Dave Nalle
Joey, your last post reminds me of how many things we've used as fuel in the past and senselessly abandonned. Hell, you could still build a car that ran on wooden logs AKA 'biomass' if you wanted to, like the old Stanley Steamer.
Your turbine point is also a good one. That's what makes biodiesel viable, and my reading suggests that E100 will work beautifully in an engine which uses a turbine and pressure induced ignition.
Dave
18 - Joey
Dave,
I had no idea the Model T was capable of burning alcohol. That's a great idea, at a time when petroleum wasn't always available. I understand the old Army duece and a half was multi-fuel capable.
Is bio-diesel a soy product? Then of course along comes the recycled restaurant grease. But that would be a limited resource available only to those who are set up to scavange, and after it caught on, the source would probably be sold, not given away.
Google Hydrogen economy sometime. It's amazing what is starting. However, from what I have read, a fully capable hydrogen economy and associated infrastructure is at least 50 years out.
I remember reading about a pig farmer, who harvested the methane created by his stock to power the farm, including the equipment. That was amazing.
19 - Dave Nalle
I had no idea the Model T was capable of burning alcohol. That's a great idea, at a time when petroleum wasn't always available. I understand the old Army duece and a half was multi-fuel capable.
So is the HMV. In fact the next generation has a multi-fuel hybrid enging.
Is bio-diesel a soy product? Then of course along comes the recycled restaurant grease. But that would be a limited resource available only to those who are set up to scavange, and after it caught on, the source would probably be sold, not given away.
Soy is one of the cheaper sources for biodiesel, but you can use whatever vegetable oil is available. I've even heard of people using lard, though I wouldn't recommend it.
Google Hydrogen economy sometime. It's amazing what is starting. However, from what I have read, a fully capable hydrogen economy and associated infrastructure is at least 50 years out.
That's why I'm focusing on options available now.
I remember reading about a pig farmer, who harvested the methane created by his stock to power the farm, including the equipment. That was amazing.
Sounds like a truly unpleasant way to power your farm.
Dave
20 - Victor Plenty
If you farm hogs (or most any other livestock), methane's already there as one of your inevitable by-products. Capturing at least some of it and getting power from it sounds more pleasant than just letting it all perfume the air for miles around.
21 - Dave Nalle
I guess you have a point there, Victor. But I still don't want to be the one hooking hoses up to pigs buttholes.
Dave
22 - Bliffle
"If you farm hogs (or most any other livestock), methane's already there as one of your inevitable by-products. Capturing at least some of it and getting power from it sounds more pleasant than just letting it all perfume the air for miles around."
After WW2 Europe had little petrol, so people improvised fuel from, among other things, methane. The magazine "Popular Mechanics" had illustrated articles detailing how to convert a small engine to use farm gases. One could see pictures of small vehicles powered by the huge gas bag it towed on a small trailer.
23 - Mark Saleski
this discussion is conjuring up some truly weird mental imagery.
24 - Mark Saleski
of course! i shoulda said weird and funny.
25 - Victor Plenty
Methane isn't harvested from livestock anatomy. Despite Dave's vivid imagery, I've never heard of anyone hooking hoses to hogs.
In gaseous form the methane might be extracted from the air in the animal enclosures (especially if they are in fully enclosed barns), but I don't think that's done very often either, if at all. So in reality, methane power is not really power from farts. That level of efficiency might be possible at some point, but I don't think anybody's quite that desperate yet.
The most common way to collect methane from a livestock facility is to change the process for handling their manure and other waste products such as uneaten feed materials. These waste products have to be handled somehow, so it makes sense to handle them in ways that will let you collect the methane they tend to generate as they decompose.
Another alternative is to arrange for the waste to decompose without generating any methane, but that's a whole different can of worms (sometimes literally) and the end product in such cases usually has nothing to do with energy production, so it's a bit off-topic for this article.