Hybrids & Oil

In the UK, gas prices are $6.62 a gallon (97.9 pence per liter) where the government has long imposed heavier taxes.
The Week Magazine, May 12, 2006, Vol 6, Iss 258, pg 13.

Gasoline-Electric Hybrid Vehicles, such as the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid and Ford Escape Hybrid deliver an average 19 mpg less than their EPA ratings indicate, according to Consumer Reports. (Richard Burr, Weekly Standard Columnist) The Week Magazine, Feb. 3, 2006, Vol 5, Iss 244, p. 39

A California company plans to offer a plug-in conversion for the Toyota Prius hybrid car that will boost mileage to 100 miles per gallon. The eDrive Systems conversion will add 180 pounds in lithium-ion batteries but allow the Prius to get about 100 mpg and drive up to 35 miles on electricity alone, the Detroit News said.

(4.26.06) "DaimlerChrysler AG pledged to build 500,000 ethanol-fuel vehicles annually, or a quarter of its U.S. production, by 2008, as automakers try to address concerns over heavy foreign oil consumption and high gas prices," the Washington Post reports. "Thomas W. LaSorda, chief executive of Chrysler, made the pledge [Tuesday] at a meeting of the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington." DaimlerChrysler embeds fiber from the Abaca Banana Plant into plastic covers for spare-tire wells. The natural material yields up to 60% in energry saving over glass fibers. Discover Magazine, June 2006, pg. 16.

The United States today wrings twice as much work from each barrel of oil as it did in 1975. With even more advanced technologies, we can double oil efficiency all over again at a cost of $12 a barrel (It was $60 a barrel at the time article was composed). We can replace the rest of our oil needs with advanced biofuels and saved natural gas at a cost averaging $18 a barrel. Combined, these two approaches average out a cost of $15 a barrel...Three-quarters of fuel usage is caused by the car's weight. Every unit of energy you save at the wheels by maki the car lighter will save an additional seven units of fuel...(We've) figured out a cost-effective way to do that so you can end up with a 66 mpg uncompromised SUV (currently at 18.5 mpg) that has half the normal weight, and a third the normal fuel use...Henry Ford said you don't need weight for strength. If you need weight for strength, your bicycle helmet would be made of steel not carbon fiber...the auto industry needs to move toward ultralight, ultrastrong carbon-fiber composites, almost certainly using thermoplastics (which can absorb 12 times as much crash energy per pound as steel)...your car will only be half as heavey as it was before, it will be safer when whacked by a heavier one...if you have an ultralight hybrid SUV burning gasoline at 66 mpg, and you then combine that with E85 (which is 15% gasoline & 85% ethanol) you just got a 320 mpg SUV because the efficiency times the biofuel saving of oil multiplies. Superefficient cars needs hydrogen a lot less than hydrogen needs superefficient cars.-Amory Lovins Discover Magazine, February 2006, Pg. 54

Excerpts "Ethanol, Electricity, Biodiesel, & Hydrogen" presented below are from
Popular Mechanics Magazine, May 2006, "How far can you drive on a bushel of corn?" pg 74-81. Online at http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2690341.html
Ethanol is ethyl alcohol, often referred to as grain alcohol; E85 is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. About 1.56 gallons of E85 takes you as far as 1 gallon of gas. It is a clean-burning fuel, potentially providing more horsepower than gasoline (with an octane rating over 100), and burns cooler than gasoline. However, pure alcohol isn't volatile enough to get an engine started on cold days, hence E85. E85's high octane rating allows a much higher compression ratio, which translates into higher thermodynamic efficiency.
Cynics claim that it takes more energy to grow corn and distill it into alcohol than you can get out of the alcohol. According to the DOE, the growing, fermenting and distillation chain actually results in a surplus of energy that ranges from 34 to 66 percent. Moreover, the carbon dioxide (CO2) that an engine produces started out as atmospheric CO2 that the cornstalk captured during growth, making ethanol greenhouse gas neutral. Recent DOE studies note that using ethanol in blends lowers carbon monoxide (CO) and CO2 emissions substantially. In 2005, burning such blends had the same effect on greenhouse gas emissions as removing 1 million cars from American roads. Growing corn is an intensive process that requires pesticides, fertilizer, heavy equipment and transport.
Alcohol is a corrosive solvent. Anything exposed to ethanol must be made of corrosion-resistant (and expensive) stainless steel or plastic--from fuel-injection components to the tanks, pumps and hoses that dispense E85, as well as the tankers that deliver it.
According to the Renewable Fuels Association, 95 ethanol refineries produced more than 4.3 billion gallons of ethanol in 2005. An additional 40 new or expanded refineries slated to come on line in the next 18 months will increase that to 6.3 billion gallons. Rrepresenting just over 3 percent of our annual consumption of more than 200 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel. One acre of corn can produce 300 gallons of ethanol per growing season. So, in order to replace that 200 billion gallons of petroleum products, American farmers would need to dedicate 675 million acres, or 71 percent of the nation's 938 million acres of farmland, to growing feedstock. The East Kansas Agri-Energy's ethanol facility processes about 13 million bushels of corn produce approximately 36 million gallons of ethanol a year, that's enough high-quality motor fuel to replace 55,000 barrels of imported petroleum. Clearly, ethanol alone won't kick our fossil fuel dependence--unless we want to replace our oil imports with food imports.
Electricity from a power source, typically a rechargeable battery pack, energizes a large electric motor that propels the car. When slowing or stopping, the braking energy reverses the power flow, turning the electric motor into a generator to help recharge the battery pack.
Vehicles that operate only on electricity require no warmup, run almost silently and have excellent performance up to the limit of their range. Also, electric cars are cheap to "refuel." At the average price of 10 cents per kwh, it costs around 2 cents per mile. Electric cars can be recharged at night, when generating plants are under-utilized. Vehicles that run on electricity only part of the time and on internal-combustion power at other times--hybrids--have even greater promise. It produces no tailpipe emissions. Even when emissions created by power plants are factored in, electric vehicles emit less than 10 percent of the pollution of an internal-combustion car.
Pure electric cars still have limited range, typically no more than 100 to 120 miles. In addition, electrics suffer from slow charging, which, in effect, reduces their usability. When connected to a dedicated, high-capacity recharger, some can be recharged in as little as an hour, but otherwise such cars are essentially not driveable while they sit overnight for charging. Only 2.3 percent of the nation's electricity comes from renewable resources; about half is generated in coal-burning plants.
Biodiesel is fuels for diesel engines made from sources other than petroleum. Among the common sources are vegetable oils, rendered chicken fat and used fry oil. In fact, Rudolf Diesel's demonstration engine ran on peanut oil at the 1900 Paris World Exposition. Processing these oils into fuel involves removing glycerin and other contaminants through a process called transesterification. Unlike spark-ignition engines, diesels rely solely on high compression in the cylinder to raise the temperature of the air enough to ignite the fuel. Consequently, diesels are tolerant of varying-quality fuels and the high compression results in high efficiency. Diesels extract more energy from each gallon than gasoline engines, and less energy is lost as heat leaving the exhaust pipe than with a gasoline engine.
Modern diesel engines can run on 100 percent biodiesel with little degradation in performance compared to petrodiesel because the BTU content of both fuels is similar--120,000 to 130,000 BTU per gallon. In addition, biodiesel burns cleaner than petrodiesel, with reduced emissions. Unlike petrodiesel, biodiesel molecules are oxygen-bearing, and partially support their own combustion. According to the DOE, pure biodiesel reduces CO emissions by more than 75 percent over petroleum diesel. A blend of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent petrodiesel, sold as B20, reduces CO2 emissions by around 15 percent. According to the National Biodiesel Board, production of biodiesel in 2004 was about 25 million gallons, tripling to more than 75 million gallons in 2005.
Pure biodiesel, B100, costs about $3.50--roughly a dollar more per gallon than petrodiesel (other levels seasonally and regionally, have a 10 to 25 cents a gallon higher price than petrodiesel). And, in low temperatures, higher-concentration blends--B30, B100--turn into waxy solids and do not flow. Special additives or fuel warmers are needed to prevent fuel waxing.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element on Earth, forming part of many chemical compounds. Pure hydrogen can be made by electrolysis--passing electricity through water. This liberates the oxygen, which can be used for many industrial purposes. Most hydrogen currently is made from petroleum. Though hydrogen can fuel a modified internal-combustion engine, most see hydrogen as a way to power fuel cells to move cars electrically. The only byproduct of a hydrogen fuel cell is water.
Most energy and industry experts agree that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles won't be widely available until 2020. The industry still needs to develop a manufacturing and distribution system. And, despite the chemical simplicity of electrolysis, producing hydrogen is expensive and energy consuming. It takes about 17 kwh of electricity, which costs about $1.70, to make just 100 cu. ft. of hydrogen. That amount would power a fuel cell vehicle for about 20 miles. Although hydrogen has the highest energy-to-weight ratio of possible energy sources, it's necessary to expend a tremendous amount of energy to compress sufficient hydrogen into an expensive, 5000-plus-psi storage tank in a vehicle. Cryogenic hydrogen boils at minus 423 F. This requires energy to refrigerate and compress the hydrogen to liquefy it, and more energy to maintain that temperature in a superinsulated tank
New York to California Comparision (pdf): using comparitable cars in weight and size.
Guide - Type of car: Raw Materials Consumed, Fuel Needed/Fuel Cost - (Price per gallon...GG = Gallon of Gasoline Equivalent), Economy
(Gasoline) 2006 Honda Civic
4.5 barrels of crude oil, 90.9g/$212.70 ($2.34g) - 33mpg
(E85/Ethanol) 2005 Taurus FFV
53 bushels of corn and a half-barrel of crude oil, 176g/$425 ($2.41g) -17mpg
(Electricity) 1997 Honda EV Plus
About 1 ton of coal, 16.4gg/$60 ($3.66gg) - 202mpgg
(B100 Biodiesel) 2006 Golf TDI
Sixteen 5 gal jugs of used vegitable oil, 68.2g/$231 ($3.40g) - 44mpg
(Hydrogen Fuel Cell) GM Hy-Wire Concept
16,000 cu. ft. of hydrogen, 73gg/$804 ($11gg) - 41mpgg
(M85/Methanol) 1998 Taurus M85 FFV
18,190 cu. ft. of natural gas and a half-barrel of crude oil, 214g/$619 ($2.89g) - 14mpg
(Compressed Natural Gas) Honda Civic GX
10,650 cu. ft. of natural gas, 88gg/$110 ($1.25gg) - 34mpgg.
Conclusion: So before we see our national fleet running on hydrogen, many households might have an electric or plug-in hybrid for short trips, an E85/electric hybrid sedan, SUV or minivan to squire the whole team, and a diesel pickup fueled by B30 or B50 to haul most anything else. All will reduce greenhouse gases and use renewable resources that come from inside our borders. David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Auto Research, says, "If gasoline prices get too high and we look to other fuels--like hydrogen--you can expect that oil-producing nations will reduce our fuel costs."

Lawns
Forty million acres, 2 percent of the land in the US, is covered with lawns. America's burn 800 million gallons of gasoline a year in their lawnmowers.-US News & World Report
The Week. May 20, 2005, Vol 5, Iss 208, pp. 20

Traffic Lights
Improving the timing of the nation's traffic lights could cut traffic delays by 20 percent and gas consumption by 10 percent.-USA Today.
The Week. May 6, 2005, Vol 5, Iss 206, pp. 18

In 1992, Jim Lutz, a program manager at General Motors Advanced Engineering in Warren, Michigan, developmed the Ultralite concept car. This 1,400-pound, four-passenger sedan achieves more than 100 miles per gallon on the highway, can reach 130 miles per hour, and exceeds the strictest tail-pipe emission standards now on the books. The Ultralite body is constructed from six strong yet lightweight carbon-fiber panels mated to a litany of other low-weight components, including the engine block and wheels.

With public anger mounting over record-high gas prices, President Bush this week announced that the US would temporarily stop restocking the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to free up more supplies for consumers. In a major address delivered as gas prices topped $3.25 a gallon in parts of the country, Bush also said that he was ordering federal agencies to ramp up an investigation into possible price gouging and that he would suspend anti-pollution rules that slow the gasoline refining process...(he) acknowledged that these steps would make little difference in the short run. Average prices have jumped 25 cents per gallon in just two weeks. The Week Magazine, May 5, 2006, Vol. 6, Iss 257, pg 2.

See some of the Hybrid Vehicle Perks
http://thejrelease.blogspot.com/2005/05/hybrid-vehicle-perks.html
No More Side Mirrors?
http://thejrelease.blogspot.com/2005/10/no-more-side-mirrors.html
Fuel Efficiency
http://thejrelease.blogspot.com/2006/02/fuel-efficiency.html
Three Waves
http://thejrelease.blogspot.com/2006/02/three-waves.html