Fuel Efficient Vehicles – Including Gas Hybrid Cars
Fuel prices have soared and many of us are looking at going back to more fuel efficient vehicles. Popular in the 1970s, the trend towards SUVs in the 1990s and early ‘aughts undid much of the conservation efforts of the last time fuel economy was a matter of concern. Though speed limits may have risen, there is a whole new lineup of cars that are ready to take on some of the demand created by people who are unwilling to spend hundreds of dollars filling up the tank each time.
While there have always been a small number of fuel efficient vehicles manufactured in the US, to reach the CAFE standards set out by congress, though not many. Several of those made in the last 20 years were made in partnerships with Japanese firms that had expertise with these smaller vehicles. Even in the early 1990s, for instance, the 3-cylinder, 1.0L Geo Metro was delivering upwards of 50mpg (21km/L) in 1990. This was at a time when US consumer purchased a massive fleet of vehicles with fuel economy less than 15mpg (6.3km/L).
In addition to these small and relatively low powered vehicles, hybrid cars and SUVs are becoming a very common replacement. Instead of generating fuel savings with very careful use of somewhat limited power and lightweight construction, new vehicles are able to deliver the sort of comfort and ride that consumers have become accustomed to.
Gas Hybrid Vehicles
The very popular gas hybrid vehicles conserve power requirements by transferring the power of momentum from when you break and storing it in the car’s battery. For that reason, a heavy frame is not as much of a liability – the energy used to get it going is then transferred back into the car with the added energy required to stop that higher momentum.
This makes the city and highway mileage of gas or diesel hybrid cars almost exactly the same. The Toyota Prius and Honda Insight are two vehicles that made early entries into this market, though nearly all automakers now have a hybrid offering of one of their most popular vehicles. For each, demand has far outstripped supply since they were first introduced in the early ‘aughts. For most drivers, the increased cost of this vehicle choice is covered in the gas savings within two years or less.
Battery Electric Vehicles – BEV’s
Electric-only hybrids (also known as a continuously recharged Battery Electric Vehicle or BEV) are also on the way, with US automakers promising the first plug-in hybrid vehicles for 2010. These vehicles will be able to take advantage of other types of alternative fuels and energies, such as home-generated power from micro-turbines or even solar paint. It is very likely that within a decade, cars will be on the market that produce some of their own fuel from the light catching the surface of the vehicle.
Small vehicles that are designed to work with alternative fuels are now being imported from Europe in increasing numbers, too. Though the first wave of fuel efficient European vehicles could be said to have been the influx of mopeds and scooters in the 1950s and 60s, this trend focuses both on small cars and the surging popularity of scooters among young people, once again. Highly fuel efficient vehicles that run on alternative fuels like bio-diesel will likely pay for themselves many times over in fuel cost savings.
Entirely electric vehicles are also becoming a hot commodity. Whether manufactured that way or upcycled from an existing vehicle, these are almost always used in combination with a rechargeable energy storage system, in the form of batteries or a heavy flywheel. They can be charged with any sort of power and may also have a small combustion engine for assistance at distances of over 60 miles (100km). The raw materials (many of which are mined and sent from China) weight and toxicity of batteries has, so far, kept adoption to low levels, despite the fuel flexibility.
Flex Fuel Vehicles
Flex fuel vehicles that can run on a variety of energetic fluids and gases are the most popular vehicles in places with excess bio-matter, such as Brazil. These relatively fuel efficient vehicles are also present in North America. Usually these flex fuel or dual fuel systems combing either a gas or diesel engine with the ability to run natural gas or un-treated vegetable oil. Sometimes they also have charging and storage capacity like an electric hybrid, too. Such vehicles are currently more a curiosity than a market force, but volatility in commodity markets makes it very advantageous to have the ability to adjust for what fuel is available or less expensive.
The marketplace for “green” vehicles has grown tremendously over the last few years. These new trends towards smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles has been good for cars, as a hobby, too. What was just a few hybrid cars and some under-powered clown-cars a few years ago has become a respectable term for well-made cars and trucks that can reduce dependence upon foreign oil and reduce polluting emissions that would hasten the effects of climate change.
Choosing the fuel-efficient vehicle that suits your needs is determined by your current and future life-style. If you think you need a big vehicle for recreational opportunities and road-trips, you might want to also consider how your driving behaviors are likely to change if gas were $10/gal ($3/L). It’s something very likely in the next 10 years that people are likely to keep their vehicles. You might find that an alternative fuel vehicle suits the majority of your driving needs.
Even if you do need to drive a mini-van or SUV, you can still make cost effective and relatively non-polluting choices about how you use those vehicles. Flex fuel might be the best option for trucks and fleet vehicles.
Is Bio-Diesel Really Better for the Environment?
Now that the price of petroleum is on the rise, many people are looking for less costly alternatives. Among the most viable options that are available is the bio-diesel that automotive engines were first designed to run on. Now available in most cities in North America as fuel for transportation and heating, bio-diesel fuel is also becoming the low-cost alternative, compared with petrol-diesel.
Biodiesel has been highly touted as one of the fuels that may be able to allow North America to grow much of its own fuel. Like ethanol (made from maize), vegetable oil that can be made into bio-diesel is indistinguishable from the stuff you consume, before processing.
Most often, this is genetically modified soybean oil in the United States, but other energy-dense oils such as canola (also known as oil rapeseed) and even rendered chicken fat. Each most locales use an oil from plants most suited to their environment, such as palm oil in the south seas and canola in Europe.
Diesel vehicles that can be very easily modified to run on modified vegetable oil, whether old or new, are highly in demand. While many of them have more displacement than a typical car might, there are also quite a few high-quality older cars that can be made like new with a bit of maintenance. In short, there has been a new resurgence of interest in diesel vehicles and, not just among people looking to haul several tons up the side of a mountain.
But, while it may be in increasingly less expensive option, is bio-diesel really any better for the environment? There certainly are far fewer asthma-inducing fine particulates to be found bio-diesel exhaust. Moreover, there are a large number of petrochemical byproducts that are toxic to wildlife and the surrounding environment. The amount of lead and heavy metals is negligible, and fuel made from recycled vegetable oil very often has the often pleasant aroma of french fries.
That said, when considering what sort of environmental net impact bio-diesel has, one must consider all aspects of production, manufacture and distribution of this commodity. Each step has an energy input that almost always includes climate change-inducing carbon dioxide. Each step also has an impact on the local ecosystem, especially in the case of rapidly expanding industries.
On the production side, there is the input of mostly chemical fertilizers into mono cultured systems. This releases a great deal of carbon from the soil, especially when new land is put into cultivation to meet a potentially vast demand. There is also the embedded fuel and emissions involved in the production of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, as well as the machines to tend it all. Over 80% of bio-diesel produced in the United States is conventionally produced soybean oil. The rest is made up from a variety of other crops, though the most energetic oils are produced in tropical climates.
After harvest, the seeds are taken to a rendering plant where energy consuming machines macerate and press the seeds into oil. This oil is then further processed into fuel that most bio-diesel compatible vehicles require. While there are some vehicles that can run used fryer oil with no more treatment than to remove the chunks of potato, such vehicles tend to have lower fuel economy. Petroleum is most often used to move this fuel around on traditional types of transport, from the processing plant to the pump.
Each type of vegetable oil has a different amount of carbon dioxide emitted per calorie of energy released. Canola and soybeans both emit just slightly less CO2 than gasoline. You can be certain that there is essentially no organically produced crop that is being made into bio-diesel, so the vast mono-cultures are detrimental to migrating animal populations as well as disastrous to the biodiversity of the soils they inhabit.
While there is a great deal of promise for fueling a fraction of the vehicles on the road with bio-diesel, unless vehicles become a great deal more efficient or energy usage becomes highly restricted, there simply isn’t enough arable land to meet our fuel needs. Given that agricultural production is just barely keeping up with hunger in much of the world, this isn’t an option.
Bio-diesel has many advantages for the pocket book and can certainly be a stop-gap measure while the world weans itself off petroleum fuel, but the net environmental cost is about even, which is to say, not so great. Moreover, the price of bio-diesel is not independent of the price of petrol – as one goes up, so does the other, though more slowly. Perhaps the ultimate good that bio-diesel fuel can do the environment is to become so expensive as to be conserved.
