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specialgreen
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Joined: 10 Jul 2004
Posts: 259
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota
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 Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:46 pm Post subject: The E85/plug-in/hybrid triple-play |
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In his Feb. 5th editorial, NYTimes editor Nicholas Kristof made the case for his E-85 vision: an E-85/plug-in/hybrid triple-play:
| Quote: | Imagine if we could develop a passenger car that averaged more than 100 miles per gallon -- or, if used only for short trips, 1,000 miles per gallon. What if it could cost the equivalent of only 75 cents a gallon to operate and needed to go to a filling station only every other month?
Surprise -- we have all that technology today! We even have a handful of demonstration vehicles to prove it. All we lack is bold political and corporate leadership to put this technology in play immediately. |
He points to CalCars.org's efforts to design a plug-in home charger for the Toyota Prius, asserts that the plug-in hybrid is marketable today, and backs it up with a quote from the CIA... well actually from retired CIA director James Woolsey: "None of this requires a Manhattan Project"!
Kristof takes the idea of the plug-in hybrid one step further, echoing a thought that several people on this forum have been voicing for a couple of years:
| Quote: | | Then make that plug-in a flex-fuel vehicle that burns E85 (which is 85 percent ethanol and only 15 percent petroleum), and it will go four times as far for each gallon of petroleum. |
(I'll correct that to say: five times as far per gallon of gasoline, assuming 25% reduction in MPG.)
With his suggestion, Kristof has touched on an important question about ethanol fuel: how do you increase ethanol's marketshare, without running out of ethanol?
Critics of ethanol fuel have claimed that if all the corn produced domestically were used for fuel, the US would only be able to displace a modest proportion of gasoline from the marketplace. And they have a point: with its current sources of grain for ethanol, America's ability to become energy-independent is limited.
The E85/plug-in/hybrid triple-play is one potential answer to that. Even if US ethanol production could only displace 10% of gasoline consumed domestically, we might double that proportion by combining E-85 use with hybrid cars; and more than double it, with plug-in hybrids.
20% may not seem like much; and it may take ten or fifteen years before the majority of cars on the road are hybrid. But even those in oil-producing nations can read "the writing on the wall," and such a change in the market could help to stabilize the price of oil on the world market, as well as protect against opportunism at the pump. |
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hotrod
Joined: 19 Apr 2005
Posts: 872
Location: Colorado
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| Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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Its taken Brazil 30+ years to develop a self suffecient alcohol transportation fuel infrastructure. We should expect our progress to be similar. If you time our move toward ethanol fuels as the time that FFV's first became available we are only beginning the process.
I like the idea to some extent, the more foot holds ethanol gets in the market the more desirable it will become as an investment commodity. Likewise I agree that having a viable home grown fuel economy will help to stabilize oil prices and markets.
I do have reservations about plug in hybrids as in some cases the are higher net polluters than the cars they displace, depending on the fuel source for the electricity. Hydro, solar, wind, tide power or nuclear electicity = good, coal, natural gas or fuel oil generated electicity = bad.
Larry |
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