Alternative-Fuel Vehicle Recommendations?

Ellen Spertus asks: "My husband and I lease a pure electric GM EV-1, which we love, and need to replace our second car, a conventional Honda Accord, which recently died. We'd get a second EV-1, but GM has stopped making them. I haven't been able to find any available all-eletric car with the range (>=50 miles roundtrip) and speed (>=65 mph) that I need. Does the Slashdot community have any experience, wisdom, or advice on choosing an alternative fuel car?"

"I'm currently considering:

• Toyota Prius, a hybrid sedan
• Honda Insight, a hybrid two-seater
• Honda Civic GX, a compressed natural gas (CNG) powered sedan

We test drove a Toyota Prius today, and it seems like a nice car. It's said to provide a quieter and more comfortable ride than the Honda Insight, and it uses pure electric power at low speeds. The Honda Insight, on the other hand, has better gas mileage. I could refuel either at regular gas stations. The Honda Civic GX would need to be refueled at special stations, but there are many where I live and work, the San Francisco Bay Area. The GX is the lowest in emissions, which would qualify me to drive alone in the carpool lane. All of the cars are about the same price, around $20,000 new. Used cars are also available."

Big fan of CNG

[DeafDumbBlind]

CNG cars are popular in some places in Europe where gas in pretty damn expensive. I know that they have trouble starting in really cold weather, but you should be ok.

Have you considered?...

[redfieldp]

The The Honda Civic Hybrid [honda.com]? It uses gas and electric, and gets pretty sweet mileage, plus its battery is self charging....

Direct links to car info

[MobyDisk]

This link [hondacars.com] bypasses the stupid registration form to read the brochure on the Honda Civic GX.

• Why would Honda think that anyone would give them their name and address, just for the priveledge of window shopping?
• Don't follow this link if you live in Denmark, because it is illegal! [slashdot.org]

Honda Insight = uncomfortable

[prisen]

I test drove a Honda Insight (2001 model year). It was very quiet, but very uncomfortable. I am 6'0"/145lbs and barely fit my legs into the car - I couldn't imagine being in the thing for more than 20 minutes. It only seats two, as you may know. Cargo space and weight is also very limited. Overall performance of the car was not good either; I was disappointed in the acceleration, however, the top speed was somewhat admirable for a hybrid car. I briefly looked (but didn't drive) the Toyota hybrid, and just looking at it made me feel better about it than I did the Honda. Both Honda and Toyota make wonderful, reliable cars, but check Consumer Reports for a more in-depth and usually trustworthy review.

YMMV and all that, this was all IMO, etc. Good luck with your car buy.

My experiences with the Prius

[Ryu2]

I'm a very happy owner of the Toyota Prius... I've actually gotten about 55 MPG in city driving, assuming I'm not in a hurry, above even the manufacturer's figures. It has been 100% reliable thus far.

I was considering the Insight, but it's only two seats, and two doors as you mentioned, so I decided to go with the Prius, as it's basically the same size as any other compact sedan.

I was looking into pure electric and gas cars, but decided not to at this time, because sometimes I like to take long-distance trips (eg, between the Bay Area, and LA, or to Nevada/Las Vegas) and there are no electric or gas refueling stations for long stretches outside urban areas, making long-distance road trips impossible with these vehicles' current range.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/ It might be useful for you as well, although it's geared more towards current owners.

As for the car itself, It's proven to be 100% reliable thus far in the 14 months that I've had it, and I've been averaging 50 MPG or so. It definitely is worth it, at least for me, since I commute about 45 miles a day round trip.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask me. If you want an independent assessment, john1701a.com [john1701a.com] has a lot of info on it from a owner. The group groups.yahoo.com/group/toyota-prius/ [yahoo.com] has a lot to offer as well with many helpful people.

Finally, since this is /. after all, there's a growing subculture dedicated to "hacking" the prius (eg, installing MP3 players that integrate with the onboard touchscreen system, or even wiring video input into the screen, installing cameras for seeing when you back up, etc... :-) )

How does a Honda die?

[gelfling]

What did you do drive it into the Pacific? I leased 3 of them and they were Russian Trucks. Indestructible.

At any rate the Civic HX is a gas only and gets about 80-85% of the mileage of the Civic electric hybrid. The insight is more of a concept car - only two seats no back at all no storage really. The Prius is an Echo with a different powerplant to give you a sense of the bigger size.

Toyota is supposed to be delivering a hybrid next year if I remember correctly. Probably based on a Corolla floorpan.

other ideas

[dmcmaine]

I've done a bit of research in my quest to find my next car and here's what I found:
-The current hybrid vehicles, IMO, offer a false ecomony due to their higher sticker price and uncertain disposal/replacement cost for the batteries +/- 8 years down the road.
-Looking at the Honda lineup it would make more sense economically to purchase the Civic HX Coupe or any other of the other non-hybrid Civics (or 4 cylinder Accords for that matter).
-Take a look at Intellichoice.com and fueleconomy.gov and do some calculations to determine the real, long term cost of a number of other vehicles (Ford Focus, Honda, Toyota, Saturn, etc)and see how it stacks up to the hybrids.
-The one caveat is that you need to know what happens what it is time to replace the batteries on a hybrid car.
-Lastly, check local rebates for buying a hybrid vehicle in your area, that might make up the initial cost difference in buying a hybrid vehicle.
Good luck!

Car pool access

[jchristopher]

As you noted, single drivers in dedicated natural gas vehicles (NGVs)can use the carpool lanes in California. This is a HUGE perk and not to be overlooked.

At last check, this benefit was not available to hybrid electric vehicles. Especially in a large metro area like San Francisco or Los Angeles this perk alone can pay for itself.

The California Air Resources board [ca.gov] provides a list of vehicles eligible for the carpool lane perk - choose carefully because not all alternative fuel vehicles are eligible!

A good resource to learn more is NGV.ORG [216.239.51.100] (I've linked to google's cache... this is a small box, please don't hammer our server.) which provides a list of cofunding opportunities available for natural gas vehicle owners, including tax breaks and rebates from the state of California.

Good luck in your search!

How about Corbin Motors?

[zaren]

Corbin [corbinmotors.com] sells an electric-only model, the Sparrow; they were in the Jet Li movie, "The One", in the final scene about "the cleanest city in America":

Sparrow's Specifications

* Onboard battery charger
* Three-wheeled vehicle registers, insures and parks as a motorcycle
* 1350 lbs. curb weight, 72-inch wheel base, 57 inches vehicle height
* 70 mph top speed, 20-40 mile range
* $14,900 retail price

The Sparrow II has a 30-60 mile range and a $16,900 retail price. Corbin also advertises a gas-powered car, the Merlin, with "a 300 to 400 mile range on a tank of gas and a projected 70 to 90 miles per gallon", but it won't be out until the fall of 2003.

Also popular in New Zealand

[kiwimate]

In NZ, CNG has been a very popular alternative fuel source for years now. (LPG -- liquefied petroleum gasoline -- is also used, but is much less popular.) At a guess, it's probably been available for over 20 years. People will buy a standard petrol car, then have it converted to use CNG as well. This entails the piping being run into the engine, a fuel gauge (typically an LED display with four coloured bars) being installed on the dashboard, and the tank itself being installed, usually in the boot/trunk (which significantly cuts the available luggage space).

Once you have a car converted in this fashion (cost used to be about NZ$1500, I think, so roughly US$850), you can drive it using either fuel source. CNG can be a bit harder to start in cold weather, and cars with CNG tanks didn't get the same range on a full tank of CNG as on a full tank of petrol. (This will obviously depend on the size of the tank -- the nature of the conversion I've described places some limitations on the size of the tank you can use.) The recommendation for such vehicles is to try to run one tank of petrol for every three or four tanks of CNG, mainly so the tubing for the petrol doesn't clog up resulting in your being unable to run on petrol if you have an emergency (like running out of CNG).

Petrol stations will often have a CNG tank beside the petrol pumps (much like a lot of service stations in the US have diesel pumps). Significantly fewer have LPG tanks, due to its lack of popularity. Filling a CNG tank is pretty simple -- you unscrew a cap on a valve, put on the CNG hose (rather like using a bicycle pump), and then let it go. I think from memory it automatically cuts off when the tank is full.

I'm too lazy to look up any information on how clean CNG really is, but it certainly smells better than petrol fumes! I also don't know what the distribution of natural gas fields are like on a global scale -- anyone else have such details? Would a nice side consequence of greater use of CNG be to decrease dependence on oil fields which are mostly located in politically unstable areas of the world?

Have Prius ... love it.

[Dr. Zowie]

The Prius isn't alternative-fuel -- just alternative-powertrain. It has loads of cool, geeky features that work together to make ... (drumroll) an ordinary 4-door family car. While I don't have a family (yet) it's nice to be able to throw some friends in the back. Basically, they've used the high-efficiency powertrain to give you a conventional 4-door car with Geo-Metro-like efficiency.

I've put about 11,000 miles on my Prius in the first year of ownership. About half of them are highway miles on roadtrips; about 10% of them are short (1-2 mile) hops in town. Its lifetime fuel economy is about 48MPG. Range is about 500-600 miles. On the highway it consistently gets over 45 MPG (and I'm not gentle on the throttle -- 70-80 MPH on the level, and I floor it when I'm crossing the Rockies -- I live in Colorado). In town it gets 35-38 for the first mile or two, until the engine is warm -- then more like 48-52.

The Prius has no transmission at all -- just a second differential that shunts power between two electric motors/generators and the engine. (How it works [insightcentral.net]). It's all drive-by-wire: the gas pedal is just a rheostat connected to the drive computer.

The engine has a lot of cool stuff to it: an off-center crankshaft, variable compression ratio, and (ISTR) noncircular pistons. Because of the differential it runs at more or less whatever speed the computer wants, regardless of how fast you're going.

For me (in Colorado) a pure EV was right out because of the low energy density of batteries -- it's hard to climb mountains in a pure EV. The Prius battery is used for load leveling on the engine (gas engines run best when the load is conditioned). Climbing over about 2000 feet vertical at freeway speeds drains the battery, but the computer handles it gracefully and the car just slows down to about 55 mph (on a standard 7% freeway grade). Conversely, coming down more than about 1000 feet of altitude will fill the battery to the top from regen braking, and again the computer does the Right Thing, using the engine as a conventional compression brake rather than blowing up the battery pack.

So even though the Prius isn't designed for mountain climbing it works acceptably under even strenuous climbing conditions. The interior is roomy and holds five people with no trouble. The trunk is adequate. The ride is quiet, and the gas mileage sure doesn't stink. Cornering is very good: tight turn radius and surprising traction given the high-mileage tires. Clearance is adequate but low: it's 4 inches under load, though the bottom 2 inches is just a flexible plastic air dam -- so you can get over 5" high obstacles without killing the car.

The Insight gets better gas mileage, looks cooler, and has better acceleration when you actually want it (though I imagine Prius ROM mods will come out one day that boost the acceleration -- the computer really does use conservative settings), but it's also really tiny -- the Insight is more of a "geek sports car". Toyota went out of their way to make the Prius look-and-feel like a basic (if plush) family car, and they succeeded.

Re:Ethanol

[cDarwin]

If you're concerned about maintaining your warranty, you might also look into flexible fuel vehicles [iowacorn.org], which run on ethanol/gasoline mixtures (some up to 100% ethanol!)

Re:BIODIESEL

[Eccles]

How many fast food joints are there in North America again?

There are ~30,000 McDonalds in the entire world, ~12,000 Burger Kings. There are a hell of a lot more cars than that.

If I were in your shoes....

[TrumpetPower!]

First a disclaimer: I'm unemployed right now (please check out my resume [trumpetpower.com] and hire me!) and driving a '68 VW camper. I can't afford a new car, but that hasn't stopped me from looking.

The Honda Insight is a fascinating car. It's as if Honda took every neat new technology they've been working on and crammed it in. Unfortunately, it's small--just a two-seater--and expensive--in the low $20Ks.

For that much money or less, you can get a Volkswagen with the TDI engine. The two-door VW TDIs (the Bug and the Golf) get better mileage than any other car sold in America except for the Insight. You can drive non-stop from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles on one tank of fuel, and that's a trip I personally would take at elast two days to drive. They're also among the least-polluting cars available, though there are cleaner ones out there. The Bug has (one of?) the highest safety ratings you'll find.

The catch? They're both turbocharged diesel engines. Wait! Don't run away! A diesel engine doesn't have to be the awful, smelly, polluting nightmare you're all thinking of. When properly engineered, as is the TDI, it's superior to gasoline:

• Proper fuel management, catalytic converters, filters, etc., can reduce emissions to well below the current average for the American fleet (the TDI makes use of every trick in the book in this regards).
• Diesel takes less energy to produce. Even if you get the same miles per gallon on diesel and gasoline, fewer barrels of oil were refined to make the diesel.
• Diesel fuel has more energy than gasoline. You can drive more miles on that gallon of diesel than on a gallon of gasoline.
• Diesel engines have much more torque than gasoline engines. Americans buy horsepower but drive torque. The Bug with the high-power gasoline engine will do 0-60 MPH faster than the diesel (but not by much) and has a higher top speed, but the diesel will easily beat the gasoline in 0-40.

But the real thing to do with one of these cars is run it off of biodiesel instead of petroleum-based diesel. Biodiesel is a high-cetane (the diesel version of octane) fuel made from vegetable oil. It's non-toxic; you could drizzle it over your salad...though it'd likely taste awful. The maufacturing process is very similar to the soap-making process; if you've ever made soap in your kitchen, you can make biodiesel in your kitchen. Biodiesel and petroleum-based diesel can be blended in any ratio desired simply by pouring them together.

The real advantage to biodiesel, however, is that every pound of carbon put into the atmosphere via the tailpipe had been previously removed from the atmosphere by the plant. No increased CO2! (Petroleum-based diesel pumps carbon from the ground and puts it into the air.) And, because the plant pulls more carbon out of the air for itself (instead of just its seeds), each pound of biodiesel results in a net decrease of atmospheric CO2.

In essence, biodiesel is the solar storage mechanism everybody keeps looking for. Run all those trains, trucks, and power plants from solar power (by way of corn and soy) and reduce dependence on oil all at the same time! All the infrastructure is already in place....

So, buy a car with a TDI engine, and you get incredible mileage and have the option of using either fuel you can find anywhere or a very environmentally-friendly fuel.

Now, if only somebody would give me a job, I'd go out and buy one....

b&

fryer oil

[Anonymous Cowrad]

All of the fryer oil is spoken for. There's a big market for used grease. Almost every restaurant has a contract with a grease buyer. The buyer removes it from the restaurant (sometimes for a fee, even) and sells it off to chemical blending companies.

It gets turned into conveyor lubricant for wet conveyors (soda bottlers, breweries, etc) and tire mounting lubricant. I'm sure there are a thousand other things it gets turned into as well.

Oh, and it smells fucking awful.

look at what Arizona did, then run ... run fast

[Triumph The Insult C]

Arizona tried something like this, but they started with regular vehicles and then gave tax credits to people who converted their vehicles to be hybrid gasoline and natural gas. If your state tries to do something like this, run for the hills. Arizona is at least $1US billion in the red because to these tax credits. They are trying to work the numbers to make it $1 billion. To sum it up, don't let your local gov't give tax credits for AFVs ... it'll end up costing more.

Re:Jetta TDI has better mileage

[Coolfish]

Way more expensive, and there are no production models as of yet...I.E.: No pudding to find the proof in.

erm, both cars are in production. in fact i could have bought a '99.5 Jetta TDI a while back but it just didn't have enough balls.. but it's still a sweet car.

and I read a review in the local paper that compared the two cars, and they found that they got better mileage in the Jetta.. so anypoop.

A happy Prius owner

[MerlynEmrys67]

I have had my Prius for about 4 months now... Got a brand new 2002 in Feb, there might be used cars available, but for the Prius a year old car was the same price as a new car. It goes 80+ MPH, gets around 50 MPG when I was commuting. Now I moved closer to work (that does a lot better for the environment anyway) and because it doesn't idle at low speeds on the interstate, only gets about 40 MPH when I actually drive it. The deal maker for me was the backseat. While the Insite gets better gas mileage, the lack of a backseat meant I couldn't take my daughter in the car... The Prius is an awesome car and I would recommend it to anyone that was willing to spend a few bucks to help save the environment

Re:Ethanol

[M-G]

It also contains less energy per gallon, so your MPG goes down when burning ethanol. So you have to have more tanker runs to the gas station, more electricity spent pumping that fuel into your car, etc. for the same number of miles driven.

More Diesel

[Coilgun]

As other people have mentioned, diesel is something worth looking into. The Golf TDI gets gas milage up with the hibrids, plus you get much better torque(if you ever want to tow something, etc)

Insight:
max torque, 89 lb-ft @ 2000 rpm w/ CVT
max HP, 73 @ 5700 rpm

Prius:
max torque, 82 lb-ft @ 4200 rpm
max HP, 98 w/ engine and motor

Golf TDI
max torque, 155 lb-ft @ 1900 rpm
max HP, 90 @ 3750 rpm

Re:BIODIESEL

[SWroclawski]

This is unnecessary.

Diesel vehicles will work with biodiesel "out of the box". In fact, biodiesel is the original fuel that diesel engines were designed to use, oil-based fuels came after the engine and refining techniques were used to make it simulate the naturally occuring oils.

Also, biodiesel is less harsh than oil-based diesel, helping the car last longer.

As to the smell- while biodiesel does have an odor, so does petrol.

- Serge Wroclawski

Volkswagen Diesel

[t0ph3rus]

I drove a Golf Turbo Diesel from London to Edinburgh and back. I loved the engine on it. The golf got superb gas mileage. It also had great acceleration. They aren't joking when the name "turbo" diesel. I plan on buying a turbo diesel when I get back to the States. You can get the Golf, Jetta, and Beetle with a turbo diesel. I would highly recomend a tried and true diesel engine that gets great pickup over a new and untested hybrid or alternative fuel engine. Also, you should consider the body. A diesel engine can cary a conventional body frame. The hybrind and Alternate fuel engines use all sort of weight saving measures in the body to increase efficiency. In the long run a sturdy body will hold up longer. If you aren't planning on keeping the car for very long then why even get a fuel efficent car? After all you only see the savings in TCO after a few years.

Re:Ethanol

[mikec]

It is questionable if ethanol saves any oil at all. In a good year (with high corn yields) ethanol production is slightly energy positive. That is, the energy content of a gallon of ethanol exceeds by approximately 16% the energy that goes into producing it. In a bad year, when yeilds are lower, it can easily require more than 80,000 BTU to produce a gallon of ethanol. (See, for example, this study. It is also questionable if ethanol reduces CO2 emissions. From that standpoint, it would probably be better to grow trees, which would recycle more CO2 than any reduction due to CO2.

Re:Ethanol

[mikec]

Sorry, I accidentally submitted before it was done.

It is not at all clear that ethanol saves any oil at all.

In a good year (with high corn yields) most studies show that ethanol production is slightly energy positive. That is, the energy content of a gallon of ethanol exceeds by approximately 15% the energy that goes into producing it. In a bad year, when yeilds are lower, it can easily require more than 80,000 BTU to produce a gallon of ethanol. (See, for example, this study [mcgill.ca].) On average it's probably about a wash. It would be interesting to see what the reaction would be to requiring ethanol producers to use ethanol instead of fossil fuel for all steps in production.

It is also questionable whether ethanol reduces CO2 emissions. From that standpoint, it would probably be better to grow trees or hemp, which would recycle more CO2 than any reduction due to burning CO2 rather than fossil fuels.

Re:Biodiesel and California air

[t0ph3rus]

Diesel engines do have higher particulate emissions. However, they are large particles. Large particles fall to the ground quicker and can not reach the lungs as easily. Also, Diesel gets much better milage. There fore you are burning less diesel than gas for the same mileage. Gas engines with there invisible gas particles are much worse for the environment and our lungs since there pollutants stay suspended. This has long been a myth with diesel since people see soot and a louder engine they think that It's worse for the environment than gas engines.

Re:Ethanol is no solution, it's part of the proble

[otis wildflower]

Almost....

Ethanol can be made from feed grain waste (when grains are raised for vitamins/minerals and the starch is discarded), and there's a net gain of ~16000 btu according to DOAg..

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46045- 2, 00.html

Still, E85 can't be used in most auto engines: it's too corrosive. Cars that can use E85 typically state it in the owner's manual or somewhere...

Re:BIODIESEL

[otis wildflower]

Correction: Most diesel vehicles will run fine on B20, but B100 (pure) will damage rubber hoses and gaskets. Cars with those (like mine) will need upgrades to accomodate B100.

Re:Ethanol

[maniac11]

>From Washington Post
washingtonpost.com

Ethanol's Ambitions
Tuesday, April 16, 2002; Page A18

THE ETHANOL lobby is normally content to fleece taxpayers in two ways.
First, it promotes public payments to those who grow the corn from which
ethanol is made: Right now the House and Senate are cooking up a terrible
farm bill that would lock in 10 more years of subsidies. Second, the lobby
has used the tax system to penalize gasoline that is not one-tenth made up
of ethanol: Motorists who fill their cars with ethanol-free gas pay around 5
cents extra per gallon. Some might reckon two federal favors enough, but the
ethanol folks think bigger than that. A provision recently inserted into the
Senate energy bill by Sen. Tom Daschle, the majority leader, and Sen. Jeff
Bingaman, the energy committee chairman, would mandate a big jump in ethanol
use and give ethanol producers protection against environmental liability.

This outrage is disguised in reasonable garb: It is part of an effort to
promote renewable sources of energy. But ethanol, though made from corn, can
only loosely be thought of as renewable, since making it consumes nearly as
much non-renewable oil as the ethanol replaces. Moreover, ethanol's
environmental benefits are debated: Including it in gasoline reduces carbon
monoxide emissions but can increase smog. In any case, a sane policy on
renewables should give promising alternative energy sources a government
boost, but it shouldn't pour billions in taxpayers' cash into products that
will never be remotely viable. Remember, ethanol already gets government
help: Since 1996, crop subsidies alone have been worth nearly $30 billion to
the industry. Increasing this help would be going too far, even if ethanol's
environmental merits were more certain.

Both ethanol's drawbacks are reflected in the Senate's legislation. The bill
creates a "safe harbor," protecting industry from suits arising out of
defective additives in gasoline -- hardly a sign of confidence in ethanol's
environmental merits. It also mandates increased ethanol consumption --
again, hardly a sign that ethanol expects to gain market share on its own --
requiring that gasoline refiners step up their use of ethanol from the
current level of around 1.7 billion gallons a year to 5 billion gallons by
2012. This mandated tripling of consumption might cause shortages and
therefore price spikes, especially since the ethanol market is dominated by
three producers, which could find ways to orchestrate scarcity and pocket
windfall profits. The biggest producer is Archer Daniels Midland, which in
1996 pleaded guilty to a charge of price-fixing and was fined $100 million.

The four Democratic senators from California and New York are calling this
ethanol provision what it is: a scheme to funnel money to agribusiness and
corn states at the expense of the rest of the country. One amendment to
limit the ethanol mandate was rebuffed last Thursday, but there may be
another chance today. The Senate should back the effort to remove the
ethanol provision from the energy bill, and Sen. Daschle should not resist,
despite his farm-state loyalties. Democrats have been trying to score points
against the Bush administration by demonstrating the link between corporate
lobbyists and the White House energy policy. If the Senate's Democratic
leaders now use the energy bill to funnel money to Archer Daniels Midland
and its ilk, they'll look like hypocrites.

So many cars

[Jordy]

Just a note ahead of time. Some of the cars listed below are only available in certain parts of California and are only available in relatively low numbers.

Pure Electric:

2002 The Nissan Altra EV (pilot?) [nissandriven.com]
2002 Ford Thi!nk City [thinkmobility.com]
2002 Toyota Rav4-EV [toyota.com]
2002 Lido Motors Lido [lidomotors.com]
2002 Ford Ranger EV (fleet only?) [ford.com]
2002 Nissan HyperMini (pilot only?) [nissandriven.com]
Selectria Force (out of production?) [solectria.com]

Hybrids:

2003 Honda Civic Hybrid [hondacars.com]
2002 Honda Insight [honda2000.com]
2002 Toyota Prius [toyota.com]

Web Sites of Interest:

EV World [evworld.com]
US DoE Alternative Fuel Car Buying Guide (many listed) [doe.gov]
US DoE Alternative Fuel Vehicle Listing (many listed) [nrel.gov]
California ZEV Buyers Guide [ca.gov]

My Audi runs on Biodiesel

[nn4l]

All recent Audi cars with a diesel engine can run on Biodiesel, which is a clean fuel made from rapeseed. Most other diesel car can use Biodiesel too, some require minor modifications.

Advantages of using Biodiesel:

• it does not contain sulphur, thus the exhaust is less aggressive to the engine and the engine last longer.
• it is CO2 neutral because the rapeseed converts exactly as much CO2 as is released later when burning the fuel. An electric car however needs electricity, which is made burning coal or natural gas or nuclear fuel.
• it is cheaper than the mineral oil diesel, at least in Germany. We have lots of biodiesel gas stations too.

Some papers on advantages and technology:
[biodiesel.de]
http://www.biodiesel.de/vortragen.htm

http://www.biodiesel.de/kraften.htm [biodiesel.de]

And yes, I'm very happy using Biodiesel in my car and can recommend it to everybody else.

Re:Ethanol

[corvi42]

What about hemp [...]

Well hemp would be less effective than corn, because ethanol is made from the fermentation of sugars, so the more sugars in the plant - the more ethanol yielded. Yes, one can make alcohols from grains, but the yield is less. Fruits yield more alcholos per volume than grains - corn yields more than hemp. Something ideal might be sugar cane.

Parade

[SubtleNuance]

You might like to have a look at this Parade here [attrd.com]

Specs include:
Range : 60miles(EV60)/150miles(EV150)
Acceleration : 8 seconds for 0-60 km/h
Top Speed : 110km/h


Made in Korea.

Biodiesel

[nothing_23]

One major alternative fuel that appears to have been missed by others is Biodiesel. [biodiesel.org] Biodiesel can easily be made with used fryer grease [amazon.com], and has none of the SOx or particulate matter emissions [nbb.org] that normal diesel, or gasoline have.

The major benefit of biodiesel is that you don't need any major change in hardware. All diesel powered vehicles can use Biodiesel with no modifications. [biodiesel.org]

I am a student at the University of Washington, and we recycle the used grease from restaurants by the university to fuel many of the campus vehicles.

Re:Some Quick Math

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you get your data?

Annual US fuel usage of 400 million gallons, with a US population of about 290 million, implies each citizen uses less than 1.4 gallons of fuel each year. Sounds like your numbers are way off, sir!

Re:Just get a VW TDI (Golf, Jetta or Beetle)

[RevDobbs]

Hear hear. With in the last couple of issues of Car & Driver, the TDI VW's were found to be much more efficient, and fun to drive, than the Honda Insight. Also, you can by a VW, where as the hybrid vehicles usually come with a fairly restrictive lease (or so I've been told).

I got stuck driving a Toyota Prius for a couple of days while my car was in the shop. No acceleration, almost dangerously top-heavy with a short & narrow wheelbase & width, the car was absolutely no fun to drive. The high-efficiency diesels are the most practical way to go.

YMMV.

Re:Some Quick Math

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye. That sounds more like daily consumption.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/info_gl an ce/consumption.html
Quickie google search.
Note they are measuring in thousands of gallons.
Perhaps he used a resource like this, and didn't notice that fact.

Re:Ethanol is no solution, it's part of the proble

[Ian Bicking]

The first page of the sited article quotes exactly the given numbers:

Pimentel's report, to be published in the 2001 edition of the Encyclopedia for Physical Sciences and Technology in September, says that producing ethanol is more trouble than it's worth: 131,000 British thermal units of energy are required to produce one gallon of ethanol, but a gallon will only give you about 77,000 Btu of fuel energy.

In other words, producing ethanol results in a net loss of energy.

So, I guess, ethanol is not a renewable energy source -- not because it is not renewable (it is), but because it is not an energy source.

My $02 on Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid

[MojoRilla]

I have been researching Hybrids for the last year. U am also currently driving a Honda Accord. Here is what I have come up with. The Honda Insight is an engineering wonder. Everything is designed to be light. The word on the street is that this car will be discontinued at the end of this year [www.businessreport.com] [businessreport.com]. And if you have kids forget it, as it is only a two seater and doesn't have an airbag cutoff switch. The Toyota Prius is an interesting car. Advantages are that it is SULEV (at least in California), and that it can run off the electric battery without the engine running (at speeds lower than 30 mph). Disadvantages I saw on my test drive was that the first one I tried wouldn't start cause the battery had drained (don't know if it was a stupid dealer or design flaw). Also, I didn't like the center mounted speedometer or the weird shift (mounted on the dashboard). Finally, the Prius uses small low rolling resistiance tires, which people are complaining about. According to one post I saw, someone said they had to change tires at 14,000 miles. And since the tires are both small and low rolling resistiance, they are hard to find. Also, during my test drive, it seemed that the gas engine was revving really high at speeds of 40 to 50 mph. Another small nit is that the breaking is non-linear (it seems rather grippy when you press hard). Finally, I have been considering the Hybrid Civic. I have test driven this car twice, and I really like it. It seems to drive really well. Although it has low total horsepower, it acheived that horsepower at lower rpm, meaning that the accelleration felt pretty normal. The tires are bigger than the Prius, and it feels very much like a normal car. It is also quiet because the bottom of the car is insulated for better aerodynamics. One disadvantage is that, at $21,000 sticker price, this car is about $3000 over the price of a comparably equiped Civic. After driving all three of these, I am going with the Hybrid Civic. The IRS recently has announced a $2000 deduction for hybrid cars [detnews.com] [detnews.com] Also, if you are interested in enviornmental issues, check out [www.greenercars.com] [greenercars.com]. It has green ratings for all the cars mentioned.

Re:Just get a VW TDI (Golf, Jetta or Beetle)

[Master Bait]

I'm driving a 1982 VWJetta diesel with close to 350,000 miles on it. It has the older non-turbo 1600cc engine and gets 52mpg on my local two-lane roads. Diesels last far longer than gasoline engines because the fuel lubricates the valve train, while gasoline is a solvent to lubricants.

I'm not all that excited about biodiesel because of the methanol needed to produce it. But I'm interested in a system that burns straight vegetable oil [greasel.com].

Re:Just get a VW TDI (Golf, Jetta or Beetle)

[bgarcia]

On a side note, is there any technical problem which has stop diesel electric hybrids in cars (they have diesel electric trains). Seems to me you would get a more fuel efficent car than a gas electric.

I guess the quick answer is "no". But just FYI, a diesel-electric train works differently than a gas-electric hybrid car.

The diesel engine in a train does one thing: it turns an alternator to produce electricity. This electricity is then used to run the electric motors to turn the wheels.

The hybrid cars usually still have the engine hooked up to the wheels using a driveshaft, and the electric motor just supplements the engine (or vise-versa).

MCC Smart Car

[dancote]

Neat little European 2-seater made in a collaboration between Mercedes and Swatch. They are very nicely appointed and have a wide choice of engines including a turbodiesel. All get excellent fuel mileage. They are not available in the U.S. through a dealer network yet - I've heard possibly 2003. There's a guy in Florida who has figured out how to bring them into the country and even claims he's been able to get them registered in a small number of states. Problem is he's price-gouging to the max. Too bad

Re:If I were in your shoes....(diesel, pollution)

[otis wildflower]

Are there catalysts to take care of that?
Yep
Will they work with US diesel, which is higher in sulfur than what Europeans buy?
Nope :/

How do direct-injection diesels get the relatively low-soot performance that they do?

IIRC it is via very high (over 10kPSI) injection pressure, which atomizes the fuel more finely than prechambered diesels, leading to more combustion efficiency (fuel efficiency and reduced particulates)..

Check this google cache link (I can't get to tdiclub):
Fuel FAQ [216.239.51.100]

Re:Problem for USA... No automatic diesels

[Mydron]

Nice troll FUDster:

All of VW's TDI-able models in North America (Golf & Jetta) come with an optional, but very responsive automatic transmission. Surprisingly VW has gotten the transmissions to the point were there is very little power/efficiency loss over the manual.

VW Jetta [vw.com]

Re:Problem for USA... No automatic diesels

[ksheff]

My dad had a 1984 Oldsmobile Ciera that had a diesel V6. It got great mileage, had an automatic transmission, and lasted for over 250K miles. Oldsmobile offered a few other diesel models too, such as the Cutlass.

P R O P A N E

[Turbyne]

Here's an article [caranddriver.com] from Car & Driver about a 10-cyl propane-fueled Ford Crown Victoria Interceptor (aka cop car).

Here's the company that did the conversion [samotorsports.com]

If you're really that concious about the fuel you use, you might as well just build/modify your own vehicle.

And I'm sorry, but the Chevorlet EV-1 may be a zero emissions car, but damn it is ugly.

Re:Ethanol

[An dochasac]

1) Ethanol has much more potential for a real economy than oil or "Zero emission" (i.e. coal burning) electric vehicles. In 1990 Deborah L. Bleviss and Peter Walzer published an article in Scientific American entitled, "Energy for Motor Vehicles." The conclusion was that alternative fuels such as ethanol and methanol would only be viable if gasoline prices approached $1.80/gallon. A few months later we entered the $61 billion Gulf War and gasoline prices began to rise to this break-even point. Likewise "Zero Emission" electric vehicles are based on a false economy. California's "zero emissions" vehicle law conveniently ignores the fact that more energy is required to charge a battery than they release. Ethanol has hundreds of times the energy storage density of the batteries used in the most advanced electric cars. 2) True there are probably better feed sources, R&D and scale economies will make these feasible. 3) Charles Schumer & Diane Feinstein and certain oil companies are pushing this misconception for political reasons. The often site a study by Pimentel but ignore others such as Keeny and Deluca, Marland and Turhollow(1991), Morris and Ahmed (1992), Ho (1989), Shapouri, Duffield and Graboski (1995)? Pimentel's study was the most pessimistic by almost a factor of two. The most recent of these studies "Estimating Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol"/AER-721 http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer721 concludes that when byproduct energy value is considered and modern production techniques are used, ethanol production has a net energy gain of 24% and it can extend petroleum imports by a factor of 7 to 1. None of these studies take into consideration the possibility that newer technology will make it possible to convert food and yard waste into fuel. Nor do they consider the energy storage value of ethanol. 4) The best I have here is personal experience: 1968 Plymouth Fury was the first car I burned an ethanol blend in, it wasn't even designed for unleaded gas. 140,000 miles + The upper half of the miles on these cars was on 10% ethanol: 1987 Chrysler LeBaron 178,000 miles + Fathers 1988 Mazda 323 240,000 Miles + Sister's 1990 Honda Accord 240,000 Miles + Higher percentages may not be compatible with seals, gaskets and hoses fittings on some cars. But it is time we convince the car companies that we expect them to be able to use flexible fuels. We don't need to be digging up ANWAR and we don't need Sadaam's oil.