Used Cars News

Gasoline has the corner on the American car fuel market, but perhaps not forever. Carmakers already manufacture passenger vehicles that run nicely on diesel fuel, ethanol or hydrogen. The first two are on the road in the millions all over the world, and the third is moving gradually toward feasibility.

The catch is that the pathway to the pump, as Thomas Hobbes may have said, can be nasty, brutish and elongated. And the on the whole, picture for pollution and energy — which the engineers term as "well to wheels" — may have downside to equal gasoline's.

Still, the supply chains for diesel, ethanol and hydrogen are undeveloped. That ought to change in a few years, as the most imperative choice for consumers in car showrooms may be what type of fuel they want to use.

Allen Schaeffer, who is the executive director for the Diesel Technology Forum, a trade association said that buying a car wasn't going to be on color choices or automatic versus manual transmission. It's all about getting into a power train.
Here is a status report on the alternatives:

DIESEL

Models are sold by the carmakers in Europe that are very clean, odor-free and vivacious. Computer control on fuel injection has reduced diesel cars' rattling noise, and ultralow-sulfur diesel, now broadly available in the United States, has made it feasible for carmakers to install filters and other devices to clean up the exhaust.

In 45 states diesel is offered by Chrysler and Mercedes-Benz, and Mercedes is planning to sell one that meets the stricter necessities of California, which have also been adopted by New York, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont.

Even though diesel engines cost more to make and buy, they can make sense for a car owner. For one, they use less gallons per trip than gasoline engines.

Moreover regular diesel fuel from petroleum, there is biodiesel. Chemicals take out from soy or other vegetables, or from beef tallow or other animal fats, burn well in a diesel engine. These materials become waxy at low temperatures, so they are typically blended in small quantities with petroleum diesel.

But like ethanol, producing biodiesel needs farmland, which could otherwise be used to increase food. Yet making biodiesel takes a smaller amount natural gas and further fossil fuels than making ethanol. Than a gallon of gasoline, a gallon of diesel will power a car 20 to 40 percent more miles, though the energy rise and the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions are not that vast.

The reason is that diesel has added carbon than a gallon of gasoline. It also has more amount of energy, of 138,000 B.T.U. versus about 118,000 for gasoline. That difference may be lost on consumers, as motor fuel is sold by a unit of volume, the gallon; it’s not a unit of energy.

Regardless of these issues, there is a real benefit in driving a diesel engine because it burns fuel at a higher rate of temperature than a spark-ignited gasoline engine does, thus squeezing more work from the fuel.

Dr. Schipper told that “There are limits to diesel, unless a diesel car is driven comparable as a gasoline car, on 35 percent less fuel per kilometer, the CO2 benefit is subsidiary and might be negative." Hybridization may be a better option, he recommended.


ETHANOL

The United States devours about 140 billion gallons of liquid transportation fuel a year, about 6 billion from ethanol. Half of all gasoline has some ethanol, which ordinary cars can burn at a concentration of up to 10 percent. About six million cars can now use any mixture of ethanol and gasoline, up to 85 percent ethanol, called as E85. Domestic carmakers view ethanol as a way to cut gasoline use and to avoid making most important changes in their production.

Ethanol has tough political support. "I’d fairly be paying farmers than the people overseas for the energy that fuels this country," President Bush told auto workers at a speech at a Ford plant in Claycomo, Mo., this year. From a driver’s point of view, ethanol might perform well in the engine.

HYDROGEN

On the hydrogen facet, environmentalists dream of ranks of windmills making electricity which will be used to segregate water into hydrogen. The fields of solar cells can also be done the same. However such renewable power may be more of use to replace coal, which is extreme dirtier than gasoline. And the economical way to make hydrogen may be the common technique, by taking it out of the methane in natural gas.

H2Gen, which is a small company in Alexandria, Va., is selling a chemical processing plant that can deliver on a truck and turns natural gas into hydrogen rapid enough to maintain fueling several dozen cars, about right for a corner gasoline station.
Hitherto, H2Gen’s customers have been industrial users.

A Shell station in Washington opened a hydrogen pump in 2004, to supply the demonstration vehicles that automakers trudge through the city, uses hydrogen produced cryogenically. Moreover an oil refinery in Ontario or in Louisiana, the hydrogen is chilled to a tremendously low temperature, condensing into a liquid. The outcome is pure, though it takes lot of energy to make. It is then put into a cylinder truck with a diesel-powered engine and dragged to Washington, which works well for a test program but scarcely saves any energy.