Autoblog reports:
Toyota to intro flex-fuel Tundra
Honda offering flex-fuel Civic and Fit… in Brazil only
All we can say is, it’s about time! Now can we see some flex fuel hybrids and flex fuel plug in hybrids please?? and Honda, how about bringing some fuel choice to the US too?
Archive for the ‘Flex fuel vehicles’ Category
Flex fuel Hondas and Toyotas!
Monday, October 22nd, 2007Turning Oil into Salt
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007Excerpt from an oped by Jim Woolsey and Anne Korin write in today’s National Review Online:
Those who won our independence as a nation didn’t just fling imported tea into Boston harbor — they did whatever was necessary to wrest themselves from British control. We need not call out the Minutemen, but to avoid the consequences of dependence we must become independent — not just of imported oil, but of oil itself.
Does this mean that we cannot use oil or import any? Of course not. Oil is a useful commodity that can readily transport energy long distances. It already has competition from natural gas in industry and from gas and electricity for heating. But in transportation it brooks no competition — it is thus not just a commodity but a strategic commodity. Oil’s monopoly on transportation gives intolerable power to OPEC and the nations that dominate oil ownership and production. This monopoly must be broken. To tell us that in following this path we are doing a “disservice to the nation†and should resign ourselves to oil dependence is like telling us we should not urge an alcoholic to stop drinking, but should rather impress upon him the health advantages of red wine.
Not long ago, technology broke the power of another strategic commodity. Until around the end of the nineteenth century salt had such a position because it was the only means of preserving meat. Odd as it seems today, salt mines conferred national power and wars were even fought over control of them.
Today, no nation sways history because it has salt mines. Salt is still a useful commodity for a range of purposes. We import some salt, so if one defines independence as autarky we are not “salt independentâ€. But to most of us there is no “salt dependence†problem at all — because electricity and refrigeration decisively ended salt’s monopoly of meat preservation, and thus its strategic importance.
We can and must do the same thing to oil. By moving toward utilizing the batteries that have been developed for modern electronics we can rather soon have “plug-in hybrids†that travel 20-40 miles on an inexpensive charge of night-time off-peak electricity at a small fraction of gasoline’s cost. (After driving that distance plug-ins keep going as ordinary hybrids.) Dozens of ordinary hybrids converted to plug-ins now on the road are getting in the range of 100 mpg of gasoline. And millions of flexible-fuel vehicles are also now in the fleet. Producing them adds costs well under $100 and they can use up to 85-percent ethanol (before long to be made from biomass rather than corn) — methanol, butanol, and other alternative fuels produced from grasses and even waste.
Biomass gasification: let’s talk methanol
Friday, March 9th, 2007The Methanol Institute reports: “President Bush has set an aggressive goal of increasing alternative fuels use in the transportation sector to the equivalent of 35 billion gallons. However, the Energy Information Administration forecasts ethanol output to reach only 11.5 billion gallons in 2017. Only 2% of this projected ethanol supply will come from cellulosic ethanol. One way to fill this gap is through biomass gasification for methanol production. Cellulosic ethanol may someday be able to produce 60 gallons of ethanol from a ton of biomass material. Using technology available today and largely developed for coal gasification, methanol yields could achieve 165-185 gallons per ton of waste wood. Methanol biomass gasifiers are also highly energy efficient (50-60%), and can use a wide range of feedstocks from forest residue to municipal solid waste. Rather than completing with weather-dependent food crops for transportation fuel feedstock, it is estimated that 250 million tons of waste wood is generated in the U.S. each year. That’s enough wood to produce 41 to 46 billion gallons of methanol, or roughly one-third of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed in the U.S. last year. North Shore Energy is looking at building a plant in Mississippi capable of producing 50 million gallons of methanol per year from 260 tons of wood per day. Air Products is looking at a dozen potential gasification projects around the world, nine of which involved biomass feedstocks.[...] this is a mature technology that is potentially decades ahead of producing ethanol or Fischer-Tropsch diesel from synthesis gas.”
This is yet another reminder of why automakers should make as many new cars as possible GEM flexible fuel vehicles, cars that can run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol, methanol (and other alcohols as well) and cost an auto manufacturer less than $100 extra to make – would be a huge step forward to reducing oil dependence and increasing energy security by opening up the transportation fuel market wide for competition.
This 2003 article from Ford Motor Company’s Roberta Nichols about GEM flexibility is a must read. Detroit has already committed to 50% flex fuel vehicles by 2012 – faster and bolder please!
Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins
Saturday, December 30th, 2006Set America Free Coalition member and former director of the CIA Jim Woolsey in today’s WSJ:
An oil and security task force of the Council on Foreign Relations recently opined that “[t]he voices that espouse ‘energy independence’ are doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable over the foreseeable future . . .” Others have also said, essentially, that other nations will control our transportation fuel — get used to it. Yet House Democrats have announced a push for “energy independence in 10 years,” and last month General Motors joined Toyota and perhaps other auto makers in a race to produce plug-in hybrid vehicles, hugely reducing the demand for oil. Who’s right — those who drive toward independence or those who shrug?
Bet on major progress toward independence, spurred by market forces and a portfolio of rapidly developing oil-replacing technologies.
[...]The change is being driven by innovations in the batteries that now power modern electronics. If hybrid gasoline-electric cars are provided with advanced batteries (GM’s announcement said its choice would be lithium-ion) having improved energy and power density — variants of the ones in our computers and cell phones — dozens of vehicle prototypes are now demonstrating that these “plug-in hybrids” can more than double hybrids’ overall (gasoline) mileage. With a plug-in, charging your car overnight from an ordinary 110-volt socket in your garage lets you drive 20 miles or more on the electricity stored in the topped-up battery before the car lapses into its normal hybrid mode. If you forget to charge or exceed 20 miles, no problem, you then just have a regular hybrid with the insurance of liquid fuel in the tank. And during those 20 all-electric miles you will be driving at a cost of between a penny and three cents a mile instead of the current 10-cent-a-mile cost of gasoline.
[...]A 50 mpg hybrid, once it becomes a plug-in, will likely get solidly over 100 mpg of gasoline (call it “mpgg”); if it is also a flexible fuel vehicle using 85% ethanol, E-85, its mpgg rises to around 500.
The market will likely operate to expand sharply the use of these technologies that are already in pilot plants and prototypes and heavily reduce oil use in the foreseeable future. And given the array of Wahhabis, terrorists and Ahmadinejad-like fanatics who sit atop the Persian Gulf’s two-thirds of the world’s conventional oil, such reduction will not be a disservice to the nation.
West’s energy security ever-more at the mercy of foreign governments
Friday, December 29th, 2006Set America Free Coalition member Frank Gaffney writes in the Washington Times:
As the Communist Chinese and fascistic Russian regimes move to forge close relations with energy-rich nations like Iran, Libya, Sudan, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Saudi Arabia, and as the Kremlin consolidates its control over Russia’s own vast resources, America and her allies will find themselves increasingly imperiled by their dependency on such sources for oil products and/or natural gas.
As a result, President Bush needs to make increased U.S. energy security a central part of the overhauled war-fighting strategy that he is set to announce next month. To do so, he must clearly go beyond the lip service that he paid to our “addiction to oil” in last year’s State of the Union speech by taking steps that will make a difference.
Done properly, energy security could be one of the most promising areas for cooperation between the Bush Administration and Democrats in Congress. By concentrating on areas where considerable progress is possible (rather than on such neuralgic issues as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or increased CAFE fuel-efficiency standards), America — and in particular its gas-guzzling transportation sector — could be made significantly less reliant on oil supplied by unstable or hostile regimes.
Such a course of action has been laid out in a blueprint produced by the Set America Free Coalition — a group spanning the political spectrum — that forms the basis for the bipartisan, bicameral Vehicle & Fuel Choices for American Security Act (introduced in the last session of Congress as S.2025 in the Senate and H.R. 4409 in the House). It entails two principal steps: (1) ensuring all cars sold in America will be Flexible Fuel Vehicles, capable of burning not just gasoline but ethanol and methanol (or some combination thereof); and (2) assuring the availability of substantially increased quantities of such alternative fuels.
This legislation would also help make electricity a true transportation fuel, by promoting the manufacture of plug-in hybrid vehicles. Since scarcely any electricity is generated in America by burning oil, the widespread use of such vehicles could greatly reduce our dependence on foreign sources of petroleum. To realize the full potential of this option, however, President Bush and the Congress will need to join forces on one other important initiative: assuring large-scale U.S. production of advanced lithium ion batteries, an essential ingredient for our future energy — and national — security and the competitiveness of our auto industry.
Ahmadinejad’s plan to subvert sanctions
Friday, December 22nd, 2006excerpt from a recent oped by Gal Luft and Anne Korin:
What do you call a world leader who faces a strategic threat stemming from his country’s energy dependence and introduces a crash program for energy independence that taps into his country’s domestic resources?
Ahmadinejad.
With 43 percent of Iran’s gasoline imported, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows that a comprehensive gasoline embargo could cause social unrest that could undermine his regime. In response, he recently announced a three-part crash program for energy independence.
One tenet of the plan is massive expansion of the country’s refining capacity. While no refinery has been built in the United States in decades, Iran’s refinery infrastructure is undergoing one of the world’s fastest expansions, including the construction of two large new refineries.
A second pillar is to secure imports of refined products from Venezuela, one of Iran’s staunchest allies against the West.
The third, and most innovative, part of the plan is to convert Iran’s vehicles to run on natural gas rather than gasoline within five years. Iran has the world’s second-largest natural-gas reserve after Russia – 16 percent of the world’s total – which guarantees an uninterrupted supply of cheap transportation fuel for decades. The cost of conversion of both the cars and refueling stations is heavily subsidized by the government.
To read the full IAGS report on Iran’s strategy to subvert sanctions, click here.
China isn’t waiting for us to move
Friday, November 24th, 2006Some very exciting news that should also serve as a dire warning to US policymakers: China sees the writing on the wall and is rapidly moving to reduce its need for oil in the transportation sector, which accounts for the bulk of the growth in Chinese oil consumption, by diversifying its transportation fuel supply. China is not waiting for the US to move on fuel choice, it is taking action to harness its own domestic resources to produce transportation fuel and most assuredly is making a shift toward true flexible fuel vehicles that can use gasoline, ethanol, AND methanol. This is exactly the sort of tranformation that the Fuel Choices for American Security Act based on the Set America Free blueprint would achieve, and Congress had better recognize that fuel choice is China’s Sputnik, and if we do not act now, its rumbling engines will leave us in the dust.
Here is the latest news:
Beijing has settled on a national standard for methanol as an automotive fuel, a decision which will legitimise and bolster a market that has been growing rapidly without central government approval.
The standard, which has yet to be officially announced, was reported in a trade magazine and confirmed yesterday by an official attached to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the economic planning body responsible for the standards.
Local companies have under construction, or are awaiting approval to build, plants to produce methanol equivalent to about 20 per cent of China’s present oil consumption, according to Jim Brock, a Beijing-based energy consultant.
By the time the plants, which convert coal to liquids, start producing in 2011 to 2013, China’s oil demand will have doubled, allowing methanol to supply about 10 per cent of the market.
“It will be a major alternative fuel which does not exist in any other country in the world,” said Mr Brock.
Methanol, a chemical usually derived from coal, can be added to petrol to create a cleaner-burning fuel. When oil prices are high, it is also cheaper.
China has abundant coal but declining reserves of oil and is expected to become ever more reliant on imports. Imports now account for about 40 per cent of Chinese oil consumption.
Several of China’s coal-rich provinces, impatient with the NDRC’s long deliberations over thestandard, have issued interim standards for methanol over the last year.
Shaanxi, in north-central China, which produces about 600m tonnes a year of coal – just over a quarter of national production – has issued stickers allowing cars using pure methanol free passage on the province’s toll roads.
“Shaanxi is doing the best job in China in promoting the use of methanol as fuel,” said Peng Zhigui, head of the provincial methanol office, in Taiyuan.
“Our aim is to solve the problem of China’s oil shortage. We are creating a new kind of energy.”
Shaanxi officials had complained that the NDRC had been holding back the development of methanol in favour of ethanol, which is mainly made using corn in China.
The complaint largely reflects provincial rivalries. Ethanol is produced using corn grown in the country’s north-east – China’s poor rustbelt – an area that has been given priority by the central government.
The two methanol standards issued by Shaanxi use fuel with 15 per cent and 85 per cent of methanol respectively.
Mr Peng said the province already had 100 buses using the “M85″ fuel and is in discussions with Chery, a local car company, to build a fleet of taxis designed to run on the fuel.
Production of ethanol is also soaring in China, partly driven by the high prices available for exporters on the world market.
Critics of ethanol say it is inappropriate to use corn to make fuel at a time when China is struggling to keep precious agricultural land in production to ensure “food security” for the country.
Methanol and ethanol are different alcohol fuels that can both be used in flexible fuel vehicles, cars that look and perform just like gasoline only cars but can be powered with a variety of fuels and cost less than $150 extra to manufacture. Ethanol in the US is primarily made from corn. In Brazil it is much more efficiently made from sugarcane, and that are many countries with a suitable climate for growing sugarcane that could also produce ethanol and export to the US should we decide to remove the protectionist 54 cent a gallon tariff on ethanol imports. Methanol can be made from biomass, natural gas, and coal.
Additional information:
Kudos
Thursday, October 12th, 2006President Bush in Missouri today: “Let me just put it bluntly: We’re too dependent on oil. [...] And see, low gasoline prices may mask that concern. So, first, I want to tell you that I welcome the low gasoline prices, however it’s not going to dim my enthusiasm for making sure we diversify away from oil. [...] this country has got to use its talent and its wealth to get us off oil. And I believe we will do so, and I believe — I know the best way to do so is through technological breakthroughs.
“[...] we envision a day in which light and powerful batteries will become available in the marketplace so that you can drive the first 40 miles on electricity, on batteries, and your car won’t have to look like a golf cart….In other words, it will be a technology that will meet consumer demand and at the same time meet a national need, which is less consumption of gasoline. These are called plug-in hybrid vehicles. [...]Most folks in the cities don’t drive more than 40 miles, so you can envision consumer habits beginning to change: You drive to work; you go home; you plug in your automobile. And you go — ride to work and go home the next — and you’re still on electricity. It’s going to change the consumption patterns. This new technology will change the consumption patterns on gasoline, which in turn will make us less dependent on crude oil, which meets a national security concern, an economic security concern, and helps us deal with an environmental concern.”
Only 2% of US electricity is generated from oil today – later in his speech the President noted this by saying, “I don’t know if you know this or not, but electricity is generated from natural gas, about 18 percent; coal, 50 percent; nuclear power, 20 percent; and then — solar and wind. “
He also emphasized the ease of manufacturing flex-fuel vehicles: “it doesn’t require much money to convert a regular gasoline-driven car to a flex-fuel automobile. See, the technology is available. It takes about $100-something to change a gasoline-only automobile to one that can use E85. And it works. “