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Is Ford the “Greenest American” Car Maker?

The Ford Motor Company isn’t looking for a handout – they’ve managed to keep their business running the old fashioned way, they’ve kept their finger on the pulse of American car buyers.

Years ago they developed a “sustainability” plan, long before it was a political topic. Near-term elements of Ford’s sustainability plan include improving today’s gasoline engines to make them more fuel efficient with reduced emissions:

• The Ford Fusion is now America’s most fuel efficient mid-size sedan for both hybrid and conventional gasoline models 
• The four-cylinder Ford Fusion S is now certified at 34 mpg highway and 23 mpg in the city, topping the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord 
• The new Ford Fusion Hybrid and Mercury Milan Hybrids deliver up to 41 miles per gallon in the city – eight miles per gallon better than the Toyota Camry Hybrid. In addition, the base Fusion with its 4-cylinder engine and six-speed transmission is EPA certified with best-in-class fuel economy of 34 mpg on the highway 
• The Ford Focus with its 2.0-liter 4-cylinder engine and manual transmission delivers 35 mpg on the highway, 5 mpg better than Toyota Corolla’s 2.4-liter 4-cylinder engine and 2 mpg better than Honda Fit’s 1.5-liter 4-cylinder, both also with manual transmissions 
• The all-new 2009 Ford F-150 – which is Motor Trend magazine’s Truck of the Year – achieves 3 mpg more than the Toyota Tundra pickup on the highway and 1 mpg better in the city with its 4.6-liter V-8 engine, compared to Toyota’s 4.7-liter V-8. The F-150’s larger 5.4-liter V-8 achieves 2 mpg better on the highway than the facing Tundra engine 
• The 2009 Ford Escape with its new 2.5-liter 4-cylinder engine and six-speed transmission achieves 28 mpg on the highway, the same as Toyota’s RAV4 and 1 mpg better than the Honda CR-V, both with 4-cylinder engines, too 
• The Ford Expedition achieves 20 mpg on the highway, beating both of the Toyota Sequoia’s V-8 engines by as much as 3 mpg on the highway

And Ford’s plans for the near future:

• A new battery electric commercial van in 2010 
• A new battery electric small car in 2011 to be developed jointly with Magna International 
• Next-generation hybrid vehicles, including a plug-in version in 2012 

Some other links to Ford documents with additional information about the their plans and progress:

What do you think – has Ford proven itself to be the Most American Car Maker?

The Greenest American Car Maker?

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100+ Miles Per Gallon of Gasoline (MPGG)

One of the common arguments against ethanol/methanol  is that we “don’t have enough arable crop land to produce enough ethanol to replace our projected demand for oil without starving to death first”.

In a way this is true, but it misses the point. We don’t have to replace all oil with alcohol (or anything for that matter), we just have to displace enough of it to reduce the strategic value of oil, making oil a plentiful commodity instead of an economic weapon. 

Here’s an interesting idea from FFV Club of America that illustrates how Flex Fuel technology can effectively increase your “miles per gallon of gasoline” to over 100 MPGG.

I get 100+ miles per gallon of gasoline (MPGG) using E85, so I use less gasoline and more domestically produced alternative fuels.

When using E85 in my FFV I can get 100+ MPGG (miles to the gallon of gasoline). After all, the challenge is about gallons per gasoline not only miles per gallon. For example. The 20 gallon fuel tank on my Dodge minivan takes 17 gallons of ethanol and 3 gallons of gasoline (E85). I normally average about 20 miles per gallon and go about 400 miles on that tank full. Even if I assume a 20% loss in mileage (truthfully I do not check or care, I just use E85 when I can) I go about 320 miles on those 3 gallons of gasoline or about 106 MPGG. Now that is progress and I have one of the highest miles per gallon of gasoline cars on the road!

In essence, you’re going much further on each gallon of petroleum-based gasoline but “cutting” it with biomass-based alcohol.

I like this so much I’m adding the capability to measure and track “MPGG” using FuelClinic in a future update.

Daydreaming: Imagine the kind of MPGG possible if the existing gasoline-hybrids like the Toyota Prius were also Flex Fuel capable (they are not). Taking the daydream one step further, how about a plug-in flex-fuel hybrid… (Need to stabilize E85 in storage, to prevent moisture from being absorbed, but otherwise – it’s possible today to build such a vehicle.)

Calculating MPGG also helps debunk another frequent argument against alcohol-blends that, gallon for gallon, drivers will actually see a decrease in mileage using ethanol/methanol vs. straight gasoline.

Note: It is true, generally speaking, that in existing gasoline powered automobiles you will get “fewer miles per gallon” using ethanol/methanol, but only because gasoline powered cars are engineered to efficiently use lower-octane gasoline as a fuel. If cars were engineered to take advantage of the higher octane/higher compression ratios possible with ethanol, the efficiency would rival that of gasoline. There’s nothing “wrong” with alcohol as a fuel, just ask IndyCar Racing,  it’s just not apples-to-apples to compare fuel efficiency in engines that are not tailored to take advantage of the different properties of each fuel.

If the goal is to reduce oil consumption, control oil prices, cut carbon emissions, and help ourselves and our nation economically, then thinking about the ability of your Flex Fuel car to “off-set” oil by a substantial margin with each mile you drive makes each fill-up a little more satisfying.

What do you think about MPGG, ethanol/methanol, or Flex Fuel technologies?

Would measuring mileage by MPGG make refueling a little more satisfying to you, or am I just nuts?

As always, your comments are important and greatly encouraged. :)

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“Sorry, I was hungry,” it says.

Robotic Technology Inc. has won a DARPA contract to build the EATR (Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot)… an autonomous robot that “hunts” for “food” when it needs energy… What could go wrong?

The purpose of EATR is to develop and demonstrate an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling – in other words it needs to “eat.”

According to researchers, the EATR system gets its energy by foraging, or what the firms describe as “engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable.”

I can see it now: One day you walk out to start you car only to find this robot sucking your tank dry. “Sorry, I was hungry,” it says.”

While this is very interesting, even more interesting is the power-plant at the heart of this thing, the Cyclone.

In Phase I, Cyclone will build and deliver within six months the engine with a biomass combustion chamber for demonstration purposes. Cyclone believes that its radial six-cylinder, 16HP Waste Heat Engine (WHE) system is ideally suited for this application. In Phase II, Cyclone would build and deliver the biomass trimmer/gatherer and feeder system to work with its engine power source.

Cyclone likens its engine to a modern day steam engine, designed to achieve high thermal efficiencies “through a compact heat-regenerative process, and to run on virtually any fuel – including bio-diesels, syngas or solar – while emitting fewer greenhouse gases and irritating pollutants into the air.”

“Cyclone brings to this project one of the most advanced external combustion engine technologies we have seen,” stated Dr. Robert Finkelstein, President of RTI in a release. “In terms of power-to-size ratio, scalability and fuel flexibility, the Cyclone engine is ideal for a self-sustaining, autonomous intelligent robotic vehicle designed for unique military or civil applications.”

I’ll be baak.

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Fuelishness! Feed – Who will buy green cars, Geothermal energy, more…

I’ve recently found a good source of links to main stream energy-related commentary and opionions at the OpinionSource.com website.  This edition of Fuelishness! Feed will include some of the best discussion material from the past few weeks.

• NYT Op-Ed: But who will drive them? …with gas below $2 a gallon and recession-ravaged consumers hanging tight to their wallets, even the cheaper hybrids have to compete with cars that run on boring old internal combustion engines. The Prius was the flavor of the month when gas prices soared to $4. But in December, Prius sales plummeted 45 percent compared with the same month a year earlier — more than the 36 percent drop in all car sales…
   
•  Honda Unveils a Cheaper Hybrid Challenger to Toyota’s Top-Selling Prius - It is smaller and less fuel efficient than the Prius, but it is expected to sell for as little as $18,000, about $4,000 less than the Prius. “It’s the first direct competitor to the Prius,” said Tom Libby, senior director of industry analysis at the Power Information Network of J. D. Power & Associates. “And it’s from Honda, so I think it’s going to be a major success.”
   
• WaTimes Commentary: Oil and the economic crisis -  Saudi Arabia said recently that oil prices should be at $75 per barrel, an idea other OPEC members have welcomed with enthusiasm. So when the group met recently, it decided to reduce output again, this time by more than 2 million barrels daily. However, the Saudis clearly did not want to assume all the reduction and insisted other producers, including Iran and Venezuela, not only approve the new cuts, but also implement them, which will lead to additional pressure on Venezuela’s already dwindling export volumes.
   
• ABG: First stage of Nevada algae biodiesel completed successfully -  Researchers at the University of Nevada-Reno have been testing a pair of outdoor algae ponds to evaluate the viability of growing fuel algae in the region. The first phase was a success with algae growing in a pair of 5,000 gallon ponds even with overnight temperatures in the 20s.
   
• NYT Op-Ed: Geothermal future – [Can we replace coal with geothermal plants? -ed.] In 2006, a panel led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surveyed the prospects for electricity production from enhanced geothermal systems. Its conclusions were conservative but very optimistic. The panel suggested that with modest federal support, geothermal power could play a critical role in America’s energy future, adding substantially to the nation’s store of renewable energy and more than making up for coal-burning power plants that would have to be retired. 

As always, your comments are encouraged and appreciated.

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Obama orders push to cleaner, more efficient cars

 

Some encouraging news earlier today…

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama opened an ambitious, double-barreled assault on global warming and U.S. energy woes Monday, moving quickly toward rules requiring cleaner-running cars that guzzle less gas — a must, he said, for “our security, our economy and our planet.”

He also vowed to succeed where a long line of predecessors had failed in slowing U.S. dependence on foreign oil…

…Obama directed federal transportation officials to get going on new fuel efficiency rules, which will affect cars produced and sold for the 2011 model year. That step was needed to enforce a 2007 energy law, which calls for cars and trucks to be more efficient every year, to at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

While I have worked very hard over the last 8 months to help users improve fuel efficiency, and strongly support higher efficiency standards (it’s a disgrace that fuel efficiency for modern vehicles is basically unchanged from those of the early 1980’s), I am concerned about the potential confusion of having each state able to set their own standards for vehicle emissions, and so are the automakers…

The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, car makers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.

And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, “greener” cars.

Obama on Monday directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether California and more than a dozen states should be allowed to impose tougher auto emission standards on car makers to fight greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked the efforts by the states, which account for about half of the nation’s auto sales. 

We have a national auto-industry, not state-specific cottage industries. Our auto makers need to be able to efficiently build automobiles that can be sold anywhere in the country. America simply does not have “time or money” to mitigate a jumbled quagmire of new emissions regulations for the automakers. We need to act more quickly.  

Instead of creating a confusing new collection of tighter tail-pipe emission standards, maintaining the current established emissions standards while increasing fuel efficiency standards will have a greater and more immediate effect – creating and securing jobs, saving consumers after-tax money (which is an economic-stimulus method that works), cutting fuel consumption (and foreign oil dependence), and cutting emissions more aggressively – without cumbersome tailpipe testing.  

This approach will also reduce the engineering costs by allowing automakers to focus all their talents on improving fuel efficiency, so they can create automobiles that are competitive with the higher-mileage imports,  instead of trying to improve efficiency while also managing to meet a variety of emissions-only regulations. 

At the same time, Obama should hold American automakers to their promise of building-in the Flex-Fuel components needed to “future-proof” these new vehicles, to allow consumers to have a choice to take advantage of the growing alternative fuels market. These systems add very little to the cost of building a new car (about $100/ea. is the last estimate I’ve heard), are well-proven (they’ve been around for 10 years or so), and empower drivers to reduce their own emissions even further by choosing to use alcohol-blended fuels.

I also suggest shifting the impetus for new efficiency standards from global warming for the time being, and concentrate on economic and security related benefits of higher fuel efficiency standards. Regardless of your position on the issue of man-made global warming, the consuming public (who put their hard-earned money on the line) is simply not very worried about global warming, according to the recent Pew survey (among others).

Why try to force-feed the customers a solution to a problem they aren’t concerned about? I think there is much more potential for progress by explaining the economic and national security advantages of higher-fuel-efficiency vehicles – with the added benefit of reduced emissions.

As far as I’m concerned, the best news from today is apparently Obama’s not going to let the temporary downturn in oil prices sway his resolve…

Obama also meant to set a tone with his promises: Science will trump ideology and special interests, attention will stay high even when gas prices fall.

We all know these prices are bound to rebound. Prices are already making upticks at retail gasoline stations (+$0.20 this last month), even as excess oil sits idly in storage tanks and tanker ships around the world. 

What do you think about Obama’s announcement today?

What do you think of my own proposals?

Comments are greatly appreciated and all view points (thoughtfully delivered) are welcome.

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Ethanol production a boom or bust?

 

If we had a reasonable demand for alcohol-blended fuel, investment for producing ethanol and methanol both here in the US and abroad would skyrocket – a significant and world-changing “boom”. 

What’s needed is a marketable demand for the fuel. Unfortunately most cars on the road can not use alcohol-blends greater than 20% or so, some of the older cars and equipment like lawn mowers, construction equipment, and boats can’t even use that much of a blend. 

There is a technology called “Flex Fuel” that has been around for over 10 years, and is already built-in to some cars sold in the US (about 3% on the road). “Flex Fuel” involves improvements to some of the fuel system components to resist alcohol-corrosion, adding a sensor that can determine how much alcohol is in the fuel going to the fuel injectors, and programming the computer that runs the engine in the car. It costs between $100 to $200 to add these components during production of a new car. All “Flex Fuel” cars can run on regular gas, or any combination of alcohol-and-gas. 

So 3% of vehicles can run on alcohol-blends currently. It costs a gas station operator about $60,000 to install the “blending” pump required to distribute the fuel, and possibly much more if they need to upgrade their storage tanks. 

Few gas station so far have thought this was a good investment for them to make. 3% of their customers can use it – if they even know their car is capable (not many people know for sure). Not a very impressive market to service. 

American automakers have previously promised to build Flex-Fuel technologies into 80% of their new cars starting in the next few years. If they stick to their promises, then a viable alcohol-blended market will start to build. If we could convince foreign makers to build Flex-Fuel vehicles, then a world-market for alcohol-blended fuels will emerge, creating a robust world market for the fuel. 

My favorite side-effect of a robust Ethanol and Methanol market is that it would turn places like Africa, Asia, and South America into competitive energy-producing power-houses; using crops like sweet sorghum, sugar cane, and jatropha. We could easily diversify our sources of energy (we don’t have to grow it all ourselves) and at the same time enable some of humanities most needy countries to build viable and renewable energy industries that would ultimately enable local economies to pull themselves out of poverty, build infrastructure, power their own future on alcohol-blends, etc… 

Another benefit of a robust market is a huge drop in demand for oil, as alcohol is used to replace up to 85% of the oil currently consumed by transportation. We don’t decimate the oil industry – we will still require oil for some transportation as well as the other products oil is a fantastic raw material for – but we can stop wasting our limited oil supply, sending it out our tailpipes.

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Fuelishness! Feed

• On Tuesday, The Energized Guyz, a live theatrical production developed by National Theatre for Children which is sponsored by Ameren, visited Mt. Vernon District 80 Primary Center, McClellan Grade School and St. Mary School teaching students about how to be “wise energy users.”
   
• “We import a lot of our oil and if we could curb consumption, we could actually dramatically reduce those imports and that would affect our balance of trade, which would positively influence the value of the dollar, which would do all sorts of things in terms of what we could afford to buy in terms of imported goods,” said energy analyst Ken Medlock at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
    
• First Cellulosic Ethanol Plant in USA Up and Running  – After a million shot in the arm from oil giant BP back in August, second generation cellulosic ethanol pioneer Verenium has started production of ethanol from non-food sources such as wood chips, grass straw, and trash at their Jennings Louisiana demonstration plant (PDF).
   
• Earth to Congressman Massa: That’s Not What “Efficiency” Means – First off, the fuel-cell car that Massa selected to drive the aforementioned 300 miles only had a range of 175 – 200 miles (depending on who you believe), and there were exactly zero (0) hydrogen fuel cell filling stations en route.
     
• Range Fuels Gets $80 Million Federal Loan Guarantee for Cellulosic Refinery –  The loan guarantee program is designed to promote development of facilities and technologies aimed at producing ethanol and other biofuels from non-food resources.
    
• Lexus Recalling 214,500 Cars For Possible Fuel Line Corrosion Caused by Ethanol –  Seems that low-moisture ethanol blends can corrode the cars’ fuel delivery pipes, causing a warning light to come on and possibly eating a pinhole through the pipe wall, causing a fuel leak. … Toyota Motors Sales USA, which is managing the recall for the automaker, said repairs will involve replacing the fuel pipes with new ones that won’t be affected by ethanol. the repairs will be done at no charge, the automaker said.

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Bio-Diesel Days – (UPDATED: Independent Study Says Bio-Diesel NOT to Blame.)

When I was a kid, to get to school we walked 20 miles up broken-glass-and-lava covered volcanic hills, dodging poison dart frogs and angry hornets, while reciting the entire unabridged Advanced Quantum Mechanics for Forth Graders… now those wipper-snappers get days because of gelled bio-diesel fuel…

All schools in the Bloomington School District will be closed today after state-required biodiesel fuel clogged in school buses Thursday morning and left dozens of students stranded in frigid weather, the district said late Thursday.

Rick Kaufman, the district’s spokesman, said elements in the biodiesel fuel that turn into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 degrees clogged about a dozen district buses Thursday morning. Some buses weren’t able to operate at all and others experienced problems while picking up students, he said. 

h/t: HotAir

UPDATED 1/27/2009

It looks like the Bloomington School District has taken a closer look at their bus problems from last week were un-related to bio-diesel fuel.

Citing an independent study, the Minnesota Department of Commerce reiterated today that biodiesel was not the culprit that caused school buses in Bloomington, Minn. to malfunction last week.

“The problems with school buses in Minnesota had nothing to do with biodiesel,” said Bill Walsh, Communications Director for the Minnesota Department of Commerce. “An independent investigation confirmed what we believed last week – when it gets to 20 degrees below zero in the Midwest, diesel engines have trouble operating unless they are properly maintained – whether or not they are using a biodiesel blend.”

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Gas prices up slightly as refineries improve margins

Some insight:

For a while, when the price at the pump was around $1.59 a gallon in the Iowa Quad-Cities, the refining margin on gasoline was negative, MacIntyre said.

“Refiners were losing money in that they were selling the gasoline to wholesalers for less than what they were paying for the crude oil that goes into the refining,” MacIntyre said.

However, they were making money on other products such as diesel and jet fuel, he added.

The price of gasoline is not set by the refiners, MacIntyre said. Gasoline prices, as well as the prices of all the other products refineries make from oil, are set by the market.

Or…

There are a lot of partial explanations. It’s partly due to some refineries cutting production, both to increase profit by reducing supply and to make repairs, at least in California. It’s partly due to the crude oil market being in contango, the term for when “the current month’s (Feb.) future price is trading lower than the futures price for the following month”—which means there’s a lot of oil being bought and stored in tankers for future sale. (The problem: we don’t know how this contango directly translates to higher prices at the pump. Does it create a shortage? Can anyone educate us in laymen’s terms?) Oh, it might also partly be due to the temporary spike in crude prices back at the end of 2008, because often pump prices lag crude prices.

More…

Gas prices continue upward spiral – AAA says for the third consecutive week crude oil prices have declined and retail gasoline prices drifted higher. Consumer demand remains weak and supply is so ample that offshore oil tankers are carrying millions of barrels of crude oil and going nowhere.

Why Do Gas Prices Rise As Oil Prices Fall? – Alvarez has one theory that speculators are behind the increase, betting the crude oil will rise in the coming days. Alvarez does stress, however, that gas station owners have the final say on how they price their gas. 

I’ve written several times, bout OPEC cuts, and crude oil stowed at sea… is this having an effect? What do you think?

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Detroit Auto Show: Audi Says 45-MPG A3 Diesel Hatchback Is Coming to the U.S.

From: Green Car Advisor

Audi today announced that its 2010 A3 2.0-liter TDI diesel hatchback will appear in dealer showrooms across the U.S. starting early next year.

The low-emissions, fuel-efficient car won’t be significantly different from the 2009 version, which Audi included in a herd of clean-diesel vehicles it drove across the land of the free last year.

The A3 got the best fuel economy of the lot, averaging slightly more than 45 miles per gallon over 4,000-plus miles.

Audi said it is targeting the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight, both of which are hybrids. Some of the A3’s prospective buyers will also likely be considering the Mini Cooper and Volvo C30.

The A3’s powertrain will include a 140-horsepower, turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel engine with a six-speed automatic transmission. Pricing of the front-wheel-drive vehicle won’t be announced until much later this year.

Audi said standard features will include hill-hold assist, Sirius Satellite Radio, leather seating surfaces, leather steering wheel and auxiliary audio input. Audi Magnetic Ride will be optional.

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Producing Sugars from Cellulosic Biomass

Michigan State University has submitted a patent application for “a process for increasing production of sugars from cellulose in a plant biomass using ammonia after swelling of the biomass with water and enzymatic hydrolysis is described. The sugars are preferably fermented to an alcohol, particularly ethanol as a fuel for vehicles.”

Biomass is roughly translated into nearly any organic material – including the parts of plants we harvest but do not use as food or feed.

A process by which whole plants are harvested as a biomass and processed together as one unit so that sugars are generated and then optionally fermented to an alcohol which comprises:(a) soaking the biomass in water for a period of time so as to increase the water within the biomass and to enhance sugar production from the biomass;(b) treating the plant biomass with concentrated ammonia under pressure in a closed vessel and then relieving the pressure to provide a treated plant biomass with recovery of the ammonia;(c) hydrolyzing the treated plant biomass in the presence of water to sugars using a combination of enzymes which hydrolyze cellulose, hemicellulose and other carbohydrates in the biomass to produce sugars; and(d) optionally fermenting the sugars to produce the alcohol.

Such a process would allow ethanol fuel manufacturers to grow a wider variety of crops that could be used as fuel stock in fermenting ethanol and methanol fuels – as well as possibly turning harvested scraps, lawn clippings, and other biomass into fuel stock. This could potentially remove some of ”food-related” arguments from the opposition of alcohol-based fuel technologies, and encourage a wider mandate and adoption of flex-fueled vehicles. 

The growing U.S. appetite for petroleum, together with demand growth in China, India, and the rest of the world, has pushed prices to new highs. The United States uses over 20 million barrels of petroleum per day, of which 58% is imported. Prices of oil are significant and continue to rise. Bioethanol is one of the low cost, consumer-friendly ways to reduce gasoline consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. It is a clean fuel that can be used in today’s cars. One of the many attributes of bioethanol is that it does not contribute net carbon dioxide to the atmosphere

Additional Details…

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AAA: Gas Prices Increasing

Concerns that the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza might disrupt the flow of oil from the Mideast and the possibility that OPEC will decide at its Jan. 19 meeting to reduce oil production again helped push the price of gasoline higher nationwide.

On Jan. 1, the U.S. national average for a gallon of self-serve regular was $1.61. On Monday, self-serve regular was up another 4 cents to $1.65 nationwide. In the Orlando area, self-serve regular currently averages $1.62 a gallon.

“We are reminded this week that volatility in any part of the world can be worrisome, but when it involves the Middle East, the hypersensitivity of the oil industry increases exponentially,” said Gregg Laskoski, managing director of public relations for AAA Auto Club South, in a statement.

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