Auto Boston

Just how big is this thing anyway?
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 20th, 2006

I’ve been scanning blog after blog on alternative fuels for the last day and a half - because I have that much time - and only two things surprise me.

Firstly, it doesn’t look yet like anyone has slotted alt.fuels amongst the literally millions of alt.binaries (etc.) newsgroups that exist;

Secondly, with all those who are supposed to be showing an interest in doing something about the price of fuel, including posting info such as this: “There are currently about 1.2 million of these vehicles on the road. Because manufacturers had to overcome technological challenges, nearly the entire increase in the number of these vehicles has been in the past three years. “ (1999 -2002) , why aren’t we seeing any publicity about this environment-saving industry? It should be bigger than Texas.Source: http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/rulings/CAFE/alternativefuels/summary.htm

The blogs tend to be saying the same thing over and over, which is that research is stagnating because of lack of funding and funding isn’t forthcoming because those who provide it are themselves heavily funded by the oil industry. The upshot of that is, there’s nothing new to report on the development of alternative-fuel vehicles. The most recent item in autoblog.com on the subject was a minibiography of Rudolph Diesel and his prediction that vegetable fuels will someday become as important as petroleum.

The biggest problem with developing the technology is obviously financial. R&D is hugely expensive and if the market doesn’t like it, the execs aren’t going to be able to give their kids the G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu grip for Christmas because of the massive losses the manufacturer stands to incur in production of a car nobody wants to buy.

Why don’t they want to buy them?

Two reasons. They don’t understand the technology and well.. where the hell do you fill these babies up?

Remember the early days of LPG? You’re running out gas and you can’t just go to the station down the road because they don’t have gas there. Enter dual fuel vehicles. Flick of the switch and you have 200 miles to go before you really have to stop and fill up.

The early problems associated with having an LPG flavoured vehicle were fairly quickly absorbed into the motorist’s collective consciousness - a gallon of LPG doesn’t go as far as a gallon of gasoline, you have to check the water more often because the converter freezes if you run low, and filling the things was a hassle because you had to go back to school to figure out this ‘bleed while filling’ caper. With the exception of the water issue, the mileage now is almost on a par with gasoline and filling the tank is dead easy.

Rather pricey now though, isn’t it.

Ethanol hasn’t had such an easy ride of it as LPG.

Firstly, who makes it in useful quantities except those who supply Formula 1 cars?
Secondly, the early problems of engine and fuel system damage caused by knocking generated such negative press, retailers in some parts are required to list the nutritional information label on their ethanol/gasoline mix products so consumers who don’t want ethanol aren’t forced or tricked into using it.

Ergo, right now, hardly anyone wants anything to do with ethanol and when they finally get around to tinkering at the edges of mixing a little bit of it with ordinary petroleum, the usual suspects get on their high horses about the implications for the motorists of this largely mysterious concept of fuel mixers.

Tomorrow, rather than just an outlook of the marketplace from this side of the fence, Autoboston will have a look at this from the point of view of the producers of ethanol fuels and if I have time, the industry that uses the fuel.