The Battle Over Green Technologies

[kevingalls]

As of December 2009, we are finding car makers broadening their exploration of mainly 4 alternative fuels for cars. The first has been around for a while...

—Diesel. Diesel engines never enjoyed much popularity in the United States due to their bad image as loud, smoke billowing engines for large cargo trucks.Europeans can expect a 2010 Volkswagen Polo Diesel to get you about 71 US mpg. That number trumps the 51 mpg Toyota Prius Hybrid. Diesel, however is still relying on fossil fuels and despite its improved mileage, is not a viable candidate for the long-term future of automobiles.

—Hybrids combine the benefits of two power sources to achieve more power or better fuel economy. For instance, a mo-ped is a hybrid which combines your leg's pedal power with a gasoline motor. Hybrid technology has been a large investment over the last 10 years, especially by Toyota. Toyota announced Monday they are planning a widespread release of their plug-in Prius hybrid car in 2011. Expect GM, Ford, and Volkswagen to have their own plug-in hybrids soon. The problem with hybrid technology is also its lack of being a true long-term solution due to its need for a fuel-powered engine. Not to mention the plug-in variety relies on your neighborhood power grid which is most likely generating electricity by burning fossil fuels. This brings us to the next alternative fuel:

—Fully Electric cars with lithium-ion batteries. Without getting into the problems and solutions considered for this alternative, the consensus seems to be that unless we can figure out a better method of capturing clean energy like wind and solar, this still relies on fossil fuels due to the necessity for power plants and grids to charge the vehicles. Nissan is planning to mass-produce a fully electric car as early as 2010.

—Ethanol. "What happened to Ethanol?", you ask. Well, Ethanol turned out to be a losing battle. The lobbyists said if we mixed Ethanol with gasoline, we'd get cleaner operating vehicles with more power. Turns out they had more smog and gas mileage dropped. Without getting into an argument over Ethanol, let me just reiterate it is not the solution. Sure it's a fuel we can grow locally but now there's another alternative:

—Hydrogen! That's right, the flammable gas which once filled the

Hindenburg

Hindenburg_disaster

might be the answer to our future fuel woes. There are two sub-categories of hydrogen fuel. The first is equipping current gasoline engines with modifications to allow internal combustion of liquid hydrogen fuel. The result could be substantially more power, and less emissions. The other, more sustainable option is hydrogen fuel-cell technology. Basically liquid hydrogen would feed from your tank into a fuel cell stack, where hydrogen and oxygen from the air would combine to produce electricity through electro-chemical reactions. This electricity would drive an electric motor, with excess power being stored in a lithium ion battery pack. Honda's FCX Clarity currently achieves 240 miles between fill-ups and twice the energy efficiency of the Prius. Why is hydrogen the best alternative fuel? For starters, it can be produced locally, so one day we won't need to rely on foreign oil. Secondly, if sustainable methods to separate hydrogen from water are improved, CO2 emissions could theoretically be eliminated. There are many challenges to getting Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology mainstream, so it's important that we don't put all our eggs into hybrids or diesel.

[linh]

I'm definitely surprised at the lack of diesel. It seems to have the most short-run potential given we can do it NOW. I believe Mazda is brining some diesel engines (and hybrid-diesel) to the states soon, so maybe they can make it catch on some.

Overall, I'm in the camp of fully electric. And thus, we have to figure out a way to make that w/o burning fossil fuel, and of course distribution. Yes, very easy to type that out in a forum. The combined use of hydrogen fuel cells as mini home generators might help this out.

As for distribution, I like Shai Agassi's take (TED video, there's a wired article somewhere too). Design cars where you can drop the battery easily, and have "car wash style" "gas stations" where you pop the old one, put in the other. This has it's own drawbacks, such as needing a huge power line to the station and stockpiling batteries, but workable as we shrink batteries.

That's only part of the ideas he has, but quite interesting.

And screw ethanol, at least not in the US. Or at least w/o subsidizing corn to do it.

[kevingalls]

Linh,
Thanks for posting and I took a look at your link to Shai Agassi's TED talk. I love TED for giving a voice to creative experts with big ideas. I think more education like this about the logistics and infrastructure of migrating our dependence off of fossil fuels is exactly what's needed to increase public demand for electric cars: education and inspiration.