US Offers $30M For High-Risk Biofuel Research

coondoggie writes "This one sounds a bit like really wishful thinking. The US Department of Energy today announced $30 million for research projects that would develop advanced biofuels that could replace gasoline or diesel without requiring special upgrades or changes to the vehicle or fueling infrastructure. The $30 million would be spent over the next four years to support as many as five 'traditionally high-risk biofuels projects,' such as converting biomass into biofuels and bioproducts to be eventually used for hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals."

Comments

First Post

[lttlordfault]

A Drop in the ocean

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

But if it comes out frosty, is it still a drop, or is it a frozen globule of urine?
 
No answer needed. This is a rhetorical question.

Re:First Post

[conspirator57]

and a distraction from policy measures that could actually solve the problem (and other pernicious problems at the same time): reducing sugar and ethanol import tariffs drastically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil#Comparison_with_the_United_States
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/sc019
http://sugarcaneblog.com/2010/03/22/washington-post-editorial-on-u-s-sugar-policy/
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12623

It is possible that Haiti and other impoverished nations could develop into self-sustaining economies by adopting some of Brazil's agricultural methods while providing a robust, diverse supply of fuel. And with corn's inefficiency versus sugar ethanol, it would go back to its proper market of food, reducing onerous cost burdens imposed on Mexico and Latin America for corn meal, a staple food.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10057/MainText.4.1.shtml

The increase in the amount of corn used to produce ethanol has exerted upward pressure on corn prices, boosted the demand for cropland, and raised the price of animal feed. Those effects, in turn, have lifted the prices of many farm commodities (for example, soybeans, meat, poultry, and dairy products) and, consequently, the retail price of food. The rise in food prices has affected not only the costs to individual consumers but also spending for the federal government’s food assistance programs.

http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/Ec1F07/tortillas.htm

"The price of oil is driving up the price of corn (because of increased ethanol production), which is driving up the price of tortillas," said Peter Navarro, a business professor at UC Irvine. "You push on one thing and another thing moves," added Navarro, the author of "If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks."

He said the U.S. ethanol stampede could be thought of "as a regressive tax on Mexico, because it raises the price of a basic commodity. In economics, we call these general equilibrium effects. Something happens in one market and it ripples through other markets."

$30m/5 years?

[appleguru]

That's not much of a development budget....

Re:$30m/5 years?

[appleguru]

err.. 4 years.. still $7.5/year isn't exactly a ton of money. That being said, I think the powers that be recognize that fossil fuels and similar power sources are inherintly a dead end. Creating new fuels is an energy intensive process, effectivly making the new fuel a one-time use battery. And depending on the process used to create it, generally not a very efficient one.

A bunch better way to spend money is developing new battery tech and at looking at utilizing solar energy to power them. That, or get over the stigma against nuclear tech and utilize small personal reactors for energy...

Re:$30m/5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

> personal reactors

from http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

Q. Are we ever likely to have nuclear powered cars?

Alas, no, if present nuclear physics is all there is to say about the possibility. A nuclear reactor engine that would provide the right amount of energy for a car could be built and would run fine and would require refuelling only every 5 or 10 years. The only problem is that it would kill the driver, the passengers, and perhaps bystanders. Nuclear reactors, as described above, produce neutrons, which are very penetrating particles and give people radiation sickness if the exposure is substantial. (All our bodies are penetrated all the time by small numbers of neutrons.) Power reactors have several feet of concrete shielding between the active part of the reactor and the operators. A big enough vehicle like an aircraft carrier or a big submarine can afford the shielding. In the 1950s some thought that nuclear aircraft were feasible. Maybe they were, but the projects were abandoned.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[AhabTheArab]

Right. In other news: The DoD is currently bitching that they might be losing something like $10 billion in funding next year. Of course, even that is a just a small fraction of DoD's full money allocations.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[TheL0ser]

"to support as many as five 'traditionally high-risk biofuels projects,'" (emphasis mine)

So it's actually much, much worse.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[plopez]

pesky details.... you some sort of tree hugger?

Re:$30m/5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.marshield.com/page/2/60/

Are there alternatives to feet of concrete shielding available that are lighter-weight?

Re:$30m/5 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pesky details are also the sort of thing I like to call "engineering and physical reality", something that people just think are made up to inconvenience their lives of consuming, commuting and making babies.

There wouldn't be enough uranium or thorium on the planet to supply every car in the world anyways. This is it, folks, we're in the end-game of cheap energy oil-driven civilization. It's gonna be fun.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[jameskojiro]

OMG, what about using a beta-volatic cell utilizing a lightweight isotope that decays via beta emission into a stable element.... Something like say Sulfur 35. Use the small reactory to continually recharge the battery packs in an electric car like a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt....

Beta Emitters = No pesky neutrons, Gamma rays of alpha particles...

The "reactor" actually more like a batter cell type design, can be shielded with the same kind of tin foil bat shit insane people use to cover their heads for crying out loud.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[Red Flayer]

can be shielded with the same kind of tin foil bat shit insane people use to cover their heads for crying out loud.

Most bat-shit insane people I've seen wearing foil hats wear ones made from aluminum. Which is kind of ironic, given that they suppose themselves to be in the enlightened minority, but are unaware that aluminum foil does not offer the same protective properties against telepathic rays as tin. It does, however, protect against beta rays, but it's need to be much thicker than aluminum foil (orders of magnitude thicker).

All that said, the big problems with your idea are (1) amount of energy produced per unit weight is insufficient for cars; (2) disposal; (3) cost of enriching the fuel.

There are reasons beta electric cells are generally reserved for special-use cases like satellites.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[countertrolling]

...get over the stigma against nuclear tech and utilize small personal reactors for energy...

Eh, It's been done already

Re:$30m/5 years?

[vlm]

That being said, I think the powers that be recognize

I think you're giving them way too much credit here. The clowns don't even know that a diesel compatible oil is shockingly easy, its just that American growing technology requires about 2 gallons of diesel equivalent to grow 1 gallon of biodiesel equivalent. On the other hand, "growing your own gasoline" is a huge problem. Purified toluene and benzene are not really biocompatible, you're not going to grow that stuff and refine it at any reasonable efficiency.

From a chemistry / energy perspective I wonder if it would be cheaper to replace every gas burner with a bio-diesel burner rather than trying to make a gasoline compatible replacement to put in gas cars. Its probably about the same level of effort.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[radtea]

Beta Emitters = No pesky neutrons, Gamma rays of alpha particles...

Not quite correct: most gamma ray sources are in fact beta emitters that decay into excited states of the daughter nucleus, which then decays via gamma emission.

There are exceptions: 35S, which you mention, decays entirely to the ground state of 35Cl.

There are still problems, though: bremmstralung radiation from the stopping electrons, modest (126 day) lifetime and long biological half-life (~45 days). The average decay energy is only 49 keV (endpoint is 167 keV) so to generate a watt assuming 100% conversion efficiency you need 1/(49*1000*1.6e-19) ~ 1e14 decays per second, which is up there in the mega-curries.

Keeping it out of the environment at current discharge limits (micro-curries per kg) would be impossible, and it tends to affect the lungs, which are particularly susceptible to radiation (about 10% of lung cancer from smoking is due to potassium-40 decay.)

So on the whole I'd rather invest in algal biodeisel, which fulfils the relatively simple mandate of the funded research: providing feedstock for existing liquid hydrocarbon energy infrastructure.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[SleazyRidr]

How is it that lame memes get modded insightful, yet your ideas about nuclear powered cars gets a funny mod?

I give up trying to understand /. moderation.

Re:$30m/5 years?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Who's the nitwit trying to ferment fuel, when syngas/Fischer-Tropsch is twice as efficient, energetically, and can just as easily make racing grade gasoline, as it can diesel, or kerosene, or what have you. Google is your friend.

High Risk?

[Thelasko]

As in, high risk of genetically modified bacteria escaping the lab and turning every carbohydrate it finds into fuel oil?

Re:High Risk?

[Stregano]

Possibly high risk because you car explodes, or high risk because if it comes within skin contact, you become a mutant, but not a cool X-Men type of mutant. Like the Mutant whose special power is that one of their arms is on their back

Re:High Risk?

[ducomputergeek]

High risk or what used to be called "basic research". These are project that may work or provide useful insight for down the road. Chances are they may not lead to some kind of "success" in the commercial world. When companies fund research and development it usually evaluates projects based on the likely hood they'll be able to produce something that is commercially viable and they can break even or profit from the work. We really haven't seen a lot of basic research labs where companies throw money into R&D and see what happens. That's the way it used to work back in the day with places like Bell Labs and even Xerox. Today this is usually done at research universities.

Re:High Risk?

[TheL0ser]

Hmm, I think we can negotiate. Is this arm in addition to my first two, or in replacement of one? Will I have use of it like my dominant hand or my off hand?

Re:High Risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like the Mutant whose special power is that one of their arms is on their back"

That could have its uses: it would make wiping ones ass easier.

Re:High Risk?

[Nadaka]

High risk as in no chance of being profitable within the next quarter, or even the next year, may not even be profitable before you cache in your golden parachute and move on to the next corp to gut and sell.

Re:High Risk?

[khallow]

We really haven't seen a lot of basic research labs where companies throw money into R&D and see what happens. That's the way it used to work back in the day with places like Bell Labs and even Xerox. Today this is usually done at research universities.

Why do your own research when you can get government to throw a bunch of money at it? The US, for example, throws billions of dollars every year at basic research. Where's the incentive for me to do basic research on my own dime?

I see this as one of the big social drivers for destroying scientific progress in the world (not just in the US). Currently, in a lot of fields the only gain from genuine scientific inquiry is status. And that can be gamed too. I see in many decades the possibility of a huge publicly funded, parasitic scientific community which doesn't do anything. Any attempt at genuine science would threaten the status quo and so is actively squelched.

Re:High Risk?

[Red Flayer]

"Like the Mutant whose special power is that one of their arms is on their back"

That could have its uses: it would make wiping ones ass easier.

Well, that depends on which way the elbow bends, what part of the back the arm is attached to, and whether there's a shoulder joint, doesn't it?

I mean, sure, it could make wiping your ass easier if the arm has a shoulder joint right in the middle of your back, and the elbow bends toward the ass. What if it bends towards the head? I guess that's a bad example, since then you could brush your hair more easily. But what if it bent towards the side?

And even if the arm was perfectly position to help you wipe your ass, you'd have to have clothes specially fitted. And you couldn't comfortably lean back in a chair. And forget about laying on a blanket to do some stargazing.

And what about laying in bed with your partner? If you want to face eachother, you've already got a where-do-we-put-the-extra-arm problem. Now you've also got that problem when you're laying on your back (forget cowgirl positions!), if you're being spooned, etc.

All in all, having an extra arm originating from your back is more hassle than it's worth. Unless you are unable to prevent getting shit all over your hands when you wipe, in which case you may be an edge case where it would be useful.

Re:High Risk?

[Red Flayer]

Today this is usually done at research universities.

And even at research universities, the proportion of basic research is being actively reduced.

This is partly because of reduced government funding for projects that do not produce tangible viable results, and partly because of the increasing partnership between public research universities and private for-profit enterprises.

Re:High Risk?

[Red Flayer]

Where's the incentive for me to do basic research on my own dime?

There never was one. That's the nature of basic research -- there's no monetary incentive to do it.

This is precisely *why* we have public funding for basic research. So that it gets done, absent a natural monetary incentive to do it.

Re:High Risk?

[DerekLyons]

We really haven't seen a lot of basic research labs where companies throw money into R&D and see what happens. That's the way it used to work back in the day with places like Bell Labs and even Xerox.

That's the "back in the good old days" version. The reality is that Bell Labs worked almost exclusively on research eventually intended to have commercial yield, any basic research was done in support of that goal.

Re:High Risk?

[khallow]

There never was one. That's the nature of basic research -- there's no monetary incentive to do it.

Then there's no such thing as basic research. Any useful research eventually leads to a monetary incentive.

Re:High Risk?

[aethogamous]

From the grant documents:

Funds are not intended for basic research leading to process development, although if an applicant deems such R&D to be necessary to achieve performance targets, the inclusion of such work may be included in the overall project plan and schedule, up to 20% of the total proposed budget under...

so, no, not basic research. The high-risk here refers of course to the risk of commercial success:

OMP's emphasis on advanced biofuels is intended to encourage industry to invest in traditionally high-risk biofuels.

From a science (but not commercial) point of view basic research grants tend to be very risk adverse.

Re:High Risk?

[kick6]

As in, high risk of genetically modified bacteria escaping the lab and turning every carbohydrate it finds into fuel oil?

Considering the dearth of nutritional value in carbs, especially processed carbs, would this be all that bad? I guess vegetarians would piss and moan, but they're too physically weak to put up much of a fight anyway.

Re:High Risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, high risk as in "We don't know if this will actually work".

Re:High Risk?

[sumdumass]

How much do you want to bet that the benefactors of this funding turn out to be connected to some political party pretty tightly.

I'm wondering if this isn't actually some sort of payback. This isn't a lot of money to start something like this when there isn't really anything that specifically meets the stated criteria on the market right now.

Re:High Risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by High Risk, they meant "no chance of any returns, ever", I am ready to receive those $30M.

Re:High Risk?

[testadicazzo]

Then there's no such thing as basic research. Any useful research eventually leads to a monetary incentive.

There's so much wrong with your assertion that it's difficult to know where to begin... Basic research often leads to a monetary incentive, but generations after the research has been done... i.e. the monetary incentives don't come in to play for the person or entity doing the research, but to later entities who benefit from the knowledge gained from that research. Some basic research benefits society as a whole without generating any financial rewards at all for the researcher.

Re:High Risk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that some kind of logically fallacious ragequit?

Re:High Risk?

[vlm]

As in, high risk of genetically modified bacteria escaping the lab and turning every carbohydrate it finds into fuel oil?

Hilariously, "fuel oil" already is a moderately short chain length carbohydrate. We're not exactly talking about turning lead into gold here.

The stuff that comes out of the ground has both longer and shorter chain contaminants, and usually some icky stuff like sulfur compounds.

The stuff that comes from sunflower seed plantations generally has too high of a melting point.

The refinery polishes up the major specs, filters out the icky stuff, adds some detergents and hi-pressure lube so the fuel pumps in the car last longer than a year, and off it goes to quickiemart or whatever to be sold.

A good friend of my father had one of those weird (for the usa) diesel cars and he drove around with a gallon jug of some particular vegetable oil, as its "good enough to get him to the next diesel pump" and perfectly safe in a crash (other than slipping hazard, I guess). Not recommended by the manufacturer for long term use due to lack of detergents, weird viscosity, and bioreactivity, but good enough to prevent freezing to death in a blizzard or whatever.

Signed, your friendly neighborhood chemist.

Re:High Risk?

[khallow]

Some basic research benefits society as a whole without generating any financial rewards at all for the researcher.

That's just a market failure where the researcher isn't being adequately compensated for the research. You were claiming that basic research had no monetary incentive. This is not an example of that since there is a party, all of society, which has a monetary incentive.

There's so much wrong with your assertion that it's difficult to know where to begin... Basic research often leads to a monetary incentive, but generations after the research has been done... i.e. the monetary incentives don't come in to play for the person or entity doing the research, but to later entities who benefit from the knowledge gained from that research.

There is this myth that we can have scientific research with no value, monetary or otherwise, in the near future, but it will have tremendous payout at some future date. The only problem with this assertion is that it's not true. Sure, there might be some research somewhere where no near future value was present, but great future value was present, but no one has found it yet.

For example, electricity and magnetism eventually lead to computers and the foundation of the modern society. So sure, that's tremendous value creation centuries after the fact. But even in the days when people were first experimenting with electricity and magnetism, they were coming up with near future discoveries of monetary value. For example, lightning rods were an early discovery which led to the preservation of real estate from lightning caused damage. The discovery that Earth's magnetic fields were misaligned from true North (and by how much) was a great boon to commerce by sea, which was a huge deal in those days.

You can make similar monetary incentives for every branch of science (and related knowledge) at their infancy. Astronomy - navigation at sea, understanding time better. Chemistry - turning (or not as the case turned out) lead into gold, making new alloys. Biology - breeding better livestock, understanding and treating disease. Philosophy - helping us think more effectively (intangible, but near future monetary gain). Math - describing effectively models of how things work.

Sure the near future application may be far smaller than the eventual goals, but even of the people who claim to do science for science's sake, they routinely have ulterior motives for doing what they do.

Re:High Risk?

[h4rm0ny]

Speaking as a vegetarian, I'm pretty sure I could take down anyone who tries to live without Carbohydrates. :)

Colza ?

[SCiPS]

Yes sure... burn the rain forest to put colza instead... great idea biofuels !!!

Re:Colza ?

[geekoid]

If the microbe solution can be scaled, no country will need to burn anything down. There will be vast lakes with bacteria eat algae and convert it to fuel. The fuel will be skimmed of the surface of the lake and refined.

The lab microbe are quite specific in that each type produces 1 type of fuel.

Re:Colza ?

[conspirator57]

then evolution happens...

???

grey goo... (-- i bet you thought this would say 'profit'.)

But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[rwa2]

Biofuels like Ethanol have a very high octane rating, so you can increase power output with really high compression ratios with superchargers and turbochargers. Supposedly these turbo gasohol vehicles are popular in Brazil, where they can actually grow and produce their cane sugar ethanol with a net positive energy output (whereas corn-based ethanol in the US costs more energy to make than you get from it in return... so it's really just an agricultural subsidy as well as a way to water down imported petroleum-based fuels and decreasing your gas mileage - FTW!)

Meh, some interesting reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no. Ethanol-powered vehicles have fallen out of fashion in Brazil for a variety of reasons. At any rate Petrobas has just open that new deep-water oil field, so no worries.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[bruno.fatia]

That's not really true. Ethanol-only vehicles have been discontinued and now the flex fuel vehicles are the most usual.
You can read more at wikipedia it's pretty complete.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[WamBamBoozle]

Ethanol from corn was always a goofy idea. What holds promise is biodeisel from algae.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodeisel#Yield

The yields tropical regions can get from palm are pretty amazing to but what is ideal is using useless land (NV) for algae farms.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes. I do live in Brazil, and I have a flex car. Flex cars are able to run on either gasoline or ethanol at any mixture rate. So there is absolutely no worries here, and this US research seems to make absolutely no sense, since this has been a solved problem in Brazil for quite some time. Ethanol is doing good, thanks for asking.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Black Gold Alchemist]

Engine mods and upgrades are NOT fun. The reason is that it often costs upwards of $100,000 to certify any conversion kit for a vehicle with the EPA. What this means is that all alternative fuel mods on post 1975 vehicles are a no-go. Unless the fuel can go in without conversion (like with biodiesel), then the costs are going to be too high to make it viable. This is why CNG is not our primary transportation fuel right now.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[mlts]

If one takes ethanol (or E85), this is a good solution -- less MPG, but better HP. Its downside is that oil needs to be changed more often because water dissolves in it, creating an acid. This is also why the service guide tells you to run a tank of pure unleaded every 3000-7000 miles.

However, here in the US, we don't have sugar cane whose by-product can be turned into booze for the car, and the effect of using corn means that food prices go higher since it is an either or unlike sugar cane -- corn goes to be processed for ethanol, or it gets made into food.

If there is some type of crop that can be grown for its main function, but have lots of sugar that can be fermented/distilled into ethanol, this would be ideal -- people eat, cars get filled up.

On a long term scale, what would be interesting is a way to pull CO2 directly from the air, mix it with water (best bet is desalinated so it does not interfere with water needs) and start making crude oil this way ready for refining and reuse. Nuclear power has enough density per square foot, so one could combine a nuke plant, a desalination plant, and a CO2 remover in one area, and get crude in quantities that are usable for fuel or for plastics. To boot, it would be a crude oil free of mercury, sulphur, or other possible toxic metals.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Pharmboy]

Sugar beets have plenty of sugar, around 20% of the beet is sugar. And it grows perfectly in the north central USA, such as the Dakotas, Minnesota and Michigan, or farther south. The problem is that corn gets tons of subsidies from the government (corporate welfare for the Monsanto asshats) and beets do not. Beets will get you around 20% more fuel per acre than corn but costs more because of the subsidies on corn. Without the subsidies, it would likely be comparable or cheaper to use sugar beets. You also get about 8x more gallons of fuel than using soybeans for oil, although oil has around 20% higher carbon density, thus it is about 5x to 6x more net BTU per acre with sugar beets/alcohol versus soybeans/biodiesel.

And alcohol has MUCH lower energy density than petrol. It also absorbs water, enough so that I just found it trashed about $500 worth of carbs on two of my electrical generators. Alcohol doesn't get better HP, it simply is less prone to detonation, so it can be run in higher comrpression engines, which by their very nature, are less efficient. So you can end up with more HP by jacking the compression up, but then your mileage goes down even more, in relative terms. This isn't exactly in keeping with green philosophies, is it?

You can't really say you use alcohol to help the environment, then drive a 300HP car that gets a combined 25MPG, unless the goal is to be hypocritical.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Red Flayer]

this US research seems to make absolutely no sense, since this has been a solved problem in Brazil for quite some time.

Unfortunately, here in the US we do not have the right climate for growing enough sugarcane to satisfy our appetite for fuel. Nor do we have the cheap labor required to make it cost-effective.

On top of that, we have various agricultural groups spending millions in lobbying to ensure that *their* crop (read: maize) is the target of most of the research, despite the possibilities of switchgrass or other plants being much better.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Red Flayer]

On a long term scale, what would be interesting is a way to pull CO2 directly from the air, mix it with water (best bet is desalinated so it does not interfere with water needs) and start making crude oil this way ready for refining and reuse. Nuclear power has enough density per square foot, so one could combine a nuke plant, a desalination plant, and a CO2 remover in one area, and get crude in quantities that are usable for fuel or for plastics. To boot, it would be a crude oil free of mercury, sulphur, or other possible toxic metals.

It's hideously expensive, energy-wise, to make crude from CO2 and H2O. We'd be better off getting away from liquid fuels entirely if we're going to use nuclear as the primary power source. Nuclear --> electricity on grid --> car battery would be far better, I'd think. Sure, we'd need to improve the grid... but the last-mile infrastructure is already in place.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[DerekLyons]

Supposedly these turbo gasohol vehicles are popular in Brazil, where they can actually grow and produce their cane sugar ethanol with a net positive energy output (whereas corn-based ethanol in the US costs more energy to make than you get from it in return...

That's because Brazil can slash-and-burn rainforest and raise cane on the fertile soil. It's a great business plan so long as you can slash-and-burn more rainforest after the old fields become exhausted after a year or two. Massive government subsidies and mandating the use of ethanol didn't hurt either.
 
Even if we could raise cane in significant quantities in the US (we can't), we lack the tropical rainforest to slash-and-burn.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[h4rr4r]

So where can I get this pure unleaded?
All our gas here in NY state is contaminated with 10% ethanol.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[mlts]

Even worse, it may be going to 15% soon in a lot places. For older engines that don't have the ability to change timing for dealing with this, this will suck, not to mention the voided warranties of engines which are warranties to work with no more than 10% alcohol.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[conspirator57]

Transmission line and impedance matching losses along with NIMBY argue against your belief in top-down, mega reactor reliant infrastructure being more efficient than alternatives. You could still be right, but it's best not to ignore these losses when calculating efficiency. I'd expect that smaller local co-generation (wind, trash to steam, depolymerization etc.) would be more efficient. But best would be to change building codes to require new construction be passivhaus and thus reduce standing energy consumption, saving it for vehicles. Also, change the federal highway trust fund to only fund projects that build railbed into medians of roads with > some threshold of vehicular traffic for eventual and gradual expansion of rail transit.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[adolf]

Even worse, it may be going to 15% soon in a lot places. For older engines that don't have the ability to change timing for dealing with this, this will suck, not to mention the voided warranties of engines which are warranties to work with no more than 10% alcohol.

Which older engines would those be?

Unless I'm missing something (which is very likely -- I'm by no means an expert in the field), the ignition systems common gas-powered cars can be split into two different categories: Those which use a distributor, and those which do not.

The distributor-based ignitions are easily tweaked to do whatever, but it takes a set of skilled hands to do the tweaking. (This is what I think of when I hear "older engines.")

The distributorless ignition systems have a knock sensor, which is used to automagically tweak spark timing. (This is what allows my high-compression BMW engine to run on low-octane fuel, when necessary.)

I suppose it might be the case that a common distributorless ignition system might not be able to adjust its own spark timing in such a fashion that it works properly with 15% ethanol, which would be a real problem in many cases since aftermarket tools to reprogram this stuff generally don't exist for plain-old boring engines that aren't fun to hack. Or it might be the case that a knock sensor simply doesn't exist in many cases...

Whatever the case, please enlighten me.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[ifiwereasculptor]

Nor do we have the cheap labor required to make it cost-effective.

Neither would have Brazil if they mined overseas/bought cheaply as the US does. As the biggest energy consumers of the world, of course your economy would revolve around oil. Therefore, you have greatly developed infrastructure and what we'll call "international relations" as to obtain oil cheaply. In such a scenario, ethanol can obviously hardly compete because it is a newcomer and a great deal of effort would have to be put in its implementation for it to become economically viable, but as it is not the case right now, it is dismissed as unfeasible. Brazil is an interesting case study because they extract their own petrol and plant their own sugarcane - so roughly the same labor costs per capita apply, regardless of how cheap they are -, the latter being usually more advantageous at the pump.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[ifiwereasculptor]

Actually the higher the compression, the more efficient the 4-stroke cycle is.

Look: http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node26.html

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[RMH101]

Don't you just need to certify the kit once, and then ammortise the cost over multiple vehicle conversions? Or does it need to be done each and every time?

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[ifiwereasculptor]

Dude, the rainforest is equatorial, and Brazil's sugarcane is mostly grown around the tropic of capricorn. You're off by almost two thousand miles.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

and the effect of using corn means that food prices go higher

I'd like to point out that the biggest risk to the USA's ability to produce enough food to feed itself, is producing too much food. It bottoms out the price, farmers go broke, they sell the farm, and the entire industry tanks. This is the reason that giving food to poor countries really fucks over the local farmers and keeps them poor. Anyway, we have lots of food. We have so much food that we feed food to our food, just so it's tastes a little better. (An oh MAN! it totally does! You ever compare grass-fed beef to the normal stuff?)

And that's the reason for the farm subsidies and the overall protectionist behavior towards our food industry. BUT, if we can turn food into fuel, then there's no more need to pay farmers not to farm, and they can make as much food as they want without taking everyone down with them.
So ethanol isn't the best alternative energy out there, but it's a great alternative to farms subsidies.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is false. Americas deep south INCLUDING eastern texas, Ark, Miss, Al, and Georgia, as well as Southern Ca will handle any of the regular cane. In addition, I believe that it was grown in the Carolina's as well.
It is not done here because Brazil has cheap labor and dumps on the market. Basically, there are other crops that are cheaper to produce.
In the end, we would be much better off NOT producing cane for ethanol (it is a 2D crop that is batched: harvested every so often), and go after algae which is 3D in operation and a continual flow. In addition, how would we compete against Brazil on these prices? Not able to with cane. It has to be something else.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[radtea]

Therefore, you have greatly developed infrastructure and what we'll call "international relations" as to obtain oil cheaply.

I wish a) I had mod points and b) "Funny" gave you karma, because man you deserve it.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[rwa2]

Yeah, good points.

With regards to the hypocrisy, the point is that if you had a smaller high-compression ratio engine turbocharged to 150hp, it would be more efficient than a bigger normal engine that was 150hp in the first place.

But since the goal of the research is to develop biofuels for normal engines, you'll just get decreased mileage without really being able to take advantage of any of the, well, advantages to using ethanol.

So far, just throwing extra fuel into engines has been (artificially) cheaper than spending money on the extra technology to make engines more efficient. Plus turbochargers and things like that make engines more complex, put more stress on the components, making things more likely to break and/or need maintenance. So the simple answer to getting more horsepower was just put in a bigger simple engine.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[rwa2]

Yep, to copy-pasta one of the interesting charts from Wikipedia:

Energy balance
Country : Type : Energy balance
  United States : Corn ethanol : 1.3
  Brazil : Sugarcane ethanol : 8
  Germany : Biodiesel : 2.5
  United States : Cellulosic ethanol* : 2–36**

* experimental, not in commercial production
** depending on production method

Obviously, the "Cellulosic ethanol" is the likely target of this biofuels research. But of course, if all they have to do is beat corn ethanol to declare success, they're not going to have to try very hard :P

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Pharmboy]

To correct my earlier statement, while engines make more HP at high compressions, they do so by producing more NO2, so they pollute more. And I agree with the turbo comment. Actually, straight 6 engines are more balanced by design, no need to externally balanced. I'm shocked I haven't seen more implementation of them. A well designed I6 with a turbo can be made small enough to still be used in front wheel drive and have extra power on tap when needed, but that isn't what is "sexy".

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[rwa2]

heh, yeah... I remember looking for some I6-powered cars after reading about them... seems like BMWs and some Volvos are the most commonly available. Unfortunately, that seems to fit into the "nice car, but you'll pay more for maintenance" sort of thing :P

I like how I6 configuration is pretty typical for use as ginormous internal combustion engines, like in factories and large ships. But beyond that, the most efficient combustion engines seem to be the gas turbines... which are even more delicate and heavy on preventative maintenance.

Re:But the engine upgrades are what make it fun...

[Pharmboy]

Most of your serious diesel engines are also I6, from Ram (Dodge) trucks to rigs. Even the bigger V12's diesels are basically twin banked I6s. The old 240z engines, old land rovers (before they were pretty, back when they were tough), as well as many other more serious engines.

Part of the problem is how long they are, which is more of a problem in front wheel drive. By design, the engine should be lower maintenance, it is just the cars they put them in that are high maintenance. Having all your intake on one side, exhaust on the other would seem to make design easier as well. And while I enjoy a nice rat engine as much as the next guy, I still think I6 engines actually look cooler. Yea, I'm not in lots of company on that one. The V6 is simply more compact and has a much shorter crank and cams, thus requiring lower grade steel and fewer connecting points. They also require harmonic balancing and have everything crammed so close together that you can't tell where engine ends and accessory begins.

As for gas turbines, I'm not sure sure that they would be such a good choice for a Camry or Accord ;) Maybe a very small one (if they scale that small) for a car that is primarily electric with a decoupled gas engine for charging. If we could get the metallurgy right enough to reduce the size and cost, I always thought some type of sterling engine would be a great add-on for a gas engine for supplemental charging. In theory.

Paranoia Reigns

[Anonymous Coward]

The Oil Companies regularly pay more than that to bury the technology. Or the inventor ...

Re:Paranoia Reigns

[Q-Hack!]

The Oil Companies regularly pay more than that to bury the technology. Or the inventor ...

eh... When the oil companies run out of oil, they can then sell us energy from all the patents they hold. We get to continue using energy and they get to continue making obscene amounts of cash. Sort of a win/win situation... at least until we run out of arable land to produce fuel with. We are all doomed in the end anyway.

Urgency

[cosm]

This sense of urgency makes me think that the US Govt is paying attention to the problem of Peak Oil. This country will experience some serious pain when we hit the downside of that slope, and probably the world for that matter.

Re:Urgency

[jfengel]

Well, I wouldn't call $30 million over 5 years "urgent". That's doughnut money to the Department of Defense, whose budget is 100,000 times more than that.

US domestic oil production peaked 40 years ago. We've been subject to nasty oil shocks ever since, as well as the unpleasant fact that many key oil exporters are avowed or tacit opponents of the US. We'd much rather be self-sufficient in oil, regardless of whether the rest of the world experiences Peak Oil or not.

Re:Urgency

[Anonymous Coward]

Urgency? $7.5 million? Please tell me you're being ironic.

$7.5 million isn't even pocket money. By comparison, the US military spent that every ten HOURS in 2009. If they get what they're asking for in 2011, they'll be spending that in more like five or six hours.

This isn't even paying lip service to the idea of peak oil being a future issue. This is sticking our fingers in our ears, and screaming "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!!" at the top of our lungs.

Re:Urgency

[Amorymeltzer]

This sense of urgency

The same page as TFA features this story:

The US Naval Air Systems Command has given Lockheed Martin $45.8 million to buy two of its K-MAX unmanned helicopters and Boeing's Frontier subsidiary $29.9 million to buy two A160T Hummingbird unmanned aircraft. The Navy/Marines will ultimately choose one of the unmanned helicopters...

More than $75 million to get four count 'em 4 aircraft so that they can later pick which one they like best. Spending $75 million now so that they can shell out hundreds of millions is urgent. $7.5 million a year for four years wouldn't even buy you a test run in the aircraft, which the military should be demanding anyway.

Re:Urgency

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, after I clicked submit, I realized I meant to say $7.5 milion/year. Whoops!

Re:Urgency

[Anonymous Coward]

$7.5 million isn't even pocket money. By comparison, the US military spent that every ten HOURS in 2009.

Umm ... every 10 hours during 2009, the military spent $758 million.

So, in comparison, we are talking about 20 minutes of the military budget.

Re:Urgency

[c6gunner]

The difference being that, in one case, they're buying a finished product, while in the other they're throwing money at something that may never pan out.

That's sorta like complaining that it costs millions of dollars to build a nuclear reactor, but your crazy neighbor swears he'll be able to build you a perpetual-motion machine - eventually - for only a $100 investment. Maybe the neighbor is worth investing in, on the off chance that he actually makes something useful, but it doesn't compare to buying something you can use right now.

Re:Urgency

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, it's a double d'oh moment for me. Dropped a decimal point on the way to the comment button.

Re:Urgency

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The DoD has actually been somewhat more active than the government generally in alt-energy research.

Partially, I'd assume that this stems from the simple fact that, when your oil products have to be shipped to you through hostile territory, you are already experiencing the sorts of prices that peak oilers have in mind(never mind something really dramatic, like enemy infiltrators blowing a few gulf coast refineries just before starting a hot war...)

Partially, I'd assume that it stems from the fact that the military has years of experience with blowing off popular opinion. Politically, admitting anything more than "Maybe we'll have to switch from oil to Clean Coal: America's Power(tm) to sustain our God-given lifestyle" will get you lynched and not reelected. Within military R&D circles, you have a better chance of hiding behind the flag and getting your work done.

Re:Urgency

[corbettw]

many key oil exporters are avowed or tacit opponents of the US.

Considering we get about 50% of our oil from Canada, I'd say you were absolutely correct!

Re:Urgency

[SleazyRidr]

That's doughnut money to the Department of Defense, whose budget is 100,000 times more than that.

Let's not exaggerate here. The department of defense only gets about 15,000 times that much. ;)

Re:Urgency

[jfengel]

I know there's a wink at the end there, but seriously: the DoD budget yearly is $663 billion. This project is $7.5 million per year.

It's closer to 88,000; I originally miscalculated it as 5 years rather than 4.

Re:Urgency

[jfengel]

I know you're joking, but also recall that oil is fungible. If the Saudis were to cut off the US, we'd need to buy more from Canada, raising the price. If they cut off any US allies, it would raise the price further.

That happened during the 1970s oil shocks, and the US produced more of its own oil at the time.

Re:Urgency

[SleazyRidr]

Seriously!?

I have no idea what to say about that. I thought it was way less than that. That's fucked up!

Re:Urgency

[jfengel]

Spending about as much money on the military as the rest of the world combined? Yeah, that's fucked up.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending

I'm all for the US military and believe it should be the biggest in the world. But we could cut it by half and still be several times bigger than anybody else's. And that alone would close the deficits that are projected for 2013.

30 Million?

[ShaunC]

Aren't we spending untold billions of dollars every year chasing Iraqi oil? $30M is a droplet of piss in the sewer. Fund it for real or get the fuck out.

Re:30 Million?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Russian via Afghanistan.

Re:30 Million?

[box2]

Why would they have to get out? That doesn't even make sense. That's like "Well, we don't have enough food for everyone, so all of you have to leave." It may not be as much spending as maintaining our current fuel source, but probing for alternatives and helping them to not die out before they can reach something beneficial is nothing to be angry about.

Re:30 Million?

[c6gunner]

Didn't you get the memo? Now that Obama is in office, you're supposed to drop the no-blood-for-oil bullshit. It only works when the republicans are in charge.

Less wishful thinking then one might think.

[alexander_686]

In the lab they have gotten microbes to produce crude oil – oil that could go into a standard refinery for gasoline, jet fuel. Etc. Of course scaling from the bench top to a industrial process.

Ethanol fails because it is hydrophilic and can not be transported with our current pipelines.

Re:Less wishful thinking then one might think.

[ciggieposeur]

It's not only in the labs. Terrabon is right now demonstrating a biomass-to-gasoline process on a pilot plant scale. It's real gasoline, not alcohol or other alternative fuel.

Uh, how about butanol?

[Xonstantine]

Pros:
1) Burns in gasoline engines without modification
2) Can be transported in existing gas pipelines (does not emulsify water like ethanol does)
3) Higher energy content per gallon than ethanol, only a little less than gasoline
4) Can be produced in the same manner that ethanol is (ie, fermentation)

Cons:
1) Does not have a farm lobby attached to it

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[russotto]

Cons: 1) Does not have a farm lobby attached to it

Also low motor octane/high sensitivity. Put it in many gasoline engines without modification and they'll either knock heavily under load, or retard the timing severely reducing power and efficiency.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[jfengel]

"Cons" should also include that it's toxic (more so than gasoline).

As well as the fact that it's currently expensive to manufacture and distill, with low yields.

Neither of this is necessarily impossible to overcome, but it's dishonest to claim that the only thing wrong with it is that it doesn't have a lobby. In fact, it DOES have a lobby: BP and Dupont have both been working on it.

Dealing with these issues might be a great use of some of that $30 million. But it's not a miracle cure.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[jpedlow]

Was lucky enough to do some work with butanol while in school (O-chem, with some manufacturing chemistry)
Apparently nowdays there's several fancy nickel catalysts that do the trick, but with relatively low yields
BUT, fiberous bed bioreactors are the trick for half decent yields...
I'm out of chem now, I stuck with my computer nerd roots and am in a server room right now, but it was readily apparent (back in the day) that butanol was the clear choice for ease of transition, octane rating, transportability, and it's emissions are 'supposed to be' cleaner than current gas offerings.
ANYWAY, go butanol go! Not quite the same octane ratings as ethanol, but it'll run on almost any vehicle with very little-if any- tuning

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[DerekLyons]

1) Does not have a farm lobby attached to it

Since butanol can be produced (an on an industrial scale certainly would be) from farm raised biomass... One suspects it's just a wee bit more complex than that.
 
But, knee jerk blaming the corporations and lobbyists is easier than actually trying to understand the issues.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[Xonstantine]

Since butanol can be produced (an on an industrial scale certainly would be) from farm raised biomass... One suspects it's just a wee bit more complex than that.

But, knee jerk blaming the corporations and lobbyists is easier than actually trying to understand the issues.

Yes, butanol can be produced from farm raised biomass, same as ethanol. But as far as air time and subsidies go, it's ethanol, all the time. Therefore the logical conclusion is that the butanol lobby, such as it is, isn't nearly as effective as the ethanol lobby. To the point of not existing.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[Xonstantine]

tert-butanol has an octane of 89, which should satisfy most engines.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cons:
1) Does not have a farm lobby attached to it

Also low motor octane/high sensitivity. Put it in many gasoline engines without modification and they'll either knock heavily under load, or retard the timing severely reducing power and efficiency.

As opposed to putting Ethanol in a gasoline engine without modification?

Changing the air/fuel ratio to make optimal use of butanol is trivial in comparison to the hoop-jumping required to make ethanol a viable gasoline-replacement. Adding some water-injection to the mix will take care of the knock, even in a high-performance engine.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[ShakaUVM]

Pros:
1) Burns in gasoline engines without modification
2) Can be transported in existing gas pipelines (does not emulsify water like ethanol does)
3) Higher energy content per gallon than ethanol, only a little less than gasoline
4) Can be produced in the same manner that ethanol is (ie, fermentation)

Cons:
1) Does not have a farm lobby attached to it

Yeah, so it's probably not going to happen as long as Iowa's caucuses vote first for our presidents.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[russotto]

Too bad tert-butanol's freezing point is 77F. So it'll only work on hot days.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[Big_Breaker]

Easy to drop that freezing point with additives and/or keep the fuel warm. Worst case you go dual fuel where you start up on gas then switch to butanol that has thawed out on the engine heat.

Re:Uh, how about butanol?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Or, just add some ethanol.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=OOIL.OB

[Anonymous Coward]

Being done...

Farm it on the OCEAN

[Anonymous Coward]

2/3 of the Earth surface is for biofuel farming...

What about Compressed Natural Gas?

[emo65170]

It makes sense to me that we should be developing technology to exploit the vast natural gas reserves we have here in the U.S. We're already familiar with CNG tech for automobiles plus its cleaner burning. Perhaps the government could subsidize CNG conversions for older automobiles and for gas stations.

Re:What about Compressed Natural Gas?

[homer_ca]

Try running 200 million cars on natural gas and those reserves won't be so vast any more. We use it for 20% of our electricity, and it's already one of the most expensive sources of power, useful more for peak load than base load.

CNG vehicles are already subsidized in some cities for air quality reasons. It's ok for buses and local delivery vehicles, but it's a long way from being practical for long haul trucking and personal use.

hemp

[iONiUM]

Remind me again, why we aren't using hemp instead of oil and corn? Oh right, something to do backdoor deals made to vilify hemp back in the day. I guess this isn't the first time political agenda has come before the good of people.. and it sure won't be the last.

Re:hemp

[Motard]

Remind me again, why we aren't using hemp instead of oil and corn? Oh right, something to do backdoor deals made to vilify hemp back in the day. I guess this isn't the first time political agenda has come before the good of people.. and it sure won't be the last.

Because hemp fuel only seems a viable option if you're smoking a joint.

Gas != hemp or corn or sugarcane. Even Al Gore finally gets it.

Re:hemp

[c6gunner]

Remind me again, why we aren't using hemp instead of oil and corn?

Our reptilian overlords are allergic to it.

On the bright side, every time we smoke a bowl, we're striking a blow against Alien Oppression!

Grandpa Munster invented this already

[countSudoku()]

Back in the 60s he invented the Gasoline Pill, which converts water into gasoline right in your tank! Unfortunately he lost the formula, so that's why there's a prize now.

There's nothing that Grandpa Munster, The Professor from Gilligan's Island, or Scotty can't solve with their engineering geniusness!

Re:Grandpa Munster invented this already

[fran6gagne]

Some says that he didn't lost the formula but he sold it to oil companies, so it never get commercialized...

Biobutanol...

[mgH20]

a long enough chain it works pretty nicely in standard internal combustion engine. Just gotta find a bug that can make economically and doesn't take of the planet...seems simple enough. We have opposable thumbs which should help! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanol_fuel

there isn't enough biomass

[Anonymous Coward]

The world uses too much fuel for biomass to make a significant contribution . The only case i see is when the cars stop moving due to the fossil fuels running out . That means this is a real hail mary .

Re:there isn't enough biomass

[Dunbal]

Nah it's self correcting. When the cars stop moving, people start dying (after all, many of those vehicles are transporting things essential to the sustenance of our overcrowded cities), there's less need for freight and more resources to go around again.

Re:there isn't enough biomass

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of room for increases in efficiency before that happens.

First, the value of suburban real estate falls as people realize how stupid it is to live far away from where the essential goods are. Strategic commercial re-zoning (from rez to commercial) of a few blocks within a large swath of rez-only zoning can serve as a stopgap. Suburbs that fail to do this, or parts of the suburb that are too far from services will die.

People start clustering in walkable towns, villages, and cities.

Railroads expand. When existing trackage is overburdened, they build parallel tracks along existing lines and/or new lines along automobile rights-of-way. The automobile culture "un-winds" and we return to walkable streetcar suburbs, freight and passenger rail.

Airports, gas stations, etc. Large swaths of existing infrastructure will initially be abandoned; but if we're smart we can at least reclaim some materials from them. Just smashing stuff with a wrecking ball and dumping it will be passe. Manual labor will become important again. Armies of men will smash concrete with hammers to get the valuable rebar, which can be recycled in small blast-furnaces built on-site. The name "Smith" is common for a reason. We will rediscover that reason.

The end winner has to be fueled

[SuperKendall]

Battery technology will never be at the point where we can go as far as we currently can in a small car, and along the way charge up in under a few minutes (unless people start gaining acceptance for sealed personal nuclear power supplies)...

People don't want and cannot afford specialized cars just for commutes. Shared cars are great but you cannot rely on them 100% like your own car.

I'm sure battery powered cars have a future but I just cannot see them as being the mainstream car that most people drive. Fueled vehicles make a lot more sense for how people use cars, so as oil dwindles it's just a question of what fuel we'll be using. I think hydrogen might well win in the end, but something like this biofuel project could make for quite a long term transition using traditional engines.

Re:The end winner has to be fueled

[Red Flayer]

Battery technology will never be at the point where we can go as far as we currently can in a small car, and along the way charge up in under a few minutes (unless people start gaining acceptance for sealed personal nuclear power supplies)...

So you say. People also said that gasoline cars would never be as reliable as a horse and wagon.

People don't want and cannot afford specialized cars just for commutes.

Horseshit. I drive a specialized car just for my commute. You think I *enjoy* driving an econobox? I do it becaause it's cost-effective. The family wagon gets used by my wife during the week, and by the family on the weekends.

When liquid fuel prices get high enough, then you better believe people will want to drive a specialty vehicle for commuting... and all their other driving.

I'm sure battery powered cars have a future but I just cannot see them as being the mainstream car that most people drive.

Obviously, I disagree. I think there are inherent disadvantages to fuel systems due to:
(1) distribution and transportation costs
(2) the relative inefficiency of small engines, and
(3) the decreased dependence on a limited set of fuels.

With regards to (3), I think from a security standpoint, as well as a market efficiency standpoint, we're far better having a system where we can swap out power sources as needed. This gives us better long-term viability (for example, allowing us to more easily change to nuclear and renewable energy sources).

Re:The end winner has to be fueled

[ShakaUVM]

Obviously, I disagree. I think there are inherent disadvantages to fuel systems due to:
(1) distribution and transportation costs
(2) the relative inefficiency of small engines, and
(3) the decreased dependence on a limited set of fuels.

Well, IIRC, gasoline is still the most energy dense way of running a car. I suppose you could rig some sort of overhead wire high-voltage system to run cars like buses, but otherwise we're pretty much stuck using gasoline, unless you think the 35 mile all-electric range (which costs 5$ in power here in California) on a Volt is "enough for anyone". =)

Let alone the distribution problems with electricity are even more problematic than gasoline, at least here in California, which has one of the worst power infrastructures in the country. We literally would overload our transmission lines if we switched to electric cars. While our gasoline distribution system is pretty fucked as well (we require special gasoline blends, and don't allow refineries to be built, either), it's basically a solved problem. Given that the Sierra Club and other assholes will shut down anything new - at all - it means that we basically have no alternatives to using existing infrastructure, which means gas, and maybe a little bit of electricity.

In regards to 3, I'm with you that we should be looking to switch to nuclear and small scale renewable plants, but there's not as much vulnerability of relying on gasoline as you'd think - we can always liquefy coal if we need to, at relatively low prices, and our domestic supplies of coal are enough for the foreseeable future. Nuclear displacing coal is a Good Thing (tm) since it would lower the price of coal and thus make gassified coal cheaper, but in states like California where half our energy supply is from natural gas, it's a more complicated issue, since displaced natural gas will end up getting wasted anyway, though it's overall probably a net win, since we're paying up to 50 cents / kilowatt hour here.

A really interesting thing I've discovered recently is that small scale solar is more cost efficient than large-scale solar. While counterintuitive, if you build out small solar plants, they don't have to go through the crippling licensing, lawsuit, and compatibility issues that large scale plants do, let alone the capital costs involving buying of land and such. PG&E is especially dickish about these sorts of things, even going so far as to block compatibility with sites, since they're bullies. Right now, the levelized break-even cost on solar in the US is .36$/KWH, but a company will come to my house, install solar for free, and sell it to me at .26$/KWH today (fully warranteed, no fees or anything else). Given that PG&E charges up to .50$/KWH, I'm expecting this to be the way of the future. The 26 cents price includes a 33% tax subsidy from the state and federal government, but even without the subsidy, it's still cheaper than both large-scale solar and what's coming out of the grid from PG&E.

Re:The end winner has to be fueled

[SuperKendall]

So you say. People also said that gasoline cars would never be as reliable as a horse and wagon.

That was obviously false based on the simple fact technology would refine the car into something more usable.

Claiming that we are even twenty years away from being able to hold the kind of energy density in batteries does not really look like a good bet, and foolhardy to insist that we have to input energy in the form of electricity - I'm a huge proponent for hydrogen cars which are electric cars, they are simply not ones you fill up with a plug.

The thing is that electricity is a lousy input source. You lose a great deal of it just transmitting it from big power centers, and the power centers are also a big point of failure that if they go affects everyone. In an emergency when power lines are down suddenly your transport is ALSO dead in the water if you relied on "filling" it via electricity.

Horseshit. I drive a specialized car just for my commute. You think I *enjoy* driving an econobox?

I should have qualified that to read "expensive specialized car". I know people have beaters for commutes. What I don't see is when electric cars ever reach "beater" status over any other transport option of the day.

When liquid fuel prices get high enough, then you better believe people will want to drive a specialty vehicle for commuting

Didn't happen last time gas pushed way up, except there was some renewed interest in the econoboxes.

A car that cannot meet many peoples basic needs for a car is something not a lot of people will buy.

(1) distribution and transportation costs

But that can be minimized with regional production, far more easily done in the case of something like hydrogen. And it leverages existing infrastructure. In an all electric world you also have distribution costs because you have to upgrade everything - plants, wiring out to places, plugs all over cities and gas stations and hotels and businesses and so on and so forth. There's a far lower barrier to switching over to some other kind of fuel than there is distributing energy for transport via electric lines.

the relative inefficiency of small engines

Actually I don't think that's very true but again I'm mainly saying we'll switch to energy that arrives via some kind of chemical fueling mechanism as opposed to electric transmission.

the decreased dependence on a limited set of fuels.

That's what the article is about. I know we'll move off oil. I just think it will be to some other kind of fuel and probably other kinds of engines.

Re:The end winner has to be fueled

[adolf]

I pay about $0.081/kWh.

Should I install solar panels and run my cars from them?

Why, or why not?

Re:The end winner has to be fueled

[Anonymous Coward]

So you say. People also said that gasoline cars would never be as reliable as a horse and wagon.

And let's not forget that a century ago, there weren't gas stations on every corner, nor was every oil refinery even keeping the gasoline fraction of any product.

Re:The big oil and gov are afraid

[RobertB-DC]

The big oil and gov are afraid of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control

I wouldn't have bothered responding to this old canard, especially from an AC, but my future son-in-law laid this on me during a (very) long road trip. He was convinced that hydrogen must be that Secret That Oil Companies Don't Want You To Know. After all, it comes from WATER, for crying out loud. You can drop a 9-volt battery and get hydrogen, for crying out loud... all we have to do is put that in a car and run it on water, right? Right?

*facepalm*

For those new to the laws of thermodynamics: Hydrogen is combined with Oxygen to form Water, yes. But it takes energy to get the menage-a-trois separated. And the energy required to liberate H2 from that codependent relationship is, by the laws of physics, no greater than the energy you'll get by combining it *back* with O.

My discussion partner said, "That's ok, we'll just have batteries to do the electrolysis." I gently suggested that if you're going to have enough batteries to generate enough electricity to generate enough hydrogen to run a car, you've got enough batteries to generate enough electricity to run a car -- without that lossy "generate hydrogen" step.

To his credit, I think he understood. That's one. AC, here's hoping you're #2.

$30M? Over 4 years!?

[hawguy]

Just to put this into perspective - $30M is about 12 hours worth of profit (not revenue, profit) for Exxon. Even with the oil spill costs, it's about a day of profit for BP.

Careful..

[Anonymous Coward]

Biofuels only make your food more expensive, it is a huge error to bet on something that comes from the same place your food does.....

Re:Careful..

[hawguy]

Depends on the source of the biomass, there is some work in developing Algae with a high lipid content for use in creating biofuels.

Fuel from high explosives

[Megahard]

Maybe power my car with JATOs like on Mythbusters. That should qualify as "high-risk research".

Farm biofuels on the OCEAN

[Anonymous Coward]

The ocean surface is waiting for biofuels farmers.

Make Engines That Don't Suck

[CompMD]

100 year old Diesel technology is more helpful in our current situation than wasting money trying to conjure up new fuels from nothing. Here's a couple vehicles I have that provide a better solution:

1984 Mercedes 300SD Turbo (OM617): It will run on just about anything. All kinds of oils, both vegetable and petroleum, jet fuel, heck, you can even dump ATF in the tank (though I don't recommend it) and it will burn that.

1983 Chevrolet Suburban (Detroit Diesel/Allison 6.2): This will also run on just about anything. It has the engine that AM General picked to power the HMMWV. There are probably still lots of these 6.2s running around all corners of the earth powered by who knows what.

These vehicles are likely going to still be puttering around for a very, very long time. Rust will get them before the engines go. We need to be focusing on developing better engines so that we don't end up backed into a corner on fuel. If we truly have options on what we can power our vehicles with, we'll be in a much better position.

Re:Make Engines That Don't Suck

[Red Flayer]

heck, you can even dump ATF in the tank (though I don't recommend it) and it will burn that.

ATF? Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms? I recommend burning two of those three, and for the third -- combustion is part of how they work.

Re:Make Engines That Don't Suck

[mattack2]

But your old diesel technology also puts out a lot more pollution, doesn't it?

(Though I don't see why they don't make more diesel hybrids, instead of gas hybrids.)

Re:Make Engines That Don't Suck

[adolf]

(Though I don't see why they don't make more diesel hybrids, instead of gas hybrids.)

Actual cost: Hybrids are already expensive. A diesel-powered hybrid would cost even more.

Perceived cost: Around here, at least, diesel typically costs 10-15% more per gallon than gasoline. (Yes, I know that it's still cheaper per unit of usable energy, but the folks buying hybrids realize this.)

Noise: A Prius is very quiet in all modes. A chattering diesel is not. (I personally don't find the modern TDI diesels to be objectionably noisy at all, but that doesn't mean that the general perception has yet changed.)

Availability of fuel: I can buy diesel in more places than I used to be able to, but it's still not everywhere that gasoline is.

Obviously, from an overall cost, simplicity, and reliability standpoint, a diesel hybrid makes perfect sense. But, currently, I don't think it would ever sell, even though I'd personally rather buy a diesel hybrid than a gas one if I were interested in hybrids at all (and I'm not).

(Warning: I live in the US. We hate diesel cars for no good reason, and the above is a brief description of the typical stereotypes in these parts. Your locale-specific stereotypes may vary.)

Re:Make Engines That Don't Suck

[adolf]

Perceived cost: Around here, at least, diesel typically costs 10-15% more per gallon than gasoline. (Yes, I know that it's still cheaper per unit of usable energy, but the folks buying hybrids realize this.)

| sed s/realize this/may not realize this/

Re:Make Engines That Don't Suck

[RingDev]

Nope. Atleast, not per mile driven. If you just light a gallon of gas and a gallon of diesel on fire, yeah, the diesel would probably be worse. But Diesels get on average ~30% better gas mileage then gas engines. So to get the same use out of the two fuels, you'd have to burn one gallon of gas and 2/3rds a gallon of Diesel.

As far as CO2 goes, Diesels are way better. But the trade off is that they generate more NOX. So you trade green house gases for smog.

Most of what you see coming out of Diesel exhaust is actually particulate matter. Primarily just carbon and some unburnt fuel. It looks bad, but it isn't nearly as bad for you or the environment as CO2 or NOX.

-Rick

Re:Make Engines That Don't Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Automatic Transmission Fluid

$30m over 4 years split 5 ways

[eepok]

Yay... $1.5 million per year for 4 years per project. I sure hope they're really promising because that's much time or money to do anything major like find a means to turn biomass into a gasoline substitute that would utilize all the current fuel line infrastructure. Good luck, guys!

Re:$30m over 4 years split 5 ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Math fail

New Battery tech - already being done

[Firethorn]

A bunch better way to spend money is developing new battery tech and at looking at utilizing solar energy to power them. That, or get over the stigma against nuclear tech and utilize small personal reactors for energy...

Thing is, billions are already being spent on developing battery and solar tech. $30M is a drop in the bucket, but could possibly point to a way to make things like lubricating oil, aviation fuel, etc... from biological sources economically.

Unfortuantly, hydrochemicals still beat batteries like a red headed stepchild when it comes to energy density, and will for the forseeable future. So in applications where you NEED that density, demand isn't going away. Examples I can think of - airplanes, long haul trucks/trains*, backup power generators, etc..

*Just too expensive to run wires over that much territory

As for the AC about nuclear cars - neutrons aren't actually that big of a deal; a single sheet of metal is normally sufficient to stop them.

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, one detail to note: we DO run wires over that much territory. Well, a lot of it anyway. Unfortunately, transmission lines aren't placed with any respect to major roads. And getting the power from them to trucks is another major obstacle.

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[badkarmadayaccount]

A long haul train is the perfect use case for battery power.

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[Firethorn]

I disagree - it takes a certain amount of power to keep the train going, and at that size they can get the diesel engines used to power it quite efficient. Plus, they tend to be kept moving nearly 24-7, limiting your opportunities to recharge. You could play with battery swaps, but then you're looking at moving at what would probably be a multi-million dollar battery pack with a winch, vs pouring in a few hundred/thousand dollars worth of diesel fuel.

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[badkarmadayaccount]

Separate train carts for batteries - hot swap using existing infrastructure. Electric at constant speed is more efficient than diesel - giving you low running costs, to offset batteries.

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[Firethorn]

Remember, diesel-electric motivation is pushing how efficient diesel engines can be in the first place, limiting any such gains.

Given the limitations of batteries, you're looking at needing a LOT more substations to do your swaps. I considered using train cars - but swapping cars is more complicated than what you might think.

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[badkarmadayaccount]

Why should it be (swapping)?

Re:New Battery tech - already being done

[Firethorn]

You need the extra battery cars, obviously. You need somebody to decouple the locomotive & battery, another to drive the locomotive, a switch track to move the battery pack off the main line, then another switch track to move the charged battery car ONTO the track. Then the individual has to couple everything back up - I think there's at least 3 connections that would be needed - the electric for powering the locomotive, pneumatic for the braking system, your actual physical connection, etc...

To clarify

[Arancaytar]

High Risk of not being profitable. Not, you know, of destroying civilization as we know it and rendering the planet inhabitable for human life.

Re:To clarify

[UnknownSoldier]

> Not, you know, of destroying civilization as we know it and rendering the planet inhabitable for human life.

You say that like its a bad thing... ;-)

Re:The big oil and gov are afraid

[Rising Ape]

Except the cheapest ways of making hydrogen are from fossil fuels - natural gas, and perhaps coal. The gap's even bigger than the difference between fossil and alternative methods of making electricity.

Henry Ford had it right all along.

[Ozlanthos]

It was this nation's #1 cash crop for over 100 years. As such, 90% of the components for the first automobiles were made of it (and previous to prohibition of alcohol, most cars were fueled by it). Henry Ford grew acres of it, and envisioned that we'd literally be "GROWING CARS"... But unfortunately William Randolph Heart made his money from newspapers printed on paper made from wood pulp (one of the three textiles it would have displaced had it remained legal after the invention of the decordicator...the other two being oil, and cotton). A medium he used to demonize it, and stigmatize our nation to the point where to this day (80 years later) all most of us do is make stupid snarky comments at the mere suggestion of it's use as an alternative to oil. Due to this nation's ignorance of it, and our resulting dependence on it's competitors, most of civilization will most likely perish before it becomes legal again....I am of course talking about Industrial Hemp.

Think I'm lying? Rather than make stupid remarks about smoking it, try looking it up on Google or Youtube and enlighten yourself!!!

-Oz

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its funny that Hearst and the US gubmint have been able to suppress this magical plant - yet no other country have discovered how wonderful the plant is. So you are saying that every other country on the plant is just stupid and the US is just oppressed?

Tell me, why isn't Russia, Korea, Japan, China, etc using magical hemp to solve all their problems? They didn't have Hearst "influencing" them. Let me know, I'd like to see a Youtube video explaining it.

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[Ozlanthos]

Actually China grows hemp. As to why they don't use it for biofuels? Your guess is as good as mine. The Chinese are great game players and probably realize that by using oil they foul us up with their ever increasing demand. Japan and Canada grow it. As a matter of fact, both nations have begun building houses out of hemp-based textiles. You also have to take into account that we REQUIRE that nation's who trade with us get rid of any hemp they are growing. The only nation's who've been allowed to deviate from this are those who import enough wares to be able to tell us to fuck ourselves well we tell them to stop growing hemp. Canada is a great example of this.

There is a problem with hemp. IT GROWS VIRTUALLY EVERYWHERE with little or no assistance from humans. This means that people like you and I (with enough acreage) could grow our own. Extortionist-capitalism requires concentration of supply to as few sources as possible. This is why when people talk about potential biofuel sources, they talk about stuff that can only be grown in certain climates, or require pesticides, herbicides, an abundance of water....etc. There are 100's of strains of Industrial Hemp. This allows for hemp to be grown on roughly 90% of the planet's arable land (too much potential supply for extortionists to be able to ass-rape everyone for), This is why we bother with drilling for oil in over 500 ft of water, when we could just as easily be growing our nation's fuel supply in the depressingly flat states.

I couldn't find a specific vid on Youtube about Russian hemp but I googled it (which you could just as easily have done...wise ass) and this was one of the first pages that came up. http://blog.alextiller.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=2729&PostID=54348. And in addition (for a little more info from ol youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TiFBPw7SNQ
Try doing a little research as I had previously suggested. I am sure you'll find (unless you were already aware and are just being an asshole about it) that you've been LIED TO, for most of your life concerning this plant and it's true potential.

-Oz

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, people don't want to advocate industrial hemp because they will be mistaken for pot legalizers - and the potheads confuse industrial hemp and marijuana often enough in their ramblings.

No, I am not saying this to be funny.

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[scarboni888]

"So you are saying that every other country on the plant is just stupid and the US is just oppressed?"

No - It's because the first U.S. drug czar, Harry Anslinger held office for two years as US Representative to the United Nations Narcotics Commission and in that role managed to get the other UN members to sign on to the insanity.

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[scarboni888]

This post needs to be modded WAY up because it's the truth of the situation we have here on this planet that is un-fucking believably insane to anyone who has done even a beginner's amount of research and self-education into.

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[kaatochacha]

Whenever someone says "enlighten yourself" or "educate yourself" I always turn up my BS detector to level 11. Those phrases generally means "think how I do, or you're ignorant"

Re:Henry Ford had it right all along.

[Ozlanthos]

Well I guess you can consider this an outlier on your scale of bs. I said it because there are a million or so sources out there with which to enrich one's knowledge of industrial hemp. If you think I am bullshitting you, you have only to investigate the subject for yourself, and draw your own opinions. If you put any level of honest effort toward it (meaning seriously considering hemp as a possible solution to many of our modern concerns) I believe you will find that it solves the dilemma of a clean source of energy, food, clothing, building materials, plastics...etc at a negligible, if not negative "cost" to the environment. The only reason I said enlighten yourself is that I've already spent the time, considered the variables, and have sold myself on the idea that it can be an option. And that I believe if enough people put forward the effort I have, that this solution could become a reality. Not because I think we all need to be brain-washed to a particular religious, political, or social bent to make the world a happy place....

-Oz

It's about time!

[gottabeme]

They should have been doing this every year since a long time ago! Just imagine, funding research that might actually lead to something useful and solve a real problem!

Re:The big oil and gov are afraid

[couchslug]

"of Hydrogen Too easy to make and too hard to control"

Show us pics and specs of your successful hydrogen-converted vehicle. No one can control YOUR personal production and use of hydrogen, so have at it, bitch-ass AC, and prove your point.

Hydrogen zealots are great at selling equipment to others, and that's about it. Don't fuck off and die, because fucking off wastes time. Just die.

Solar or bust.

[Banquo]

Every major idea for alternate fuels is practically impossible (and when you take the human condition/profit/tradeoffs/greed into it, completely impossible) and the tradeoffs are all horrible with anything other than solar.

Biofuels cause food displacement, land clearing, and are a net "bad" for the environment. Plus they would force people living on subsadies to work for a living and they have lobbies to prevent such things from happening.

Hydrogen is dangerous to store, and ALL US hydrogen regulation plans have language making it illegal to refill your car at home and the requirement for all hydrogen cars to have proprietary fittings that you can't "just tap into" (Ie you can't make and compress your own. ( that cuts into business profits and taxable income so it won't happen.) They'll set an arificially inflated (no pun intended) price on it and while it may potentially be better for the environment, unless you're using solar to create your hydrogen,..you're still burning power somewhere in the mix.

Solar is free, safe, and easy. Efficiency on solar panels grows daily (and as mentioned in another article) the US has no shortage of space to put solar panels/farms/arrays

The only way to change to ANY different fuel source though is to be able to fix the price of oil and obtain it from non-foreign sources.
If oil was at a set price (even a high set price that could only go down) that would allow enough stability politically to be able to truly invest in infrastructure. (if you're paying $3.00/gal today and prices drop back down under a dollar US citizens aren't going to be falling over themselves to invest in alternate fuel.

Go with something like changingworldtechnologies, (Someone explain to me the US government is roadblocking them at every turn again??) get our mass gas and oil from recycling (killing two birds with one stone) fix the prices and wean ourselves off slowly (domestic production would insure price and political stability and maybe get us out of the Middle East)
After we've developled and implemented solar/nuclear infrastructure we then sell off our excess to the rest of the world at a profit as well as insure dirt cheap oil for the things that still need it. It would take about 15 years or so to get "in full gear" but it would be 100% beneficial. The only people who would lose out would be big oil and those who have their bread and butter based on ties with the middle east.

Unfortuately they alone weild enough power to topple governments so.... cest la vie.

That's the best plan I could come up with and while it's a LONG TERM solution, I think it's about the only one that could actually work in the real world.

Wow a whole $30 million

[scurvyj]

This amount of money is pathetic. Is it being deliberately set up to fail?

Electric Cars

[ShakaUVM]

I pay about $0.081/kWh.

Ah, you must live in a state with a SANE energy policy. Yeah, not living in California changes the numbers around a lot.

Should I install solar panels and run my cars from them? Why, or why not?

Two different questions, there:
1) Should I install solar?
2) Should I run my car off electricity?

For 1:
If you're a hippie, then sure, yeah, knock yourself out. But there's no economic reason to. Solar will not compete at the 8c/KWH range unless costs come down by a factor of 3 or so. Solar prices *have* fallen significantly (~50%) in the last 5 years or so, so it might not be a bad idea in a decade or so, but right now, it's just not going to make sense unless you live in a third world country like California.

For 2:
In California, you get 7 miles to a dollar of power out of a Volt. At 8c/KWH, you'll get about 30 miles per dollar, which is the equivalent of 90MPG assuming 3$ gasoline. (Oh, you probably pay $2.50 where you live, eh?) But Volts are expensive, maybe $35,000 after tax and rebates and all the other stuff. Let's compare it against an Altima Hybrid, which is in the same class (technically if you really want to save the most on a car, an old Civic is your best bet. =) Altima Hybrids with comparable equipment work out to about $28,000 (well, they're sans nav, but up a lot of other features like a moonroof). So you're out $7,000.

So it really works out to how much you drive a year.
So assuming you drive 20,000 miles/year (55 miles per day), you will spend about $670 on 'fuel' for your car, compared with about $1818 the Altima Hybrid. So for $7,000 extra investment you get $1,200 back per year, a 17% ROI, which is very good.
But if you drive 10,000 miles/year, then it's a 8.5% ROI
If you drive 5,000 miles/year, then it's a 4% ROI, and so forth.

So yeah, it looks competitive. But if you had power rates like us, you'd spend more on 'fuel' for your Leaf than a gas-powered hybrid.

A final, compromise route, you might consider is converting a hybrid car to a plug-in system. So if you have a Prius or whatever, you can double its efficiency (sorta) for $4,000 or so, alongside a 10% federal tax credit.

Re:Electric Cars

[adolf]

Thanks for the breakdown. That's exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to see, since nobody ever seems to discuss miles-per-dollar.

I live in Ohio. I don't know how sane our energy policy is in the grand scheme of stuff, but according to you it is very sane indeed.

Meanwhile, I take the "old Civic" route, for the most part: I drive old cars. The E36 BMW has about 183k on the clock and is a blast to drive, and maintenance has been reasonable -- I've got about $10k in the car, including purchase and repairs (including tires, brakes, oil), over 6 years. It gets OK mileage, consistently averaging about 19.5MPG. Mostly, it gets driven in town with an occasional highway stint -- 19.5MPG seems, to me, to be fairly awesome for my driving habits. It goes about 10k miles per year, and is generally* absurdly reliable.

So. Moving that BMW about 60k miles burned about 3076 gallons of premium unleaded. If we assume that it cost $3.20 per gallon, on average, then I've spent about $10k on fuel during the time I've had the car, or about $20k for fuel, maintenance, and original purchase.

Which means that it costs, so far, about $0.33 per mile to operate, or that it goes 3 miles on 1 dollar.

If a Volt costs $35,000, and gets 30 miles per dollar from the Ohio grid (and never uses the gasoline engine) then over six years and 60k miles:

$35,000 for the car, $2,000 for coal-fired electricity, and maybe another $700 in brake parts and tires (the rest, presumably, being covered by GM's warranty program), for a total of $37,700 -- or about $17,700 more than driving a fun and featureful BMW that burns dinosaurs.

Eventually, the Volt will pay for itself. But even at 10 years and 100,000 miles (assuming the BMW continues to cost $20k per 60k*), the BMW will have cost only $33k, still far less than the Volt over the same period, and I will have had more fun over that decade with the pretty-well loaded-up and easily-hackable BMW than a Chevrolet golf cart.

And, of course, after that the Volt's warranty will be gone with the wind, and it will then begin getting more expensive to operate as suspension parts need replacing, batteries age, and so on.

I don't think I'm in the market for any of these new-fangled battery-powered cars. Or, at least, I won't be until their long-term costs are actually established, and the used market for them matures and levels out. :)

*: I really don't expect that maintenance on the BMW will exceed that. All of the known weak points on the car have already been addressed, the body is in good shape, the leather is nice, and the $10k purchase+repair figure I've been working with here even includes a acquiring spare engine with half as many miles on it, along with paying someone replace the lousy 4-speed auto with a 5-speed manual. And if I ever decide to give up on the car completely, I can easily replace it with something similar, used, and maybe a bit newer for just a few $k. The window sticker from 1995 said that the list price was something like $38,000, and I'm quite happy that I'm not the loser who spent that sort of coin on a car. ;)

Re:Electric Cars

[ShakaUVM]

Yeah, used cars tend to dominate any real numbers comparison. Even if you have an unreliable car, a new engine is only the cost of 3-5 months lease on a new car, so you're still ahead for the year, even if you have a lot of problems.

For most people, buying new isn't done because the numbers look good, it's because they want a new car. Status, keeping up with the Joneses, etc. I could give a shit.

But for me, the cost analysis was a bit different. I own my own company, and am on the road all the time for trips to other cities to have meetings conduct tech workshops, etc. So when a car is a business expense, it mixes everything up. Off the top of my head (and I'm not an accountant, so I could be very wrong), the main differences are:
1) You don't get mileage for your commute, but you do get them for business trips. So your average worker is kind of screwed over by the IRS, but for people that have multiple workshops every month in other cities, you get a pretty large tax write off for mileage.
2) The mileage write off includes maintenance. So if you have an old car, you can't write repairs off as a business expense.
3) However, new cars as a business expense get depreciated over 5 years (or 1 year in 2010, woot) so you get to apply the cost of the new car against your taxes - call it a third the price of the car back into your pocket.
4) If your old car breaks down en route to give a workshop, you look unprofessional, and also don't get paid. My old car had 170,000+ miles on it from all my work driving.
5) Certain new cars qualify for stimulus tax credits, which you don't get if you lease or buy used. The Altima Hybrid and Leaf both get these to make them more attractive, economically.

So when I ran the numbers, the old car was still more economical - unless I missed a workshop. And then the Hybrid started looking pretty damn good.

You've gotta tell them

[Anonymous Coward]

Unleaded green is...people!!!

Flex Fuel in the US is a joke

[RingDev]

Maybe your flex fuel vehicles are better, but here in the states, GM's "Flex Fuel" technology is completely crap.

Sure, you CAN run your flex fuel vehicle on E85, but doing so drops your fuel milage by 20%+. You wind up blowing through way more fuel to drive the vehicle like a gutless hog.

Ethanol engines can be incredibly efficient. All of our top fuel race cars are burning ethanol. But in order to get that efficiency they have to push much higher compression ratios. To change the compression ratio though, you have to change the chamber size or the stroke of the crank. Neither of which can be done on the fly. You can get around this with a variable controlled turbo charger or other forced air induction. But GM's flex fuel vehicles are just naturally aspirated. No turbos, no compression ratio changes. Just a different type of rubber tube that holds up to ethanol, different oxygen sensors, and a little bit of valve and timing control.

Heck, the last I saw, they had more invested in the marketing of Flex Fuel then they had in developing it.

-Rick

Re:Flex Fuel in the US is a joke

[vlm]

All of our top fuel race cars are burning ethanol.

Almost none of them, you mean?

Real Race Cars like F-1 run plain ole gasoline, although a rather highly purified grade.

"top fuel dragsters", which I believe is a trademark of NHRA, run a mix of nitromethane with a splash of methanol, both way too toxic for the average moron to handle in bulk.

The only "race car ethanol" I'm aware of is the Indycar group has started to use ethanol in recent years, I believe there's a sponsorship thing going on there.

Re:Flex Fuel in the US is a joke

[badkarmadayaccount]

Nitromethane is rarely the major component - too expensive. Monster trucks also usually run on alcohol.

Diesel or gasoline substitute?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? We already know the answer to this. Diesel substitutes are easy, and many can be made for less than the current price-per-gallon of diesel fuel. The future is diesel.

Gasoline substitutes are so far all losing propositions: we spend more gasoline generating them than we save by using them. They so far have all been nothing but back-door corn subsidies. There could be technology advances in the future, but the fact that we haven't converted to things we can already do now, like cost-effective diesel substitutes doesn't bode well for any other "fuel substitute" we might come up with in the future.

the best is this...

[hesaigo999ca]

>http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/12/16/042220/JBIs-Plastic-To-Oil-Gets-Operating-Permit

This is a parallel story line on /. where they figured out how to turn plastic into gas, so now we can return all our plastic containers tupperware, bags, bottles, etc...to get gas in return. Can't wait for this to become very popular...

Re:The big oil and gov are afraid

[gatkinso]

Hydrogen is essentially a battery - stores the energy that you used to liberate it from water.

Easy to make - yes.

Easy to make in industrial quantities efficiently (or even profitably)? No.

Perhaps one day will will have uber effiecent solar hydrogen generating stations in our homes, but that is a long way off.

And, BTW, even today fresh water is too precious in many areas to simply burn (how crazy is that?). So now we are talking seawater for the hydrogen... which just tripled the problems that must be dealt with.

Re:The big oil and gov are afraid

[gatkinso]

Energy and technology will not drive us to space. Profit will, regardless of the nut factor. If there is profit to be had there you'd be nuts NOT to go.

If someone figures out how to make a buck by shipping people there, then they will. It is that simple.

Satellites are insanely complex and expensive - yet they exist. Why? Because someone made a profit (for the most part) by putting them there and selling their services. All so people can talk to grandma, and watch porn on demand (among other things).

Something may or may not happen with manned space travel/exploration/colonization... and the people making a profit at it will not give the first shit about the fact that Africans are dying of AIDS by the millions, or that whales are being slaughtered, or whatever.

In soviet russia

[ickleberry]

Biofuels research you!

High risk

[scarface71795]

The U.S military can use that money up in 34 minutes and you give that out for 5 years of study on something that your army could really need later on. My Government really doesn't think things though Do they?

high risk

[Goldsmith]

biological photosynthesis efficiency ~1%

inorganic photosynthesis efficiency ~10%

It's nice to grow fuel (or algae food), but there are other good solar fuel options. Inorganic catalysts (iron oxide is this year's sexy "new" catalyst) could use some funding too.

Tax-and-spend ignorance.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaaand this is what happens when government steps in on what private enterprise already knew was a quagmire.

Your tax dollars hard at work!

The ULTIMATE alternative fuel conspiracy ...

[MACchine]

The ULTIMATE alternative fuel conspiracy ... I found this story myself just searching around on the web for a few days over a period of many years ... Here is the first source in 2000 an IRAQI professor at the University of Babylon in Iraq claims to create an AWSOME alternative fuel ... http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=0487992EN&q=related%3AcvDnjuQ1qzgJ%3Ascholar.google.com%2F&uid=787066510&setcookie=yes "Performance study of a four-stroke spark ignition engine working with both of hydrogen and ethyl alcohol as supplementary fuel Al-Baghdadi, Maher A.-R. Sadiq" Here a Davis grad student who previously was referencing the above professor in his quest to get funding to do similar research as the only expertise in the field with these fuel supplements ... http://gate.its.ucdavis.edu/enrollment/preprop06/jordan/ “GATE Center > Enrollment > Research Proposals Awarded in August 2005 > Eddie Jordan Hydrogen Enriched Ethanol Project” The library at the University of Babylon was particularly looted and destroyed over a long period of time after the war started. This is where the original work was done ... http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_4_63/ai_104971393/ A few years later the author/professor, Al-Baghdadi, Maher A.-R. Sadiq, shows up at a university in Libya researching fuel cells but that link is DEAD, but now there is this book at Borders ... http://www.borders.com.au/book/cfd-modeling-and-analysis-of-different-novel-designs-of-air-breathing-pem-fuel-cells/7689234/