What is the future of fuel? What's new? What's next? Since 2007, Gas 2 has covered a rapidly changing world coming to terms with its oil addiction.
There’s significant demand for the Bob Lutz-backed Fisker Karma V8 conversions, especially now that Fisker, the company, doesn’t look particularly suited to provide parts and/or technical support for their existing hybrid powertrains. So his interest in Fisker getting bailed out makes sense. That said, it’s specifically because of Lutz’ involvement that I hope the whole enterprise crashes and burns.
There have been plenty of doubters, haters, and detractors from Elon Musk’s electric car dream. For a while there his baby, Tesla Motors, was a political football punted between Democrats and Republicans. But with the full repayment of the $465 million Tesla borrowed from the U.S. government, Tesla has not just defied the odds, but proven the viability of a pure electric automaker.
This blog is about gas, ultimately. How to use less gas, what to use instead of gas, and all that jazz. The usual suspects are ethanol, bio-diesel, electrons, and hydrogen-peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide? Watch this death-defying 160 mph rocket bike shame a Subaru STi and you’ll be a believer.
The search for an alternative fuel source other than oil should leave no idea untested. Still, there are some ideas with more potential than others, and some alt-fuel concepts are just plain strange. Compressed air vehicles have been around for around 150 years, but the technology has never caught on with automakers. There’s a reason for that, and it’s called torque, or the lack thereof.
For electric racing fans, there is no event more anticipated than the inaugural Formula E season, which kicks off next year. Several world-class cities have already been selected to host these contests of speed, and most of the schedule is already determined. This week though Bangkok was added as a host city, and Formula E also revealed what the Renault-designed race cars will look like.
Can the power of social media literally propel a car halfway across the country? That’s the hope of a group of high school students who converted a Karmann Ghia into an EV, with plans to drive it from Kansas City to Washington D.C., but with a twist. The car will only go when it gets mentioned on social media. So you know what we have to do.
The not-quite-bankrupt Fisker Automotive is struggling to stay afloat, and affluent buyers of the beautiful plug-in hybrid know it. While hundreds of lining up for a supercharged V8 conversion, other owners are divesting themselves of their Fiskers on the used car market, taking a huge financial hit in the process.
Compressed natural gas, or CNG, may be the fuel of the future here in America. Vast untapped resources of CNG are only now being exploited, and automakers are responding with a limited offering of CNG vehicles. Spy shots suggest that GM could be prepping a CNG-powered Chevy Impala for either fleet or public sale.
