Gas 2.0

[UPDATE 9/15/09]: Volkswagen’s Diesel-Hybrid L1 Concept Gets 170 MPG, Available by 2013

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This is what a team of engineers can do when challenged to push the limits of fuel efficiency and technology. You may have already heard of VW’s 1-liter car, but take a closer look. It’s a sports-economy concept car produced a few years ago by VW engineers, to answer one big question: could they build a car that consumes less than 3 liters of fuel for every 100 km traveled?

It turns out they could, but they didn’t stop there. Instead, VW blew by that goal to create a car that uses only 1 liter of fuel for every 100 km. That’s 285 MPG.

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For under $30,000, you will soon be able to buy an electric car with a 120 mile range, or a plug-in hybrid that gets 300 miles-per-gallon.

Sound like a fantasy, but this one could be coming to a dealer near you. Slated for release in late 2008, the company Aptera will be offering the initial limited release of their fully electric model Aptera Typ1, and the 300 mpg plug-in will follow in 2009.

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While plug-in hybrids offer great increases in fuel efficiency, they may come at a surprising cost: water. A recent study from Environmental Science & Technology found that plug-ins require the consumption of 3 times more water, and the withdrawal of 17 times more water, than their gasoline counterparts. As Popular Mechanics pointed out last week:

A 30-mile commute in a gasoline-powered car would require the withdrawal of 18.9 gallons of water… The same commute in a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), meanwhile, would take a whopping 318 gallons…

So what accounts for the increase in water usage? PHEV’s don’t require water directly, but the power plants that power them do:

Any power plant that runs steam turbines uses water, whether fired by coal, natural gas, or nuclear energy, says King, a mechanical engineer at the Bureau of Economic Geology at UT. Many plants consume water by running it through cooling towers where it evaporates away. Plants can also tie up water resources via withdrawal, in which plants recycle water that is drawn from a reservoir.

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