British Queen Elizabeth II Converts $15 Million Bentleys to Biofuel
The British Queen Elizabeth II has two state Bentleys, which according to the US Department of Energy gets nine MPG in the city and uses 31.1 barrels of petroleum a year. These royal $15 million gas guzzlers are being converted to bio-ethanol.
According to Jalopnik, the Queen is preempting Bentley’s move to biofuels:
Queen Elizabeth the II, who lives rent free in several state-owned mansions and castles — the poorly insulated kind that are a bitch to heat in the winter — travels by a state-owned private jet and requires a security detail that uses many fossil fuel powered cars, trucks, motorcycles and helicopters, has decided to do her bit for the environment. The biofuel conversion is estimated to increase the fuel economy of her two, scarcely used, Bentleys by a staggering 40%. How? By burning some of her tiny island nation’s food supply in place of gasoline. Bentley is expected to introduce a similar system for its range of luxury cars by 2012, allowing similarly well-heeled individuals to feel better about themselves while dining on imported fine foodstuffs.
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Converting her Bentleys to biofuel is the least the Queen can do for the environment, and it follows in the heels of Prince Charles converting his Aston Martin to run on ethanol made from English wine. The Bentley conversion will require changing the engines in the Queen’s limos. One of the Bentleys was a gift from the luxury car manufacturer, and the other was purchased so the Queen would be ensured there was always one on hand when she was traveling across the country. I wonder if the new bio-ethanol engines will also be a gift or will the Royal Family have to purchase them?
Bentley has responded to the Queen’s conversion positively:
We have a lot of support from the Royal Family for our biofuel strategy. It is something about which they all take a keen interest. Bentley will introduce a new powertrain offering a 40 per cent fuel economy improvement by 2012. Also, by 2012, 100 per cent of the range will be compatible with renewable fuels, delivering significant savings in CO2 emissions.
Meanwhile, Bentley has had to cut production and lay off workers as the economic recession has curtailed global sales. Yea, our new Bentley was the first thing to go when we tightened our family’s purse strings. I wonder if the British government will need to bail out the luxury car maker like the US has done for the auto industry.
Image: UK Press Association
Does anyone have any information on how the queen’s conversion to ethanol fuel will increase mileag by 40%, while every other car that is converted to ethanol loses mileage of up to 40% because of the lower specific energy of ethanol?
This is very encouraging. I know there will be a debate on the impact this, and other efforts to shift to biofuels, will have on global food supply. To allay any fear that more use of biofuels could potentially stymie efforts to ensure global food sustainability, the world should consider experimenting on cellulosic ethanol, which doesn’t necessarily rely on food crops.
If an engine is designed to take advantage of ethanol’s higher octane rating, it will use a higher compression ratio which makes the engine significantly more efficient. A sufficiently more efficient engine can get more work out of a fuel that has a lower energy content than out of a less efficient engine that is using a higher energy content fuel. There is also the fact that ethanol burns cooler than gasoline. A whole lot of that extra specific energy in gasoline does nothing but heat up the water in the cooling jacket and get dumped into the atmosphere by the radiator.
Any more questions, ChuckL, just ask. I am happy to fill any gaps in your knowledge.
nice PR ….. what a joke
Wow envy doth run deep. I love it when people get on forums and blast the rich. Hey I would love to be able to afford a Bentley, but I don’t begrudge those who can.
It’s not about envying the rich. It’s about the absurdity of paying $15 million for a car, then saving a few pennies on gas. If she really cared about the environment and had 3 brain cells, she would drive a reasonable luxury car and spend the resulting savings on research projects.
Do you really think this was her idea? Seriously this is a pr stunt by the government not a serious idea by the queen.
This is purely symbolic, just like everything else the “figurehead” monarch does.
Now, if only Al “I’m so green” Gore would sell off a couple of his mansions and reduce his fleet of Suburbans that follow him around when he travels on his private jet to rallies (that draw large crowds who DRIVE to them) to tell us how WE should be reducing OUR consumption, then maybe the environment would notice some benefits.
Thank you LonnieB!
I wonder how much it cost the new ethanol engines needed for the conversion, did they run a cost benefit analysis or is just an environmental campain for Biofuel. It might turn out that it would have been better to support financially the company instead of laying off the workers and consequently the families and kids.