Gas 2.0

There’s an electric car revolution underway in sleepy Browntown, Wisconsin, population 252.

More than six Sebring-Vanguard CitiCars, many zipping down the country roads in southwestern Wisconsin, are registered to owners in this small town – most to Phil Welty and one to myself.  They come in red, yellow and several other colors and look like a wedge of cheese, but they’re all completely powered by electric motors.  It’s estimated that as few as 600 CitiCars are still on the road in the U.S. with less than 3,000 manufactured by Sebring-Vanguard between 1974 and 1976 during the last energy crisis.

“When I first saw the CitiCars back in the 1970s, it was the only all-electric car on the market,” recalls Phil Welty,  “The same problem exists today as in the 1970s, like high fuel prices and our marriage to foreign oil.  I’ve always wanted to bring one back from the junkyard and restore it to fully operable condition.”  Not content with just one, he has two CitiCars on the road, using his other cars for parts.

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Today, the oil industry has become a player in the auto industry. ExxonMobil is launching the Maya 300, a lithium-ion battery powered car that can drive up to 120 miles on one charge yet has the look and feel of a gasoline-powered car.

This announcement comes on the heels of a whirlwind of investments by the oil industry to help position them as players in the biofuels industry. Many oil companies have either purchased ethanol or biodiesel plants and/or made investments in cellulosic technology and development companies. Does this announcement set the stage for the rise of other players to take over the helm of U.S. auto industry?

The Maya 300 was developed in conjunction with Electrovaya, a pioneer in the development and manufacturing of Lithium Ion SuperPolymer battery systems. The two companies have worked together to, “develop the innovative urban vehicle that will be a ‘game changer’ in advancing transportation alternatives.” ExxonMobil actually developed the lithium-ion battery separator film and was the first company to introduce the lithium-ion battery in 1991. Read the rest of this entry »

For consumers who support E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) and drive a flex-fuel vehicle, E85 became a little easier to find today when the 2,000th E85 pump opened today in Davie, Florida a suburb of Miami. The station is owned by U-Gas, which has brought most of the E85 infrastructure to Florida. As part of the celebration, the station offered E85 for $1.00 a gallon at not only this station, but all stations where U-Gas sells E85.

Willie Urbieta, President of U-Gas is a huge supporter of ethanol and said during the press conference, “For me personally, it feels really good when I fuel up to know that I’m not sending money to countries that are not that friendly to us.” Read the rest of this entry »

Vehicles fueled by biomass-fired electricity would travel 81% farther on a given crop and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than vehicles powered by ethanol, a new study finds.

In a new study published online yesterday in the journal Science, researchers led by Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced modeled entire fuel systems all the way from crop cultivation to vehicle propulsion, comparing cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions for both biofuels and bioelectricity. They found that the bioelectric pathway came out ahead of both corn ethanol and advanced cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was a big day for the biofuels industry. President Obama issued a presidential directive to the USDA to expand access for biofuels that includes $800 million to fuel biofuels research. The purpose of the directive, in part, is to aggressively accelerate the investment and production of biofuels. What the directive does not do, is set dollars aside to help improve the infrastructure for higher ethanol blends including E85 although it encourages production of more flex-fuel vehicles.

This announcement appears to be serious, at least as serious as a government proclamation can really be– they created another committee to oversee that the presidential directive. The USDA, EPA and DOE will form a Biofuels Interagency Working Group with a mission to increase energy independence in part through the development of the nation’s first comprehensive biofuels market development program.

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Corn ethanol was given a reprieve today when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its proposed rule for implementation of the Renewable Fuels Standard or RFS2 that includes calculations of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for all fuels. The RFS was signed into law as part of the Energy and Independence Act of 2007 which limits the maximum amount of corn ethanol to 15 billion gallons of the required 36 billion gallons by 2022.

There was palpable concern among corn ethanol proponents leading up to the ruling due to the controversy surrounding Indirect Land Use as well as the passing of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) last week by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which was not favorable for corn ethanol.

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The Good

The 9 billion gallons of ethanol that Americans used last year helped drive down oil prices. For those of us who fuel our vehicles with gasoline, as much as 10 percent of that gasoline is ethanol. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires that more biofuel be used every year until we reach 36 billion gallons by 2022.

Reduced oil prices are good. We can go from good to great, if we move past fuel from food and haste to fuels from wood and waste. Although the economics do not yet favor major production, pilot plants are taking wood and paper waste and converting it to fuel. Other cellulosic material is even more promising. Some grasses , energy crops, and hybrid poplar trees promise zero-emission fuel sources. These plants absorb CO2 and sequester it in the soil with their deep root systems. These plants often grow in marginal lands needing little irrigation and no fertilizers and pesticides, standing in sharp contrast to the industrial agriculture that produces much of our fuel. (see Dedicated Energy Crops Could Replace 30% of Gasoline: Ceres, Inc. Wants to Make it Happen) Read the rest of this entry »

Bentley has released official pictures of the ethanol-powered GT we previewed a few weeks ago.  This new car is the first flex-fuel vehicle in the company’s history, and Bentley is calling the 621 bhp bruiser the “Continental Supersports”.  Bentley claims the GT’s owners will be able to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds on their way to a top speed of 204 mph.

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Several weeks ago, I filled you in on Bentley’s upcoming ethanol supercar, promised to be the fastest, most powerful Bentley ever offered.

In the days since, Bentley has kept the world’s journalists hungry for more details, releasing only this “Project Victoria” teaser video, a March reveal date, and precious little else… but has one of Volkswagen’s lesser-known suppliers inadvertently given away Project Victoria’s horsepower secrets?

You bet! Read it here first, after the jump.

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The Ricardo Company has a long history of innovation. From the day Harry Ricardo founded the Two-Stroke Engine Company in 1905, to their direct-injection engine patents that date back to the 1930’s, and to the development of several key technologies found in Audi’s dominant LMP sportscars, they seem to always have something up their sleeves.

So, then, it might not be surprising to learn of the Ricardo Company’s latest new project: a true ethanol efficiency breakthrough that Ricardo promises will turn the gasoline vs. ethanol equations upside down.

Ricardo is calling it’s new process Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection (EBDI). Find what you should think about the new tech (and read the original press release) after the jump.

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