As a whole I think Jeep drivers are fairly environmentally conscious. After all, I think most of us drive Liberty’s for the promise of getting out into nature. However, one of my pet peeves is the ignorant short-sightedness of people when it comes to complex issues like energy. The fact is that the internal combustion engine, diesel or gasoline, is pretty darn efficient and cheap. Each modern car pollutes a fraction of a percent of what it was 35 years ago before the first EPA standards went into effect (yes, I know that there are more cars now but overall pollution levels in most major cities has gone down substantially). While auto engines are condemned the alternatives espoused by the “greens” are often worse than what we’ve got. For example:

1. Ethanol – Gets 25% worse gas mileage than gasoline which is about 25% worse than Diesel. Brazil is held up as a model society that has adapted to using ethanol fuel on a widespread basis. Never mind that they have significantly cut into the South American rain forests in order to get enough farm land to produce the sugar cane required to distil into the fuel. Never mind huge quantities of fertilizer and pesticides that are used in said farming. What would happen in the US? The Gulf of Mexico is already brown and hideous algae washed up all over Texas beaches from fertilizer (nitrogen) runoff that has drained into the from the Mississippi river – you can see the effect from space. Aren’t environmentalists supposed to be against all of this?

2. Electric – Let’s not even go into the technological hurdles of developing an all electric car. Let’s just concentrate on where the electricity for these supposed clean cars comes from: mostly from burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal or natural gas. If everyone purchased electric cars they would effectively be trading many small smoke stacks from their cars (i.e. tailpipes) for one huge one at the electric plant. This would be done at a great sacrifice in fuel efficiency because a significant percentage of energy that is generated at the plant does not make it all the way to the electrical outlets in our garages due to inefficiency in electrical transmission over distance. Furthermore, batteries are not nearly 100% efficient and lose their charge just by sitting or as influenced by environmental factors such as temperature. Has anybody tried to use their fully-charged iPod after it has sat unused for a week or more? Guess what, it won’t work because the battery is dead. Park your electric car in the Texas sun for 8 hours while you work and how much of the charge do you think you will lose? 5% maybe? I’m glad my gasoline powered Liberty doesn’t lose 5% of its efficiency by sitting unused for a day. As for non-fossil fuel other sources of electricity, each has their own major problems: nuclear = radioactive waste; hydroelectric = significantly alters the environment for animals and humans in flooded and downstream areas; wind = there is a new term in our vocabulary called “visual pollution” (just ask Ted Kennedy) because nobody wants to look at the ugly things; solar power = takes up a lot of real estate which the environmentalists don’t like and despite decades of research has never really been made to work in a viable way.

3. Hybrid electric – This may be the alternative with the most promise, although it has its own shortcomings. Every hybrid vehicle suffers from added weight due to having least two engines (one combustion and one electric), a huge and complex torque converter that can accommodate two or more engines, heavy batteries, and a complex electricity generating brake system. Now that we know that the published EPA tested fuel economy ratings for hybrid cars have proven to be profoundly overstated the fuel savings is not all that great. In fact hybrids may be no more efficient than a gasoline or diesel engine powered car that has been similarly optimized for fuel efficiency by using smaller engines, installing narrower tires, aerodynamic shape, cutting unnecessary weight, and removing unnecessary power-sapping optional electric equipment. The jury is still out on this one, though. I suspect that some form of hybridization to be adopted in the design and manufacture of all mainstream vehicles eventually.

4. Fuel Cell – Ah, pollution free cars at last – only byproduct is good old water. One minor problem though. Where in can you get free hydrogen? Oh, we’ll strip it off of long hydrocarbon chains that comprise natural gas. Okay, but you still have leftover carbon (bad) and you are still dependent on a fossil fuel. Also any method of separating hydrogen any proposed donor molecules, whether they are hydrocarbon, water or anything else, takes a great deal of energy. Where does this energy come from? Probably from another fossil fuel or nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, solar… HEAVEN HELP US!

For now I think the best thing that we can do for the environment and economy is make our gasoline and diesel engines as efficient as possible. Personally, I am impressed by the new generation of diesels and wish more were available in the US. We certainly would be in a much better position if all vehicles got 25% better economy.

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William C Montgomery
The Truth About Cars
The Truth About Guns
'05 Sport 4X4, 3.7L - Black | Frankenlift II Premium, JBA KJ Lifted A-Arms 4.5 | Cooper Discoverer A/T3 - LT245/75R16, Load C

I'm really very interested in alt fuels, etc, here is my take on a couple of your questions.



Ethanol does get 25% less, in engines built for normal gasoline. You can refine ethanol so that it has a higher octane rating that gas (105-110), which means you can run the cylinders at higher pressure which makes a more efficient engine! The only problem is, you have to rebuild the engine to accomplish it. Also, burning Ethanol puts out 36-40% less CO2 emmissions than gasoline, as well as a lot less of the other pollutants.
Ethanol doesn't have to be made using sugar cane- a great opportunity is being used by farmers who grow corn- they turn the corn into ethanol, and then make cattle feed out of the byproducts.



I'm not big on electric cars... I like the rumble of a good V-8 :-p On the other hand, we have the technology to make it, we are just at a curious point in history when we aren't limited by WHAT we know, but by how expensive what we can make is!





Hydrogen can be broken down using other methods- we haven't even begun to use solar energy because of the expense, which is slowly coming down as the technology becomes more available. Hydrogen has allready been used in ICE engines- BMW has the H speed record at over 200 mph on Hydrogen.

In theory, I'm not opposed to nuke plants, especially breeder reactors which reuse their contaminants and do not make much waste. Unfortunately, the catostrophic results of terrorist attacks or a screw up are a little daunting to say the least!



We've got all the technology we need to make efficient cars, we just need the money to do it!! I'm a huge fan of the new diesels as well! Biodiesel is a really neat fuel as well- I work on a milatary base right now, and most of our vehicle fleet is disel and we use biodiesel in all of our vehicles. Much cleaner than normal diesel out of a renewable source!

Some innovative things that I've seen:
The whole hydraulic brake thing in Hybrids- that is a smart idea! So much energy is thrown away when you use brakes! The ability to even gain part of it back and use it for acceleration is really neat.

Hydrogen augmentation: Done correctly, you can produce enough hydrogen through electrolysis to make a difference in internal combustion engines. The tech is just getting started, and it needs a lot of refinement, but it looks promissing.

I'd LOVE to toss a new generation diesel into my renegade, run it on biodisel, and integrate some of these ideas into a full system. Like I said earlier though- we have the technology, but we are limited by the funding!

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You might be interested to read this article on BusinessWeek.com. I think it is a fairly evenhanded non-scientific article that addresses the pros and cons of ethanol.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2006/tc20060519_225336.htm



I have read this with regard to natural gas burning engines – that engines specifically engineered to burn the fuel got much better gas mileage and power as opposed to converted gasoline engines that are quite poor. I was not aware that this was also true of ethanol engines. Good point.



Sugarcane, corn or cellulose – whatever crop we use isn’t what I see as a potential environmental concern. At what point do we have to start plowing under virgin prairie or clear cutting our forests to grow ethanol? How much land is it going to take to grow enough of the crops to make a difference? How much more fertilizer and pesticides are going to be used to dumped into the environment? Of course, I would rather employ US farmers than buy crude oil from people that would like to kill Americans but I think that these questions must be addressed before we go too far down the ethanol highway.



I am also very interested in the latest generations of nuclear fusion for electricity production. I decided not to mention this because my other comments created enough controversy without opening that door. Also, I don’t ever foresee the day when personal automobiles will have little nuclear motors in them.

_________________
William C Montgomery
The Truth About Cars
The Truth About Guns
'05 Sport 4X4, 3.7L - Black | Frankenlift II Premium, JBA KJ Lifted A-Arms 4.5 | Cooper Discoverer A/T3 - LT245/75R16, Load C

The newsweek article was interesting. Thanks for posting it!



The point about using corn is that we allready grow massive amounts of crops to feed cattle- and some of it is wasted. By satisfying the needs of 2 industries with 1 field, we cut down on the land requirements. Also, there are a lot of other options out there- bacteria farms, etc.

In addition, we still have a lot of space on the planet- for instance, if people would stop kililng each other in the Eithiopian/African nations and start planting crops, they have some of the most fertile soil in the world; in fact just that one region has the potential to feed the world.

Overuse/overpopulation will just get worse as more humans pop up. Big problem all around!



Hmmm nuclear renegade. Sounds fun :-p Actually, I brought up nukes for a different reason- Hydrogen. Hydrogen is very energy intensive to create and store. With huge nuke plants (or another source of non-fossil or renewable energy) putting out relatively efficient energy, the problem isn't so bad.

_________________
Frankenlift
Boulderbars
All J Tranny skid
31x9.5 SS TSLs!
Detroit Truetrac/Powertrax
http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2062875

I personally think that biodiesel has far more potential.
One fairly recent discovery with biodiesel is using certain types of algae as the source crop. These algaes contain well over 50% oil and are extremely easy to grow. Can be fed using sewage.

There are also some new advances in the refining process, one particularly interesting one that uses nanotechnology. The device is relatively small and has numerous inlets, some of which are fed the oil and others that are fed methanol. The stuff that comes out the other end is high-grade biodiesel. The design is meant to be stacked to allow for increase in production volumes.

There are a number of reasons that I think biodiesel has more potential than stuff like E85.
One major reason is the complete independence from fossil fuels. Since it also has a place as a replacement for heating oil, the benefits are even bigger.