“What makes Go->HEVs more propelling? Corn, that’s what! I want to tell you that…”
Winnie, Winnie, Winnie… That’s compelling, not propelling.
“What?”
Bill Moore said, “The emergence of biofuels”? such as ethanol and biodiesel , “to power the internal-combustion engine makes the potential for plug-ins even more compelling.”
“Oh… You mean when I put a Fischer Panda DC-AGT genset on the back of my neon green GEM and run the diesel generator with green diesel, I can’t wear a propeller cap on my head as I drive around?”
Well, you can, but they may lock you up.
“Oh, well, never mind.”
And, if you start talking about 1000 miles per gallon, then they definitely will lock you up. Unless, of course, you are the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The October / November 2005 issue of Mother Earth News featured Bill Moore, the publisher and editor in chief of EV World (www.evworld.com), a weekly online publication and clearinghouse focusing on electric vehicles and related news. Bill, who began reading Mother Earth News in the mid-1970s, which helped kindle his interest in sustainable technologies and energy, states in an article about biofueled PHEVs:
“James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA, argues that burning E85 (85-percent ethanol; 15-percent gasoline) would further reduce the amount of gasoline the “flexible-fuel plug-in hybrid” would consume. If Energy CS?€™s 160-mpg Prius were refitted to burn E85, it could consume only 15 percent as much gasoline, resulting in the equivalent of a conventional car getting 1,000 mpg for the first 60 miles ?€” at least theoretically. After 60 miles, the fuel efficiency would drop back to 333-mpg gasoline equivalent.”
“What? You’re getting only 300 miles to the gallon in your flex-fuel-phev?”
Actually, this is somewhat of a misleading exaggeration since fuel is consumed to generate the electricity stored in the PLI batteries of the PHEV — all the more reason that publishers, editors, and writers of information about electric vehicles need to use a different, common standard, e.g., kilometers per megajoule.
“Well, what if, instead of a biofueled generator, I get a fuel cell, and go around shouting, I’ve got Hydrogen Power?”
…
“Wait, where are you going? Why are you edging away from me? I want to tell you my idea for dressing up Felix Kramer, Jay Leno and James Woolsey in Three Amigos regalia.”
(Holds up thumbs and index fingers to form a square from which to peer through.)
“We shoot them driving around the streets of Austin in a shiny new, four passenger GEM arguing over who gets to drive. Why three in a four-seater, you might ask?”
(Dramatic pause.)
“Well, then we could stage a rescue; they could save the fetching Daryl Hannah from being carried off by someone dressed as a sheik driving a Bugatti. She dispatches the bad guy (chop-chop) and jumps into the GEM as the Bugati veers off and crashes into flames. Then our gyros drive off together into the sunset singing The Electric Slide. Whadyathink?”
You say they went to the drive-in for subs? Well, EVs do seem to make sense for short trips.
One Comment
O.K., if Daryl is unavailable we can get Alexandra Paul. According to the NY Times (September 29, 2005), she and other former lessees have formed a small but voluble group that has protested the dismantling of their EV1′s.
In March, Ms. Paul was arrested during a protest in Burbank. She and another protester locked themselves in a car, which was parked at the exit to an installation where G.M. was stockpiling reclaimed EV1′s, to block trucks that were ready to ferry the cars away.
She said that there is something worse that spending five hours in the lock-up and a fine of $1,600 and 80 hours of community service: going to a gas station!
After G.M. took her EV1 away, she had to drive her husband’s Toyota Prius hybrid, since she could not quickly find an electric car to buy, and that meant going back to the gas station. “It was months, torturous months,” she said, before she found a used electric RAV4.
While the Toyota Prius hybrid may be the height of eco-wizardry to many Americans Ms. Paul indicated to the NY Times that she is unimpressed with getting 50 miles per gallon. “To me in the 21st century, 50 miles per gallon doesn’t impress me when we can go to the moon,” she said.
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[...] After Gutenberg Just another pretty face « 1000 MPG, Theoretically [...]
[...] Makower did say, and I should amend my previous post to indicate, that last Wednesday, Bill Ford also said that Ford “would promote flexible fuel vehicles and help build an ethanol infrastructure in the Midwest.” Which is a good thing — while Ford is promoting H2ICE — James Woolsey and the Committee on Present Danger, among others, are on a tear about flex-fuel, plug-in hybrids. [...]
[...] While he avoids entering the debates about their well-to-wheel efficiency, McLeod does see a role for biofuels, primarily as a component of fuel used by a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. “Switch transportation load from portable energy sources like gasoline or biodiesel to electricity… The gradual introduction of the plug-in hybrid (PHEV) with ever increasing all-electric range. A plug-in hybrid with a range of 30 km could easily replace 75 % of hydrocarbon consumption simply because most people don’t drive that far in a day.” [...]
[...] Repeat after me, transportation journalists, “Kilometers per megajoule, kilometers per megajoule.” Let it be your mantra. (grin) [...]
[...] So, despite the stated commitment to an ethanol program, even despite future research by the U.S. Department of Energy into advanced combustion research that includes flex-fuel engines, the weight of scientific opinion is in favor of other approaches, even when treehuggers are extolling the virtues of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle with the ICE portion consisting of a flex-fuel engine. [...]