Posted on 03/29/2006 3:43:18 PM PST by kellynla
(CBS) The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an economy car. It was a sports-economy car — one that combines performance and practicality under one hood.
But as CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports in this week's Assignment America, the car that buyers have been waiting decades comes from an unexpected source and runs on soybean bio-diesel fuel to boot.
A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No — just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School
The five kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year — rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren't exactly the cream of the academic crop.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Agreed, 100%.
And the first stage of this evolution is to improve the efficiency of the gasoline/diesel engine. There are limits but if the average oil based engine efficiency were improved by 10% that would translate to 10% plus demand for crude oil.
IRL Using ethanol: http://sports.espn.go.com/rpm/news/story?id=2003457
Ethanol can be used in "Flex-Fuel" vehicles at up to 85% ethanol. http://www.e85fuel.com/index.php
How is Brazil's ethanol produced? How many Brazilian have cars?
Sweet! Build me a 4x4 truck with that engine, 300hp and I'll be happy to plink down $20k for one!
This isn't really news. Al Gore made a speech about it a few months ago. He said it was just another corrupt Republican trick and came down hard on 'Big Soybeans'.
Source one. Note blended with. Needs a petroleum base. The highest blend I can find on the Net is 85% petroleum based/ 15 Soybased.
http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/biodiesel_basics/default.shtm
Source two cites the use of Ehtanol is possible as a pure fuel source but does not cite any examples of it in use. All existing ethanol usesage is listend in fuel blends. This source also cites the problem. The energy used to produce the enthanol exceeds the energy gained using the enthanol. Like electricity, you have to have some energy source to produce it. Thus you must use oil or coal or some energy source to produce the ethanol which produces LESS enegry then if you simply used the oil as gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel#Ethanol_fuels
Count on your gas mileage to drop. Ethanol has 66% of the energy than gasoline.
In addition, performance will be degraded as well.
How about used 100% acetone as an additive? Or used 100%isopropyl alcohol? I can get that free except for the filtering funnel. A little oil in it shouldn't matter in small amounts.
Not hard to do with a high Power to weight ratio. When you start hanging stuff like heaters bumpers airconditioning, soundproofing etc, the mileage drops and performance suffers. Put a cummins deisel Idling on a go cart and you'd get 60 mpg!
I'm with you, kellynla. The point is not how much it costs initially to grow soybeans for biodiesel, because as the technology improves, the farmers can use biodiesel to produce the beans ever more cheaply to make the fuel. The point is, we don't want our enemies in the ME to control our economy through our dependence on their oil. That's worth at least an additional $.50 a gallon to anyone who hates the idea of being dependent on such a treacherous bunch of cut-throats.
You appear to be a bit behind on the current state of the ethanol industry - the energy ballance is positive.
http://www.ethanol.org/documents/NetEnergyBalanceissuebrief.pdf
http://www.ethanol.org/documents/ScienceJournalJanuary2006_000.pdf
http://www.ethanol.org/documents/NetEnergyBalanceofEthanol.pdf
Brazil produces their fuel from sugar cane, and according to an expert on the business channel today, if we make ours out of sugar, it will cost only one tenth what corn or soybeans cost. His company is investing heavily in ethanol plants around the country. It is coming.
SO much for that evaluation. Sounds like some techno wizards to me.
I refined 35 gals of bio diesel today. I didn't use any petrol oil in the process.
The BF goodrich all-terrains you need on that to go off-road will make you reconsider. FWD or not. If you have the $, they are great! And the chunks of dried mud flying out of the tread is impressive. I only have 16" ones, but they get bigger:)
Yea but alot of time and engery was used to grow the plants that you turn into fuel. In illinois are fuel costs are higher because we are forced to use a higher ethanol mixture.
Wow, hope they are able to patent the idea.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.