Change? Why not natural gas hybrids?
New fuel, new batteryStarting Wednesday, the Pickens Plan will kick off a virtual march to push Congress and the White House towards a greater embrace of natural gas and wind power.
President Obama, however, has indicated that natural gas isn't an option. It's the electric car or nothing, but is that really wise?
I'm certainly not arguing against plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. It just seems to me that scaling up production of these vehicles is going to take much more time than most advocates are willing to accept. Likewise, many of these vehicles are going to be consuming dirty coal for decades.
Thus, shouldn't natural gas be at least part of the conversation? And, to protect the drive towards electrification, the program could be driven by natural gas hybrid vehicles, which keeps investment into battery technology rolling while replacing foreign oil with domestic, cleaner natural gas.
Certainly having big dreams of solar power plants in the Southwest powering America's fleet of plug-ins via a super-grid are worth pursuing, but such a plan isn't going to happen over night. And the costs of making this happen far more quickly are probably more expensive than most tax payers would accept.
Thus, couldn't natural gas, especially focused around hybrids, be a bridge off foreign oil while electrification is developed and scaled?
Labels: electric cars, Hybrid Vehicles, natural gas
posted by Dahcredyns at
10:04 AM
8 Comments:
Natural gas is a fossil fuel that's causing global sea rise. We should be getting off fossil fuels not trying to use more.
But if we had to use natural gas resources, we could easily convert it into methanol and then covert the methanol into high octane gasoline using the Mobil Oil MTG process the way New Zealand did back in the 1980s.
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/
well, using natural gas is about using a different fossil fuel, not more fossil fuels. still, don't most syn fuels utilize a certain amount of fossil fuel to become syn fuels?
still, i don't care that much about CNG, but i would support it as a short term bridge.
nonetheless, methanol might very easily become a viable biofuel via microbial electrolysis. instead of converting methanol into gasoline, why not start using methanol fuel cell vehicles?
Natural Gas MUST be a component of our move towards alternate energy vehicles! Obama is foolish for not listening to T. Boone Pickens.
If all the upcoming EV's and PHEV's end up being way overpriced, I would be inclined to go with a CNG, such as the Honda Civic GX. Heck, for the price of a Fisker, I could buy three!
The primary source for hydrocarbon synfuels should be nuclear energy, IMO, utilizing something similar to the Los Alamos labs Green Freedom concept:
Green Freedom
http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf
Gasoline from Air & Water
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/11/gasoline-from-air-and-water_24.html
enigmatic-
while i agree with your points, my angle is a bit different.
there are a lot of people whom don't believe in hybrid cars and whom also believe that EVs are too futuristic, at least in terms of cost. yet, they would still like to fight against foreign oil dependency, and many i've spoken with are interested in natural gas.
certainly, natural gas isn't a perfect solution, but it seems better than the status quo, and it seems it could be part of a comprehensive energy program that could have a significant, almost-immediate impact on foreign oil dependency.
It's right that we should get off fossil fuels as soon as possible. But it will still take a while and natural gas is very popular in Europe.
An all electric car is powered by the national electric grid. The most common fuel for generataing electricity in the US is coal (60%). Natural gas produces less than 1/2 the greenhouse gases as coal for the same unit energy so a natural gas hybrid is far cleaner than a coal powered electric car. Natual gas is a bridge because is will take a lot of time to replace our coal infrastructure with renewables and our electric grid has to be upgraded in the process. If you want to make a big change is CO2 emmisions natural gas transportation is a big step.
- Steve in Denver
i'm with you Steve. i say we should mandate that we end foreign oil dependency by 2025, for example. then make every car more efficient and multi-fueled. if automakers were making natural gas hybrids, all the battery technology needed by EVs and PHEVs would still be developed.
then the money made ending foreign oil dependency could then be utilized to fund greener energy production.
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