The Reason We Can’t
Have Cheap Gas or: You Have Clean Diesel in My Gas!
Brought to you by the Auto Transport Source.
In a world full of $3.75/gal costs of gasoline, we are
looking to find a way around this. Circumvent the oil companies and find a way
to save some cash. Willie Nelson’s tour bus runs on biodiesel – why can’t my
car? Well, the truth is, diesel is more expensive than regular gasoline, even
though with recent advancements and technologies diesel now burns cleaner,
longer, and slower than gasoline, meaning that mile per gallon rates are going
up in diesel fueled vehicles, and emissions are going down.
The Ford
Motor Company saw that, and they jumped on it. With the Ford ECOnetic soon to
come to retailers, it’s a wonder we haven’t seen this sooner.
But
Americans are going to have to wait even longer for this new technology.
The Ford
Motor Company is manufacturing this vehicle, of all places, in Europe, a continent known for its eco-friendly ways and
nice shops and fancy hats. This comes as a major surprise mainly because of the
fact that the FMC was founded, developed, and turned into a powerhouse by Henry
Ford: an American. Which now begs the question?
Why Europe?
The Ford
Motor Company states that it would not be “cost-effective,” to say the least.
In order to ship the cars across the Atlantic,
we would have to charge American consumers $25,000 per ECOnetic, and apparently
that’s something that FMC just isn’t willing to do. They feel that “clean
diesel,” as it’s known, won’t be bought by American consumers and will tank in
2009. But what the FMC doesn’t understand – indeed, what a lot of people don’t
understand – is that diesel vehicles
now hitting the market with pollution-fighting technology are as clean or
cleaner than gasoline and at least 30% more fuel-efficient. So why now do we not
get this technology? California
has just passed legislation that would allow Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz to
sell diesel vehicles in their state – thus overturning a four-year ban.
But that still begs the question:
why isn’t diesel bigger in America?
Last year, half of all cars sold in Europe
were diesel-powered vehicles. Compare that to a sharp decrease in
diesel-powered vehicle sales in America,
and the rise of hybrid technology (a good alternative, to be sure), and it’s no
wonder no one is marketing their diesel cars at us. We see hybrid vehicles
(proven by the sales of the Toyota Prius last year) as the “wave of the
future,” but we haven’t even looked at other options. Hydrogen vehicles are
still in the testing phase, but it will be years until they hit the market –
and even then, will we want them?
Americans are picky, sure, but are
we so stubborn as to look a gift horse in the mouth and deny ourselves this
opportunity? We have the chance of stepping into the future, of once again
being a world leader in science and industry. But now, the leaders in science
and industries may be American, but only Europeans are seeing the fruits of our
labors.
The Composition of Diesel
Diesel is a very
interesting choice of fuel, to say the least. Its refining process is crude at
best – often times described as “pulling the dregs off the bottom of the gas
refineries.” This has some truth behind it, because typically (using old
technology) diesel is dirtier, smellier, and more polluting than gasoline – but
the time for that is long, long gone. What makes diesel so polluting is,
mainly, the sulfur that it contains. High-sulfur mixtures of diesel produce
that black, acrid smoke that long-haul trucks are known for, but low-sulfur
mixtures are becoming much more commonplace, resulting 20, 30, even 40% fewer
emissions.
Biodiesel, too, has played a huge
part in diesel’s recovery. It’s much cleaner, and can actually be mixed with
regular petrodiesel (diesel refined from petroleum) in fractions of 99%, thus
resulting in substantially reduced emissions. Carbon monoxide emissions have
been known to be cut by 50% or more by mixing biodiesel and petrodiesel, and
the mixtures can be made at home using kits. Biodiesel studies have also been
known to reduce health effects as opposed to petrodiesel. But biodiesel isn’t
the only form of alternate diesel; In fact, diesel can be pulled from just
about anything. Wood, hemp, straw, food scraps (think Mr. Fusion from Back to
the Future Part II), and (this is cool) sewage can be formed into a
synthetic-based diesel fuel that can be used to power cars. Its technical name
is biomass-to-liquids (the process of turning biomass into a liquid), and this
promising technology could hold more answers than just the one to our energy
crisis.
If we can harness the power of
biomass-to-liquid technology, we could be able to solve the problem of how we
power our cars, but we can also solve the problem of giant landfills, or of
human waste going out to sea. Using simple technology, we can have our septic tanks
become BTL converters with our garbage cans feeding into these as well. We
could control our own future, be completely self-reliant.
The human race is
on the verge of a worldwide revolution. The turning point is about to hit its
zenith – we are going to be propelled into a new era of cleaner, cheaper fuels,
the rise of self-sufficiency, and the decline of giant energy conglomerates.
With diesel fuels, coupled with research into hydrogen-powered vehicles and
other promising technologies, we are on the precipice of the largest turning
point in history. This is going to be a lot of fun.
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