Many of us who enjoy building projects and handling repairs also share a technical interest in cars and trucks — as well as the frustration of gasoline prices climbing past $3 a gallon. And if you’re like me, you’d prefer to take action rather than merely complain about the problem.
The good news is that solutions are available, although they’re sometimes overshadowed by widely publicized ideas that might be considered futuristic at best. Take plug-in electric vehicles, for example. If we bought substantial numbers of these cars, the increased demand on electric-power plants would only create new economic and environmental problems. Another proposed solution, hydrogen fuel cells, sounds appealing because these cells create only water-vapor emissions, and the best companies in the world continue to develop them. However, the cost and complexities of making, distributing and storing hydrogen make this technology seem like a long shot.
More realistic present-day solutions include gasoline-electric hybrids, clean-burning diesels, flex-fuel ethanol-burning vehicles, and cars and trucks that burn bio-diesel fuel. The Japanese are far ahead in hybrid technology, the Germans and other European countries are most advanced in diesels, and American companies lead the way in flex-fuel.
Hybrids
Hybrids are proven winners in both cars and trucks because their gasoline engines produce essentially free electric power as they run. But there are differences between high-economy and high-power models. Economy hybrids use small, high-tech four-cylinder gasoline engines that work in concert with electric motors. The electric motors derive their power from battery packs, which are recharged by the gasoline engine and by an ingenious regenerative-braking system that captures friction energy from early braking and channels it into recharging the batteries.
Toyota and Honda have pushed their different hybrid technologies to fantastic heights. The Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive system uses a gasoline engine primarily to generate electrical energy, so the vehicle runs on electric power as much as possible. In fact, the Toyota hybrids, such as the Camry and Prius, rarely if ever run on their gasoline engines alone.
“The Prius has our highest percentage of electric power, while the Camry has less electric with more gas-engine power,” says Paul Williamson, Toyota’s chief engineering spokesman. “The Lexus GS450h has the most gas-engine input and the least percentage of electric power because it’s aimed at high-performance, while the Lexus RX400h and Highlander Hybrid are somewhere between those extremes.”
The drawback to relying mostly on electric power is the possibility that if a vehicle is left outdoors in severe subzero temperatures, power might drain from the battery pack and the gasoline engine could balk at running the vehicle by itself.
Honda’s Integrated Motor Assist (IMA) system avoids this pitfall because its gasoline engine is the primary driving force, using electric power to complement the gasoline engine. The two-seat Insight and the compact Civic Hybrid are the best examples. (The Insight will be discontinued after the current model year.)
Honda uses an improved IMA technique in the hybrid version of the Civic, although chief engineer Akira Fujimura stresses that Honda and Toyota both have fuel economy and low emissions as common goals. “If we could only improve fuel economy and emissions by 10 percent, we might as well use just the gasoline engine,” he says. “But if we can improve them by 30 percent over the EPA estimates, we’ll make hybrid versions.
Diesels
In the United States, diesel engines are common in heavy-duty trucks but scarce in cars because they are considered oily, foul-smelling, noisy and messy. American consumers’ failure to demand clean, low-sulfur fuel is mostly to blame for those drawbacks, but that is changing. Owners of diesel-powered Volkswagens boast that their vehicles achieve 45 to 50 miles a gallon and keep running for more than 200,000 miles. Several Mercedes diesel-fueled sedan models also enjoy a reputation for running smoothly with few problems, and Mercedes diesel engines will be installed in certain 2007 Jeep Cherokees.
Volkswagen and Mercedes, among other manufacturers, are working on improving catalytic converters while waiting for the U.S. market to adapt to low-sulfur fuel. In Europe, Asia and wherever else low-sulfur fuel is available, diesel engines run smoother, cleaner and quieter and are more durable and swifter than U.S. buyers realize. While driving on an unlimited-speed autobahn in Germany, I cruised effortlessly at 140 mph in a Mercedes E320 station wagon with a 3.0liter Bluetec turbodiesel engine.
The good news for diesel proponents is that by October 2006 the sulfur content of U.S. diesel fuel must be reduced to 15 parts per million (compared with current levels in excess of 320 ppm). That could open the door for high-tech diesel vehicles from various European and Asian manufacturers, which already account for more than half of the vehicles in Europe. In those countries the sulfur limit on diesel fuel has already dropped from 12 ppm to 5 ppm.
Flex-fuel
Vehicles that can run on fuel made from corn may sound like a corncob-pipe dream. But U.S. manufacturers and Midwestern corn growers are pushing the use of E85, a fuel that’s 85 percent ethanol (which is made from corn) and cheaper than gasoline. Although General Motors (GM), Ford and Chrysler have each built more than 1.5 million “flex-fuel” vehicles during the last decade, E85 has only now become fashionable — possibly because of a spirited ad campaign by GM.
The company promotes its new fleet of light pickup trucks and SUVs capable of burning E85 with the slogan “Go green; drive yellow.” But despite its ecologically friendly reputation and the strong potential that technological improvements promise for this fuel, it does have drawbacks. First, one gallon of E85 requires the equivalent of a gallon of energy to produce. Second, flex-fuel vehicles with altered engines are required to accommodate the hotter-burning fuel, and the fuel economy of such vehicles may drop 15 percent to 20 percent compared with gasoline-powered models.
Maybe one of these technologies will dominate the market, or maybe a combination of them will prevail. But any reduction in foreign oil, any improvement in fuel economy and any decrease in environmental damage that cleaner-burning fuels might offer will make us all winners.