The Green LiterGoing the extra mile with electric vehicles, hybrid cars, fuel efficient cars, biofuels and alternative energy sources

Great movies influence people. The more they like it the more they are inclined to try it out, especially if it’s based on reality (nope, you can’t do Thor sorry). Wouldn’t it be great if a movie could help influence people to buy green cars?

A good example of a movie affecting how people buy and/or use their cars is The Fast and the Furious franchise. According to the statistics in this site, when the first movie was released 2001, the compact performance products sales went up to $2.86 Billion. At the end of 2002, the sales was at $3 Billion. There was also a 25 percent in performance and racing products. This is all good for the movie franchise but won’t help in decreasing the dependence on gasoline.

Maybe a Fast and the Furious Green Car version movie would do well?

Image via Wikimedia Commons (Copyleft License)

General Motors is looking to the future by sponsoring the 2011 Alternative Clean Transportation Expo (ACT).

This 2011 ACT brings together stakeholders of alternative fuel and clean vehicles. Besides being the Gold Sponsor, GM also brought their plans that will make GM as THE car manufacturers for alternative fuels.

Several plans, like the Hawaii Hydrogen Initiative, point to the fact that GM will not focus its green efforts on only one technology. The car maker is working of several planes of this new industry, launching the Volt plug-in hybrid vehicles, announcing plans to make fuel cell cars a reality as well and focusing on alternative fuels like LPG.

Plans are good, but the real thing is even better. We’ll see if GM goes through with these plans.
[Article via: Autoevolution | Image By CoolKid1993 at en.wikipedia. (Transferred from en.wikipedia ([1])) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons]

Oil prices are plunging, hopefully back to normal but that doesn’t mean that we should stop finding alternative fuel such as this one being used in Vietnam named Gasohol.

For the record, Gasohol is a combination of Ethanol and Petrol. We can fell a sigh of relief as far as the continued downward trend of the oil price is concerned but you never know when they can go up again. We have seen LPG, Biofuel and other forms of ethanol or alternative fuel that are being introduced in the market and if we are wise, we should keep our options open.

Waiting for another unruly fuel price hike is not exactly the best position we may find ourselves in and if we value our convenience as far as transportation is concerned, then we should do what the Vietnamese people are doing as well.

PV Oil, a PetroVietnam subsidiary, announced on Monday that Gasohol E5 will be provided on a pilot basis in the districts of Dong Da and Cau Giay at VND16,500 ($1) per liter – VND500 and VND1,000 cheaper than A92 and A95 petrol respectively.

Gasohol E5, which is five percent ethanol and 95 percent gasoline, is produced by the PetroVietnam Biofuel Joint Stock Co., an affiliate of PV Oil. This fuel is cost-effective, eco-friendly and safe for engines, PV Oil says.

Source

Here is a good solution that you may want to look out for if you are hesitant on changing your car with the hybrids and electrical cars that are being offered in the market today. But what if you had the choice to own an engine that can be flexible and run on any type of fuel? Well if you are asking if there is such a thing, yes there is!

It is called an Omnivorous engine, an automobile engine that Wallner and his colleagues have tailored to efficiently run on blends of gasoline, ethanol and butanol.

Now wouldn’t that be something? Imagine no longer worrying about the usual issues of rising oil prices and also finding ways to beat the issues of having to run a car on a limited basis. This can certainly be the best solution one could ever dream of.

Unlike regular automobile engines, which typically run solely on gasoline or, in rare instances, on a blend of gasoline and ethanol, the omnivorous engine would be able to run on any blend of conventional gasoline, ethanol or butanol, another organic alcohol that scientists are beginning to consider as a potential biofuel. Even more significantly, the omnivorous engine would use a suite of sensors to calibrate itself so that it burns available fuel as efficiently as possible.

Source

The continuous increase of fuel prices is going crazy. Unlike before, 1 liter of gas could get you anywhere worthy. But these days, you will be surprised at the impact it has. It would not be surprising if you would need 1 liter of gasoline to get you out of your house gate. That is how bad it has become.

With the crude oil market continuing to skyrocket its outrageous prices, who is to blame? Many are pointing to politics while others are pointing towards the lackadaisical consumer who could care less of how to save on gas. Perhaps it has been the common thinking that anyone, as long as they have money, could burn fuel as they wish. Apparently, all that is about to come to an abrupt end and people are now acknowledging hard times ahead.

So how do we go about it? There are alternatives. We have heard of the much celebrated LPG conversion for cars which is approximately half the price of modern day fuel. But it has its fallbacks such as skin and health diseases from leaks. Besides, what makes you so sure that they will not reach the point of scarcity like normal fuel?

Then there are the natural fuel from crops such as algae and fossil fuel. But in their case, how compatible are they with the car engines of vehicles today? And again, how long would they last.

These are the questions that are going around the motorist’s mind. If you satisfy the fuel issue, how about the car maintenance issue? These are things this blog will discuss in detail and hopefully help out the motorists to continue enjoying their daily private car use.