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Join CanadianDriver’s Facebook group
Follow CanadianDriver on TwitterBy Jim Kerr
The high gas prices of last summer brought the issue of energy sustainability to the attention of many drivers. Will there be gasoline shortages? Will we be able to afford the fuel so we can drive? What happens when there is no more oil? These questions still need to be answered.
Currently, the price of gasoline is lower. The economic slowdown in North America, combined with the previous high prices, have caused people to drive less, buy smaller vehicles and change their driving habits for a more economical style. With less demand for gasoline, the price has dropped, but when the economy rebounds you can be sure the prices will climb again too.
Other parts of the world also have increased need for gasoline. The huge populations of China and India are now becoming more affluent and looking for personal transportation and the fuel to drive it. So what will it take to provide energy sustainability?
The short-term and immediate solution is to make our vehicles more economical. The United States’ Corporate Average Fuel Economy rating, or CAFE, is currently 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for trucks under 8,500 GVWR (US mpg, about 8.7 and 10.6 L/100 km respectively). Proposed regulations will increase this to an industry average of 35 mpgUS, or 6.7 L/100 km. To do this, smaller and lighter vehicles will be one of the keys.
It is generally known that lighter vehicles get better fuel economy. For example, a 10 per cent reduction in weight will provide about 4 per cent improvement in fuel economy. If vehicle size is also reduced along with the weight, and a smaller engine used, the economy can improve up to 8 per cent with no change in vehicle performance. However, in the past 10 years, the average weight of vehicles in North America has increased 10 to 20 per cent. Some of this additional weight is because of more safety and convenience features, but most of it is simply due to larger vehicle size. Park a new pickup truck beside one ten years old, and the size difference is remarkable. Small and light is good when it comes to fuel economy.
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at 11:02 am
I’m inclined to disagree that “Hydrogen fuel would be the ultimate solution.”
Ultimately, battery-powered electric vehicles are still far more efficient than hydrogen vehicles, due to the relatively low efficiency of the production of hydrogen fuel–think about the number of energy changes it goes through to convert mechanical to electrical to chemical to… etc. Furthermore, the production of hydrogen fuel would likely rely on the very same power stations as those that would charge electric vehicles.
Even if the electricity to charge an electric vehicle were wholly derived from “dirty” power sources, it’s still far more efficient than burning fossil fuels individually in IC engines. Larger power plants utilize fuel far more efficiently than individual IC engines (they produce more electricity per unit fuel). Cleaner electricity plants will (hopefully) come with time, but even with “dirty” power plants, there’s still a significant benefit to be had.
The weakness of electric vehicles is the battery technology (which will come with time) and the time required to charge them (which will come with improved batteries or a Better Place-style swap system).
The only reason I can see using hydrogen power is for long-range commercial vehicles. But even then, unless there is a revolution in producing hydrogen energy efficiently, hydrogen powered vehicles seems nothing more than a stopgap on the road to electric vehicles.
at 9:57 am
Where do you imagine all this hydrogen comes from? Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is just an energy carrier. It still has to be produced, which takes energy.
If it is made from methane (natural gas), there will still be CO2 production. If it is made from electricity, it has many of the same issues as electric vehicles, with additional storage and transport problems.
Hydrogen isn’t likely to be a solution unless we have nuclear fusion, or some other source of clean electricity. Renewables won’t be sufficient:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/ps/1.112.pdf