In item 33 on handicap access we started talking about less-polluting forms
of public transportation.  Someone claimed that electric cars would produce
more total pollution than gasoline burners.  I found a reference to the fact
that gasoline burning engines are less efficient than fuel cells, which are
less than 40% efficient.  Electricity is about 30%, more if you use the heat
generated as a by-product.  Does anyone know more about the various forms of
cleaner motor vehicles, those utilizing the various types of batteries,
electricity from power lines or 'third rails', or fuel cells?  How does the
different technology work, what is the current state, what sorts of vehicles
are actually being manufactured and in use, relative costs, legal aspects?
California was supposed to be selling 10% zero-emission vehicles by 2003 -
does this include hydrogen fuel cells, or methanol fuel cells?

163 responses total.

Actually the newest craze you'll see on the market, before electric cars, are
natural gas powered autos.

I think that vehicle size is more of a problem.  Why do people have to
have such huge vehicles?  Those monsters get less than 13 miles out of
a gallon of gas.  Current production small cars can go three times as
far, and further, on the same gallon.
 
Wasn't it Honda that said they would be building a zero emissions,
gasoline burning, vehicle by the turn of the decade?
 
Electric vehicles won't be accepted until we find a better way to store
electric power.  Battery technology hasn't gone far since 1900.  The
mass / energy  and energy / $ ratio simply isn't high enough to compete.

I presume zero-emissions does not include water and carbon-dioxide, but what
does Honda plan to do about the sulfur and nitrogen?
Fuel cells supposedly can burn fuel much more efficiently than internal
combustion engines.  I read about hydrogen powered buses, and possibly
methanol power cars, that use fuel cells.  What has actually been accomplished
already?  Seems like you could generate an awful lot of methane from manure,
and then use it for fertilizer.  Or from city dumps - there is a greenhouse
running off the methane from the Ypsi city dump.  How difficult is it to
generate methanol from agricultural wastes?  Why is more methanol not already
used in internal combustion engines?
        The problem with electric cars is that people want them to also provide
heat.  In California, this should not be a problem, but in the north perhaps
some other fuel, such as LP gas, could be used in a heater?

People concentrate too much on finding new ways of expending limited
resources, if you ask me.  If you're going to worry about new sources of
energy and the limit on fossil fuels, why bother moving on to something else
that's going to run out, too?

Methane and methanol will not run out, that is the point.  You can generate
them from plants, which get their energy from the sun, which will not run out
of energy for many of our lifetimes.  Batteries can be charged directly from
solar cells.  Methanol is wood alcohol, the stuff that bootleg liquor used
to be adulterated wtih that caused blindness.  Lots of little creatures will
produce the stuff for you at very low wages (just feed them waste, from
agriculture or industry).   I think methanol has less energy per gallon, so
you would have to refuel more often, but is that a problem?

Not if the method of extracting that energy were more efficient.

Some race cars run on Methanol.  It is not currently a cheap fuel.  I
know one problem is that alcohol burns with an inviable flame and no
smoke, making alcohol fires almost impossible to detect.

During WWII my grandfather, in Germany, had a car that ran on wood gas.
Wood was cooked in a boiler by a wood fire and the gases given off were
then used to run the internal combustion engine.  I saw one of these cars
in a museum in Germany.

I have also seen pictures of busses with large bladders of methane
attached to their roofs.  I'm sure the Ford Expedition and Chevy
Suburban crowd would go for those.  Perhaps an electric Ford Power
Stroke truck or Dodge Ram?

In short, I don't think any of this is going to catch on big-time
unless it makes cars cheaper or more powerful or better looking.

First the mentality of the biology behind the wheel needs to changed.

        Hondas car is a low emission vehicle (lev) not a zev. I think levs are
10% of current emissions. There are batteries that can go extended distances
but the cost is prohibitive.

        Klaus, Amhearst has a wood gas pick up truck most years. If you're
interested in going this year, we will be trying to put together some car
pools. We would like to have a visible Mi. presence.

I agree with the changing of the wheel.. something along the lines of a
*shudder* joysick, or a flight yoke would be much more interesting and
enjoyable.. and quite possibly safer in a crash.. but that's just my
speculation. actual milage my vary (depending on fuel type)

I suspect that while a joy stick might be safer in a crash, it would also make
it much harder to control the car, and therefore make crashes much more
likely.

However, that doesn't have much to do with changing the "mentality of the
biology behind the wheel" (in other words, the driver), which is what Klaus
talked about.

I didn't see the wood-gas pickup the last time I went a couple of years
ago.  I'd like to go again but other obligations will keep me close to
home for a while yet.
 
Got it on the 10% of current emissions, Patric.  Thanks.  That is pretty
darn good, however.
 
I can't see a flight yoke or stick on a car.  Those are used on airplanes
where you have two axis of control: Back and forth and up and down.
In a car one could use the back and forth motion for accelerate and
decelerate, however that might be nasty in the case of and accident where
the driver is thrown against the stick / yoke.
 
Skid-loaders and dozers use two sticks poised in front of the driver.
These just control the speed of the wheels (tracks) on the left and
right side of the machine to control direction.  They steer by skidding.
Tough on tires, tracks and driving surfaces.

I drove both the Ford joystick and the wrist twist cars. Both required massive
power boosters to work. Both reduced the "feel" of the road to almost not at
all. When safety issues first boiled to the top the steering wheel was a
killer to be banshed. Then they realized how many lives were being saved by
the feel of the car.

Electric cars have a simple drive, a motor in a wheel. But to control that
motor pushes the complexity into the power control circuits. We have no high
power contol technology that is cheep and easy. Star Wars has not begot
anything good enough to use.Did not thingk of it

Methanol is considerably more expensive to produce than gasoline. It is
also quite toxic by inhalation and has a high vapor pressure. It is also
hygroscopic, which leads to corrosion. 

Biofuels are a "last resort". "Gasohol" is/was a subsidy to farmers, and
also diverted resources that would be better used for food production.
Farming wastes are *best* returned to the soil, to maintain fertility.

Fuel cells are the best choice as they can make use of a variety of liquid
and gaseous fuels, and have a higher efficiency than internal combustion
engines. The capital cost is the major economic problem. 

The *even better* choice is conservation - public transportation, smaller
cars, car pooling, etc. This extends our fuel resources most efficiently
at very low cost. 

seena put his finger on the current madness - primarily looking for ways
to find new resources to squander. The SUV craze is the most bizzare example
of this. 

(Smaller cars *and* carpooling?  I have yet to see a small car that can
fit me comfortably in the back, and I'm not even that big.)

i think hybrid vehicles are really the next thing.  combinations like electric
powered with a small internal combustion generator to recharge when needed,
etc.

Isn't there some way to produce methanol from agricultural wastes, using
fermentation, while preserving the nutrient part of the wastes, which is the
nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, not the carbon and hydrogen?
I found a chapter in Phillip Ball's 1997 Made to Measure, New MAterialsf or
the 21st Century, on different sorts of batteries and on fuel cells and solar
power.  Let's stick to fuel cells, first.  They may be expensive as regards
technology, but so are internal combustion engines.  If you made enough of
the fuel cell type, costs would go way down.  
        In the hydrogen fuel cell, there are two separate cells, one with
oxygen, the other with hydrogen (you can substitute other fuels).  There is
an electrode in each cell.  The gases are bubbled through solution over the
metal electrode, they give up or accept an electron via the metal, and you
have electricity.  (I presume there is some way to join the resulting ions
to make water).  Other cells can burn methane, and produce CO2 and water, but
they operate much more efficiently than just burning the methane (natural
gas).  These cells can be made very lightweight, and you can refuel rather
than carrying a heavy battery.  They were used in the 1960s on the Apollo.
IF you use an acid rather than alkaline electrolyte solution it can tolerate
carbon dioxide impurities in the fuel, and you can even use air instead of
oxygen.  200 phosphoric acid fuel cells can generate 210 kW at 140 volts.
        You can also burn methanol in a fuel cell.  
        A typical acid fuel cell is less than 40% efficient.  "That's still
better than an internal combustion engine".  At the moment they cost twice
as much as a conventional power plant per kilowatt.
        Vancouver put in a hydrogen powered bus in 1993, Chicago was supposed
to have one that can go 200 miles by 1996, and eventually all 2000 buses
should be fuel-cell types.  Ballard was planning full commercial production
by 1998.
        Cars are not designed to carry such bulky fuel, but can instead use
methanol.  (Rane, gasoline fumes are also toxic, is there much difference?)
Methanol generates less CO2 than gasoline.  The methanol is catalytically
converted to hydrogen, and can store more energy in the same volume.
        Reasons to convert away from combustion-powered vehciles include
pollution, noise, and the fact that these fuels will run out.  Simply using
less of them will just postpone this.

From www.ttcorp.com/nha/advocate/ad24cta.htm, it appears that Chicago was
about a year behind schedule.  Excerpts from the website:
                                      
   Chicago Chooses Nonpolluting Fuel Cell Buses for City’s Public
   Transit
   Air Quality Grants, Stock Options Provide Financial Incentives
   
   by Jacquelyn A. Cochran, Director of Publications, National Hydrogen
   Association
   _________________________________________________________________
   The Chicago (Illinois, U.S.A.) Transit Authority announced in
   September that it had added the first of three zero-emission fuel
   cell-powered buses to its service fleet. A partnership between the CTA
   and Ballard Power Systems, maker of the fuel cell engine which powers
   the vehicles, will test the buses on actual public transit routes for
   two years.
   
   Once bus operators have been trained to operate and maintain them, the
   fuel cell buses will be placed into revenue service later this year.
   The three routes where the buses will run were chosen because they all
   operate out of the same garage where the fueling station will be
   located and because they travel through the downtown area where the
   highest concentration of pollutants are created.

[part of section omitted on grants that funded this]

 Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grants
   from the Federal Transit Administration (80%) and monies from the
   Regional Transportation Authority (20%) provided a total of US$6.7
   million toward the project.
   
   The cost of the three Ballard fuel cell buses was US$1.4 million each.
   Spare parts, maintenance, training, and engineering are expected to
   cost US$1.6 million. Construction of the fueling station and the
   hydrogen fuel cost US$900,000. An additional US$2.9 million was
   provided by the FTA and the RTA to modify an existing CTA bus garage
   that will house the new buses and to pay for additional site work,
   labor costs by field forces, and additional monitoring systems. In
   total, US$9.6 million was allocated for this project.
   
   A newly built hydrogen fueling station at CTA’s Chicago Avenue
   Garage houses the storage tank and refueling equipment for the fuel
   cell buses. Air Products & Chemicals, Inc., built and maintains the
   fueling facility, is supplying the hydrogen (derived from natural
   gas), and is training CTA staff in safety and refueling procedures.
   
   [INLINE] ©Copyright 1997. All Rights Reserved.
[the webpage was updated this January, don't know if they referred to the
buses put into Service Sept. 1997 or 96]

In my ongoing attempts to cope with the expanding universe, I've looked into
these things myself. I have found:

* Solar power yields 1300 watts per square meter, directly facing the sun.
  The conversion efficiency is probably up to 10% by now.

* An _Impala_ class passenger car requires 25000 watts to cruise at 60 MPH.
  A _Monte Carlo_ I think measured out at around 17000 to 19000 watts. This
  is what must reach the drive wheels.

* Fuel costs as of the early '80s:
        Propane         $1.30 per gallon equivalent of gasoline
        Methanol        $2 to $2.50 per GEG
        Ethanol         $2 to $2.50 /GEG
        Methane         50 cents /GEG
        Wood (purchased)  33 cents/GEG

* The wood gas burner works by burning the wood with insufficient oxygen, thus
  producing carbon monoxide, which is combustable, and feeding that into the
  intake manifold. along with enough oxygen to burn it. The major problem with
  the wood gasogen is that air is mostly nitrogen, which means that your fuel
  is diluted right from the start. The end result of the calculations was that
  a _Delta_ which topped out at 100 MPH on gasoline was expected to barely
  make one-minute miles on wood gas. Other problems included ash particles
  in the wood gas.

  Nonetheless, it was the most attractive option, since not only would it have
  been the cheapest per BTU to buy fuel for, but would also have allowed
  wilderness refueling. So I looked into it a bit more closely than otherwise.
  Unfortunately, I had no place to work on it at the time.

* Electricity from the power company currently costs about 13 cents a kilowatt
  -hour (Detroit Edison) (or around 10 cents/kw-hr from Wyandotte Municipal.)
  Gasoline out of the pump works out to about 2.2 cents/kw-hr.

* The Otto engine cycle running an 8:1 compression ratio has a maximum
  theoretical thermal efficiency of around 65%.

* And finally, fuel consumption accounts for only about 20% to 25% of the
  total cost of running a car. Half or more is in the purchase price, along
  with the fact that the machine eventually wears out and needs repair or
  replacement.

Detroit Edison is selling us power at 9.13 cents/kWh.
Their special electric vehicle rate (7 pm - 10 am) is about 4 cents/kWh.
I live in Ann Arbor, where do you live?
The cost of running our car is primarily the $25 a month or so for minimum
required insurance.  The car goes about 1500 miles/year at 35 mpg.  At
$1/gallon, about $45 for gasoline.  A new muffler was $90.

What happens to all the pollution in the form of wood smoke?  And how
air-tight is the system that gets the carbon monoxide to the air?

I would expect that a car running on a battery would not need the muffler
replaced too often.  Probably the same for fuel cell technology.
And you would not be repairing the engine.  Less or no corrosion.
What maintenance costs would be involved in a battery-driven car?

Correct that electric rate for electric vehicles to:
3.90 cents offpeak June-Sept, 2.90 cents Oct-May.
Sounds like electricity could be competitively priced quite soon.
Particularly if gasoline were taxed higher to penalize the pollution.

        One benefit of the wood gas generator is you can burn almost anything,
old tires are said to work great but filthy.
        Ballard is in production and among other things has teamed up with Ford
Motor Co. to produce foel cell vehicles, I believe they are doing pickups.
        If anyone wants to see a miniature fuel cell run a fan off the sun,
come to the Urban Options renewables day in Lansing , April 18, Keesan is
looking to car pool. I'm going to enter a car pool item, it may come in handy
for many events.
        Electric vehicles are quiet, thoy dont need mufflers. A friend has
driven the GM Impact, he says it silent at idle<no motor turns) and under
acceleration you only get road noise. Lots of power. When U.S. Solar comes
through with a battery breakthrough we'll start seeing EVs on the roado

Methanol is primarily the fuel used by Indy style cars.  It is less efficient
(The turbocharged CART rules engines burn about 1.8 miles a gallon over the
course of the race, and are capable of worse numbers), and expensive.  It is
less likely to catch fire than conventional gasoline, but it burns clear--you
can't see it.  This has caused the occasional problem in race condition pit
lanes, most notably at the 1981 Indianapolis 500 when Rick Mears caught on
fire along with his car.  Methanol is a usable fuel, but it's not very
practical.

(In the 1994 German Grand Prix, Jos Verstappen's pit stop turned into a very
visible inferno when a connection problem caused less than a liter of gasoline
to spill out over a wide area, including much of the pit crew and Verstappen
himself.  The fire was very visible and caused only minor injuries)

Electric powered with gasoline to recharge is *very* inefficient - plus
the battery problem. Fuel cells skip the heat-engine-electric generator
links. 

Fermentation yields ethanol, not methanol. Methanol must be synthesized.
The soil also needs the cellulose and lignin, etc, for the creation of
humus to create loams. Otherwise you will end up with clay/sand.

The description of a fuel cell in #17 is not correct. The electrodes are
porous and on opposite sides of a porous (ceramic, e.g.) membrane, in which
is the electrolyte (e.g., potassium hydroxide). 

Gasoline fumes are obnoxious. Methanol fumes are rather pleasant. Also, the
vapor pressure of methanol is higher than gasoline, so the concentration
is higher (and higher losses by evaporation). Gasoline fumes make you sick
first. Methanol fumes make you blind.

Ethanol powered cars.  I can just imagine that!  Russian MIG fighters
used ethanol in their cooling systems.  However, they had problems with
the pilots drinking the coolant.

Urban planning has never looked better.

I meant to include in #24 that one problem with fuel cells that has not
yet been surmounted is that they only run cleanly, without gunking up,
on hydrogen-oxygen. The oxidation conditions are mild, so other carbon-based
fuels produce byproducts, including elemental carbon. These can accumulate
and kill the reaction sites.

re #22 and previous entries:  we are supposed to be talking about cleaner
vehicles here rather than renewable energy.  I agree that wood and tires are
renewable, but are they clean-burning?
re #24.  Rane, the cellulose production by the plant is not exactly removing
humus from the soil, is it?  It comes from carbon dioxide and water.  It is
helpful to return the other elements to the soil, but adding cellulose would
be more soil improvement than preservation.  
        Could you check on methods of synthesizing methanol from plant
materials?  I know you can get methane from city dumps by fermenting, and
ethanol, there must be something that produces methanol, I would think.
        Doo you know how fuel cells that accumulate carbon can be ungunked?
        Jim points out that only up to about 10% methanol can be added to
gasoine for use in traditional internal combustion engines, in cold climates,
because it won't work in the cold.  Probably would work in California.   Does
anyon know if methanol is used in steam-powered vehicles?  And would it work
in fuel cells in cold climates?  The methane type fuel cells operate by
generating hydrogen from the methane, which is natural gas.  Seems like some
of the methane, assuming you have a tankful, could be used to heat the vehicle
by more conventional means.  And you should not need a very large tank if
there are refueling stations are close together as gas stations are now.

Soil accumulates humus from the decomposition of the plant litter. Humus
slowly oxidizes and disappears on its own otherwise, and the texture,
body, ability to hold moisture, tillability, etc, become worse. The plants
are indeed making cellulose from CO2 and H20, but if a lot of that is not
returned to the soil, humus production stops. *Very little* of most food
crops is collected as food/textile/feed products, and the rest is usually
plowed back in.

You can synthesize some methanol by oxidizing methane, though with very
poor yield.  The production of methane from fermentation of plant
materials is very slow. There exists no current process for converting
plant materials to methane with any significant efficiency. Sewage
treatment plants produce methane with anaerobic digestion, enough to
provide their own power needs, but that is a tiny fraction of the energy
potential of the sewage. Methanol used to be made by the destructive
distillation of wood (that's why it is called "wood alcohol"), also with
poor yield. It is now synthesized from a CO + H2 mixture ("synthesis gas") 
which is produced by the partial combustion of methane. A LOT of research
has gone into finding a direct CH4 --> CH3OH route, but without success. I
had a couple of students working on it for a while because I thought I had
a "good" idea...which did not pan out. 

Algae might be a better starting place to make alcohol or whatever than
land plants; if I remember right, it's a lot more efficient at turning
sunlight into carbohydrates.

From the human safety standpoint, ethanol is definitely preferable to
methanol.  While methanol & ethanol don't contain quite as much energy
as gasoline, the difference is not that much - it should be quite
feasible to design vehicles that burn these that have the same cruising
range as gasoline automobiles today.

Natural gas does have some nice advantages.  It burns cleanly, is
readily available, and cheap.  Unfortunately, the common source, pipes
sunk deep into rocks, consists of fossil carbon and so contributes to
global warming.  It's also somewhat tricky to ship and store.  The 2
usual solutions, pressurized gas, and liquified (really *cold*) gas,
both pose obvious accident risks.  Propane is almost as good as methane,
and not quite as much of a nuisance and danger to ship.

In biochemistry, of course, the most comon energy source is sugar.
Sugar will, in fact, burn quite nicely, with a pretty blue flame, if I
remember right.  It should, therefore, work pretty nicely as a fuel for
a steam boiler.  Since sugar liquifies at a fairly low temperature, in
theory, it ought not to be much trouble to make it work in a diesel
engine.  Of course, starting such an engine cold could be a bit
"interesting".  It is also known, for a fact, that it's possible to make
a room temperature fuel cell that burns sugar cleanly, producing only
water & carbon dioxide.  Existing fuel cells for gasoline run at a high
temperature, and in addition to the carbon fouling problem Rane
mentioned, also produce significant amounts of NOx (if using air).

with sugar as a fuel, how do you make sure it burns completely, and without
gunking things up (caramelizing) and doing the old sugar-in-the-gas-tank
thing?

Sugar does not dissolve in gasoline, or so I have been told.  I was at the
builders show, at the Saline Fairgrounds, last night and I saw that MichCon
had a natural gas burning car on display.  However their booth was poorly
maned so I wasn't able to talk to anyone about it or the flexible gas pipe
they had on display.
 
Powdered wood, grain, etc. also could be burnt in an internal combustion
engine.

        So would those high maintenance fuel cells be useable in 
maintenance available fleets such as busses, taxis and small trucks
(the UPS delivery truck size)?

The ones I recalled had a 500 hr mean life, and probably cost a pretty
pennny (lots of expensive catalysts, etc.)  I suppose if you didn't mind
paying something like $20K every 3 months, they'd be "practical" for a
fleet.  My suspicion is they're only really suitable for military use at
this point ($20K might be a fair price for an emergency gasoline
generator that is absolutely silent and so doesn't attract sniper fire
or guerilla raids.)

A problem with changing over to a new fuel system is that it will either be
dreadfully expensive or take a fair number of years to complete.  Engines that
burn gasoline will not burn methanol properly.  Rebuilding everything (not
the entire engine, but the relevant parts) would cost a fair amount, and the
alternative is to just let alternative fuel engines work their way in, which
is a long and difficult process to maintain.

The library has a book on the history of electric automobiles, with Appendix
one containing a section on converting.  They figure $2500 or more to convert:
car purchase                    $200-400   (if you don't have one already)
electric motor             $300-1800
machine shop work                 $500-700
(you could do this part yourself, of course)
controller (what does this do?)   $600-1200
batteries (72 volt)                $600-700
charger                     $200-700
cables and misc            $300-500

I expect many of these items could be found used.  
The author converted a DAF and drove it for 16 years, with expenses being
$392/year (including purchase price, don't know about fuel) compared with
Runzheimer's 1991 annual cost of $5820 for a new conventional car.
He recommends buying something cheap with an inoperative engine, with a body
that is in good shape (no rust), something with cheap replacement parts.
There is a long list of suggestions.  The most efficient on the list seems
to be the Dodge Colt (we have one with an engine) - lowest RMP/mile. followed
by Honda Accord.  (1993 calculations).
The library also has a small booklet on alternative fuels (badly spelled)
(misspelled carburetor) and one on methanol as a car fuel.
        I will summarize info on batteries later.
What is the life of a typical electric-car battery, and do they actually conk
out after a certain usage, or just get to the point where they don't hold a
charge as long, but could be purchased cheaply for those who don't care?

How old is that book?  I find the $200-$400 cost for "car purchase" to be
awfully low.

remember that this is a car without a functional engine.  for most people,
this is scrap or parts.  seems reasonable to me.

Re #35: if you want to use methanol as fuel, you would have to rebuild
essentially the entire engine. Both gasoline and methanol produce water
vapor on combustion, but the hot engine prevents condensation and subsequent
corrosion. However methanol itself absorbs and contains water, which gasoline
does not, so the raw fuel can lead to corrosion of both steel and aluminum.
Therefore the fuel handling system would have to be changed. In addition,
methanol bvurns to prouduce a somewhat different set of partially-burnt
products than does gasoline. One component is formaldehyde. Also, acids
are produced. The first is toxic, and the latter would pose a different
corrosion problem in the rest of the engine.  

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss