The Fuel of the Future

Validating Thomas Edison

At the turn of the last century, cars came in steam, electric, and gasoline versions. When Thomas Edison was asked which he favored, without hesitating, his reply was electric cars. They didn’t have the vibration, noise, and smell associated with gasoline cars or the long start up times and limited range of steam cars. Had someone listened to him at the time, we might not now be stuck with a 19th century technology that requires us to send huge amounts of money to countries whose chief exports are petroleum and terrorists.

In spite of huge vested interests in the status quo, it’s no longer a question of whether cars with combustion engines will end up in museums, but when. Ultimately, the demise of this technology will come down to economics and consumer satisfaction. The next generation of cars will cost less to drive, will require less maintenance, and won’t require the sacrifice of size or comfort.

The Contenders

If it were possible to harness all the hot air coming out of our politicians on this subject, we could probably power our cars indefinitely. However, until that day comes, the fuels being most widely considered are ethanol/biofuels, hydrogen, and electricity. There’s also a very interesting newcomer to this discussion, compressed natural gas (CNG).

The Bipartisan Choice

At present, subsidies for ethanol dwarf our spending on any other form of alternative fuel. This is the bipartisan choice, supported by both Democrats and Republicans. That alone should be a red flag.
Treating what is basically moonshine as the answer to our dependence on oil from the Middle East is as silly as it sounds. However, the politics behind this idea appear to be more than enough to trump common sense for the time being.

Farmers are the largest contributors to politicians in most states. While they’re generally found in more red states than blue states, they usually have sense enough to shower both parties with contributions and have bought broad support for ethanol subsidies as a result.

Meanwhile, the auto industry is desperately looking for another fuel to keep cars powered by the combustion engine alive because the parts and service business for the next generation of vehicles is likely to be a lot less lucrative. It doesn’t hurt that the auto industry is also one of the last bastions of union labor in the private sector or that Michigan is a swing state. As a result, both parties are inclined to make sure that what the auto industry wants, it gets. This brings to mind the saying “be careful what you wish for”.

Politics aside, ethanol is a train wreck. It costs more than gasoline to use because it reduces mileage. People don’t eat less just because their food is being turned into fuel so it drives up food prices by shrinking the supply of food while the population continues to grow. It requires a huge and very expensive infrastructure. Finally, it can never be produced in enough quantity to satisfy the demand for vehicle fuel in this country. It never has been, and never will be, a serious solution to our energy problem. All it shows is that government solutions to problems invariably involve the politically connected and waste huge amounts of taxpayer dollars.

Renewable, Plentiful & Sooooo Expensive

Hydrogen is the next candidate. It’s everywhere. It’s plentiful. It’s renewable. You can even make the stuff from water. When it comes to alternative fuels, it might also be the only idea that’s makes ethanol look good in comparison.

There is no pure hydrogen anywhere on this planet, so it requires energy to separate hydrogen molecules. Almost all the hydrogen today is produced from natural gas in a conversion process that requires more energy than it produces. By the time this process spits out hydrogen, about 60% of the original energy has been lost. It can also be made by electrolysis but the economics of getting hydrogen from water are even worse, so this accounts for only small percentage of the hydrogen available commercially.

I recently drove a Toyota powered by a fuel cell that ran on compressed hydrogen during hydrogen day at Exposition Park (Los Angeles) on 8/23/08. Acceleration was a bit sluggish, but the SUV was solid and quiet, had the usual amenities, had enough range to drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles on a tank of compressed hydrogen, and had enough room for passengers and cargo.

The event was littered with auto company representatives that were pretty vague when it came to costs. I finally found a graduate student involved in hydrogen car research that had access to a hydrogen filling station at his university. According to him, the hydrogen equivalent of a gallon of gasoline costs $5 there and is heavily subsidized. The cost of the fuel cell to turn the hydrogen into electricity to power the car is still in six figures, but is expected to come down if this technology becomes more widely adopted.

To prove the point about this technology still having poor economics, Toyota recently announced plans to begin leasing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in Japan that are very similar to the one I drove. The cost is $7,700 per month for a 30 month lease, which doesn’t include the cost of hydrogen.

Between the cost as well as nagging safety issues (hydrogen is 10 times more flammable than gasoline and 20 times more explosive) my guess is a better technology will cause the government grants keeping this technology alive to dry up well before the economics of hydrogen ever allow it to be widely adopted as a vehicle fuel. This is a technology in desperate need of a several major breakthroughs before it’s even close to becoming viable.

The Clean Fossil Fuel

It’s hard to see much sense in wasting 60% of the energy in natural gas to turn it into hydrogen which then requires a fuel cell that costs six figures to turn it into electricity, and then requires an electric drive to power the result. Why not just compress the natural gas (CNG), make a few modifications to the car so the combustion engine can burn it, and then save 40% on the cost of vehicle fuel? As CNG burns much cleaner than gasoline, this will also reduce emissions.

Since natural gas is a hydrocarbon that isn’t renewable, we still have the long term problem of finite supplies. In addition, natural gas produces less energy than a comparable amount of gasoline, so the range of CNG vehicles tends to be less and the storage tank tends to be bigger, which reduces the amount of space available for passengers and cargo. For reference, the only car available designed specifically to run on CNG is the Honda Civic GX. It has a price tag of $24,590 and a range of around 170 miles.

For alternatives to gasoline, building the necessary infrastructure is the biggest challenge and CNG is no exception. There are only about 1100 CNG filling stations in the U.S. and only about half are open to the public. This compares with around 170,000 gasoline stations in the U.S. and leaves us with a familiar Catch 22 when it comes to alternative fuels. The demand for CNG vehicles is limited by the low number of available refueling stations, but these stations may not be built until there are more CNG vehicles on the road.

However, when compared with ethanol and hydrogen, CNG looks like the pick of the litter. Because of this idea is finally starting to get some traction. Finite supplies mean this is more of a stopgap measure than a long term solution to our energy problems. However, the sources of supply are more stable (Canada, U.S. & Mexico) it is less expensive than gasoline, and existing vehicles can be adapted to use it as a fuel. Developing additional supplies will have to overcome the usual opposition from the environmental movement and it remains to be seen if CNG will still be competitive when the cost of building more infrastructure is added in and increasing demand bumps up against finite supplies.

The Combustion Engine Slayer

It has taken a century, but Thomas Edison’s favorite vehicle fuel is finally poised to begin the process of changing what we drive. Vehicles powered by electricity (EVs) are going to make the internal combustion engine look like a noisy, inefficient, heat-blasting, poison-spewing monster with too many moving parts in comparison.

Unlike combustion engines, electric drives are very efficient, have few moving parts, are very quiet, and can go a lot longer with less maintenance. This is not exactly good news for automakers that have built up a very lucrative parts and service business to support the combustion engine. Toyota in particular has been especially egregious in requiring its customers to have their cars serviced by a dealer every 5,000 miles and pay through the nose for the privilege. Their reaction to this revolution has been to drag their feet as long as possible when it comes to introducing a plug-in (PHEV) Prius and ignore EVs completely in the hope they’ll go away. For companies like General Motors that get it, Toyota’s uncharacteristic lack of vision gives GM an opportunity to recapture lost market share. It’s pretty safe to say that driving costs of a few pennies a mile coupled with extended service intervals and substantial savings on maintenance will make EVs and PHEVs a big hit with consumers.

For Thomas Edison’s vision to be fully realized, a nationwide network of charging stations will still have to be built. Electricity is already widely available, so the infrastructure problems for this technology appear to be less daunting. In addition, several companies have already developed lithium batteries that can fully recharge in the time it takes to fill a gas tank, which will minimize the inconvenience factor. The last nail in the coffin for combustion engines is another battery breakthrough that dramatically increases the range of electric vehicles. Recently, there has been a very promising discovery http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html that may solve this problem. Whether this or something else overcomes the final hurdle, the chances are very high that EVs will eliminate the need for the internal combustion engine within a decade.

In the meantime, however, lithium battery technology will allow hybrids to take the next step by turning them into plug-in hybrids. This is now possible because batteries made of lithium are lighter and can store several times more electricity than batteries made of lead or nickel.

(Left) The Fisker Karma plug-in, available in 2009 for about $80k.





These add less weight to a vehicle and dramatically increase its range. If you look through the archives of, you’ll see a flood of recent announcements about lithium batteries for vehicles going into mass production along with almost daily announcements about new hybrid, PHEV, and EV introductions. This time, the genie is out of the bottle for good.

Initial lithium battery plug-ins will have a range of up to 50 miles on the batteries alone. While that may not sound like much, keep in mind that 80% of the people in this country drive 50 miles a day or less so this can eliminate most of the demand for gasoline and CNG could eliminate the rest. If your PHEV is charged at off peak hours when you’re asleep, the fuel cost will be a few pennies per mile.

Rethinking the AutomobiIe

With about three dozen EVs and PHEVs now on the drawing boards, in production, or for sale, a whole new generation of independent automakers is getting involved. Since most of them don’t come from Detroit, they don’t know that a car should be a boxy, rectangular thing with four wheels that’s made out of steel. New materials and new designs are going to create lighter, more aerodynamic vehicles that also help to increase the range of battery power. Electric drives will also allow designers to produce cars that destroy the stereotypes most people have about EV performance.

EVs allow an electric drive to be placed on each wheel, which is a far more efficient way of powering a car. If your stereotype of an EV is a pimped out golf cart for environmentalists, think again. Designers in Japan have already doubled the number of wheels to eight, attached an electric drive to each one, and created the Eliica (pictured above) with a top speed of 230 MPH. Here’s how it stacks up against a Porche.

(Left) The founders of Google have invested in the Aptera, now available in fully electric or plug-in versions for under $30K.

Designers are also going the opposite direction. Currently, there are several three wheel vehicles now in production or on the drawing boards. These have room for two, but qualify as motorcycles in most states including California which means that a lone driver has access to the carpool lane on the freeways. The leading company in this area appears to be Aptera.

For anyone getting a little bored with their automotive choices, the world is about to get a LOT more interesting.