Detroit - “We’ll Stick With Gas”
DETROIT — We’ll stick with gasoline. That was the conclusion of a panel of experts discussing alternative fuels at the SAE World Congress on Wednesday. Panelists said that gasoline will continue to dominate until the industry begins mass production of fuel cells and other electrically powered vehicles. The panel spent most of its time discussing ethanol. Hydrogen was all but ignored. Panelists said another alternative fuel, compressed natural gas, was best used as a niche fuel for urban transit buses, rather than passenger vehicles. Joseph Kaufman, manager of fuels and vehicle trends at petroleum producer ConocoPhillips, said petroleum-based fuels, as well as liquid biofuels that can be blended into them, will continue to carry most of the energy load in this country for the next few decades. Internal combustion engines will continue to dominate, he said, even as they become more sophisticated.
Kaufman said there is a tendency to minimize potential negatives associated with fuels seen as replacements for gasoline. Alternative fuels may work fine in small quantities, but the real test of their viability won’t come until mass production begins, he said. ” The attributes of fuel produced on a small scale are easily ignored,” said Kaufman. Flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on any combination of gasoline and E85 ethanol are a ” bridging” technology that can help cut petroleum dependence, said Meg Novacek, director of powertrain systems engineering at Chrysler LLC. E85 is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. But because ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, the price has to be brought low enough to encourage people to buy it, she said. ” Customers are only going to buy what makes sense for their budget,” Novacek said. ” We have to make it cost-effective so there is market demand to buy E85.” According AAA, the current nationwide average price of regular gasoline is about $3.40 a gallon. E85 is selling for about $2.79 a gallon. But if you factor in the fuel’s lower energy content — and the resulting decrease in a vehicle’s miles per gallon — the price is $3.67 a gallon, AAA reports.
Mark Maher, executive director of vehicle powertrain engineering at General Motors, said the nation would see ” meaningful quantities” of ethanol from non-food sources in the next five to 10 years. GM recently entered a partnership with Coskata Inc., a producer of non-food, or cellulosic ethanol. The federal government has set aggressive goals to increase ethanol production. Even non-flexible fuel vehicles can run on up to 10 percent ethanol, or E10, but the Department of Energy, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and others have begun studying the idea of introducing ” intermediate” gasoline blends that contain 15 or even 20 percent ethanol. Novacek and Maher urged caution. They said higher blends could damage vehicles not optimized to handle high concentrations of ethanol. Also, they said, many non-vehicle engines, such as those found on lawnmowers, may not be able to handle more ethanol. Panelists disputed a widely held belief that ethanol production consumes more energy than the fuel produces, but Kaufman said issues such as ethanol’s effect on land use and the availability of food crops cannot be ignored. ” We have to really be careful we’re making ethical decisions around energy and transportation,” he said. ” This is not an insignificant issue.”
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