Gripen here. This is a long post, as is my style, so consider that fair warning. I figure if you’re reading this blog you have a little free time on your hands anyway.
As many regular visitors to Swade’s blog know I’m the resident “treehugger” at TS. Now, let me temper that statement by pointing-out I’m not a nutcase extremist like those Greenies in New Zealand, Australia, and Belgium attacking Saab for trying to do the right thing. Like my political beliefs, in regards to my environmental beliefs I tend to fall smack-dab in the center between extremes. For example, I wouldn’t own a HUMMER, but I wouldn’t own a Prius either. I might own a Chevy Volt, Opel Flextreme, Tesla Roadster, Tesla WhiteStar or Tesla BlueStar if I could, though.
So due to Saab’s traditional ethos of “rightsizing” they’re a good fit for me.
There’s a big political push in the U.S. right now for “reducing our dependence on foreign oil” to achieve “energy independence and security” and we’ve heard previously that Sweden has a goal in pushing ethanol – to wean itself off of petroleum by 2020. Could it be that driving a BioPower Saab running on E85 would help further that goal more than driving a Toyota Prius?
Absolutely. Read on.
Now, making a statement like that I’m of course going to have to explain myself. I recently received a flex-fuel capable lease car from my employer. It’s a 2008 Chevrolet Impala LS. It has a 3.5-liter V6 engine with variable valve timing. I looked-up this car at fueleconomy.gov and compared it to the Toyota Prius.
Running on E85 and assuming 15,000 miles per-year driven with a mix of 45% city and 55% highway driving the Impala will consume 5 barrels of petroleum per year. With the same parameters the Prius will consume 7.4 barrels of petroleum per year. Now, I know this isn’t directly comparing the Saab to the Prius, but that’s something I can’t do because the BioPower Saabs are not offered in the U.S. market yet.
However, using common sense and knowing that the Saab has two fewer cylinders and a smaller displacement engine than the Impala (2 liters versus 3.5 liters) and that it’s a smaller and lighter car, it’s logical to figure that the Saab would consume even less petroleum per year running on E85 than the Impala.
Here are the numbers for the Impala and that gas-guzzler Prius:
I’m seriously thinking about buying one of those scrolling LED signs for the back window of my Impala and setting it up to read, “Reducing our dependence on foreign oil: This car running on E85 ethanol consumes less gasoline than your Prius” just to stick-it to those high-and-mighty Prius owners!
——
Living in Los Angeles, California, U.S. of A, I see a lot of self-important people driving hybrids around, particularly the Prius. I’d love to know how many Prius (I’ve read that’s the plural, just like “moose”) Toyota has sold in California alone, or how many Honda, Lexus, Ford, and Toyota hybrids have been sold in the state. They’re everywhere!
An added bonus of owning a Prius or a Honda Civic Hybrid in California is that you can buy a permit which allows you to display a sticker on your car and drive in the high-occupancy vehicle (“carpool”) lanes even if you have no passengers. Long-distance commuters really like this as they can often speed around traffic jams even though they’re alone in their car. Not every hybrid vehicle owner can apply for one of these special permits, only the most fuel-efficient and least-polluting models. The vehicle has to get over 45 miles-per-U.S.-gallon (5.22 liters-per-100-km or 54 miles-per-Imperial-gallon) highway and meet California’s advanced technology partial zero-emission vehicle (AT PZEV) standard for criteria pollutant emissions. As of 2007 only two models qualified (the Prius and the Civic Hybrid).
To give you an idea of how popular hybrids are in California, 85,000 stickers are issued per-year, and only to hybrids which meet the strict standards detailed above. Last year the state had issued 85,700 stickers by early February. Keep in mind that only two hybrid models qualify. So Toyota and Honda sold more than 85,000 Prius and Civic Hybrid models in about five months (assuming the 2007 models went on sale in September 2006) in California alone. To put that into context, Saab sold 32,711 vehicles in the entire United States in 2007. That’s for the entire year. Toyota and Honda sold more than two-and-a-half times more Prius and Civic Hybrid models in about five months in the State of California alone than Saab sold 9-3, 9-5, and 9-7X models in the entire nation in twelve months.
Sadly, the demand for these stickers is so great it has led to a black market of stolen stickers! Also, used cars with the stickers are fetching a premium of up to USD4K for the privilege of using the carpool lanes. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a USD4K premium on the resale value of your Saab?
Personally, while I’m concerned about particulate matter emissions (the cancer rates of residents in the area of the ports where the air is most polluted by diesel emissions is multiple times the national average) and NOx emissions (I can see a marked improvement in air quality since the state started cracking-down on emissions since I was a kid), I’m most concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on global climate change.
Therefore I believe that that ethanol technology is a better solution than gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles right now. Of course, Saab’s BioPower plug-in hybrid technology would be even better!
When a larger portion of the U.S. ethanol supply comes from cellulosic processes, preferably from waste feedstock, rather than the currently-favored corn-based ethanol it’ll make ethanol even more attractive and a viable option for BioPower customers. General Motors’ recent deal with Coskata announced at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit will help further that cause.
Saab is targeting the 2.0T BioPower 9-3 for sale in the U.S. in “early 2009”, according to Saab USA President Steve Shannon in his presentation at the 2008 9-3 media debut in Washington, D.C. in August, 2007.
Shortly after Saab starts selling BioPower cars in the U.S, we’ll start seeing second-generation biofuels in the marketplace. The U.S. Department of Energy is investing US$114M in four small-scale cellulosic ethanol plants with a second round of funding this Spring of up to US$200M to be invested. GM’s partner Coskata could possibly receive some of this funding.
So after all that, what I wanted to point-out is something I discovered that I hadn’t heard anywhere else before: running your car on E85 uses less gasoline than a Toyota Prius hybrid. Your BioPowered Saab could be more “green” than the most efficient gasoline-electric hybrid.
If only more people knew about it.
Excellent points Gripen! I never really stopped and noticed that an E85 vehicle uses less gas then the all mighty Prius! It’s a shame that E85 is so sparse in the US. It’s nice to see that other people share my belief that the Prius is not the savior of the automobile and the environment. Plus it’s the dumbest looking car ever!
What might be interesting to know is the carbon output. We’d need to know what’s the net carbon output of ethanol (corn-based vs cellulosic) and gas rather than just consumption of gas only.
Measure in terms of Co2 release (tailpipe as well as production and transportation of each fuel).
Well done Gripen. Can’t agree with you more. The Hybrid car is the biggest lie in the motor industry at the moment. The lifecycle footprint of these cars are worse then normal gasoline cars. Other then what is pointed about in this blog The big problem is the batteries. They are still lead acid, which are difficult to recycle and pollutant. These also need to be replaced on average every 10 years, causing the average car in Aus to go through 2 – 3 sets of batteries which by the way is approx $10,000 a pop. The other big issue is the embodied energy in the car. It has two sets of engins, all the added electronics and It is heavier then a car of simalar size due to the batteries and two motors, meaning more steel to required to carry the load. So who ever thinks that they are being green by driving a hybrid is deluding themselves.
Bleuler,
It is generaly thought of that the net output is zero, as the CO2 emission put out by the car is offset by the absorbtion by the plants when they are grown.
The flip side to this, though, the one the consumer will mention, is that the E85 car comes with higher running costs. We know from your tests, Gripen, that the E85 mileage isn’t as bad as first thought, but you’re still going to be filling up more often on E85.
The altruistic notion of being ‘green’ isn’t always going to win out against the compromise that the Prius represents because the Prius makes its case with a perception of much cheaper running costs.
Offset that against the purchase price and the batteries as mentioned above, and you’ve got another picture all together, of course.
bleuler – go to the fuel economy comparison site linked in the article – it shows 6.9 tons of CO2 on E85 – 8.3 tons on gas vs. 4.0 tons for the Prius.
Another point from the comparison that Gripen glosses over is total annual fuel cost – $2250 on E85 vs $2095 on gas for the Impala (assuming E85 is 60¢/gal cheaper than gas) vs. $999 for the Prius.
IMO the most important factor in green solutions has to be reducing the total fuel used – it’s going to be a few years until there is enough E85 capacity to replace gasoline imports at current levels. Hybrids using E85 get us to the cutover faster – but I’d rather be able to buy a diesel passenger car.
Trent -
CO2 in the production (machines burning fuel, power off the grid,etc.) of ethanol and it’s transportation (unless of course it’s by trucks burning ETOH). Throw in corn-based ETOH, and it gets somewhat worse, unfortunately.
CO2 production from farm/wastedump to tailpipe (for ETOH) VS oil rig to tailpipe (for gasoline).
I’m all for cellulosic, though. Much more efficient from what I’ve read.
On the points that Tim and Blueler raise, above, something that we should all consider is that current FlexFuel vehicles have essentially taken an existing engine and converted it to accept ethanol. In the US this has mostly been as a CAFE dodging exercise. In Saab’s case they’ve also tweaked the compression and the software to take some advantage of the higher octane rating etc.
I think in the future we’ll see Saab BioPower engines that will be fully optomised for E85. i.e. I think the 27.5% fuel consumption penalty will come down by quite a bit in Saab applications as they tune the cars more and more with E85 specifically in mind as the primary fuel source.
Swade – Of course Prius drivers (and others) don’t care about being green. They care about how much cheaper the cars are at the pump, and the image that comes along with them.
If they really and truly cared about being green, they’d ride a bike and use geothermal and solar energy to heat their house.
I was wondering something…do hydrogen-powered vehicles take a huge performance hit like electric hybrids do? How does hydrogen power compare to explosion power in terms of performance?
I think the first car company that comes up with a cheap(ish), green, and attractive car that does 0 – 60 in under 6 seconds will make a fortune. The only companies doing green performance I know of are Fisker and Tesla (and I guess Koenigsegg :p), and their cars are nowhere near cheap.
I can’t believe we can send people to the moon but we can’t come up with alternative energy vehicles that are quick without charging two or three years’ salary for them.
Interesting to note that an E85 vehicle could be more fuel efficient than a prius.
In Australia i think the biopower 2.0t is the pick of the engines available in the 9-3 at the moment (twin turbo diesel not released yet). I like the increased power (similar to the 2.0T) and if the fuel economy hit is not as much as SAAB says (30%) then so much the better.
…plus you forgot to mention that Prius are about as exciting to drive as a lawnmower.
I have a conventional engined Honda Euro and it averages 7.5 L/100km. Close enough to make buying a Prius redundant.
The myths about hybrids are just populist nonsense/hysteria, much like that surrounding the fallacies about global warming.
California issued 85,000 HOV stickers which is the maximum for the vehicle code. It is not an annual limit.
Fallacies about global warming?? Craig, I hope you mean the fallacies of “it’s not happening,” “it’s liberal propaganda,” or “it’s just more hypocritical b/s from Al Gore” ??
Well, Al Gore is a little hypocritical in his points.
But more importantly, there’s been an interesting study done on how the particle pollution we have produced since the industrial revolution is actually blocking out the sun’s radiation…. Which implies that the enhanced green house effect has been slowed due to the blocking of said radiation. Such implications have lead many of the scientist to believe this is the reason why we haven’t noticed global warming sooner; even more, they wonder what the real power of global warming is without this blanket.
It’s an interesting Catch-22 or double edged sword, however you prefer to word it.
TimJ#2: I didn’t “gloss-over” anything. The article was simply pointing-out that a flex-fuel car running on E85 consumes less gasoline than a hybrid.
You quote the CO2 numbers from the EPA, but “gloss-over” the fact that those are GROSS CO2 emissions, not taking into account that the CO2 emissions from the majority of that E85 is absorbed back out of the atmosphere by the next batch of plants grown to create the next batch of ethanol. Only the gasoline portion of the E85 is a net increase of CO2 to the environment. The full 100% of the Prius’ CO2 emissions are a net increase to the environment.
If we’re discussing the CO2 emissions of the BioPower cars versus that of the Prius (which I didn’t include in the scope of the post because I didn’t want to make it any more complex) that can be calculated as well.
Using the Saab International website as a reference we learn that the CO2 emissions from the 2.0t 9-3 running on gasoline is 144 g/km combined cycle. Figuring 15,000 miles driven per-year that converts to 24,140 kilometers. That means that it generates 3,476,160 grams CO2 per year, or roughly 3.83 U.S. short tons. That’s the GROSS CO2 output from a 2.0t 9-3 sedan with a manual transmission.
Then you read the small print at the bottom of the page which says, “Regarding CO2 emissions, E85 reduces fossil carbon dioxide up to 80%”, which if I’m mistaken means that 80% of that 3.83 tons of CO2 is “renewable” and “carbon neutral”, meaning it gets canceled-out by the harvesting of the next batch of ethanol.
The final calculation would be to take 80% out of that 3.83 tons which means you’d be left with 0.766 tons of fossil fuel CO2 added annually to the atmosphere versus the Prius’ 4 tons. I’m not scientist or mathematician, so let me know if I got any of those calculations wrong.
This was far outside the scope of the point of my post, but since you brought it up I thought I’d address it with the info I have.
Bleuler: all that CO2 emitted during the production and transportation of ethanol has already been added-into the equation by the economists who have studied the ethanol versus gasoline debate and ethanol still comes out on the winning side (“energy positive”) except for one flawed study years ago which has been repeatedly debunked since then.
Trent: the Prius does not now, nor has it ever used a lead-acid battery. It uses a fully-recyclable and safe Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) battery. Some of the arguments you’re making against the Prius (while I don’t disagree with the sentiment) are a bit dated.
Next you’re going to try telling me about how a HUMMER is better for the environment overall than a Prius, right?
Gripen – I don’t know, was it a Hummer HX? :p
I looked over my calculations above and though I think I did the math right, the results just don’t seem plausible. Does anyone see where I might have messed-up?
I was going to calculate the CO2 emissions by using the fuel economy, but the fuel economy numbers at the Saab International website look fishy to me. Surely the automatic transmission-equipped 2.0t BioPower 9-3 sedan running on gasoline doesn’t get 35 miles-per-U.S.-gallon in the combined cycle does it? That seems a bit on the optimistic side. They say this is according to the “1999/100 EC directive”, but I still don’t buy it.
Let’s see, let me do the math this way: I’ll take the U.S. EPA’s fuel economy estimate for the 2.0T (I know, this will likely yield worse fuel economy than the 2.0t due to tuning differences, but it’s at least a reference point) 9-3. The automatic-equipped 2.0T 9-3 in the combined cycle gets 21 miles-per-U.S.-gallon.
Figuring 15,000 miles-per-year driven that would mean the car would consume 714.29 gallons of gasoline. The way the EPA figures CO2 output is to figure that one gallon of gasoline creates 20 pounds of CO2.
That means that 714.29 gallons of gasoline would create 14,285.8 pounds or 7.14 tons of CO2 annually.
Now, take the 80% out of that to figure the fossil fuel emissions when running on E85 and you’re left with 1.428 tons of CO2 from fossil fuels annually.
Is my math wrong? Someone point out where I’m messing up my math, please. I seriously would like to calculate this properly.
Talonderiel, my argument is a little more complex than that. Most likely synonymous with the ham fisted “religo science” being used to explain the causes, projected outcomes and the very nature of the phenomenon.
Stern report, the gratuitous exaggerations, inaccuracies and outright misrepresentations contained in Mr Gores piece of cinematic indulgence are prime examples.
I believe in cleaning up the planet but i don’t believe much of the populist nonsense being concocted keeping the global warming industry puritans in their comfy niche jobs.
Simple fact of the matter is that noone really understands the current phenomena, how long it will last and its biggest influence. I become especially critical when i see other scientific points of view rubbished, ignored and in some cases attempts to prevent them from seeing the light of day when it appears it may conflict with the popularly held point of view (sound familiar).
Yes i know the big corps are guilty of this but why imitate them?
How anyone can call this science is beyond me.
craig: are you a scientist? Because I’m not. However I’m going to believe something like 99% of scientists, whose lives are spent studying this kind of thing rather than trying to sniff-out a conspiracy at every turn.
Heck, even the Republican Presidential candidates in tonight’s debate admitted they believe that global climate change is caused by humans and is a threat. When was the last time you saw Democrats and Republicans unanimously agreeing on ANYTHING???
In regards to the CO2 emissions, According to the UK Department for Transport, the Prius is tied with the diesel MINI Cooper D as the second least CO2-emitting vehicle behind the Volkswagen Polo 1.4 TDI, so diesels are still better in that department anyway.
Craig, it seems your a little more studied up on the subject that I am at this moment… or I’d like to chalk it up to that fact that I haven’t slept in 3 days… nothing like undergrad projects, work and the military to keep you awake
I’ll briefly state that my references would come from Sir John Houghton, The IPCC studies, cross references of Paleo-climatology records and current NOAA/NWS climate records, and the information presented by each of my professors at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University – Daytona Beach, FL- where I’m working on a BS in Applied Meteorology within the field of research.
I apologize for being way too out of it to really get into the references and the dynamics of modeling future climatologies, let alone forecasting an exact answer. I will credit you with the fact that Global Warming is a relatively new study in the field of Thermodynamics, Meteorology, Atmospheric Physics, etc… and is still being studied.
To each their own, no reason to debate it here on Swade’s site any more. I thank you for the counter-argument. I always enjoy a chance to see a point of opposition, as only the real truth is seen when considering both point and counterpoint.
Even Newt Gingrich thinks conservatives should be more progressive on green issues. Clean tech is not anathema to big business. Regardless of what you think about global warming, getting more use out of limited resources and converting what was waste into energy makes economic sense. I’d rather see Saab stay on the path of trying new fuel approaches than have them wait until someone else figures out the one definitive solution.
I will keep this short and to the point:
1. the #1 problem with E85 (or any ethanol) is that production of enough ethanol to compare to 1l of gasoline uses more than 1l of gasoline.
2. The whole question of food vs energy
3. Production of Ethanol uses vast amounts of fresh water.
These are current and seirous problems. Problem #1 will hopefully be fixed as production increases and new methods are developed. But right now there are no real proofs that this is due to happen any time soon enough.
Problems #2 and #3 are more serious, as it is the countries that need food and scarse water resources best that are most likely to see that “hey, I can sell ethanol to fat lazy Europeans at 10x the value of the food I would produce”
Serious
Real
Problems
I stil endorse ethanol, as the only solution to the problems above is enough demand that the industry realises that economic gain lies in streamlining its production
The final carbondioxide emmissions of petrol, gas or ethanol during their use as car-fuels are only one of the many aspects to the environment relating influences of driving. Concerning a Saab-Biopower driving it is generally known by experience that the input of bioethanol is in a range of 35vol% higher compared to petrol. Until now there are no officially evaluated methods to determine the carbondioxide emission of a bioethanol-car.
As a much more environmental impact is to consider the production and manufacture of the above mentioned fuels. Only by exact Life Cycle Assessments relating to bioethanol, petrol, diesel or gas and their comparisons we can estimate what kind of fuel is of the lowest negative level for our environment.
In my opinion in the case of hybrid-cars we have specially to look at the details of the complex process in producing the high sophisticated batteries and the use of the expensive metals. These battery equipments and their functions are truely the real basis of hybrid-driving. Only Toyota and Honda perhaps know what the real environmental impact during the production is. But such facts they never will publish.
By the way. First. Henry Ford I was able to make cars practicable with ethanol. But the petrol lobby was stronger. Second. For nature there is no difference where the carbondioxide comes from whether it is ethanol, petrol, diesel or gas.
Saabaudi
Your last statement is wrong. The difference is that CO2 from petrol has been “excluded” from the current environment by the fact that it’s been stored as crude oil and gas in pockets deep down in the earth’s crust.
CO2 produced directly from Ethanol/Biogas comes from plants. These – as you know – “breath in” CO2 and breathe out O2. Once you burn the plant, the C that makes up the plants cellulose cinds itself to O2 and becomes CO2 in a 1-to-1 relation to the CO2 the plant used to grow.
The problem is when we convert plants into something else than CO2, such as Metahne that all our cows and pigs fart after eating plants. Cows and pigs who only exist to become steaks and saussages on our plates. Methane is a much more violent greenhouse gas than CO2 and is not recycled be plants when they grow (plant’s don’t breathe in methane)
“cinds” => “binds” in the post above
(Swade, I don’t know how to edit entries…)
TrakDah,
well but the plants don`t know where the carbondioxide is coming from when they are absorbing and making it up to cellulose and for the environmental impact there is also no difference.Think perhaps about another fact. The origins of natural gas or oil sources have been plants too which changed carbondioxide. Of course long, long times ago. But in consequence you may argue that the carbondioxide now emitted by petrol combustion once also was part of the former flora and is now given back to the actual atmosphere. In my eyes the applied 1:1 carbondioxide relating statement of the car-makers is a fitted calculation of a milkmaid.
Apologies for still playing devil’s advocate -but I wonder if the CO2-cycle argument holds up when the source matter is not a crop grown expressly for Ethanol production? Along with other byproducts, Coskata even claims to be able to use old tires as one source of material for conversion to Ethanol.
If plants would have grown anyway, then don’t the plants absorb CO2 from any exhaust pipe? I think that’s the point Saabaudi was trying to make.
TrakDah: when you look into your arguments all of them have been debunked by experts:
1. Ethanol has proven in all but one flawed study to be “energy positive”.
2. I’ll start worrying about lack of food when we come close to using all the existing arrible farmland we already have. By then cellulosic will be a reality and in production, so the yields will go up and we won’t need nearly as much source material to produce ethanol. Also, the cellulosic can be made with waste materials.
3. Current ethanol production does not come close to using quantities of water to the point where we need to worry about a lack of it. The new Coskata cellulosic process uses less than 1 gallon of water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol.
TimJ#2: the plants wouldn’t have “grown anyway”. The plants the economists are assuming will absorb the CO2 from the ethanol-powered vehicles is the next batch specifically planted on farms to replace the last batch.
I can see that this debate has turned into one based on CO2 emissions and overall environmental impact of an ethanol-powered versus a gasoline-powered parallel hybrid car.
However, the only point I was trying to make (and I admit that it’s hard to pick my point out of such a long post) is that if we’re solely talking about reducing our dependence on foreign oil to achieve energy independence and security (politicians’ catchphrase), a vehicle running on E85 is more effective than a vehicle running on gasoline, even if it is a very efficient hybrid.
To those of you who have mentioned diesel here in the comments, I had originally included a LOT of material on diesel in the post but it was decided that the post just got out of hand trying to tackle too many subjects. Maybe the diesel portion of the original post can make it into a post in the future.
Let me just point-out this ONE point for those of you in Europe or Australia who are insisting that diesel is better than E85 for the U.S.: diesel emissions laws are four times more stringent in the U.S. when it comes to nitrides of oxygen (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) than in Europe.
This means that for a diesel-powered automobile (which I’ll remind you is already more expensive to manufacture than a gasoline-powered or flex-fuel one) will have to have a lot of expensive emissions reducing equipment added to it to bring the NOx and PM levels down to a level which is acceptable to our regulations.
This will put the price to the consumer of a diesel car far out of the price range the average buyer will find acceptable and will cost more than the savings in fuel costs due to the increased fuel economy will justify. People go and buy a Prius and figure, “well, I’ll pay the hybrid price premium off in five years in fuel cost savings alone”. They likely can’t make that justification with a diesel car in the U.S.
RAND made that justification for diesel (based on existing conditions in the US):
“For all three vehicle types, the advanced diesel offers the highest savings over the life of the vehicle among the options considered.”
and: “The report finds that E85 does not generate net societal benefits unless a breakthrough reduces ethanol production costs or gas prices stay near their current high levels for a sustained period of time.
“Hybrid and diesel technology are close, but diesels have the advantage for the typical motorist, and provide a strong edge for drivers who require towing, hauling and rugged capabilities such as those offered in pick-ups,” Graham said. “Hybrids have a competitive edge for urban consumers who experience more stop-and-go city traffic.”
What is the calculation – how much of the rainforest in Amazonas has to go for a barrel of E85?
TimJ#2: thanks for the link. I scanned it but don’t have time to read it in-depth nor the original white paper.
While I respect the work RAND Corporation has done in the past I wonder if they took into effect the non-CO2 emissions from diesel and what costs would be incurred to reduce them to a level low enough to comply with current emissions regulations. They need to add that cost into the cost/benefit calculation as well.
The RAND report seems to only compare the cost-of-ownership of the various vehicle types, not the overall societal affect or environmental impact.
Ken H: I don’t know about Sweden, which imports its ethanol from Brazil, but U.S. ethanol consumes 0 hectares of Amazonian rainforest. The U.S. doesn’t allow importation of ethanol.
Gripen – RAND appears to say that there are technological challenges for each solution:
• diesel – emissions controls
• hybrid – batteries
• E85 – high volume fuel production (not a vehicle-based challenge like the others)
Their evaluation is that diesel’s hurdle is slightly lower than the others:
“While it is assumed that the hybrid vehicle will save more fuel than the advanced diesel, the overall advantage goes to the diesel because of its lower technology costs and better performance such as increased torque,” Graham said. “For E85, it is the cost of producing the fuel, not vehicular changes, that drives the negative results.”
and FYI – European emissions standards for PM and NOx from diesel cars are coming closer to the US standards within the next 6 years:
“Euro 5 will enter into force in September 2009. The main effect of Euro 5 is to reduce the emission of particulate matter from diesel cars from 25mg/km to 5mg/km. Euro 6 is scheduled to enter into force in January 2014 and will mainly reduce the emissions of NOx from diesel cars further, from 180mg/km to 80mg/km.”
TimJ#2: thanks for the info. Yes, the European standards will come more in-line with U.S. standards being enacted (Bin 5) in 2010 around 2014. Right now U.S. federal standards (Bin
which came into effect in 2007 are not quite as stringent as those in effect in California, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Bin 5 will put the current Bin 8 states in the same boat as those other 5 states, meaning there will essentially be one diesel emissions standard across all 50 states.
The result is if a car maker wants to bring a diesel for sale in the U.S. this year it has to comply with Bin 5 diesel emissions regulations to be sold in 45 states, but that won’t allow them to be sold in some of the most important car markets (CA, NY, New England). So a Euro maker who wants to sell diesels in the U.S. market should have a vehicle which is 50-state emissions complaint. In 2008 there is only one model which is available in California: the Mercedes E320 BLUETEC, which had to get a waiver from CARB to be allowed to be leased in the state as it doesn’t meet CA’s stringent emissions laws. I had more details on this in my original draft of this post, so maybe the info will make it to a future post, Swade-willing.
In 2014 it won’t be such a big deal as you mention because the entire U.S. will be on Bin 5 and Europe will be on Euro 6, meaning they’re pretty much on the same page and it’ll be much easier to bring diesel cars straight over from Europe for sale in the U.S. Of course, the down side of that is it’s six years away…
Right now diesel is great for Europe, and flex-fuel and hybrids are great for the U.S., IMHO. In Europe regulators are more concerned about CO2 emissions, whereas in the U.S. they’re more concerned about NOx and PM emissions.
What would be ideal in my mind (in the U.S.) is something like Saab’s BioPower 9-3 plug-in hybrid convertible running on E85. The fossil fuel CO2 emissions from such a vehicle would be very low at no real sacrifice to performance (in fact, there might be a performance BOOST with such a setup).
What the heck!?!? I guess I should’ve previewed that last comment. I had “Bin 8″ in parenthesis and it turned it into a smiley with sunglasses…
If this article is accurate, you all may start arguing about how to increase your carbon footprint rather than decrease it.
http://www.britsattheirbest.com/001645.php