Aug 8, 2009. Thank goodness our computer industry stayed ahead of the power curve and led the world with innovative new products, but unfortunately not so for the Big Three US automakers. Here are three examples to drive home my point.
US Automakers Lost Opportunity No. 1 to Be Innovative. What would you say if I told you we could produce a car that’s 90 percent cleaner than the average gasoline-powered car, is a full sized four passenger sedan, gets 36 MPG and the fuel that runs it costs $0.63 per gallon, and, unlike oil, 98 percent of the fuel the vehicle uses comes from North America. Then what would you say it I told you the big three US auto makers have little desire to make such a vehicle? Well, you’d think I was crazy, but it’s actually our US automotive industry that’s crazy. With all the natural gas we have the US automakers should have been a world leader in the manufacture of natural gas vehicles (NGV) a long time ago. For just one example the Honda Civic GX NGV meets all of the aforementioned requirements using compressed natural gas (the simplest and cleanest-burning hydrocarbon available) and has been acclaimed the “world’s cleanest internal-combustion vehicle.” The US could be a leader in producing NGV’s that combine top performance with low emissions. There are more than 7 million NGV’s in the world, but only 150,000 in the US . Having more natural gas than any other country (except for Russia ) we could have taken oil down (we have a measly 3 percent of the world’s oil supply) a long time ago by switching to NGV’s. Being the world’s largest auto consumer, the rest of the world would have to follow, not the opposite way around as US automaker scramble to catch up with just about every new innovation coming out lately. While the US automakers have little incentive to make NGV's, up north across the border, the Canadian Natural Gas Vehicle Alliance is making an all out effort to promote NGV's.
http://www.cngva.org/about.htm.http://gas2.org/2008/05/05/the-cleanest-cars-on-earth-honda-civic-gx-and-other-natural-gas-vehicles-ngvs/
http://mudomaha.com/news/2009/cng.5.13.pdf
US Automakers Lost Opportunity No. 2 to Be Innovative. While in Europe more than 50 percent of new cars purchased are diesel, cars that actually get better gas mileage than hybrids, the US automakers are instead pushing small unsafe hybrids that have absolutely no resale value when you consider a 100,000 mile life-time battery that needs to be replaced for $5,000. The reason you see so fewer diesel cars in the U.S. is because US automakers have chosen not to push diesel cars because they last longer. Remember how “planned obsolescence” almost killed Chrysler before Lee Iacocca stepped in back in 1979? Today, only Volkswagen, Mercedes and Jeep sell diesel-powered cars in the U.S. The new turbo-charged diesel cars give the driver the sort of get-up-and-go that leaves a gasoline engine in the dust and, unlike the smelly, hard-to-start, and loud cars of 20 years ago, the new turbo-charged diesel cars are virtually indistinguishable from gasoline powered cars. Plus they have much better resale value because the engine is virtually indestructible, and as far as gas mileage, well the American Honda Accord gasoline version gets 30 MPG and the European diesel version gets 52 MPG (WOW). But there’s even better news for diesel. Biodiesel can be mixed in any proportion with fossil fuel diesel and pure biodiesel reduces net carbon dioxide emissions by 78 percent compared to 100 percent petroleum diesel, a perfect marriage for environmental concerns and an energy hungry public. And to think that we could be producing all of our fuel for diesel cars from algae-based biodiesel and the jatropha plant, all grown in the US . Remember how last year the failed biodiesel plant in Chesapeake was going to buy all the jatropha oil it could get its hands on? As biofuel production picks up in the US , the big three automakers are making only meager plans to build diesel cars. As in the case of the Canadian NVG’s, we’ll end up trying to catch up with European diesel vehicles.
http://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/Hybrid_Car_Batteries.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/diesel-cars-460409). http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/06/07/2009-honda-accord-diesel-to-hit-52-mpg. http://hamptonroads.com/2008/01/odu-experiment-turning-sewage-algaebased-biodiesel-flourishing
http://www.jatrophahq.com/jatropha-curcas-news/south-florida-gets-its-first-real-biofuel-plant-1.
US Automakers Lost Opportunity No. 3 to Be Innovative. Flex-fuel cars run on gasoline, ethanol, or a mixture of the two in the same tank. Brazil has become a world leader in producing flex cars and making big bucks doing so. Flex cars sold in Brazil don't cost any more than traditional models, and, while engines use 25 percent more ethanol per mile than gasoline, ethanol sells between a third to half of the price of gasoline making it cheaper that gasoline. By using second-generation bio-fuels from non food crops (waste biomass - those grass clippings we pay to have trashed, the stalks of wheat, corn, wood, and newly developed bio-hydrogen and bio-methanol), the US could produce 100 percent of its ethanol fuel needs for flex cars. Better yet our flex-fuel cars could be natural gas / gasoline. But, as in the case of the Canadian NVG’s and European diesel cars, we’ll end up trying to catch up with Brazilian flex cars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel
http://www.worldculturepictorial.com/blog/content/brazil-a-leader-green-power-50-cars-able-use-100-biofuel-70-electricity-sourced-hydropower
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