Passing Gas

Andrew Azzarello

Marc Bousquet

Remixing Little Brother

October 25, 2010

Passing Gas

Humans rely on electricity for everything in the world. It is sometimes seen as impossible to live a life that does not include electricity. Since the first forms of electricity were obtained it has continually been researched and developed further to meet the needs of the evolving human race. Today there are multiple ways to obtain energy from wind power to hydrogen power. So the big question is if we have forms of alternative energy then why are we still using combustion vehicles? In the United States alone there were four million plus cars produced in 2006 and fifty-one million plus cars in the World in 2009. These large numbers of vehicles in the world show how much our world is influenced by automobiles. But there is a puppet master that controls all of this and that is the major oil companies. These companies continuously get large sums of money dumped into to continue their production of high priced gasoline and only in the recent years have we seen a strong shift from the motor companies towards alternative energy vehicles. These Alternative energy vehicles will provide a brighter future to generations to come through eliminating oil warfare, finding clean forms of energy and providing more self-sufficient automobiles.

Alternative energy is a blanket term that deals with all resources that will be able to replace fuels and not contain the harsh consequences of usage. Most commonly alternative energy is se en as fuel that does not use up natural resources nor do they harm the environment. Common forms of alternative energy are wind power, solar power, and hydrogen fuel cells. All these forms of energy do not use up our natural resources and instead find forms of renewable energy and use science to convert these renewable resources into energy. Alternative energy is even now being developed to power the cars that we drive on a daily basis. Through using clean renewable energy such as electric, hydrogen fuel cell and biodiesel to power motor vehicles, fossil fuels will become a thing of the past.

Electric cars used to be a thing of the future, something only seen in motion pictures or video games but this is not the case today. Electric cars are steadily becoming the next form of transportation that will replace classic combustion engine cars. Through replacing combustion engine cars with electric cars emissions would be reduced greatly, due to zero tail pipe emissions. Electric cars also have many performance advantages. The acceleration of an electric vehicle is significantly greater than combustion engine vehicles. A constant supply of torque of an electric motor makes it possible so that acceleration can happen quicker. Not only is performance of an electric car better but the running costs and maintenance are significantly cheap as well. This is attributed to an electric car only having five moving parts as compared to a combustion engine that has hundreds moving parts. Since maintenance cost is so low most of the running costs can be attributed to the replacement of the battery of electric vehicles. However companies such as Tesla are working to develop battery packs that are more efficient and require less cost. Tesla Motors is an electric automotive company that is based in the Silicon Valley. As of today Tesla is the only automotive company that is building and selling fully electric vehicles that are street legal. Tesla started off their journey in the automotive industry with the Tesla Roadster. A small, two seat sports car that is capable of traveling a distance of 200 miles, accelerates from zero to sixty in three point nine seconds and “according to Tesla Motor’s environmental analysis, is twice as energy efficient as the Toyota Prius”. Tesla plans to produce the Model S, a family sedan with a range of three-hundred miles on a single charge. Tesla motors proves one thing to the world, they prove that electric vehicles are no longer science fiction they are here today. With the advances that Tesla is making in electric vehicles it will not be long until other automotive companies begin to shift towards producing electric vehicles. Tesla has started an alternative energy powered car revolution that will shape the way we travel in the years to come.

Many people know about alternative energies such as electric and biodiesel. But there is one more source of alternative energies for cars that is very effective and slowly rising to replace fossil fuel. This saving grace is a form of energy known as a hydrogen fuel cell. How a fuel cell works is that it takes in oxygen from the air and hydrogen from a tank and causes them to react creating electricity which gives energy to a battery. When this reaction happens and energy is created a byproduct is created but that byproduct is non-other than water. This environmental friendly byproduct makes hydrogen cars seem like the perfect solution to fuel driven vehicles but there is one problem that hydrogen cars face today. That is the ability to get all the hydrogen fuel cell components in a vehicle so that it is light cheap and able to power every component of the car. As of now there are prototypes of hydrogen cars and one of the most active companies in hydrogen cars is Honda. Right now they are in the works of creating a Honda model that is purely Hydrogen driven. If Honda succeeds in producing their hydrogen fuel cell driven vehicle then they will add to the possibilities of alternative energy vehicles that exist in the world. All it takes is a pioneer in a certain field to create a difference for the rest of the world and that is exactly what Honda is doing with its FCX clarity Hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle. The FCX clarity takes the benefits of a zero emissions electric vehicle and combines it with the ease of fueling that a combustion engine car has. Hydrogen is the driving force of the FCX and allows the battery to be powered by the hydrogen fuel cell and only needs to be refueled by filling the hydrogen tank which has a refueling time of five minutes. With Hondas advances in the Hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle it has opened a window of opportunity for alternative fuels to finally eliminate major oil companies not focusing on alternative energies. Hydrogen also provides the solution of charge time and range for the electric vehicles by supplying electricity in a different medium.

While the world is waiting for the technology of hydrogen and electricity to be perfected there is one form of alternative energy that is readily available to society today. This form of energy is known as biofuel or fuel made from organic compounds. Today cars can run on biofuel either by having an engine conversion to support the fuel, running an older diesel engine that can readily use biofuel without conversion, or using ethanol. Engine conversions and older diesel models have the ability to use low-quality vegetable oil or used vegetable oil. Vegetable oil cars go through an engine conversion that adds components that heat up the oil to make it more watery. Then the oil can be converted into fuel for the engine. Older diesel engines do not need an engine conversion because they have indirect combustion chambers that allow for vegetable oil to be converted to fuel. Lastly a very common form of biofuel today is ethanol which is a combination of a percentage of corn and gasoline. The ratio used in the United States for ethanol fuel is eighty-five percent ethanol and fifteen percent gasoline. Even though ethanol contains gasoline it still produces a clean alternative to gasoline but faces one problem. Due to it being easily miscible with water, it cannot be efficiently shipped through modern pipelines, like liquid hydrocarbons, over long distances. Biofuels present a readily available alternative to gasoline at the present day showing that alternative energy is possible.

All these examples of alternative energy do nothing but prove that gasoline is a thing in the past and our energy needs are going to be soon met by other forms of energy. Alternative forms of energy yield the same or more amounts of energy than gasoline and they all produce less or zero emissions. Weigh the positives and the alternative energy sources have it.