10 years from now do you think half the cars produced in the US will use ethanol?

Question

or some other kind of biological fuel, if so what kind

Thank you for taking the time to answer

Answer 1

It won't be ethanol. If 100% of the US corn crop were turned into ethanol, it would only provide enough fuel for about 10-12% of current gas-using vehicles. And, that would leave no corn to feed people or livestock.

I think that the vast amount of energy obtainable from fossil fuels is not going to be replaced with bio fuel. There simply isn't enough bio material to produce the amount of energy we get from fossil fuels.

Answer 2

I think switchgrass production of ethanol is showing at least some promise right now. Some of the more desolate areas are great places to grow it, so it won't be like it is replacing other crops. As far behind the curve as the auto industry is in technology, yes, I think in 10 years a good portion if not over half will use ethanol, even though the hydrogen technology is probably better.

Answer 3

According to the 2006 Consumer Guide new car book, the 2006 Chevy Impala running on normal gas averaged 24 mpg. Running on E85 (85% Ethanol), the same car averaged 17 mpg. This shows me that you can take a car with reasonable fuel economy, run it on ethanol, and get SUV mileage.

Think about where biofuels come from. We have X amount of land to grow food in the world. When you take land away from growing food to making fuel, you take food from the world market. Biofuels, in my opinion, are not feasible for large scale use.

What I do think would work is a wind/solar/geothermal powered hydrogen production facility making hydrogen gas by hydrolysis. Because it's self-powered by green energy, it would be environmentally friendly. When hydrogen is made by breaking down some other chemical, I think that just puts us back where we started. So, any power supply that can be turned into a fuel for use later would be a great idea. The problem is where you get it from.

New solar/wind/geothermal power generating facilities could make hydrogen gas and liquefy it. Because gaseous hydrogen has such a low energy density, liquefying it would be a good solution for storage in vehicles.

Most importantly, what we need to do worst of all is to just use less energy period. Why do people think they should drive two hours each way to and from work? They burn a tremendous amount of fuel doing that. We live houses that are often larger than we really need. Why not live in a home that suits our real needs? Why don't people live close enough to where they work that they could take a bicycle or walk when the weather is nice? Why do people have to drive SUVs to drive them self to work, when a small car that gets decent mileage would do the exact same thing with less fuel being used? The problem is self-important people who decided they have a right to drive a vehicle that gets 15 mpg and have to live in over-sized homes a long way from their jobs.

My plan to help the environment is to live close to where I work. I will be riding a bicycle or walking from my apartment near my hospital (I'm a Respiratory Therapist). Therefore, I don't need a car at all. Someone could argue that I harm the environment by riding a bicycle, but I think the impact is insignificant compared to someone who has a long commute to work in their car everyday.

Lifestyle change is vastly more important than biofuel. We can burn all the ethanol or biodiesel that we want and not do anything useful for the environment.

Answer 4

Life as we know it on this planet is based on the metabolic breakdown of substances to create energy. Unfortunately, this has translated out to the internal combustion engine for machines.
So fuel (whether it is food or petroleum products) are burned by the organism/machine. It is the ongoing burning of fuels by the engines that have gotten us to this point in ecological history, and the problems associated with this combustion.
In my opinion, it doesn't matter if we use bio-diesel, ethanol, or some mixture with petroleum with a replaceable organic material; we will still have heating of the atmosphere from the burning of the products, and other gases to dissipate in the air that is used as a diluting trash-can.
Hopefully we can move towards some other type of energy exchange (i.e. storage batteries or electricity from solar chargers) once better storage cells have been devised.
Otherwise, we are going to continue with similar problems, just different fuels creating them.

Answer 5

I had a research on bio diesel and it was really interesting that would be better that ethanol in so many ways.

Answer 6

Ethanol production isn't incredibly efficient either, though the corn lobby won't say that.

I'm rooting for switchgrass.

Answer 7

Maybe, but Hydrogen Fuel cells are showng the most promise

Answer 8

No. Vested interests will try to keep the industry as close to the status quo as possible.

Answer 9

no because car dealers are trying to use sunlight to fuel their cars.