Comment Re:Exactly! (Score 1) 224
Thanks for agreeing with me Bob. But I don't think it has anything to do with a poorly optimized engine, or U.S. vehicles in general. The efficiency of the internal combustion engine these days is remarkable, and the ability to modify the programming to match different fuel types is anything but a compromise. What you have with an electronic engine is a programmable machine with impressive flexibility. You may not remember the days when you drove a car to high altitude and it barely ran...
On the bright side Americans are finally beginning to realize that Diesel is a better choice. I drove Diesel's for years until the ULSD mandate made them un-economical relative to gas. Diesel's have the compression you're looking for, of course.
The truth is that alcohol just doesn't have the same energy density in terms of btu/kg as does gasoline, so there's no way you're going to get anywhere the same mileage. So the consumer was sold a big bag of hype, under the assumption that they were all idiots, and couldn't calculate miles per gallon. And of course in the foolishness of governments, they mandated that a fixed amount of the stuff had to be produced every year, regardless of demand. So now the refiners, and the oil companies, are sitting on gallons and gallons of the stuff. Here in the Midwest once the subsidy expired I have not seen a single vehicle at the E85 pump. And down at the local refinery, they are building storage tanks. The result: biofuels will be set back years.
It's not that we shouldn't be working very hard to produce biofuels. It's that we are trusting the wrong people to do it. The government, particularly politicians, are too corruptible to be in charge of anything this important. Just my two cents...
On the bright side Americans are finally beginning to realize that Diesel is a better choice. I drove Diesel's for years until the ULSD mandate made them un-economical relative to gas. Diesel's have the compression you're looking for, of course.
The truth is that alcohol just doesn't have the same energy density in terms of btu/kg as does gasoline, so there's no way you're going to get anywhere the same mileage. So the consumer was sold a big bag of hype, under the assumption that they were all idiots, and couldn't calculate miles per gallon. And of course in the foolishness of governments, they mandated that a fixed amount of the stuff had to be produced every year, regardless of demand. So now the refiners, and the oil companies, are sitting on gallons and gallons of the stuff. Here in the Midwest once the subsidy expired I have not seen a single vehicle at the E85 pump. And down at the local refinery, they are building storage tanks. The result: biofuels will be set back years.
It's not that we shouldn't be working very hard to produce biofuels. It's that we are trusting the wrong people to do it. The government, particularly politicians, are too corruptible to be in charge of anything this important. Just my two cents...