The Blue Oval Wants To Turn Even More Green. Really Green
What will be the fuel of the future for cars? Gasoline? Diesel? Ethanol? Electric? Hydrogen? I might as well ask “What are the numbers for next week’s lottery?” No-one really knows; which is why everyone is hedging their bets. To invest in a particular technology and ignore the rest is basically playing Russian roulette. (There you you. We forgot CNG.) This next evolution of the car industry is going to be critical. While Ford is looking at other types of alternative propulsion, at the moment it is pretty much playing it safe, sticking to more efficient ICE’s, hybrids and electric cars. Very good bets to make. But now, it seems, Ford is playing it a little riskier.
USA Today reports that Ford is getting very interested in the use of biomass as an alternative fuel source. “Ford has a long history of developing vehicles that run on renewable fuels and the increased use of biofuels is an important element of our sustainability strategy now and moving forward,” said Tim Wallington, a technical leader in the Ford Systems Analytics and Environmental Sciences Department. The historical part is true. The Model T originally was powered by hemp. What may have pushed Ford in this direction is Green Jobs Act of 2010, which offers investment tax credits for algae-based bio-refineries. Ooh! Ford taking another covert government handout? (Just a joke, people! Just a joke!)
As part of this foray in the world of biomass, Ford dispatched some of its researchers to Wayne State University’s National Biofuels Energy Laboratory, which is studying suitable algae strains as way to produce biodiesel. Ford has also used its researchers to do in-house tests on producing biodiesel from algae oil. “Algae have some very desirable characteristics as a potential biofuel feedstock and Ford wants to show its support any efforts that could lead to a viable, commercial-scale application of this technology,” said Sherry Mueller, a scientist for Ford. She is very optimistic of the biomassacre, but acknowledges its current economic limitations: “At this point, algae researchers are still challenged to find economical and sustainable ways for commercial-scale controlled production and culturing of high oil-producing algae.”* It seems like the future at Ford is in green. And I don’t just mean money…
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AaronH - Thermodynamics may favor gasoline, but geology and ecology are saying that's not going to work for too much longer. Oil is a finite resource built over geological time from algae and plants. It has been used intensively for 100 years during which the human population exploded and many countries became very dependent on large amounts of oil. You may think the ride will last forever, but it won't. Oil supplies WILL peak, and there will be shortages and supply issues. The car companies are seeing the writing on the wall. Gas is not between $20-30 a barrel and won't be anytime soon (barring severe deflation). In this scenario, you build efficient cars and look for the next most likely energy source. Toyota is going for efficiency through hybrids (and backing that up by working with Tesla), Nissan is going electric, any car company that hopes to last for another decade or two has to do something. Ford is making the connection that liquid fuels just happen to work real well due to their high enery density, so finding a way to make (rather than merely pump and refine) liquid fuels in large quantities is the easiest way to maintain the status quo (electric sacrifices range, CNG require larger storage space, diesel is ultimately still oil dependent, ethanol is impractical if produced from corn). If they succeed with this, we all get to drive diesel or ICE cars for another couple decades.
Interesting comments and perspectives. Need to dig down deeper into data, economics, thermodynamics and unfortunately politics. Disappointed in the author of the article - the information and supporting data is available - not sure why there is any question at this point. We have spent several years evaluating the various options and while we too thought EV's had a good shot, it turns out that Peak Minerals are a more serious issue than Peak Petroleum. The result of our research offers only one viable solution - biodiesel from 2nd generation feedstocks - everything else at this point is just noise and is not sustainable. etcgreen.com has more info if you are interested