Ford Bets On Ecoboost, Chrysler And GM On Natural Gas For Pickups

Dramatic shift from BIG OIL Subsidies with Republicans in charge? ROFLMAO

@forraymond I believe what LW was getting at was that the interest in alternate fuels/ev's will diminish rapidly if the Republicans take over...

@forraymond But the big problem with that is that it is a very American centered point of view. And while the US is a very large market it isn't the largest or even second largest market.

@forraymond Charly - But it is the most important market for US based automakers, and certainly for anyone building a full size pickup truck, which is what the article was about.

All true but I believe that optional fuel sources like natgas, like ethanol, like LPG, should be available for those people who want to buy vehicles that use them. In some places across the America these alternative fuels are plentiful. Ethanol and the farm states go hand in hand, while natgas and its infrastructure is plentiful elsewhere, like Texas, for instance. But I remain a firm believer in gasoline, and to an even larger extent, diesel. I am not interested in electric vehicles, hybrids, natgas, LPG or diesel for myself. Just give me good ol' gasoline internal combustion engines; the bigger the better. That may be old school, but I have never cared about the price of gasoline, even when gas was scarce in 1973. We muddled through. We found gas. We drove. We never walked. We got to work and back. And I believe that gasoline as the primary source of fuel will continue for at least the next hundred years or more. Oil will always be available. More will be found. In some places in the US it still bubbles up out of the ground. I learned today that Israel and Cyprus have gone into a joint venture in the Leviathan labyrinth of the eastern Mediterranean and hope to be self-sufficient within three to five years. Great news for the world, not so much for Iran, Russia and OPEC. Other places around the globe are just now being explored and will yield oil for hundreds of years to come. The only downside is that gasoline will be available, but at a price. We better get used to $4/gal gas and by next year the norm may even be $5/gal for regular unleaded. Most Americans will keep buying the gasoline no matter what the price. At $4.79/gal for Shell Premium I still buy the same amount of gas I do every week, but I eat out less often. And that's the way it will be for most Americans if they want to drive. What will be hurt will be businesses that rely on discretionary spending because most of that discretionary spending is redirected to buying higher priced gasoline. No ecoboost is going to solve that. And if enough people buy into the natgas engines, the price of natgas will also rise until an equilibrium price is reached for all fuels. We're chasing our own tails here.

Highdesertcat, I agree with everything you have noted, except that even beyond our petroleum-driven transportation system, even beyond 100 years from now, we can still "grow" liquid fuels that work in ICE's. The efficiencies of ICE is just exploding: When I was growing up, I was told that ICE's would top out at 25% thermal efficiency. With the recent triad of new developments (Variable valves; Direct Injection; turbo-charging), it's now hovering close to 45%. Who would have thought it! Two great liquid fuels for vehicles in 2112 may be soy-based, bio-dieesl; and n-butanol for a gasoline substitute. I can see 1-liter engines in 2500-lb cars getting 80-100 mpg routinely, perhaps with light-weight "mild-hybrid" assistance that still allows good braking, handling, and cornering.

@highdesertcat I am NOT against the development of alternative fuels and innovative sources of energy. I believe in the more the merrier. I believe in Nuclear, I support solar for as long as the sun shines, and I will delighted to use wind-generated electricity for as long as the wind blows. But when everything else fails, there's good ol' coal! Always there, at the flick of the switch. But the core fuel for the future will remain oil, specifically gasoline and diesel for the overwhelming majority of transportation. Let's see airplanes use those bio-fuels and then see how much the ticket costs. Not conducive to business travel. For instance, I get a real charge over the Volt since I read a comment from a person who owns one but drives it on the gasoline-generator for most of the time, being forced to feed it with Premium gasoline. Not Regular. Premium! She should have bought a Cruze instead. For me the choice is clear. I travel a lot. Alternative fuels and various incarnations of electric vehicles are simply not my bag. I believe that most Americans see it my way. They may not like the price of gasoline, but they will continue to buy it.

I do not care if the disaster at Fukushima-Daiichi is a rare incident or not (nuclear accidents have been rare thus far, but from a historical context, the technology and facilities are newborns - thus making the odds of future disasters much more probable and sooner than not); its occurrence has soured me forever on the reliance upon nuclear power plant generated electricity given the limits of today's technology and the incredible hazards involved when something goes wrong at such facilities.

we could grow all of the butanol and bio-diesel we need if we were just willing to use Hemp (won't happen), produces 3 to 1 as much energy in comparison to corn, believe it's 7 to 1 bio-diesel in comparison to soy and even better the stalks produce 5 to 1 as much pulp/pound in comparison to trees, you think the petrochemical, lumber/paper and agricultural lobbies are going to allow that. Sugarcane works in Brazil because it grows like a weed, requires no irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, etc, Hemp would work the same way in NA (without using prime farmland), while corn requires massive amounts of all of the above. In terms of CNG, the infrastructure is there (much more so than for ethanol), the entire country is covered in NG pipelines, just a matter of setting up compressors at fueling stations (doubt the oil and gas lobby would like that one either). And Eco-Boost (+) CNG would be a winner in so many ways, so Ford's strategy seems to cover the bases.

You can make electricity with any source of heat or kinetic energy. Natural gas is cheap and plentiful now, but for how long? Use it for electric generation and concentrate on improving the electric car. If it comes to it, power plants could burn wood or waste material.

@rnc to"rnc".. Don't forget the "farming of the seas" for offshore seaweed in tropical waters where high growth rates occur. That biomass can also be turned into biodiesel and butanol for motor fuels. But, if I remember correctly, land vehicles account for only about 1/3 the CO2 pollution in the US. The rest predominantly comes form coal-fired power plants (75% of all electric power in the US comes form coal-buring power plants); industrial heating, and commercial air travel. Still, all told, that's going to have to be a lot of biomass to replace the convenience and current availability of petroleum-based fuels (gasoline, diesel, jet A, heating oil, CNG).

@DeadWeight Exactly the opposite here. Daiichi has proven that unimaginable disasters can be withstood or contained and that nuclear power is much safer than chanters of "chernobyil-chernobyil" lead us to believe.

@highdesertcat You shouldn't buy a Volt if you don't have a place to recharge the battery. It is like calling a 911 a bad car because it can't transport your sofa

@DeadWeight Lets see what will happen with the region around Daiichi. Also 6 big accidents with only a few hundred nuclear power plants does seem to point that the word rare isn't used correctly. The bigger point is that even before 11-3 the Japanese have shown themself to be not competent enough to run nuclear power plants. And if you think the Japanese can't run them then the question is who can?

@DeadWeight Charly... You asked: "And if you think the Japanese can’t run them [nuclear power plants] then the question is who can?" ANS: The French. 80% of electricity in France is generated by nuclear power, and their safety record has been immaculate. It is also true that France has more "roundabouts" than all other countries in the world combined. So I would think that electric or electric/CNG hybrid cars would be ideal for them, since vehicles are encouraged to keep moving continually and steadily just by the efficiency of their road systems. (Electric vehicles don't deplete as much battery reserve at low to moderate speeds, but do so at top speeds (high RPM).

@DeadWeight But we are not all French. ps CNG means you only have one or two suppliers unlike oil were you only need to outbid the other consumers

CNG maybe perfect for the US but it isn't for the European market. There is simply no way for Europe to become self sufficient in gas and using more of it only makes Russia's position stronger.