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Friday, June 17, 2005

500 mpg cars?

Thomas Friedman goes green in his NYT piece today.

Then add to that flexible-fuel cars, which have a special chip and fuel line that enable them to burn alcohol (ethanol or methanol), gasoline or any mixture of the two. Some four million U.S. cars already come equipped this way, including from G.M. It costs only about $100 a car to make it flex-fuel ready. Brazil hopes to have all its new cars flex-fuel ready by 2008. As Luft notes, if you combined a plug-in hybrid system with a flex-fuel system that burns 80 percent alcohol and 20 percent gasoline, you could end up stretching each gallon of gasoline up to 500 miles.

6 Comments:

500 miles per gallon of gasoline, but not 500 miles per gallon of fuel. I think the 500 mpg claim is misleading.

By Hammer, at 3:59 PM

Hammer, you're a nitpicker. ;)

Actually, I thought the same thing when I read the original post.

By Joseph Thvedt, at 5:02 PM

I wouldn't be such a nitpicker, but I've looked at the 500 mpg claim before.

By Hammer, at 5:16 PM

I think the ultimate point is 500 miles per gallon of stuff we have to buy from the middle east.

By Jambo, at 10:34 AM

Niece saling term thrown in there. 500 a mile what would all the convience stores say. Jeff

By Anonymous, at 10:36 AM

It's an admirable goal, but 500 mpg sounds science fiction. I think it's a disservice for two reasons. One, Bubba's going to hear 500 mpg and scoff. It sounds like nonsense, like something Snopes would be debunking. Two, people who think 500 mpg means 500 miles per gallon of gasoline are going to feel mislead when they read the fine print.

By Hammer, at 11:10 AM