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Last Updated: Mar 26th, 2006 - 13:41:45 |
Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Fuel Cells Help Balance Bus's Efficiency
A new technology is providing communities with high quality rapid transit at an affordable price, providing real opportunities to reduce congestion and improve air quality. Many believe that this technology, known as bus rapid transit ("BRT"), is the future of public transportation in America.
The concept behind BRT is simple: take everything that people like about rail systems and put it on rubber tires. The vehicles have flat floors and multiple, double-wide doors, just like a subway.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Fill 'er Up with Cornstalks, Please
The next time you drive past a cornfield or wheat field, think 50 billion gallons per year of ethanol. That's the fuel potential locked within the nation's agriculture and municipal wastes such as stalks and husks (corn stover), wheat straw, rice hulls, leaves, grass, and paper according to Burrill & Co., a San Francisco-based life sciences merchant bank. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 10 to 15 billion gallons of ethanol could be produced using only corn stover and wheat straw.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Here Come The Hybrids
With gasoline prices continuing to fluctuate, the news has been full of reports about the improved fuel economy provided by hybrid vehicles. Nationwide, interest in hybrids continues to grow, and J.D. Power and Associates now predicts that, by 2005, there will be nearly 400,000 hybrid vehicles on the road.
So just what is a "hybrid vehicle"? It commonly refers to a vehicle that combines two power sources, usually an electric motor and a gasoline engine. But not always; even among gasoline-electric hybrids, not all models are created equal.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Retrofitting Engines Improves Air Quality
An estimated 160 million people live in nonattainment areas for ground-level ozone, also called smog, which is formed by nitrous oxides and other pollutants. About 65 million people live in areas that violate air quality standards for particulate matter. Reducing nonroad emissions is a critical part of the effort by federal, state, local and tribal governments to reduce the adverse health impacts of air pollution.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Record Gas Prices Spark Interest in Electric Cars
Prices at the pump are driving more car buyers to look into electricity as an alternative fuel source. This summer, oil and gas prices surged to new highs. Oil reached $70 per barrel for the first time in history in August, boosting prices at the gas pump to $3 per gallon in many parts of the country. The rising prices have sparked a high interest in electric cars, scooters, bicycles and all-terrain vehicles, said Alex Campbell, spokesman for Zap, a company that makes battery-powered vehicles.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Hydrogen Or Hybrids?
DEAR DR. MOORE:
Which is better for the environment, hydrogen-powered cars or the new hybrids?
In the near term, I'd have to say the hybrids-because they offer a way to reduce pollution now.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
What’s up with Hybrid Vehicles?
If the price of gasoline has got you scared, and you’re thinking about maybe trading in your car for a moped, you’ve got half the solution right. It might be time to trade in your car, but forget the moped – get a hybrid car instead. The dictionary defines the word hybrid as: Offspring resulting from breeding between parents of two different species, and that’s a good definition for our purposes. That’s because a hybrid car has a power plant that’s a cross between a gasoline powered engine and an electric motor.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Do you own a Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV)?
Do you own a Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV)? What in the world is a Flexible Fuel Vehicle? It’s a car or truck that is capable of burning certain alternative fuels. Now we’re not talking gasoline vs. diesel engines here, we’re talking about gasoline engines that can also burn ethanol, natural gas, propane, hydrogen, methanol, and p-series fuels. According to some chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy, p-series fuels are “a unique blend of natural gas liquids (pentanes plus), ethanol, and the biomass-derived co-solvent methyltetrahydrofuran” just in case you were wondering.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
This Revolutionary Engine Has A Familiar Name
Imagine that there is an alternative fuel engine that could: Burn clean fuel, this improving the fuel economy and driving range by 30 percent.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
The Fuel-Cell Future
It's great when spokespeople for giant corporations point out basic environmental truths. In calling for patience in the efforts to build the hydrogen energy economy, Scott Foster, a General Motors spokesperson on advanced technology vehicles, points out that the 70 million cars on American roads could double to 140 million by 2025. These cars would also double the number of miles traveled. So if we're dependent on hybrid technology as our green savior, we'd need every hybrid to be 62 percent more efficient than the best hybrid today just to stay where we are now with fuel economy. Scary, isn't it?
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Choosing Hybrids
Hybrid cars are emerging as a driving force in the U.S. auto market. Since 1999, more than 200,000 hybrids (vehicles that run on both gas and electricity) have been sold in the U.S.
However, some hybrids may be stopping short of delivering on promises for fuel efficiency and pollution. That's the news from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a group that recently launched a Web site that it says separates the hybrid truth from the hybrid hype.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Electric Cars 'Zap' Rising Gas Prices
Tired of paying more and more for gas? Fuel prices this year have been at the highest levels in 25 years, and with world demand for oil higher than ever, they most likely won't decrease any time soon.
According to Zap, a publicly owned company based in California that manufactures an array of electric vehicles, one of the best ways to beat rising gas prices is to buy and drive an electric car.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Gas Sense-In Search Of The Elusive Hybrid Car
Paying more than $50 to fill up a gas tank is enough to get anyone's attention. Which is why so many people these days are looking for gas-"sipping" hybrids to put in their garages and why many of them are going online to track the elusive vehicles down.According to a recent AP-AOL Poll, 41 percent say that gas prices are making them seriously consider purchasing a more fuel-efficient car, including hybrids.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Drivers of SUVs Saving Big Money with Diesel Engines
Half of all American vacationers on the road this year are driving gas guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks, according to a new survey on driving habits from research firm MarketFacts. These bigger vehicles burn high amounts of fuel, which not only puts a dent in drivers' wallets, but also increases the country's dependence on foreign oil. Ironically, the MarketFacts study shows that fuel economy is an important issue for SUV and pickup drivers.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Dissecting Diesels By The Numbers
Drivers looking for a car that can offer dramatically better mileage may want to consider a vehicle with a different kind of engine.
The good news is that better mileage may be available from an engine already in use-the diesel engine.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Hybrid Vehicles Makes a Turn for the More Powerful Vehicles in the Auto Industry
It is common knowledge among car enthusiasts and car owners that the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the amount of fuel it consumes. With this in mind, several automobile producers have begun diverting a big chunk of their efforts to producing more hybrid 4x4s in the year 2005.
Taking on the Fleet First. The big three - Ford, Dodge and General Motors have seemed to agree that 2005 is the perfect opportunity to introduce the hybrid versions of some very popular vehicles.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Here Come the Hybrids
When is the American auto industry going to “get it” and start producing gas-electric hybrid vehicles to compete with the Japanese models already here from Toyota and Honda? From the looks of the New York International Auto Show, which runs from April 9 to April 18, the environment is still not coming into focus in Detroit.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
The Driving Need For Electric Vehicles
The idea of environmentally friendly electric vehicles may seem like a future trend but it has been going on for decades. It is expected that in the near future they will become as mainstream as the microwave oven because of their enormous potential to help our environment as well as reduce our dependence upon gasoline.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Hybrid SUV Sets City Fuel Economy Record 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid Takes On Manhattan Traffic Jams On A Single Tank Of Gas
The world's cleanest, most fuel-efficient sport utility vehicle recently passed a difficult test with flying colors.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Should I Buy a Hybrid Car?
Hybrid cars, also called hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) blend the best of the conventional car with the best of electric cars for a winning combination. Uniting the cleaner energy of the electric motor with the long-range power of the gasoline engine yields a hybrid automobile with lower toxic emissions and better fuel economy—sometimes up to 30 miles per gallon or more than conventional cars. And the good news is these HEVs perform as well if not better than non-hybrids and are as safe, reliable and comfortable as any traditional car.
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Alternative Fuel Vehicles
Fuel Cells and Alternative Fuel Vehicles
The history of the fuel cell can be traced back to the 19th century. Since then the development and usage of fuel cells in a variety of applications have come a long way. Fuel cells hold great promise for fueling alternative fuel vehicles. Here is some of the history of the development of fuel cells.
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