Automotive X Prize Winner Gets 102.5 MPG ... and it's powered with E85 fuel.

[JohnWxy]

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/9/17/automotive-x-prize-winner-gets-1025-mpg.aspx


The Edison2 Very Light car seats four people, can carry 10 cubic feet of luggage, has a 200-mile driving range, can accelerate to 60 mph in less than 15 seconds. Their Very Light car has a heater, air conditioner, and stereo system. The engine is a single cylinder, DOHC, and is Turbocharged. The Yamaha engine has a displacement of 250 cc, with an output of 40 horsepower and 29 ft lbs (foot-pounds) of torque, and runs on E85 ethanol fuel. Oliver Kuttner, the founder of Edison2, said his target price is $20,000.

A 250 cc engine producing 40 hp an 29 ft-lbs of torque.. that's 2.7 Hp per cu.in. and 2 Ft-lbs of torque per cu. in.

[Pab Sungenis]

1. I will buy one in a heartbeat

if they get it off the drawing board and on the roads.

Yes, I'd have to fill it up twice as often as I currently do at that range, but when a fill-up costs only $5.00? Brilliant.

[JohnWxy]

3. I thought that motorcycle with a fairing around the whole vehicle was pretty cool. I think that

sell. YOu could ride in cold weather without having to blow-torch your fingers to get blood back into them!

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. E85 blended with

... cellulosic ethanol, not from energy-intensive monoculture of genetically modified corn or soybeans, right?

[JohnWxy]

4. I haven't found anything on whether they used cellulosic ethanol, but I don't think there is very

much of it around. Re energy intensive monoculture, and genetically modified corn or soybeans .. I think you just described the agricultural system in the entire industrial world. I don't know if they sourced their fuel from a farm in a pre-industrial society or not. THey might have found it hard to talk American grain producers to stop buying GMA grain seeds, for this competition, especially since 80% of the corn (for example) grown in the U.S. is fed to cattle and pigs (i.e. this Edison2 teams demand for agricultural product would be miniscule compared to the demand for corn to feed cattle and pigs). Don't think it's likely the farming industry would change their farming practices for this competition.

Even so, all the scientists (and I do mean scientists, not internet bloggers and would-be experts) have shown that starch based ethanol yields a gain in energy inputs vs energy out-put, in the Ethanol fuel, now reaching 50% to 66%. The amount of petroleum energy consumed to make ethanol in the U.S. is about 4% of the energy in the fuel produced (Farrell & Kammen, Univ. of Calif, Berkeley, 2006). Recently USDA completed a survey of ethanol producers in the U.S. and found that more are adopting the use of biomass into the ethanol production process (instead of throwing the corn cobs away they are starting to use them to help fuel the corn to ethanol conversion process - with attendant reduction of use of fossil fuels).

I personally have concerns about the use of GM grains as they seem to be marching ahead with this without enough research on long term effects. Europe is being much more cautious in this regard. But, at any rate, this is a reason to start another thread. GM crops weren't created to make ethanol. Nobody thinks if we stopped making ethanol tomorrow that farmers would stop planting GM crops.

[4dsc]

5. Food for fuel is immoral.

Fuck corn made ethanol.