- Most cars are gasoline powered.Red cars image by Catabu from Fotolia.com
Nearly all vehicles today run on gasoline or diesel, both of which are petroleum derivatives. Due to the growing crises of climate change and declining oil reserves, alternative fuels are becoming more and more attractive. This trend produces a danger: motivation exists to overstate the benefits of new fuels as a reaction to the increasingly evident damage caused by fossil fuels. - Electricity is seen by some as the solution to the damage being done by fossil-fuel use in cars and trucks. Electricity can power a vehicle by outfitting it with batteries that are hooked up to the transmission. A vehicle can run solely on electricity, but most vehicles that incorporate electricity are hybrid vehicles that also have a gasoline engine. Difficulties of electric vehicles include the weight and size of the batteries, the energy utilized in production of the batteries, battery disposal problems (particularly if there are millions of electric vehicles on the road), and the major question of where all the electricity to charge the batteries is going to come from.
- Ethanol and biodiesel are alternative fuels that can be mixed with or used in the same way as gasoline and diesel fuel, but they are made out of biological material rather than fossil fuels. Ethanol is produced from agriculture waste such as corn stalks, and can be mixed with gasoline. Biodiesel is produced from forms of oil other than petroleum, and can be mixed with traditional diesel fuel. Today, many thousands of acres are being planted in corn for the production of ethanol. Numerous problems are inherent in this trend. First, the land used for this fuel is no longer being used to produce food, thus raising food prices worldwide. Second, the machinery that is farming the corn is run on diesel, to the extent that some analysts claim that more diesel is being used to produce the ethanol than would be used to run the cars that the ethanol is running. Until these problems are addressed, it appears that ethanol is not a viable alternative to gasoline or diesel, when the entire process of producing it is taken into consideration.
- Hydrogen is thought of as an alternative energy source by many people, although it actually isn't. Hydrogen is a means of storing energy, and therefore plays the role of a battery rather than an energy source. Hydrogen is a relatively efficient way to power a vehicle once it is in the vehicle. The problem is how to create enough hydrogen to make any substantial dent in the amount of gasoline that is being used today. Electricity is required to produce hydrogen, and this must come from either wind, solar, nuclear, or fossil fuels. The technical difficulties inherent in a widespread transition to a hydrogen economy make it unlikely that it could replace gasoline in any meaningful way.
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