Why Still Gasoline?

by Aaron Connor

Everyone knows that gasoline prices are almost unbearable. Sarcastic e-mails and jokes about giving an arm and a leg up for a gallon of gas are becoming common. The complaints are substantial, even though prices are still somewhat modest in our area as opposed to others. The ideas of an alternative fuel are talked about more and more. Some say that the technology isn’t there yet, or the consumer isn’t ready to make the switch. This is true in some cases but it seems there has been no drastic steps to eliminate or stray from gasoline.

GM has introduced a line of motors that they are putting in their standard models of cars that run on E85(flex fuel). Although this advertisement push has been the largest in the past few years, certain cars from as far back as 1991 are rated for use of E85. The changes that the motors underwent to accept this new fuel were minimal. Even though E85 is 85% ethanol, the other 15% is still regular gasoline. Not only is it still 15% gasoline, the other 85% (ethanol) is made from crops such as corn. Some how, using crops just doesn’t make any sense. You are taking a food product away from consumers to use it in another application. There really isn’t an abundance of these crops to use it as a substitute for our immense use of gasoline. Furthermore, crops are raised on farms that are maintained by massive pieces of farm equipment. This farm equipment first plows the field, plants, raises, then finally harvests the crop. Each pass of the equipment uses several gallons of diesel fuel. So we are using fuel to make crops and then process them to create a new fuel.

Some say that biodiesel is a great alternative fuel. This may be true, its clean and goes farther than gasoline. If you look a little deeper biodiesel is made from soy beans. Soy beans are also a crop that needs planted, raised, and harvested.

Some think that a car running on solely electric power is not only unpractical, but also impossible. The idea is that it would never catch on, however this technology was available in 1889 when Thomas Edison build one of the first electric vehicles. In 1996 GM even had a car in production available for $400-$500 a month that ran on 100% electricity. This car, the EV1, was available for lease only. When the leases of the EV cars were up in 2004, GM refused to let the previous owners resign a lease or purchase the vehicle. Instead a few were disabled and sent to museums. The others were collected in isolated locations and Crushed. GM claims that the cars were recycled, but that isn’t the point. They obviously wanted to experiment, yet what went so wrong that they abandoned it completely. They even seemed to destroy any and all ties to the experiment. As far as the previous owners, They started a “Don’t Crush” campaign and refused to return their beloved cars. GM impounded their cars until there was no sign of any EV1’s on the road. California activists even offered 1.9 million dollars just for GM to return about 78 of these impounded cars to their owners.

Other makes such as Toyota and Ford also had all electric cars that were all pulled off of the streets at the same time. So who is responsible for the recall of these cars? Obviously the companies themselves did the official recall of the cars however, who influenced this. Is oil such a big business that it can stop advancements in technology?

There is no question that some type of energy is needed to create any type of fuel for our transportation. Unfortunately our economy won’t make any type of major switch as long as people are able and willing to pay for gasoline, no matter what it costs.
Sources:
Who killed the electric car?- moive documentary
http://kicktheoilhabit.org/e85.php
http://www.greenyour.com/transportation/car/car-buying/tips/choose-a-flex-fuel-car
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/electric.html