Propane Instead of Gas

Normal gasoline burning engines can be modified to allow them to take in propane as fuel. It is possible to run on a mixture of both propane and gasoline. The use of propane gives you extra flexibility; you can use more of whichever is cheaper or more available.

Car Pool : Save Money, Time and Gas

Carpooling is an incredibly simple way to save on money, time and gas. Commuting to work and back again is predictable and thus easily included in a carpool schedule. What are you waiting for! Check into carpooling to your workplace!

Save Gas Towing Trailers with a Deflector

Sometimes we have to move a little extra cargo, or maybe your work calls on you to do a lot of hauling. The solution often is a trailer. The extra air resistance the trailer causes will reduce the fuel economy of the towing vehicle. However, installing a slipstream deflector on the roof of the tower can help reduce the additional air drag. And that can mean you save on gas while towing.

The video shows how to install a wind deflector on a truck which will be used as a tower.

Keeping An Eye on the Gas Price

The US Energy Information Administration publishes data on average retail gasoline prices. This lets us keep an eye on the general condition of the country's gasoline economy. As you can see from the chart, gasoline has been gradually getting expensive over the last while. We are now are a national average just above $2.80. That is still far below the spike of summer 2008. However, it is all too easy to fall into the "boiling frog trap" ... the phenomenon where slow changes are ignored until it is too late. The gradual upward trend in the gas price is a sign that we had better prepare for expensive gasoline in the future, even if right now it is not so bad.

Hydraulic Hybrid Ingocar

Here is another concept for vehicle propulsion: hydraulic power. Valentin Technologies is developing the Ingocar which it hopes will achieve a gas mileage of 170 MPG or only 0.590 GPHM (gallons per hundred miles). The vehicle is light and aerodynamically streamlined, but the real secret is in its hydraulic drive system.

The idea is that a normal gasoline burning combustion engine is used not to provide propulsion, but to pressurize a reservoir of hydraulic fluid. Each wheel of the car will then have its own hydraulic drive which will convert that pressure into motive revolution of the wheel. This system can run in reverse during braking. The wheel drive motors act as pumps, converting the kinetic energy of the car back into reservoir pressure.

Whether this technology will prove out or not is unknown, but it is good to see that we have many options under development. We are going to sorely need a way to drastically increase our fuel economy in the decades ahead as the global oil supply becomes ever more expensive. Each idea under development gives us one more arrow in the quiver for the hunt to save on gas.

Battery Swap Overcomes Charging Times for Electric Vehicles

One of the common concerns with electric vehicles (EV) is the limited range provided by the battery. Electric vehicles run completely off of electric energy provided by a battery, unlike hybrid electric vehicles which include a gasoline powered engine and only use the battery and electric motors for assist or to recover energy while braking. Modern and likely future battery technology cannot store as much energy as a gasoline tank can. The result is that EVs have a limited range. Coupled with this limited range is the fact that it takes hours to recharge the battery. Translating these restrictions to a gasoline powered car would be like having a vehicle with a small gas tank that took hours to refill!

One potential solution is to swap out a depleted battery with a fully recharged one. This does not increase the range provided by a fully charged battery per se, but it does reduce the recharging time to the time to swap a battery, which could be about the same time as it takes to fill up your car's gas tank. There would be battery swap stations which would function much like the gas stations of today. The video demonstrates one scheme for how these battery swap stations could work.

Trans Alaska Pipeline Pumping Less

The Trans Alaska Pipeline is a 800 mile long tube carrying crude oil from Prudhoe Bay on the north coast of Alaska to Valdez, a seaport on the southern edge of the state. It was constructed to help satiate the overwhelming thirst for gasoline after the oil embargo of the 1970's. It has given us 30 or so years of service delivering petroleum. But now the Alaskan oil fields are in decline, leaving the pipeline with only a trickle to deliver. The chart above, taken from Wikipedia clearly shows the decline in oil output from Alaska. The youngsters of today, who are just now starting to own and drive cars, are experiencing from the beginning higher gas prices. In a decade or two, when Alaskan oil production drops to levels so low the pipeline can no longer be used, they will see a huge 800 mile long empty, rusting pipe and wonder at the waste of energy, effort and materials that went into it. But for the older folks, that pipeline gave us 30 years more of cheaper gas. This growing gap between the older and younger members of our population highlights the fact that we do not use resources for the long term ... our society thinks about what we can get today. One cost of this orientation towards short term profit will be a painful generational divide in society.

The Story of the Alaska Pipeline

The United States built an 800 mile long pipeline to help deliver the oil from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay and North Slope to the Continental 48. Here is the story of how that came to be. Particularly interesting is the segment around the 2:30 mark discussing the attempt to use an icebreaking tanker for carrying oil through the icy Arctic waters. That plan did not work out: the tanker could not manage the ice. Today, with global climate change bringing warming to the Arctic it might soon be possible to navigate tankers through the newly ice free Arctic waters. Ironically, now that it may be possible, there is very little oil to deliver! The Alaskan oil fields are all in decline, having already produced the majority of their petroleum. That petroleum is now in part contributing to the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, helping to ensure even higher future temperatures.

Pipelines : Fragile Oil Movers

Our gasoline economy is dependent on pipelines which move crude oil between various storage and processing facilities. Despite their importance, pipelines are often exposed and somewhat fragile. This video shows what can happen when one of them is damaged.

How Your Gas Gets to You : Oil Tanker In Action

The United States imports around 12 million barrels of oil a day and except for what arrives via pipelines from Canada and Mexico, it all goes by sea. Oil tankers are a necessary but invisible part of the supply chain leading up to your gas tank. Let us salute these tireless giants of the seas by watching one in action!