Balancing driving pleasure and environmental cleanliness
Posted by DavidM in Driving | 4 June 2007
I had a comment from Aurelien on an earlier post asking whether it was worth waiting for hydrogen fuel and how to balance driving pleasure with environmental improvement. Unfortunately, due to the delightful spamming community we automatically close comments on articles after a couple of weeks so here's my response.
I don't understand the logic of motor manufacturers spending large sums of money on developing 'biofuel' cars - petrol engine cars that can use ethanol for example - when every existing diesel car can run on biodiesel with no modification.
It just needs motor manufacturers to allow it to be used within warranty and the demand will shoot up.
The only potential issue I know of is damage to engine seals and even that's not certain.
Where money probably is well spent is in the longer term development of hydrogen fuel. I also don't know know enough about the production, but if exhaust emissions are zero and the only emissions are at production facilities, that should make it far easier to capture and clean any outputs centrally.
So in the short term I suggest trading in your petrol car for a diesel - something like the BMW 320d if you want a good drive (0-60 in 8.9secs and average 50mpg) - and run it on biodiesel. Ideally make sure your biodiesel supplier is using recycled cooking oil.
Then wait and see what develops with the new fuels.
