Buy On A Budget And Get Value For Your Dollars
You don’t have to buy a motorized roller skate to realize good gas mileage. Some of the new midsize cars are so efficient; they beat some of the smaller compact offerings. One of the leaders in the MPG race is the Hyundai Sonata, rated at 27 miles per gallon as reported in the 2011 Consumer Reports Annual Auto issue released this month. 

Honda and Toyota no longer dominate the “family sedans” category, priced at around $30,000. A dozen entries scored well enough in the surveys to earn solid recommendations. The best among them was the Ford Fusion.

Consumer reports top picks for 2011 by category are:
Budget Car: Honda Fit | Small Car: Hundai Elantra | Family Sedan: Nissan Altima | Green Car (I assume they are not referring to color): Toyota Prius | Small SUV: Toyota Rav4 | Family SUV: Kia Sorrento | Sporty Car: Ford Mustang | Family Hauler: Toyota Sienna | Sports Sedan: Infinity C37 | Pickup truck: Chevrolet Avalanche.

Cars Running On Wood?………… Solving A Knotty Fuel Problem!

Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy (Public Domain)

When I first heard that autos might run on wood, I had the mental image of a big truck like vehicle with a guy standing in the bed throwing logs into a steam furnace. The greens of the country would go nuts, what with the smoke, ash and all the air contamination. But that’s not the case at all. According to the Wall Street Journal, a number of groups are working on technologies that produce oil substitutes or the base products of gasoline from wood chips or other biomass through a process called pyrolosis. The technology is intriguing because it creates oil and other petrochemicals like benzene from cellulose, but without most of the troubling drawbacks that other biofeuls have.

“We are making gasoline. The molecules we make are exactly the same as what is made in the petroleum today,” said George Huber, the UMass chemist who created the process used by a company called Annellotech.

Most plant material can be used, but wood chips or sawdust are best. Annellotech says the process is so inexpensive that a plant should be able to make a profit as long as crude oil sells for $30 a barrel or more- it was above $100 a barrel as this article went to publish. If the government, environmentalists and other special interest groups stay out of the way, we the American people, can and will solve the problem and provide lower cost fuel.

50% Boost In The Economy Of The Internal Combustion Engine… Surely You Jest!
I’m not kidding, and don’t call me Shirley. A start up called Scuderi Group has developed an engine that causes combustion to occur after the piston reaches the top of the cylinder. Scuderi says that change alone when coupled with a turbo-charger and a small air tank could result in a 50% fuel economy improvement.

The technology isn’t entirely new as Scuderi splits the compression and fuel intake into one cylinder and the combustion and exhaust into another. Existing engines use the same cylinder to do all the work, but combustion only occurs every other revolution of the piston.

The “split cycle” engine is not a new concept but Scuderi’s innovation is a small air tank that stores energy and helps maintain high compression throughout the cycle, maximizing fuel usage and producing large improvements in fuel economy. Here again, if we can keep the government out of the way, another innovative idea will help our fuel cost problems.

–Citizen Wayne