What can we do?

One way to save gas is by changing the way we drive. My website has fuel saving tips, but we all know that habits are hard to change, and as any self-respecting modern hippie knows: we want our cake and eat it too. Is that too much to ask? We want a fast car, we just don’t want it to be bad for the planet! That’s when we have to look for alternatives: can we power our vehicles in a cleaner format?

We currently have a few choices available, some more viable than others. Our usual fuels – gasoline, natural gas, propane, and diesel - are all non-renewable fossil fuels that contribute heavily to global warming by releasing the carbon dioxide (CO₂) that was previously tucked away inside the earth.

A better option is biodiesel, which you can make yourself or buy at the pump in increasingly more locations. The benefit of using biodiesel is that it does not contribute to global warming - the CO₂ released was recently removed from the air by the plants that created the oil. But unless we are only using waste oils, we could be endangering our food supply by using up agricultural land to produce fuel.

There has also been a lot of talk about hydrogen and fuel cells, but as it is right now, Hydrogen (H₂) is difficult and expensive for any of us to experiment with. Plus, H₂ is a very inefficient way to store and distribute energy. In many cases the H₂ even comes from fossil fuels and therefore still contributes to global warming.

Woodgas is also an option, but for powering vehicles it is not very reliable, because you have to start it like a woodstove (which takes time), and it doesn’t shut down easily.

The best solution is still the electric car. We can create electricity in many clean ways that do not contribute to pollution or global warming. In fact, you can be completely independent ("off-grid") with some relatively inexpensive equipment. The good news is that electric vehicles (EVs) are just around the corner. Currently there are already a number of EVs available for sale. Sadly, the affordable ones are still slow and don’t go far and the others are expensive. But just as DVD players only a few years ago cost over 30 times what you can buy one for today, the technology will become much more affordable as the number of EV’s being produced increases. The website has a list of EV’s currently available for sale – you will be pleasantly surprised!

Part of my mission is to explore and experiment with all of these options, and to see how they work in real life. The experiments will start small and lead up to an electric vehicle conversion: the electric hippie van! I’m sure this project will dispel any EV myths anyone may have. Videos of these projects will of course be made available online.

For the next few articles I will be discussing each of the aforementioned options in a bit more detail, starting with the one I’ve already experimented with – biodiesel.