With the scientific progress achieved by mankind to date, anything is possible: baby elephants the size of small rats, harvesting cubic blue watermelons, building flying cities, and more. So why, you may ask, do our cars still run on traditional gasoline?
With the oil prices going mad, why don’t our cars run on water, orange juice, diet soda or even uranium? It is scientifically feasible after all and can be more environmentally friendly.
Before the massive oil-consuming era we live in today, there was a variety of technologies on offer: petrol and electric lighting systems, hot air balloons and hydrogen-powered aircraft, paints produced from sugar cane or light crude oil, and electric- and petrol-powered cars side by side with traditional carts and horses.
In the race between technologies, electricity had the comparative advantage over steam and internal combustion to power cars. It was cleaner and easier to integrate compared to the overheating and more polluting options, but the downside was the complexity and weight of the batteries needed to store the electric power.
The technology was well ahead of its time. In fact, the first ever car that broke the record speed at the time – just 100 km/h – was electric, and it maintained the record for years.
As major oil reserves were discovered and drilling techniques improved, gasoline became cheaper to produce. Since it was also easier to store in tanks rather than the heavy electric batteries, it won out with carmakers over competing technologies.
People were fascinated by the new source of power that came out of a hole in the ground, thinking that the precious resource would never be exhausted.
It seemed so abundant that industries ignored other technologies in favor of oil. Plastics, paints and energies that were produced from other raw materials shifted to use oil derivatives. Steam trains were replaced with diesel locomotives and chimneys with gas heaters.
Over time, the reality changed dramatically. The 2.5 billion people grew to nearly 6.7 billion, and the few million vehicles and aircraft are now counted in billions. The demand for energy and raw materials boomed, greatly surpassing the supply. Our very existence is oil-powered. Companies continue to invest heavily in exploration, drilling and transporting infrastructure as countries engage in oil wars.
Our fathers never worried about the cost of filling up a tank of gas, but it has become one of the nightmares of our generation. Huge effort is now being made to mitigate our dependence on oil. New forms of power are emerging as the world reverts to technologies that were abandoned years ago.
Since the mid-90s in Europe, cars have been powered with the cheaper natural gas, a wise and economic choice since the technical modification is simple and cheap. For the same reason, nearly 90 percent of cars in Brazil run on ethanol extracted from sugar cane. Petrol engines burn natural gas and ethanol the same way they burn gasoline.
Diesel engines, on the other hand, follow a different process and cannot run on the abovementioned alternative fuels. They can, however, run on biodiesel, a non-petroleum based fuel that can be produced from vegetable oil – which is widely criticized – or from used frying oil, a less controversial source. This is not exactly new: The first ever diesel engine ran on fuel derived from vegetable oil.
Making a strong comeback, and more likely to win out in the 21st century, is electric power.
Advancements in nanotechnology and enhanced chemistry processes reduced the weight of batteries, making hybrid and electric-powered cars a reality. More than one million hybrid Toyota Prius have been sold and the waiting list for the 100 percent electric Tesla Roadster runs quite long.
Both are seeing huge success because they are trendy, environmentally-friendly and more economical. The Tesla consumes the equivalent of 1.74 liters of gasoline in electricity to cover 100km.
In 2009, traditional Japanese, American and German carmakers as well as newcomers specialized in electric cars – such as Tesla Motors, Fisker and Think – will introduce to the market a number of new models of hybrid and electric cars.
There are other promising technologies as well such cars that run on compressed air, a technology that’s considered to be the most economical and environmentally-friendly. France-based MDI is leading the pack.
Cars powered by fuel cells, which run on hydrogen and turn it into electricity and H2O, is the least promising since hydrogen is highly explosive and its storage is very delicate.
It seems that the “oil era is fading as most experts and analysts see more than one alternative to gasoline. Most likely, car manufacturers will look back to the “pre-oil era when a number of technologies co-existed. In 20 years time, roads will likely be teeming with cars powered with petrol/gas, diesel, electricity, air, sugar cane – the possibilities are endless.
