50 miles between 4-hour fillups? And people think that's going to make it in the marketplace? Seriously?
When I was commuting it was 30 miles each way. I'd have had to buy one of these Phill thingies for home (and install it in my detached garage), and another for the office (and convince someone to let me install it somewhere...I don't think our office even had natural gas service...)
No, what they're saying is that for every 50 miles worth of driving, you have to have the thing plugged in for 4 hours.
That means, basically, that you'd need to park the sucker when you get home at, say, 6, and leave it there. By 6 in the morning, 12 hours later, it's 'gassed' up to a 150-mile run. These things have a 170-mile radius at best, in any event.
This doesn't mean that you can't use it for a run to the grocery store that night or something, but it does mean that you have to be serious about having the things hooked up to a supply at home when you're not using it - OR have knowledge of a good Natural Gas filling station in your area.
I notice they claim that corn-based ethanol yields a 21% greenhouse gas reduction over gasoline. I'm sure that doesn't take into effect the 80% increase due to the petroleum that has to be burned to generate the ethanol.
Well, I was counting those already. Last I heard, you needed 0.8 units of fuel to generate 1.0 units of ethanol from corn. I think that includes farm equipment and petroleum based fertilizers. So it'd have to reduce emissions by 80% just to break even.
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When I was commuting it was 30 miles each way. I'd have had to buy one of these Phill thingies for home (and install it in my detached garage), and another for the office (and convince someone to let me install it somewhere...I don't think our office even had natural gas service...)
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That means, basically, that you'd need to park the sucker when you get home at, say, 6, and leave it there. By 6 in the morning, 12 hours later, it's 'gassed' up to a 150-mile run. These things have a 170-mile radius at best, in any event.
This doesn't mean that you can't use it for a run to the grocery store that night or something, but it does mean that you have to be serious about having the things hooked up to a supply at home when you're not using it - OR have knowledge of a good Natural Gas filling station in your area.
This thing claims to be able to find filling stations that handle natural gas, FWIW.
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Corn ethanol as a fuel (let alone an "energy source") is a boondoggle.
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So it'd have to reduce emissions by 80% just to break even.
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