Watched the documentary "Pump" on Netflix the other night. It's a very interesting exploration of how we ended up with oil powered cars and some suggestions on how we can get out of this dilemma.
It goes back to the early days of the automobile where there was a wide variety of fuel (electric, ethanol, gasoline) for cars. Interesting in that Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on ethanol which he felt his rural customers could easily make in a backyard still. However, Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust stamped out everything other than oil. A consortium of GM, Mack Truck, Standard Oil and others bought up the electrified trolley cars, scrapped them and replaced them with busses. Standard Oil was also instrumental in getting prohibition passed to make it illegal for anyone to make their own ethanol.
The movie discusses current alternative fuels (electric, methanol, ethanol, natural gas) along with some of their history and the oil industry's efforts to keep people from using them. For instance, at one point California mandated methanol cars to deal with pollution but the oil industry came up with reformulated gasoline (carcinogenic MTBE) to keep people from moving away from oil.
It points out that the oil companies control about 2/3 of fuel stations and that these will never have any alternative fuel without a government mandate. We'll never see Exxon charging stations for Tesla.
There are about 15 million FlexFuel vehicles on the road but the high ethanol fuel is not readily available and not cost competitive. Also, most people driving these cars are not even aware that they have a FlexFuel vehicle. Brazil has done a good job of moving to sugar cane ethanol... not clear that the US corn ethanol is competitive.
Very interesting movie.
It goes back to the early days of the automobile where there was a wide variety of fuel (electric, ethanol, gasoline) for cars. Interesting in that Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on ethanol which he felt his rural customers could easily make in a backyard still. However, Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust stamped out everything other than oil. A consortium of GM, Mack Truck, Standard Oil and others bought up the electrified trolley cars, scrapped them and replaced them with busses. Standard Oil was also instrumental in getting prohibition passed to make it illegal for anyone to make their own ethanol.
The movie discusses current alternative fuels (electric, methanol, ethanol, natural gas) along with some of their history and the oil industry's efforts to keep people from using them. For instance, at one point California mandated methanol cars to deal with pollution but the oil industry came up with reformulated gasoline (carcinogenic MTBE) to keep people from moving away from oil.
It points out that the oil companies control about 2/3 of fuel stations and that these will never have any alternative fuel without a government mandate. We'll never see Exxon charging stations for Tesla.
There are about 15 million FlexFuel vehicles on the road but the high ethanol fuel is not readily available and not cost competitive. Also, most people driving these cars are not even aware that they have a FlexFuel vehicle. Brazil has done a good job of moving to sugar cane ethanol... not clear that the US corn ethanol is competitive.
Very interesting movie.
