Alternative Fuels - Say To Heck With Gas
There's possibility you might have noticed a slight increase in the price of gas. Okay, you're probably grinding your teeth every time you just pass a gas station, to say nothing of the stress of actually buying gas. It's enough to make a person say the heck with gas entirely. If only.
Fortunately, there are alternative fuels available, with more on the way. There's a good chance you'll be able to find a fuel alternative that will save both your teeth and your sanity when you go to the pumps.
Biodiesel
This alternative fuel is available right now. Commercially available biodiesel costs right around the same amount as regular diesel, which could still be a savings compared to regular gas to begin with.
The real alternative that will save money is using purified cooking oil as fuel. By running ordinary used grease through a strainer, you can use it without modification in some diesel vehicles. Given that you get used oil for free at many restaurants, this is an alternative fuel that can really save you money.
Hybrid Cars
As the name implies, hybrids use two or more fuels as an alternative to just using gasoline. This is one of the more common kinds of alternative fuel strategies, since they don't require any change in your habits.
They way most work is to use a gas or diesel motor to power a generator that charges batteries that power the electric motors that drive the wheels. Whew. This increases fuel efficiency by a number of means, including using the friction from braking to charge up the batteries, for example, and taking advantage of having less weight from the engine.
Fuel Cells
One alternative fuel source that will become widely available in the next few years is the fuel cell. Of all the alternative fuels, this one is the most science fiction like of them. A fuel cell is basically a battery that never goes dead. Never, so long as the chemicals that provide the energy keep coming in.
The chemical that most fuel cells are slated to use is hydrogen. Eight dollars of hydrogen will take a car around 160 miles. This is very roughly equivalent to getting 80 miles to the gallon with regular fuel. And as fuel cells as an alternative fuel become more popular, hydrogen prices will almost certainly drop, so this is one of the most promising.
So if the price of gas is getting you down, then take heart, alternative fuels and some relief are just around the corner.
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Wanna-Be Hypermilers Easy Prey For Gas-Saving Gimmicks
The cost of gas in the United States, traditionally priced very low compared to the rest of the world, have been rising for the last two years and market forecasts say they won't be going down anytime soon, if ever.
With record-high gasoline prices looming as a permanent part of the future, people everywhere are looking for ways to make their vehicles more fuel-efficient.
Some are trading in their gas-guzzling SUV's for hybrid and eco-friendly alternative fuel cars.
Others are becoming hypermilers, the new class of road warrior that competes to squeeze the very highest mile-per-gallon out of every little drop of fuel their cars consume.
The media has focused a great deal of attention on hypermiling drivers who claim they are able to boost the average miles-per-gallon of their Honda Civics from 27 to a more budget-friendly 40 mpg through the use of a few simple tactics. And in fact, they actually ARE.
But, all this talk of using tricks and techniques to increase a car's gas mileage has predictably opened the doors to a new flood of old gimmicks claiming they will boost your car to unprecedented levels of fuel efficiency.
The sad fact is, however, that most of these gimmicks are nothing less than myths, scams or well-aged shams, some of which have been around since the gas rationing days of World War Two.
Using top secret additives or even magnets to your car's gas tank is not likely to save you so much as a dime on gas, or so claims the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - the arm of the United States government that monitors vehicle fuel efficiency. They monitor gas-saving claims and test any products they find for sale that claim to significantly affect gas mileage.
EPA scientists test fuel consumption by putting automobiles up on racks that allow the wheels to turn just as they would in real driving conditions, then "virtually" take the car over a computerized course.
Over the years, they say, they've tested more than a hundred products that claim to increase fuel efficiency and thus save on gas.
Most of these fall into two categories - either additives or gadgets. And the most common are liquid additives you add to your cars gas tank, gadgets that pump air into your carburetor, and magnets that claim to change the molecular structure of gasoline.
In all its testing, the EPA says, it has never found a single product that produced significant savings on gasoline - let alone the huge savings many claimed.
Despite the best efforts of the EPA to expose these shams, the claims continue, especially on the internet where so many old myths seem to find everlasting life.
NOTE! This is NOT to be confused with HHO, or more commonly known as Hydrogen generator fuel conversion 'add on' kits. Hydrogen fuel is NOT a myth, nor just another gadget. HHO generators have actually been in use by the US Government and other large agencies since as early as the late 1940s. Previously too expensive for the average consumer, smaller and much more affordable systems have been brought to market thanks to the skyrocketing gas prices of late. You'll be seeing more and more HHO powered vehicles on the road in coming months.
But back to the gas-saving scams and gimmicks...
It takes mere seconds with a search engine to turn up multiple pages of products making preposterous claims. We easily found products with prices ranging from $40 to $200 being sold on numerous sites, even though the spurious facts and figures used to justify their sales have long ago been exposed by the EPA.
Some of these products even attempt to cloak themselves in phony EPA approval by claiming to have been tested by "EPA-Certified Labs." But the truth is, the EPA does not certify labs nor does U.S. federal government endorse any gas-saving products for cars.
And think about this - with auto manufacturers under such tremendous pressure to provide consumers with better fuel economy, they'd be all over these devices if any one of them could deliver the gas savings they claim.
While the promise of stretching your gas dollar to the max can seem awfully tempting - especially when the promising product costs only around $20 - it's best to beware. Most will be benign at best, while some of the worst have been shown to cause engine damage.
Before you attempt to stretch your budget by spending money on some of these gas-saving schemes, consider this: the real hypermilers, those road rangers actually getting 40 miles per gallon out of a car rated for 27, are doing it with hypermiling techniques, some as simple as coasting until a car runs out of acceleration. That's not a pitch you can sell from a web page, but it's the easiest no-cost way to actually save on gas.
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