Green Cool Hip

Imagine a world where one can pull over to the side of the road at any time and refill his vehicle. You must be wondering how or thinking that a container of gasoline in the trunk is in order. Well, hold on to your seat for this one. All one needs to do in this not so distant and not so futuristic world, is drink enough water in order to pee at will. Yes, Urine. A Urine-Powered vehicle may soon become a reality.

According to Dr. Gerardine Botte and her team at the University of Ohio, extracting hydrogen from urine is easier than getting it from water, thus making a hydrogen vehicle powered by Mr. Pee very likely.
Our scientist tells us that a molecule of urea comprises four hydrogen and two nitrogen atoms and requires 33 times less electricity to be released than if it were extracted from water. This should make it hopefully easier and cheaper to power future vehicles.

Aqua Power Systems, a Japanese company, is already offering batteries that can be powered by urine, among other liquids, for sale.

Although this groundbreaking technology is still in its early stage, there’s hope my urine may some day become an additional source of income.

Happy Drinking!!

I hate fuzzy math. We have all seen fuzzy math with statistic polls, financial stats, etc… In almost every case, it’s always been an industry or company trying to push a product to consumers. I have recently met a number of people who are excited over GM’s latest claim of the Volt’s 230 mpg. If we take a few seconds to review the numbers provided by GM for its widely anticipated Chevy Volt, due to hit market in 2010, some things get lost in translation or in this case, lost in calculation. In order to clarify things a bit, let’s take a real look at the number “230″ thrown at us by GM.

For simplicity, we’ll use 50 miles as the magic number that the average vehicle owner commutes daily in the United States and assume that a gallon of gasoline costs on average $3. The Volt has an effective range of 40 miles on a full electric charge, after which the gasoline engine kicks in. GM claims the gasoline engine generates electricity that is used to recharge the battery, but does not provide how much of the gasoline is used to drive the Volt. Getting to that number should be a matter of running the car in a test lab and compiling some data. GM has this capability and either has not done so or at least is keeping this number from the public. I tend to believe the latter.

So, let’s assume that the vehicle gets 50 miles a gallon and omit the cost of recharging the battery using your home standard 110 volt outlet at night. Ten (10) miles a day is driven on gasoline power. In a five-day workweek, the average commuter drives 50 miles on gasoline which consumes one (1) gallon of gasoline. Now, remember we also drive 40 miles a day on electricity, which is the volt range on a single full electric charge, according to GM. Thus we get 200 miles of electric driving over 5 days. Finally, add the 200 miles and the 50 miles, we can easily conclude the Volt goes 250 miles on a gallon of gas. Substract 20 miles for idle time, that would use either electricity or gasoline, and we have 230 miles.

Or we can arrive at the conclusion that it costs 40 cents to recharge the Volt’s battery when using your home power outlet and the cost of gallon of gasoline averages $2.30. Driving 40 miles or less a day, the cost of a gallon of gasoline would let us drive our Chevy Volt for 230 miles.

Now that GM has started this trend, we can expect every auto manufacturer to come up with such bogus number. Nissan is already claiming 367 miles per gallon with the Leaf, which is by the way a true zero emission car (no gas tank) but not much of a looker in my opinion.

So, if you fill up your tank and embark on a cross-country trip, will you get 230 miles a gallon and be able to drive from New York to Los Angeles on a full tank of gas, (assuming a 15-gallong tank)? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Is the Volt the right step for GM? DEFINITELY.

Although, not a zero-emission vehicle, it surely looks Green, Cool & Hip.