Guest Author - William Charles Vetter

In Today's News
The United States Congress by a vote of 314-100 passed landmark legislation, a 13 year plan to raise minimum fuel standards for US cars, for the first time since 1975, and more importantly, offered massive support for renewable bio-fuels! This legislation requires Appliances to be more efficient and all lighting will use 40% less power. Ok, now sit down and compose yourself! Proponents said the bill fell short. Opponents warn of unsafe and more expensive cars on the road. Both sides are wrong, read on to see why.
Also Today
Wal-Mart announced that it will sell a battery powered electric vehicle (EV) rumored to be a new version of the once British Mini-Cooper. Currently manufactured by BMW, estimated price $35,000.00 Honda announced development of a hydrogen fuel cell, powered car.

That Was Fast
I started writing about the need for a change to alternative fueled cars on the World Wide Web just 6 weeks ago. These articles are available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. It is amazing to me just how fast the changes have been implemented. I changed the country in less than 2 months. Is it just a Coincidence? I don’t think so.

We Did It, or am I just totally delusional?
Ok, so maybe I am a little, but, hey I put a lot of time and heart into these articles. These are one page articles so it may not seem like much, but I put a lot of late night research into everything that I write and I’d like to think that someone besides me is reading what I write. Whether anyone does or not I am proud of my weekly articles. It’s sort of like going back to school and having to write a weekly report, I didn’t do this much homework when I was in grammar school.

Did they go far enough?
Yes, for now. It took us 100 years to get where we are at and you can’t become the “Biggest Loser” over night. It’s a 13 year comprehensive plan and I think that it will cause people to think about energy and change the way they think. Change takes time, people are afraid of change it is scary. Americans are in love with their big, overweight and powerful cars, but I think that the next generation will be able to change and thus have a different outlook on energy use and the cars that they drive. Small, light, and quick energy efficient cars will come into style and soon they will be all the rage. The little "tuner" cars are quickly becoming very popular with the younger crowd. Just look at the changes that are already underway...

Will more fuel efficient cars be more dangerous?
Yes and no. One Gallon of gas has 33 million heat calories that’s a finite amount of heat energy to work with. You may be Interested to know that reducing horsepower doesn’t increase mileage, unless you light up the tires every time you leave a stop light and drive at a constant high speed. My Chevy Corvette gets 30 mpg. The challenge is, harvest all 33 million calories and don’t let any get away, then reduce engine and drive train friction. Lower the coefficient of drag (CD) without increasing lift. The car must slip through air and not act like a huge parachute. The Ford F-150 pickup truck has a CD of .45, a Toyota Prius has a CD of .29. Reduce weight, it takes exactly twice the energy to accelerate and decelerate a car that is twice as heavy. Recapture energy when braking. Make it light. Many people argue that lighter cars are more dangerous, that’s not really true. If a lighter car has advanced design features and materials it’s actually safer. If the lighter cars are made of ultra-light, space age composites with high tech computer sensors, that’s the car I would want to be in. The reality is that eventually we will all be in the same size cars so no, it's not the size that makes a car dangerous, it's the difference in sizes of cars, that creates the danger to smaller cars.

What about cost?
Currently high tech stuff is expensive, so were the first laptop computers but as competition for your business increases and early demand decreases, prices historically drop. By the pound Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles (ATPZEV) will be expensive but they will be lighter too so it’s all merely relative.

What Should you do?
If you are soon to be in the market for a new ride, I recommend buying a car with the highest technology/mileage rating that you can afford. It will cost a bit more to buy but will save you tremedously, gas prices are never going down again, we still have cheap gas compared to Europe and England, but I can imagine gas going to $4.00 a gallon in the next 2 years. In 5 years when you try to upgrade a low tech, guzzler will be a “freebie” on the used car market. Stay ahead of the curve, as much as possible.

Conclusions and The Big Bad Wolf
It’s unfortunate that it takes legislation to get people to do the inevitable. However, I don’t think that people would move in this direction without legislation and leaders to drag them along. We have got to re-build now, before the big bad wolf is at the door. Don't drive around every day in way more car than you need. There is a finite amount of oil on Earth and it's really only a matter of time until its all gone...

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