The 150mpg SUV - Kunstler's Worst Nightmare ?  

After Gutenberg reports on a new "extreme hybrid" that can achieve, by some estimations, 150 miles per gallon (more at MetaEfficient and The New York Times). Hat tip to john15 at TOD for the title.

The AFS Trinity web site reports that “a 2007 SUV straight off an American automaker’s showroom floor and subsequently equipped with the patent pending Extreme Hybrid™ (XH™) drive train, exceeded 150 mpg.” Now if we please could have that in km / mJ-gmCO2e-dollars, please?

AFS Trinity Power Corporation presented their latest prototype at (NAIAS) the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Intrinsic to this hybrid drive is their new Fast Energy™ technology: “patent pending control electronics to cache power for short periods in ultra-capacitors and provide this power in bursts for all-electric acceleration that is better, in many cases, than the internal combustion engine of the host vehicle.”

The control unit integrates power from the ultra-capacitors with energy from a low cost, deep cycle battery pack. The life of the batteries is extended because kinetic energy reclamation goes to the ultra-caps, whereas the batteries re-charge by plugging into a household socket.

Writing an exclusive for the New York Times, Matthew Wald explains that the rate of energy flow is an issue with regenerative braking. As the brakes are applied to slow a hybrid car, its electric drive motor turns into a generator. This process converts the car’s motion into a powerful stream of electric current, but the batteries in today’s hybrids capture only about half of the energy produced this way. While very expensive advanced lithium batteries are better capable than current systems to take these short bursts, ultracapacitors can absorb a much higher percentage than current systems.

While GM is also looking at creating a Vue based pure hybrid, they are still heavily focused on old style engine models - Technology Review reports they are Partnering with one of Vinod Kosla's biofuel ventures, Illinois based Coskata - "Cheap Ethanol from Tires and Trash".

Yesterday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, General Motors announced a partnership with Coskata of Warrenville, IL, a new company that claims it can make ethanol from wood chips, grass, and trash--including old tires--for a dollar a gallon. That's significantly less than it costs to make the biofuel from corn grain, which is the source of almost all the ethanol made in the United States.

Coskata executives, who until the announcement had kept the company's existence and technology under wraps, say they have developed a hybrid approach involving both thermochemical and biological processes for making ethanol. Until now, most researchers have focused on developing either thermochemical or biological methods. Coskata says that besides being cheaper than other ethanol production processes under development, its technology uses less energy and water.

GM will give financial, technical, and marketing support to Coskata to help it scale up its process, which so far has been demonstrated only at the lab scale. Coskata is completing a pilot-scale ethanol production facility and will announce locations for a 40,000-gallon-per-year facility and a 100-million-gallon-per-year commercial-scale plant later this year.

Coskata joins a number of other companies looking for ways to make biofuels from alternative sources. A new federal mandate, signed into law late last month, calls for 36 billion gallons of biofuels to be produced by 2022; of that, 21 billion gallons is to come from sources other than corn grain. But so far technology for making ethanol from such feedstocks has not been proved commercially.

The Coskata process begins with gasification, a well-known technology that involves heating up a wide range of organic materials until their components disassociate and form synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Then, instead of using chemical catalysts to convert the syngas into various alcohols as is done in conventional processes (see "Breaking Ground on Cellulosic Ethanol"), Coskata uses new strains of bacteria to convert it into ethanol. Since ethanol is the only product, the technique produces a better overall yield than catalytic processes. Bacteria are also easier to work with than catalysts in some ways. For example, they're not as particular about the ratio of gases in the syngas. "It is theoretically possible to feed our organism exclusively carbon monoxide and it will make ethanol from that," says Richard Tobey, vice president of R&D and engineering at Coskata. "You can't do that with the catalytic approaches."

Links:

* Reuters - GM eyes breakthrough in cellulosic ethanol
* Greentech Media - With GM Deal in Hand, Coskata Promises $1 Ethanol
* New York Times - Toyota Will Offer a Plug-In Hybrid by 2010