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ReprintsLotus supports move to methanol
Tony Lewin
Automotive News Europe
June 23, 2008 06:30 CET
Experts at Lotus believe that methanol could hold the key to carbon-neutral vehicles. The UK-based automaker and engineering firm's Exige 270E Tri-Fuel concept has a gasoline engine that can run on gasoline, methanol or ethanol. The advantage of using methanol is that the fuel can be produced either from wood products or created by using hydrogen plus CO2 collected from the air. The latter course has the advantage of locking the carbon collected from the air into the methanol cycle. Using synthetic methanol, cars could be as carbon neutral as a fuel cell vehicle operating on hydrogen. Plus, unlike fuel cells, there would be no need for a new infrastructure to create a fuel network for methanol-powered cars. Jamie Turner, Lotus Engineering chief engineer for powertrain research, said another advantage of this solution is that as fossil fuels are phased out all cars could gradually be converted so they could use sustainable renewable fuels such as methanol. Said Turner: "We believe that this is an entirely workable solution to the problem of global warming associated with transport, and can be used to reduce the effect of CO2 emissions from other areas as well." |
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