DON HILLEBRAND: "Many of the American-based companies make outstanding diesel engines, but they only sell them overseas. They don't actually sell them in North America."
Don Hillebrand also says diesel can help in lowering the use of carbon-based fuels.
DON HILLEBRAND: "The diesel can give you an extra thirty percent fuel economy, which is a substantial amount of carbon reduction and a substantial amount of cost savings."
The Ford Motor Company makes diesel vehicles for the European market and could sell them in the United States. And GM has said it will manufacture a diesel passenger vehicle for the American market soon.
STEVE EMBER: Yet, gasoline engines remain the most common in passenger vehicles in the United States and are expected to remain so. Some manufacturers are pushing cars to new levels of fuel efficiency.
GM is offering the Chevrolet Cruz Eco. It has a gas-powered engine that is more fuel efficient than most hybrid models. The car travels about seventeen kilometers on a liter of gas.
And then there is extreme fuel efficiency. The Edison2 is an experimental car that was one of the winners of the ten-million-dollar Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. The prize was given to teams that could design a vehicle that could travel one hundred miles or more on one gallon of gas. That is at least forty-three kilometers a liter.
Oliver Kuttner led the Edison2 team. He says electric cars have a problem with weight. He says their batteries weigh too much. He believes very light-weight cars are more efficient than electric cars can ever be. The Edison2 car uses E85 fuel that is mostly ethanol, a form of alcohol.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25