Getting Ready for Earth Day: Greening Your Car

Stop propagating the myth that nitrogen in your tires keeps them inflated longer than regular air (which is 78% nitrogen). Check the comments to your original post to see why.

True you disclaim your statement by saying "some say inflating tires with nitrogen makes them leak more slowly" but this is like saying "some say carbon dioxide is warming the earth", the overwhelming majority of evidence and science goes against it.

Read your own comments, they can be quite informative.

Thankfully for me, the weather's getting better so I can start riding my scooter more. I filled it up yesterday after commuting to work for a week. It cost me less than $4 and I was getting 70 mpg! (The only way I'd be able to beat that in a conventional car would be to carpool with two other people.)

Sometimes the best way to green your car is to eschew the car altogether.

I don't know why it seems to be so violently ignored on this site, but ethanol is one of the easiest ways to go green(er) in a car right now. I'm shocked it's not on this list.

At the pump, you can make a choice: fill up on 100% petroleum or fill up on E10 or E85 ethanol-blended gas. Choose the latter and you choose an environmentally smarter fuel. Period.

If you must drive your car, this is one thing you can do right now that has an immediate, direct green impact.

You might wring your hands over a lot of myths about ethanol, but you'd needn't: like whether ethanol production delivers a true net energy gain (it does -- at least 33% more BTU's out than in, and that' not even holding the petroleum industry to the same standard), how much less/more C02 it releases (ethanol is carbon neutral; the C02 it releases is consumed by the crops raised to produce it: this is a renwabe resource); how it threatens food supplies for hungry nations (it doesn't: ethanol consumes 20% of US corn; livestock consumes 50%, people consume 10%, much in the form of corn syrup, plus the US exports more corn for human consumption than any other nation).

You might also dismiss ethanol as an over-hyped silver bullet promoted by farm interests. First, no one in ethanol is calling it a silver bullet - anymore than they're calling proper tire inflation a silver bullet. Second, if ethanol is good for your fellow American farmers, so what? Isn't that a good thing? Did you have any any other ideas for revitalizing dying rural communities?

A 100 million-gallon-ethanol plant eliminates the consumption (read: import) of 2.3 million barrells of oil annually.
Simultaneously, that keeps energy dollars right here in your own back yard. That's good for everyone.

Some people have argued that because ethanol produces slightly fewer BTUs (a standard heat energy meausurement, than gasoline) you sacrifice efficiency, which increases consumptin. Many others contradict this by pointing to studies that show MPG gain/loss with is negligible. Others quesion BTU's (heat energy) as the right measure of "efficiency," considering that ethanol promotes more complete combustion. And even as this post shows, driving habits and tire pressure have a big -- maybe bigger-- impact on efficiency. To me, this efficiency argument is apples to oranges. If there's a chance I'm going to burn slightly more fuel with ethanol in my tank, I'm going to err on the side of the renewable, carbon-neutral source every time.

Full disclosure: I've done a lot of work for the ethanol industry in the last two years (so I've learned a lot about its pros and cons). I've also paid my dues commuting by bike and mass transit in Portland for 12 years. But the reason I'm posting this super long comment is that I'm just tired of my friends choosing to ignore that ethanol is maybe really a good thing.

Ask yourself this: the next time you're at the pump, which will it be -- a tank full of a toxic, non-renewable resource that releases sequestered carbon into the atmosphere or one blended with a biodegradable, renewable resource that cuts net CO2 emissions and reduces petroleum consumption? That choice is your easiest way to "green your car."

I agree that lowering your speed can help save fuel, but I'm not so sure it's the most effective thing you can do. To not accelerate too quickly may help even more. Those jack-rabbit starts just kill fuel economy. Also, coasting to a stop when the light is about to turn red can really save fuel as well.

Keeping proper tire inflation is a no-brainer, and going a little over the recommended psi can help too.

Atul
http://www.realitydriven.com

I agree with the ethanol comment and a lot of cars can take ethanol, but where do you get it? I live in Tampa, Florida and I don't think I've seen a single supplier.

Jessica, you've just hit on the main problem: retail distribution. Ethanol is huge in the Midwest but not yet available everywhere.

I don't have an answer for you (I do know you can get e85 in Lakeland) except to just start asking for it. I think the most common ethanol blend available is E10 (10% ethanol). Here are a couple industry links that might be helpful:

http://www.drivingethanol.org
http://www.ethanolrfa.org/

Best of luck!
GBV

Does anyone have info on fuel reformulators that are supposed to reduce emmission plus keep your engine running cleaner thus less maintanence costs?

You guys are missing something huge here. Many of the newer more fuel efficient cars on the market are actually detrimental to the environment by the way of the amount of BTU's they consumed to be manufactured. Correct me if I am wrong, but a car will consume a 1/4 of the BTU's (fuel) in its lifetime that it took to manufacture it initially. So that hybrid car isn't really environmentally friendly after all, but my old toyota truck with properly inflated tires and a regularly tuned up engine is. Don't believe the crap all these so called "educated people" are trying to foist on you. Be satisfied with what you have and the earth will thank you for it.

Earth day is an interesting event with an empty road free from cars.