Living Like Ed by Ed Jr. (whitelam books .txt) 📗

and automakers are investing in heavily, though its use in vehicles you and I can drive is probably several years away. A fuel cell is an electrochemical energy conversion device that mixes hydrogen and oxygen to make water, creating electricity in the process. The big drawback with hydrogen—and the reason I’m not a huge supporter of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles at this time—is that hydrogen is made by burning fossil fuels, so the benefits aren’t enough to outweigh the drawbacks right now. We need to find a clean way to “make” hydrogen for it to be a fully green solution.

In the meantime, you can get a car today that burns one of these other alternative fuels. And if you can get around and do the tasks you need to do while you’re burning one of these other fuels—while you’re burning natural gas or propane or biodiesel or ethanol—it’s often better for the environment than burning gasoline in a regular internal-combustion-engine car.

You may also qualify for some tax benefits, or be able to drive alone and still use the carpool lane. In California, you have to get a special sticker for your vehicle that will allow you to use the high-occupancy vehicle, or HOV, lane. Anyone who has dealt with L.A. traffic knows this can be a very big benefit indeed.

So let’s take a quick look at each of these other alternative fuels and see what your options are today.

Natural Gas

Natural gas is a fossil fuel, but it’s one of the cleanest-burning alternative fuels. Also, it’s made primarily from methane. Furthermore, almost 87 percent of the natural gas used in the United States is produced right here in the U.S., so switching from a gasoline-powered car to a natural gas car helps reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Consumers don’t have many choices when it comes to shopping for a natural gas-powered car. In 2007 only one vehicle that ran exclusively on natural gas was available to consumers in the United States (as opposed to governments or big companies for their fleets). Actually, it was being sold only in California and New York. That vehicle is the Honda Civic GX NGV (for natural gas vehicle). It comes with a device called Phill, a refueling appliance that you connect to your home’s gas line, the same type of gas line that fuels your stove or your clothes dryer. That way, you can fuel the car at home overnight, which makes it just as convenient as an electric car. A full tank gives you a range of 220 to 240 miles, so you can go pretty far with it, and if you use it around town, you will never have to go to a filling station.

Another option, when it comes to natural gas, is a flex-fuel vehicle, one that can run on natural gas and that can also run on either gasoline or diesel fuel. As the name suggests, a flex-fuel vehicle gives you more flexibility, since you can run on readily available gasoline or diesel when you can’t find a natural gas filling station—and they’re not easy to find as of yet.

                  We had some, um, adventures with a flex-fuel car that Ed used to own, which ran on natural gas and gasoline. We traveled cross-country in that car one time, and Ed had this old map of all the natural-gas filling stations. Now, they don’t have an infrastructure for this stuff. It doesn’t exist. We’d go to these places where there’s supposed to be a tank of natural gas, and they’d be like, “Oh, no, three years ago they got rid of that.”

But Ed was determined that he would find natural gas. So he would drive around for an hour in a city—burning natural gas while looking for natural gas—instead of just going to a gas station and filling up with gasoline until we could get to the next natural gas station.

On more than one occasion, we would go to a place and it would living like just be a stump. And then we’d be in the boondocks with not enough gas. And I would always be on pins and needles, wondering if we were going to make it across the country. It was never dull. But I did it once. One time. That was it.

Oh, and remember how I wouldn’t take the electric car to the hospital when I was in labor with Hayden? Well, that meant we had to take the other car, which was this same natural gas flex-fuel car. So we get in, and we go out of the driveway toward the street, and Ed takes a left, and that’s a funny way to go, because the hospital is in the other direction. Then he gets on the freeway and heads completely in the opposite direction. I asked, “Where are we going?” And Ed says, “We’re out of natural gas, so we have to go to Glendale.” Now, we live in Studio City, and Glendale is a good 10 miles away by freeway, so I was like “No way! Pull the car over! Get off the freeway! Get to a gas station immediately!”

I think he thought I was going to deliver right then and there, so he pulled off and went to a gas station, but even then he would not get out of the car and pump the gasoline. So I had to get out of the car—in labor—and pump gasoline. And I said, “I hope some-one’s taking your picture right now.”

We finally made it to the hospital, with time to spare, but you never know about these things. My feeling is, get natural gas on your own time, buddy! Not when I’m in labor.

I’m not sure our marriage could have survived all this craziness for too many years. Thank goodness the car companies have come out with some really good green vehicles that are easy to live with, like my Prius and Ed’s Phoenix SUT.