Alternative Fuel Vehicles

Alternative fuel vehicles are cars that are designed to run on a fuel source different from gas, or a combination of an alternative fuels and gas. Some alternative fuel cars can even run on air or natural gas! Hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius can run on gas, electricity, or a combination of both. Some are plug-in hybrids that recharge their electric batteries by being plugged into a wall. They get excellent gas mileage because they run on an electric motor and a smaller gas engine than you’d see in other cars. Flex-fuel cars can run on ethanol, a fuel made of plant sugar. A drawback of these cars is that sugarcane ethanol is the only good ethanol in terms of emissions, and ethanol isn’t as flammable, so Flex-fuel cars get less mileage on it. Modern, cleaner cars that run on diesel get better mileage than other cars because diesel is more flammable than gasoline, which makes up for the fact that diesel is an expensive (and stinky when burned by most trucks) fuel source. Electric cars run solely on electricity and usually have to be plugged into a wall to recharge. The Tesla Roadster is a $100,000 electric car that can go almost 250 miles when you plug it in and charge it for five hours, and it can go from 0-60 mph in almost 4 seconds on its 6,831 Lithium-Ion batteries that only cost a few bucks to charge! Hydrogen cars like the BMW Hydrogen 7 can run on hydrogen in certain forms, and the engines of hydrogen cars are quieter than gasoline cars.