Back in 1980 when I first tried to run for U.S. Senate, then backed off to an unsuccessful challenge to U.S. Congressman Robert C. McClory, I drove an alcohol-powered car.
The idea was to show ethanol produced in the United States could replace to some extent, gasoline, much of which was imported from OPEC nations.
Two men in Elgin (Dale Pate and Herb Hansen) had invested a carburetor that used 80% alcohol and 20% water.
First I had a Buick from Wolf Cheverton in Belvdere.
There were operational problems, so I switched to a Pinto, which worked fine, except for one very cold night when it stalled on Route 176 just before Greenwood Road. (The couple in the house on the Northwest corner let me call Gravers to tow the car to Woodstock, where I was living then.)
The biggest problem was getting pure alcohol to mix with the water.
There was FS in Woodstock and another station just south of Morris, one in Palatine, I think, and maybe I found others.
But there was no network of fueling stations.
At that time, Ford had rolled out cars in Brazil that ran on pure ethanol.
Since the most expensive part of distillation is removing the last bit of water, the inventors thought they had a marketable idea.
Brazil seemed like a good potential market for the invention. there sugar cane was used to produce the alcohol.
But, to make ethanol a viable fuel, people would have to have a place to “gas” up.
The Illinois Corn Growers Association could have opened such stations, or just a pump and a tank at one of the local cut rate chains, but did not do so.
Getting government subsidies and mandates for use made more sense, probably, because lobbying for such government action was cheaper than installing pumps with some gasoline company or building whole stations.
An idea to have the Federal government spend $12 billion for such pumps was floated in 2010.
Volkswagen is going all in with electric vehicles.
Besides building six battery manufacturing factories, VW is investing in 18,000 fast-charging stations.
VW will probably succeed.
Rivan, the Bloomington electric truck manufacturer is doing something similar in this country.
The referenced article reports, “Rivian says users can add 140 miles of range to their Rivian EVs in 20 minutes.”
The Ford Pinto had a habit of catching fire.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a6700/top-automotive-engineering-failures-ford-pinto-fuel-tanks/#:~:text=Ford%20neglected%20to%20add%20reinforcements,catching%20fire%20that%20persists%20today.&text=And%20arguably%20the%20most%20dangerous,1971%20through%201976%20Ford%20Pinto.
I would consider an electric car IF these criteria were met:
A range similar to my present gasoline car of about 350 miles in the month of January and I had the heater constantly turned on to keep warm.
Electric charging stations in the same quantity and locations as the present amount and placement of gasoline stations.
Time to fill-up and charge the batteries of my electric car the SAME as for my present gasoline car which is about 5 minutes.
The cost to purchase the electric car of the same carrying capacity, 4 adults, with a trunk, etc would be the same as an equivalent gasoline powered car.
Another factor that is rarely or never discussed is the question of infrastructure for electricity in neighborhoods of homes.
If everyone had an electric car or suv or pickup and wanted to charge their vehicles overnight at home rather than going to a charging station – is there sufficient electric cable capacity in the neighborhood going to each house?
Are power generating stations/locations capable of keeping up with demand not only at home recharging but also at all of the charging stations as numerous as are today’s gasoline stations?