MOTORING NEWS - The American website Greencarreport.com published interesting results to an online survey conducted in December.
They gave followers on Twitter the opportunity to vote on the question: Which alternative fuels will survive long-term? The options for an answer were a choice between E85 ethanol, hydrogen and natural gas.
Electric cars were excluded as it is not a fuel but technically an "energy carrier", the website said in its report on the survey.
Surprisingly, a remarkable 59% voted for hydrogen as the alternative fuel that would survive over the long term.
About 26% said none of them would survive and out of the other two choices, E85 ethanol received just 6% of the votes and natural gas just 9%.
The website reports that building a fuelling network is turning out to be more of a challenge than have been anticipated.
The attempt to boost passenger vehicles fuelled by cheap, abundant US natural gas is now essentially over, with a mere 942 public natural-gas fuelling stations throughout the 50 states.
E85 ethanol, the bio-fuel that's largely derived from corn in the US, is in slightly better shape: there are about 3 000 US petrol stations that offer it, but that is only a tiny percentage of the estimated 125 000 US petrol stations.
Hydrogen is only available from 39 stations nationwide, all but four of them in California, so the optimism for this fuel of the future was a surprise.
Regarding electricity, there are 45 500 charging cables in 16 500 different places throughout the US to recharge plug-in electric cars.
Greencarreport.com has noted a reservation because this particular poll had one of the highest responses of any poll it has run.
That may indicate "organised voting in the background", since a substantial portion of readers typically tend to be sceptical of hydrogen's chances, according to the report-back on the survey.
They also concede that Twitter polls are "far from scientifically valid, due to small sample size and self-selection by those who choose to participate".
Still, the result shows when alternative fuels are weighed up, it's either hydrogen or nothing.
Read a related article | Fuel price: A little relief in sight
ARTICLE: www.greencarreports.com
