Welcome to the Fuel Matters Blog

Climate change continues to be a hot topic in both the US and the world over. You can’t discuss climate change without the terms greenhouse gasses (GHG’s) and fossil fuels. In one hand you have fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses, and in the other you have renewables. Energy and transportation are two leading causes of GHG’s. Fossil Fuels have traditionally powered both, but renewables have been gaining traction, and quickly. Covid-19 and the OPEC+ fallout earlier this year hit the energy and transportation industries especially hard. In the transportation industry, renewables don’t come in the traditional form as it does in the energy sector where we see water, wind, and solar. Instead, renewables come in the form of electric, hybrids, and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV’s). There is a lot of dis/misinformation regarding this topic so we will take a small, broad look into some data of the newest wave of technology, PHEV’s.

We are fast approaching the November election, with Joe Biden running as the democratic presidential candidate. One of his tasks if elected, is pushing for America to switch to electric vehicles with a big focus on the economic advantages. Biden’s climate and energy package are a proposed $2 trillion dollars, and in it will be a cash-for-clunkers program. The program will allow American’s to swap out, less-efficient vehicles for a rebate toward electric vehicles made in the United States. Unlike the Cash for Clunkers Program in 2009, this program will incentivize Americans to go completely electric, the 2009 program just rewarded Americans to buy more fuel-efficient cars, then their current models.

Last year, Eastern Ohio was affected by a major loss when General Motors made the decision to close their Lordstown facility, a major part of this small town. Since then, a banker by the name of Steve Burns, now CEO for Lordstown Motors, is starting from the ground up with hopes to revive the facility once again.

Electric and autonomous trucks have made huge leaps in technology in the past several years.  Having said that, wide scale implementation within the trucking industry is still years away.  Automated distribution centers however will be tested very soon. Tech companies have received financing to launch startup businesses within the sector. “Outrider, a technology based company out of Golden, Colorado, has received $53 million to launch its startup and will begin beta testing of automated electric trucks at five yards in the U.S.,” Josh Fisher of FleetOwner reports.  Outrider posted a short video to its Twitter page to give the public a glimpse of how the process works, see below:

On Tuesday the United Kingdom’s government announced a ban on the sale of Internal Combustion Engines starting in 2035 (five years earlier than previously planned). Meaning it will eventually be illegal to sell new gas, diesel, and even hybrid powered cars to adhere to this standard. Many governments across the world have plans of internal combustion engine bans in the coming decades. Germany is cracking down on older diesel cars. France wants to ban diesel and gasoline cars by 2040.Norway wants only electric or plug-in hybrid cars to be available by 2025. California's state government has stopped buying gasoline sedans for fleets, and the state itself seems to be flirting with an eventual ban too.