Final edition?

DrRobin wrote:

Does anyone know what ‘bio fuel’ is and where you can buy it?

I assume it is a fuel that contains no petroleum at all, so E-100.  I thought that came from crops and there isn’t enough land available to grow the base crop, not without food production suffering?
 

Since we're talking about a petrol engine, biofuel means ethanol.

I've never heard of a regular passenger car engine that can run both straight petrol and E100 -- not to say it doesn't exist, but it would need some extra equipment a Jimny does not have at least.

So what they are talking about in the press release is the fact that the Jimny (already) runs on ethanol blends.  Big agricultural countries already mandate ethanol in petrol: in the US essentially all petrol is E10 from maize, in Brazil it's E25 from cane.  In such markets it is also easy to find E85, and lots of vehicles -- especially big pickups and the like, but also just regular cars -- will be capable of handling high ethanol blends ( "flex-fuel").

Long story short, the advantages from an environmental perspective are debatable, and the cost effects are minimal or negative if you consider the cost of the subsidies usually involved.

Mandating biofuels in a place like the UK is almost guaranteed not to go well.  Remember when everyone thought it was a great idea to pay Drax power plant to convert to wood fuel?  

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I'm with Bob: proper offroad edition to send off the Jimny in EU/UK.  Lift, bars, winches, locking diffs front rear and centre, stonking great mudders and a roll cage.  Build it as a 3-door on the JC74 frame, gear it down for dirty work.  Aussies would stop calling the Jimny a toy!

Thanks Motacilla.

I went and looked it up, Porsche, Ferrari and other performance makes have been working on e-fuel for some time and it seems that they are trying to get EU laws changed to allow it’s use after 2035 when the new petrol/diesel car bans comes in. Apparently it’s an uphill struggle as e-fuels are nearly as polluting as petrol.

Apparently the argument is e-fuel delays the move to EV, which is where the EU has decided they are going and with no alternatives.

Forecasters all predict e-fuel if available will cost twice to four times as much as petrol, so don’t pin any hopes of a new e-fuel Jimny, or any other small/medium car.

EV might be too heavy for a Jimny, but look at electric motorbikes, trials bikes, aircraft, boats, non of these were practical a few years ago.

If you don’t think EV is a goer, then best go and buy the newest petrol Jimny you can still get and hope it lasts until the petrol runs out.

Robin

Petrol is unlikely to run out,but falling demand might mean you need to go a long way to find anywhere selling it.  Ironically, big cities, where EVs are more suitable, are likely to keep petrol stations longer than rural areas.

EVs definetly won't be taking over the boating world anytime soon. The boating world is way behind when it comes to technology and engines. The trend at the moment for boats is for sporty centre console hardtop boats out of northern Europe powered by big petrol outboards which has been the biggest growth recently as they continue to get more power out of outboard motors. Currently you can get a 600hp v12 outboard!!!. Planing boats need torque and alot of power to get a slab of grp moving over water whilst powering electronics, fridges etc whilst being able to travel long distances. At the moment I don't think anyone is really mass producing a planing boat powered by all electric. Most use diesels or petrol outboards. On the River Thames where I work electric day boats and river launches are a thing and do work great however with a marina of 140 boats plus all the others we sell I would say a good 95% is still powered by diesels or petrol outboards. Currently got two new electric day boats for sale of which both have sat for over a year with little to no interest........

Regardless how clean an renewable the source of your fuel, if you mix it with air which is 78% nitrogen and burn it you have harmful emissions. That is one of the main reasons for moving away from internal combustion engines.

Not really.  For petrol engines, the nasty stuff is negligible with modern emissions control, as long as people don't mess with it by de-catting, EGR deletion, etc.  It's all about CO2 now.  

Diesels are more difficult to clean up because the fuel has no time to vaporise before combustion starts and peak temperatures are a lot higher, and we've all seen nearly-new diesels belching black smoke, but my guess is that some of these have been chipped and the DPF has been removed.

The black smoke is soot, partially burned fuel, something that is unavoidable in the diesel combustion process because the fuel is not burned as a homogenous fuel/air mix.

Attempting to "clean it up" using a dpf is like putting a plaster on a sore, just hiding the problem, filtering the particles out so they are not seen, storing them so the combustion process can be completed at a later time by "re-burning" them in the dpf regeneration process, which burns more fuel and releases the heat energy unused into the atmosphere.