Drilling the Sky -- link to fuel flexibility in cars

The US **COULD** shift to total GEM flexibility in all
new cars in 2-4 years, if we really pushed. It's well-established technology.
Brazil shifted from near zero fuel flexibility to >50% GE flexibility in
new cars in about two years, and the US auto companies all know how to do it.
If oil companies supported it, strong motion could start in two months.

**WITH** GEM fuel flexibility and intelligent engine control...
it may not be too hard to use a zero-carbon liquid fuel as well.

I know that GEM flexibility is easy, and how. I do not know how
much extra it would take (if anything), to get to GEMH flexibility --
gasoline, E85, M85 AND HYDRAZINE, if hydrazine should
be the liquid fuel of interest.

Cars have run on hydrazine in Germany. (At least by Kordesch...)

Why hydrazine? As a LIQUID FUEL, it can be stored in the same kind
of gas tank that golds gasoline, E85 or M85 -- though I don't know
whether today's gas tanks in cars are corrosion-resistant enough to do it.
Still, I do know they can handle M85, so  hydrazine may fit too.
(If not, I don't know how hard it would be to upgrade the tanks... or whether
there is a comparable fuel.)

UNLIKE hydrogen, hydrazine could probably be moved around in the same kind of
infrastructure that could handle methanol. I have heard a chief economist
of a major oil company say... it would cost at least an order of magnitude more money for them to
move to a hydrogen infrastructure than to a methanol (or flexible) infrastructure.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO US: pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere is expensive (and basically
unproven, unless you count biofuels). CO2 from coal plant emissions is messy.
But -- NONCARBON liquid fuels like hydrazine or ammonia DO NOT REQUIRE
a source of carbon. Also, the chemistry of making ammonia, say, in bulk,
is very well known and efficient in mass production.

I do not know what kind of additives would be needed to make hydrazine or ammonia or
other noncarbon liquids as acceptable as gasoline or M85 for use in cars.
There is a lot of unreliable conventional wisdom out there about all these fuels. 
(For methanol, I KNOW things are fine, based mainly on the survey review by Roberta
Nichols of Ford posted at www.werbos.com/energy.htm. But ADDITIVES ARE ESSENTIAL --
pure methanol would not be acceptable for the mass market.)
Someone really needs to look into this.

IN SUM... for a company like Exxon, maybe it is time to start thinking about
"the hydrazine economy" as a long-term alternative to "the hydrogen economy."

Using energy from space (or earth-based solar power), it would probably be a lot cheaper and easier to
make stuff like hydrazine than stuff like hydrocarbons!!!!

And it is zero-CO2...