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Driving more using less fuel

Discussion in 'Prius, Hybrid, EV and Alt-Fuel News' started by bwilson4web, Aug 7, 2013.

  1. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    damn government won't let me drive my experimental car on the highway.:( Many of the concepts could actually be modified and work, but safety regulations are pretty stiff. To pull it off in the US you would need to make it a 3 wheeled vehicle, which fall under much easier motorcycle regulations. I think some of the designs could be fun, but I doubt you could run a business on them.
     
  2. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    Agreed that hypothetical situation of everyone in U.S. buying a Prius is bit ridiculous to contemplate, but:
    If every car in the U.S. were mandated to have the fuel economy of a Prius, that is a much more realistic question to be asking, and one that the the 2025 CAFE standards will take us close to.

    First off, if the Prius or the Japanese auto industry writ large did take over the world, it is highly likely that there would still be large N. American production. There would simply be too much idled capacity and workers sitting around at firestorm-sale prices (read: bankruptcy) -not to mention at low interest rates- for a foreign industry to not take advantage, least of all to hedge against rising transport costs and currency fluctuations (and natural disasters like a tsunami!)

    That being said, the only way for the average car on U.S. roads to get 50 mpg (when the median auto on the road today probably gets around 22 mpg) is for large scale electrification. Standard hybridization will not do for large vehicles and performance cars, nor would those who drive these be willing to compromise on the performance or size of these cars.

    That leaves PHEV's, deployed across all product lines.....pretty much every car has a plug and the drivetrain of a Volt or Fusion Energi........or a plug-in 2-mode hybrid Tahoe.

    The effective doubling of fuel efficiency will result in more driving unless a counteracting step is taken with fuel prices.

    Agreed that rising fuel prices are necessary to sustain the trend, but this is only possible with government action, either a Price Floor or a Carbon Tax.

    Anyhow, if the entire fleet had twice mpg, and fuel prices were increased, then U.S. oil consumption of 18 mpbd would drop to about 9 mbpd........below the amount we will soon be producing.

    This is the technical definition of Energy Independence (not the phony kind that politicians talk about), but even here it can't be achieved without -again- government intervention.

    Some sort of restriction would have to be placed on export of refined products (export of crude oil is already restricted).
    Otherwise, U.S. refineries would just take the surplus U.S. oil production above the domestic demand level, and send it to China, India, etc. as gasoline, diesel, etc.
    If an export restriction on refined products is put into place, then Americans would be both physically and price-independent of the global oil price, and we would enjoy lower oil prices than the rest of the world in much the same way we do with natural gas.
    This would be very good news for jobs, the economy and the trade deficit.
     
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  3. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    exactly, there is a partial rebound with efficiency.

    Price floors really warp the market. I don't know what good it would do, other than guarantee people that own the oil a profit. A carbon tax to reduce oil use is like using a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito. Its going to hit a lot of other things first, and will likely miss the mosquito. I'm not against an carbon tax, but it would have to be very high to reduce oil use. The one clinton proposed would only have added $3.50/bbl or about 3.4%, we barerly notice when it changes that much. Forbes editorial writers thought around $40/bbl would be appropriate. That would also shift more petrochemicals from oil to natural gas. If there were mideastern price spikes the tax could be waived for short periods of time. Do it by $10/bbl/year and it would not hurt the economy, especially if you lowered the payroll taxes by part of the amount.

    A couple of things are wrong here. The average vehicle is over 10 years old. Even if vehicles selling today got twice the fuel economy, it would take 10 years to get a majority of the fleets fuel economy up. There is also population growth, so that should be added to your 9mbpd. I would hate to see our fuel taxes go as high as europes, but a little bit every year would move people to more efficient vehicles. Small increases might actually speed the transition, as people would not have money to buy the newer cars if we slapped a $3.50/gallon tax on gas right away.


    ;)

    You could do an export tax. I don't see much of a problem if we have a surplus. Its not going to be much. MOst of the exports are oil imported, refined, then value added products exported. That seems like a good thing. It builds spare refining capacity here, instead of brazil or china. Lack of refining capacity also causes price spikes.

    It would be short lived. there really isn't that much oil here. I expect we will always at least import oil from canada and/or mexico. If the price gets cheap, people will use more.
     
  4. walter Lee

    walter Lee Hypermiling Padawan

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    Elio Motors is doing just that - a three wheeled motorcycle with an enclosed cabin that PR segments are mis identifying as a car that gets 84 mpg on a regular conventional gasoline motor. The Elio vehicle is a two seater with the driver in the front and the passenger in the rear.

    The reportedly back from the grave Aptera 2e is also a three wheel motorcycle. Unlike the Elio the Aptera 2 seater is a side by side seating arrangement. Motorcycles don't have the same safety requirements as a car....but the original Aptera design used a carbon fiber cabin to enhance safety.
     
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  5. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    I'm sorry but there has been bs about energy independence for over four decades now ... ever since the Middle East cut us off - back when we had gas lines that you had to wait in line for hours - when fist fights would break out as folks would try to cut in line - back when we only imported less than 15% our crude addiction. And now we import well over ½ of our petrofuel addiction. Our world population grows & grows, and our ever increasing demand for cheap energy grows ... so how on earth can anyone realistically think we can ever be energy independent. Will a 50 percent reduction in use do the trick as we continue to have less and less resources to pump out of the ground? There are no guaranteed silver bullets just around the corner. Alternatives help and conservation helps - but most think that we can carry on, status quo like we have for the past four or five decades. This is such a huge disconnect from facts & reality. Odds are that we are in for a very bumpy ride in the not too distant future. That's the creepy truth that no one even wants to contemplate wrapping their head around.

    .
     
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  6. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Obviously something was causing the lines. It was oil price controls. They were removed in 1981. Since then, we have had price spikes and troughs but no shortages that were not weather related.

    I'm sure someone has the earlier data but here is eia, from 1981. We hit a trough with cafe standards and high prices in 1985 of 1,849,508 thousand barrels, peaked in 2005 at
    5,005,541, and now are on the way down last year with 3,878,250 thousand barrels. After peaking in 2005, we were down to 40% imports in 2012. It will likely take higher oil taxes to get bellow 25%.
    U.S. Imports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products (Thousand Barrels)



    Less oil, but definitely plenty of coal, wind, and sun. Sure why not;) We need to actually put policies in place to reduce use. Those price controls just created shortages, use went up all those years of the oil price controls.
    Its hard. Putting solar panels on the white house did exactly jack squat to reduce oil consumption. Freedom car, super car, did the same. Gasohaul, that is now ethanol had done a little with some damage to food. Electrification and cafe standards seem like they are doing something. And yes, oil taxes have worked in other countries, if oil price controls cause shortages, why wouldn't oil prices going up cause less use? How about some better public transportation? How about lets stop trying to make it impossible to die in a car (people will always try, and suceed) freeze the overbeering safety regs on cars and let the weight start to drop.
     
  7. TheEnglishman

    TheEnglishman Member

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    If everyone in America drove a Prius, Toyota would build Prius plants in America to lower shipping costs, like they did with the Camry and many other popular models. Also, I think SOMEONE should be building compact trucks in America. Isuzu pickups (of the 80s and 90s), Nissan Hardbody trucks, and Ford Rangers gave better real-life fuel economy than any bloated numbers for full-size pickups. Weight is a key element in building any fuel efficient vehicle. A 2010 Ranger with a 7 foot bed weighs 3069 pounds. A 2013 Ford F-150 short bed weighs 4685 pounds. Obviously there's some room for improvement in the weight department.
     
  8. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    If toyota built a prius plant in the US, then they could drop the price and more people would buy them. If you read the annual reports there has been a reason to build a prius in the US since 2006. The US government and State of mississippi paid toyota to build the prius in Mississippi. They decided to build the corolla there instead, lowering the cost from building it in California, US government paid them to build a tundra plant in Texas, and they used some of the money to move tacoma building from california. Closing NUMMI was probably more profitable than building the prius here, I understand. But if it was about profits the prius would be built here by now. Its partially about jobs. If they build the prius here, then they likely lose jobs in japan. The US government has been paying them money to make cars here anyway. Toyota says they have plans to build the gen IV here, but the yen is weaker, and the japanese car market is soft. The Japanese government gives them more money than the US one. I think if they don't build them here in gen IV, they need the stick (tarrifs), they already invested prius money in thailand and china because they have tarrifs. I would like more prii sold here whether built in the US or Japan, but the volume has been high enough for a very long time to build them here. The annual reports say they lost a fair amount of money per car in 2011 and 2012 buy building them in Japan instead of the US. The weak yen makes japanese labor more cost competitive now.

    You need to raise the price to meet the new safety requirements. The two compact pickups are the Tacoma and the frontier. A tacoma regular cab is 3250lbs, a redesigned ranger won't be much different.
    Compare Side-by-Side
    A 4wd taco gets 1 mpg better than a 4wd f150. A 4cylinder 2 wd manual jumps to combined 23mpg, but they don't sell many of those. If you want an efficient light truck that's what you need to buy.
     
  9. TheEnglishman

    TheEnglishman Member

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    Tariffs are a horrible thing. Tariffs will really spike prices. Remember the Chicken Tax on large trucks and vans not made in US? All we got was a Ford/GM/Dodge oligopoly on heavy duty trucks until Nissan came here with its NV van.
     
  10. SageBrush

    SageBrush Senior Member

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    Free market economics as is is practiced in the US is warped by unpaid for externalities by the consuming buyer. Fix that, and the problem of lazy, ignorant, wasteful fossil fuel consumption self-corrects.

    The current system sucks.
     
  11. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Tarrifs are definitely bad when free trade can work. The US definitely does not have free trade with Japan. We do see that the tarrifs in Europe, Thailand, and China have gotten toyota to localize production there with much worse numbers than building prii here. Toyota already has recieved lots of US government subsidies on the prius. Still I don't want to kick Japan when they are down, nor do I want the car to be more expensive. A threat of tarrifs can be effective. Toyota did do something to lower the possibility. They announced moving production of the Lexus ES to america, but .... less expensive ES's won't really help with using less gasoline. I hope toyota chooses to move production here, where costs are lower, and doesn't choose Japanese jobs over profits again.

    Given all this, I would like to see more prii on the road, but no new government program that favors them until toyota starts making them here.
     
  12. 3PriusMike

    3PriusMike Prius owner since 2000, Tesla M3 2018

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    I think it is down to ~40% now and dropping.

    IMHO, energy independence does not necessarily mean that we import zero. But it does mean that we import a small enough amount and that we have domestic alternatives that can relatively easily replace the imports at some higher price, so that we aren't able to be economically held hostage, as we were in the 1970s.
    Having a large number of EVs and PHEVs will do this. Also having a large number of CNG cars/trucks/fleet cars would do this.

    Imagine what it would have been like in ~1974 with all the gas lines if 10% of the cars were the equivalent of a Nissan Leaf and another 10% were a PHEV like a PIP or Volt. People who could not get gas easily could carpool with a neighbor who has an EV. The problem would have solved itself in a week.

    Mike
     
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  13. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    Also have to keep in mind how the PHEVs are paid for. In our hypothetical situation, we effortlessly "gave everyone" a free PHEV version of their existing car, doubling mpg.
    In the real world, of course, people have car payments. So that would limit the rebound (or completely eliminate it) if people were expecting to be able to make those payments by saving money on gas.
    Of course, the only way people would make such a switch is with a government mandating all cars be sold be PHEVs. Otherwise, each individual would simply do their own TCO of the PHEVs, and the doubling of efficiency would be very delayed, if not prevented altogether.

    That's not necessarily how a price floor must work. If the government simply mandated that private companies must charge a certain price, and not below, then you are correct that it would greatly increase oil company profits, because:
    - They are able to charge, say $100/bbl, even if China goes into recession and the global oil price drops to $40
    - Their cost of capital goes down, because potential investors will have less risk to their projects (which were earlier deemed too risky, but now are insulated from a price crash)

    If there is no concomitant price ceiling (as was done in the 70's, to disastrous effect), then the main 'warping' of the market is to the benefit of oil profits (but also green energy projects, which would also be protected against the prospect of sustained, cheap oil). But we must agree that any market intervention by governments always 'warps' in one way or another. The only question is if the results produce the socially desired outcome.

    There is one way to design a price floor that gives green energy a benchmark price of oil to compete against, as well as long-term certainty.
    And that is to simply levy a tax on oil if it drops below a certain price, say $100. Well, as long as the price of oil is above $100, the tax in not levied. If the price of oil drops to $40, each refinery must then pay a tax equal to the difference between this price and $100. This extra $60 in revenue can then go to green energy projects. This would have an 'amplifying' effect over time, because oil price is likely to go down if there is a viable, green alternative.



    Forbes got it right....$40/bbl is about $1/gallon. The well-to-wheels co2 of 1 gallon of gasoline is about 22 lbs; that is 1/100 of a ton, so $40/bbl put a value of $100/ton co2.
    Economists have long advocated a price on carbon equal to the marginal cost of removing or avoiding 1 ton of it.
    This is about $100/ton for an IGCC coal plant w./ carbon capture. If the co2 tax were less than $100, the coal plant would simply pay the tax, but keep putting co2 into the atmosphere. If the tax were, say $120, then the coal plant would avoid the tax by installing carbon capture equipment. So, it has to be >= $100.
    An incremental increase in the tax rate followed by a tax cut is an excellent idea.....this is behind the idea of the Carbon Fee & Dividend scheme.


    Yes, of course it would take ~15 years or so to turn over the fleet. ;)
    I was just playing with hypotheticals here since we were debating the effect of everyone having a Prius.

    Vehicle-Miles Travelled is a better proxy for future oil use, and recently VMT growth has lagged population growth due to many factors including unemployment, retirees driving less, young people not buying cars, urban growth, transit ridership, living closer to work, etc. Even after factoring in VMT, 2025 CAFE standard should cut 25% off today's oil use by 2040.

    You could do a Carbon Fee & Dividend whereby the gas tax is refunded off fuel-efficient new cars. Of course this tax would be highly regressive, as many people can only afford to buy used, so perhaps it could be rebated based on a new OR used car that improves a certain % mpg of your trade-in.

    An export tax is a great idea. Another way to ensure price-independence of global oil markets is to set up a ratio system of energy exports to imports.
    It could be set to require any american company that wishes to export fossil fuels to first have purchased a permit from another company that had imported fossil fuels. For example a company that wishes to export 75 million barrels of gasoline would have to purchase up to 50 million barrels of heavy crude permits from/equivalent from some other company (if the government set the import:export ratio at 1:1.5 for these 2 fuels, and so on).
    At the present time, because the U.S. imports way more fossil fuel than it exports, the permits would be very cheap or even free. (They would have to be non-bankable, expiring after 1 year) However, once our consumption dips below our production, they suddenly become very valuable. This ensures they will be sold to the company that has the highest value for them. This means a company making a fuel that is high-value added (refined, not crude) or advanced (GTL), etc. This fuel will command the highest profit for the company because it will have a high demand/price on global markets, while having low demand/price in the U.S., effectively ensuring that we don't "give away" valuable domestic fuels.

    There actually is a lot of oil here in America, it's just not affordable oil. I remember the Green River Formation every time I hear "drill, baby, drill"
    Supposedly, that crowd thinks we have trillions of barrels just stashed away there, being kept away from honest, patriotic, environmentally-responsible oil companies by a socialist EPA and wacko environmentalists.
    The sad truth, is there are actually a trillion or so barrels there, but the cost of production would be so high (even with minimal environmental safeguards) that this would be incompatible with v8s and SUVs. The "drill here, drill now" crowd doesn't realize how expensive energy independence is :rolleyes:


    Summary:

    2013
    ----------
    20-22 mbpd in refining capacity
    18.5 mbpd domestic crude demand
    ---------
    so, 1.5-3.5 mbpd are 'pass through' imported crude re-exported as refined prods.

    8.5 mbpd domestic production
    so, 10 mbpd imported crude needed to satisfy domestic demand




    2040(e.g.)
    ------------
    20 mbpd in refining capacity or less
    8.5 mbpd domestic crude demand
    -------
    so, 11.5 mbpd are 'pass through' imported crude re-exported as refined prods.

    10.5 mbpd domestic production
    s0, 2 mbpd greater crude production than demand, resulting in exports or lowered domestic price
     
  14. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    Energy Independence is very possible, and with the right policies, could happen by 2030.
    But it will raise the price of gasoline in order to achieve this. There is no other way around. If gasoline is cheap, Americans will always consume more than we produce. There is simply too many cars and too much purchasing power here.
    The price of gasoline will have to go up, and there are really only 3 ways for that to happen:
    (1) Market forces - think China, India, and the next billion cars to be bought
    (2) Carbon or Fuel Tax
    (3) Price Floor

    Either way, price is going up. (1) promises to be a bumpy ride; (2) and (3) are not perfect, but they are much less volatile since the main driver of price is we, the people -through our government- as opposed to a foreign cartel.

    Most of us here at PC have wised up to this fact, but most of the driving public will be in for prices that will make today's 'pain at the pump' look tame by comparison. I doubt anyone will be doing much celebrating on the day we hit Energy Independence! :cool:

    As you mentioned, though, the best way to protect ones self from the coming price shock is to go down the HEV/PHEV/EV/CNG route.
     
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  15. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    We can also roughly calculate the cost of Energy Independence.

    Economists have noted that economies tend to go into recession when oil prices exceed 5% of GDP.

    The U.S. economy is at or near $16,000 billion GDP.
    5% of this is $800 billion. This is the maximum that can be spent on oil while still growing the economy.

    One simply has to to find where the total expenditure of $800 billion, devoted ONLY to domestically produced crudes (with some profits from export of refined products) lies on the supply/demand curve:

    Well, domestic drilling is unlikely to ever sustain more than 10 mbpd for long periods, given the maturity of our fields.
    Lets use 10.8 mbpd. This translates to 4 billion barrels per year.
    $800 billion / 4 billion = $200/barrel of oil.

    So, basically gasoline that now costs $3.50 will set you back $7/gallon.
    And the typical American getting 22mpg would need to get 44 mpg in order to keep their cost-per-mile the same

    44 mpg......hmmm.........is there a really great car, reliable, roomy, affordable, that gets 44 mpg driven like a maniac, or 50 mpg normally........hmmm.......:whistle:
     
  16. hill

    hill High Fiber Member

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    let's not forget what a huge amount of oil we are saving by outsourcing all of our industries . Oh boy that sure has worked well. So we shift a huge amount of our energy use to the rest of the world but the global energy market /demand stays the same. To hell with the drill baby drill crowd ... go ahead and let them. Let's see how much economic growth is created by fuel /energy that costs twice as much.
    And while we're talking sad truth let's talk about another one. The sad truth is that the new/yet real expensive Trillian barrels can't be blended with the cheap stuff when fixing world market prices because the Mid East cheap stuff is running low. You see, lest we forget - they've been pumping and pumping there for what .... some 70 or 80 years now? good luck with expectations of keeping that great cheap source on the books as an endless supply too much longer. The sad truth is, not only has oil production peaked - years ago, the, new oil field discoveries peaked back in the 1960's. You gotta ask yourself are we using less fuel because we're smarter and more efficient or is it really that we don't have as much to waste anymore
     
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  17. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    I can answer that.

    In a country such as ours where being fuel-efficient or driving a Prius is sneered at, and where driving a muscle car or large SUV/pickup truck is celebrated, the answer is "we don't have as much to waste anymore".

    Unfortunately, only a very small % of the population has become "smarter and more efficient".
    The rest of the population is only going in this direction due to the price signal (and they will quickly reverse course if the price signal moves in the opposite direction, which many still think could actually happen).

    The real tragedy here is that the biggest losers will be those who didn't have much choice (those who could only afford to buy used, for example) as well as the pain and suffering high prices will cause the economy in general (affecting everyone, regardless if they bought a LEAF or a Ford Excursion).
     
  18. Scorpion

    Scorpion Active Member

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    It's not actually that large. Most of the U.S. outsourcing has increased foreign use of electricity, not oil.
    Think factories in China or call centers in India.
    U.S. outsourcing has thus increased foreign coal use and CO2 emissions, but oil use is a small, positive increase.

    - every $ of GDP produced overseas uses less oil, since foreign countries are more oil-efficient; thus every $ of the U.S. economy sent overseas reduced global oil use as compared to that $ being made in the U.S., after deducting bunker fuel for ships
    - outsourcing has dramatically raised the wages of the average Chinese and Indian. Guess what? They are all buying cars now. More global demand, higher price

    In the short run, the former matters more, but in the long run, the latter (consumer demand) will determine price
     
  19. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    Oil use peaked in the US in 2004 or 2005 depending on which figures you use. Since then there has not been a great flood of outsourcing based on any energy costs. In fact the natural gas boom has returned some manufacturing that is natural gas and/or electricity intense back to the US.

    An oil tax, and a reasonable one, $40/bbl phased in over a 4 or 5 year period, with import taxes on oil based products (gasoline, plastic) of similar amounts would not increase outsourcing. It would continue the shift of some petrochemical manufacture from oil to natural gas where the US has an advantage. I agree that doubling the price might cause too much pain, but.... that would not lead to outsourcing, but inflation. You can minimize the damage to the economy from the new oil taxes by lowering other taxes. My favorite is the medicare payroll tax, since health is one of the externalities of oil pollution.

    A carbon tax is much more problematic. If you are going to raise a carbon tax as high as that oil tax, it could definitely lead to manufacturing shifts. We have seen this happen with cap and trade in Europe already. Here as well there is less of a consensus of whether ghg is really a problem, while just about everyone agrees imported oil is a problem. I would like to see some higher taxes through a cap and trade on electrical emissions, most of this could be done simply by removing grandfathering and decreasing caps on SO2, NOx, mercury, and particulates. A small tax would not hurt, but a large one like as needed for oil would indeed hurt america's competitiveness and might not really lower ghg at all.
     
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  20. I thought that one could drive on less fuel by making the gas a vapor before burning it....