Tuesday 11 August 2020

Methanol fuelled cars

 There is a rumour going around that the electric car incentives in China will soon be removed which will end up driving electric car prices up beyond internal combustion engine cars. China Government's incentive was there to kick start the electric car industry to promote cleaner environment but in reality it only reduced the air pollution but the process of manufacturing the electric cars contribute more environmental pollution than regular gasoline cars. The question now is how many people will really buy electric cars once the subsidies are removed. There is a new rumour going around that the methanol fuelled cars will be the next wave in China owing to the fact that it is cheaper to make than the electric cars and methanol is cheap and produces low air pollution and the cars can be refuelled quickly just like a regular gasoline car.

The Chinese Government have been going around looking for methanol contracts to purchase and they are also trying to ramp up methanol production domestically. Methanol is cheaper than gasoline and the internal combustion engines can be adopted to run on methanol. It will be interesting to see if this will become a reality soon. If the methanol cars will be introduced the gas stations can easily be modified to offer methanol at the pumps without massive infrastructure works like electric charging stations.

It is quite obvious that there are numerous benefits of using methanol compared to electricity. If this starts in China it won't be long before other countries may follow since electricity production is some countries isn't cheap and some countries struggle with the present electricity production which will add more stress on the power grid to charge electric vehicles. The countries that will benefit from this will be India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines and Myanmar. So far there is no solid new on methanol cars being launched any where in the world but if China takes the lead things may change very quickly.

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