What about alcohol ? 15:1 compression, 30% more power for the same capacity,
'race ready', low NOx emissions ?

I was doing some calculations: A (US) gas car does ~20mpg. 50000 miles per year
are about 2500 gal./year or 5750 USD/year in fuel. So one can talk about a
break-even price of an average car, in fuel-years at 50thou*mi/yr, of 2-4 years. 

This is to be able to compare to the break-even if using an alcohol-only car
which is presumably slightly more expensive (but in countries with taxes per
engine volume alcohol users can save a lot by dropping lower by two or three tax
brackets - imho a 900cm^3 engine run on alcohol with turbo can produce in excess
of 150hp - the savings in insurance cost probably pay for the alcohol conversion
in the first year, at most in two - and nobody will beat you again at the
standing mile from the traffic light, even if the car is a Fiat Panda).

In Europe small cars are much more popular and mpg is 35-60 ish so the break
even would be longer (but small cars are cheaper).

Also check these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_alcohol_fuel
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=alcohol+fuel+price+gallon&btnG=Search
http://www.flexiblefuelcars.org/history_of_alcohol_fuel.html

Note that from the point of view of green fuel E85 is 'adulterated' alcohol.
The adulterant is gasoline and this is what prevents its use with high
compression ratio engines. I think that the adulterant is about to be phased out
... also the price of alcohol is largely set by taxes (just like gas). Without
taxes alcohol may be very competitive BTU for BTU.

Peter P.

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