Unit 4, Lesson 3
Alternative Fuel Vehicles: Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling
Objectives:
The students will:
- > learn that the adoption of alternative-fueled vehicles (AFVs) will require changes in technology, consumer use, fueling infrastructure, and community design;
- > understand how traffic patterns and the need to service and park cars have influenced the design and growth of our communities; and
- > identify performance characteristics, special maintenance problems, potential costs, and refueling schedules of an AFV.
This set of lessons helps tackle the tough questions that emerge when one considers using AFVs on a daily basis. Where can I fill this thing up? How well does this thing work? How would my life be different? How much space do I need in my vehicle? How much power do these alternative fuels offer?
TEKS:
Science
- Environmental Systems: 8B
- Geology, Meteorology, and Oceanography: 2A-D, 3A-D, 9B-C
Social Studies
Time:
10 days for entire lesson or may be broken down into smaller steps if necessary
Materials:
Activity 1, Activity 2, and Activity 3
Student Handouts
- > Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling: The Challenge
- > Getting around Your Community: Guide to Community Research
- > Who's Interested in AFVs? Who Cares about Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling?
Other Useful Resources
- > Four to six maps of your community or region showing major roadways, shopping areas, and centers of employment
Activity 4 and Activity 5
Student Handouts
- > Energy Content of Various Fuels
- > Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling: Guide to Fuel Team Research
- > How Do Typical 20th Century Vehicles Work?
- > Evaluating Team Reports and Presentations
- > Fuel Fact Sheets (to be distributed to appropriate teams)
- > Resource Guide
- > Fuel Review Worksheet: Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling
Other Useful Resources
- > Access to the library and Internet
- > Publications listed as references for this lesson
- > Flip charts, poster board, transparencies, and use of an overhead projector
- > Access to word-processing or presentation software
Directions:
ACTIVITY 1 - BACKGROUND READING AND DISCUSSION
Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling: Presenting the Challenge
Time
30 minutes (to save in-class time, readings may be assigned for homework)
- Ask students to put themselves behind the wheel of an AFV and imagine driving it throughout the week or maintaining it throughout the year. How would the experience differ from driving a gasoline-powered vehicle? Encourage them to think about the sound of the car, refueling, and finding mechanics to fix a problem with their fuel tanks or motors. Explain that AFVs are already in use around the world and their numbers are rising, but their full acceptance by the American public depends on the convenience of driving and refueling them. Explain that the emissions standard of a vehicle is actually more important than the fuel choice when it comes to improving air quality, so it’s important to consider more than simply what kind of alternative fuel(s) a car uses.
- Distribute the student handouts for background reading and community research. Have students read the student handout Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling: The Challenge. Ask if they would be willing to depend on an AFV to get them where they needed to go. If not, why not? Which vehicle characteristics are they most interested in (power, long distance between refueling, reliability, etc.)?
ACTIVITY 2 - GROUP DISCUSSIONS AND COMMUNITY RESEARCH
Getting around Your Community
Time
45 minutes of discussion, with another 20 minutes the following day for student
reporting of research done at home
- Divide the class into four groups and distribute a map of the community to each group. Refer to the student handout Getting around Your Community: Guide to Community Research. Through this exercise, students will better understand
the transportation issues in their unique communities. Point out that traffic patterns and service requirements of gasoline-powered cars have influenced the way that many American communities have grown and developed.
Allow 30 minutes for students to discuss the questions on the handout and to mark their maps as requested in the handout. Have the students make a key that describes any symbols they may use on their maps (to designate schools, working areas, traffic, etc.). Note: For questions 2 and 3a students may need to question their family members and report back to the class.
- Spend 15 minutes having the teams briefly describe and compare their maps
to the class. Explain that when AFVs are more widely used, the
community may need to provide additional fueling stations or service stations. Ask them
to keep this in mind as they research their alternative fuels.
- Have students answer questions 2 and 3a with the help of their family members and report back to class the following day. Ask them to keep in mind their family’s driving habits when researching and judging the best alternative fuels for local drivers.
- Ask students to identify various types of people who may be interested in driving, maintaining, and refueling cars. What would their chief concerns be? Refer to the student handout Who's Interested in AFVs? Who Cares about Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling? Do students identify with any of the people on this list? Who else in their community may have an interest in AFVs, and what might their concerns be?
Extensions
- > Have students keep a transportation log for the next two weeks that will answer questions 2 and 3a in the handout Getting around Your Community: Guide to Community Research.
- > Have students make up a sheet similar to the Who's Interested in AFVs? handout that represents actual people in your community.
ACTIVITY 3 - CLASS DISCUSSION
Images That Sell Cars
Time
30 minutes
- Ask the class to identify characteristics of cars that appeal to them (and/or to various other people, such as an adventurer, a businessman/woman, a "soccer mom," a single man, or an environmentalist). Their answers may include power, easy handling, body design, mileage, trunk space, ease of maintenance, low mileage, and so on. Write the answers down where the class can see them.
- Ask students what images car companies use to market their vehicles. Their answers may include personal freedom (an individual driving on an open road), independence (a car parked on a cliff or mountaintop), comfort and luxury (a couple listening to their favorite music, a passenger sleeping on the reclined seat, a family watching a video in their car), toughness (a man or woman driving a pickup truck on rough terrain), family values (families enjoying a road trip or vacation), friendship (friends eating, talking, laughing, listening to music together), and the ability to easily do everyday things (grocery shopping, taking kids to school). Write down these ideas so everyone can see them. What images appeal most to them?
- Remind students of the list of important issues they analyzed in the lesson Getting Oriented: The Move to Alternative Fuels, including national self-sufficiency, protecting the health of children or the elderly, and protecting the environment. Ask how the images they identified above relate to the issues that they think are important. (They may find that their issues are not addressed.)
- Present this issue for discussion:
Most Americans think of themselves as environmentalists, yet many Americans drive large, energy-intensive cars. We want to
protect our families, yet some of the most popular cars have poor safety records.
Are marketing images more powerful than our own values?
- What images are associated with using mass transit, bicycling, or walking?
Do these images appeal to you?
- How might transportation of the future be marketed to promote its advantages and benefits? Explain that in the next fuel team research activity students will need to identify an image to market their AFV to a particular audience.
ACTIVITY 4 - FUEL TEAM RESEARCH AND PREPARATION FOR PRESENTATIONS
Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling
Time
Three days
- Distribute the student handouts listed above in the Materials section for fuel research and presentations and refer to the student handout Energy Content of Various Fuels. Explain that the
energy content of a fuel influences how far a car can travel on a tank of fuel, which in turn influences how often a driver has to refuel the car. The efficiency and range of a car are also affected by other characteristics, however. Ask students to identify the characteristics that influence fuel efficiency. (Possible answers: the size and weight of the car and fuel tank, efficiency of the engine, aerodynamic styling, and the extras commonly used such as air conditioning and heat.) How would these characteristics affect the range of a vehicle? (Answer: Large and heavy cars, heavy fuel tanks, inefficient engines, boxy styling, and the use of extras will reduce the range. Large fuel tanks and aerodynamic styling expand the range.)
Help students analyze the chart by asking which fuel has the energy content most
similar to gasoline. (Answer: ethanol 85.) Vehicles running on which fuels would need to
be refueled most often? (Answer: those at the bottom of the list.)
- Refer to the student handout Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling: Guide to Fuel Team Research. Explain that in this research, activity teams will
investigate the performance characteristics of alternative fuels, the design or modifications of the drive train, special maintenance and refueling issues, and the special audiences for various AFVs of the future. Students should keep in mind these key questions:
- > What is needed to bring your fuel into widespread use in the community?
- > For what purpose might the alternative fuel or AFV best be used?
- > Can it resolve any special problems (such as tailpipe emissions in areas where
they are particularly worrisome)?
- > Can individual commuters use it, or is it best for fleets of vehicles operated by organizations that can install and maintain their own fueling infrastructure? The student handout How Do Typical 20th Century Vehicles Work? provides a baseline drawing needed to answer question 2a in their guide to fuel team research. It also lists possible new vocabulary students may encounter.
- As they did for the lesson Clean Fuels: Availability and Distribution, the fuel teams will use the questions provided in this section to prepare a written report and a mini-presentation lasting about 10 minutes. During that time, other students will be able to ask related questions about the fuel. Refer students to the handout Evaluating Team Reports and Presentations so that students will
know in advance what is expected in their presentations.
- Provide students with the opportunity to meet in their teams, to divide up the research tasks, and to decide how they will present their findings and who will do it. Encourage them to develop diagrams and other graphics to help present their findings. Remind them that these presentation aids may be further developed for a public
presentation.
- Coach students as they do their research. Much information is already available in the Fuel Fact Sheets. Additional information can be found at the web sites listed for the alternative fuels in the Resource Guide. Especially helpful are publications of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Union of Concerned Scientists, car manufacturers, and organizations that promote alternative fuels (such as NESEA, the American Methanol Institute, and others listed in the Resource Guide) as well as their Internet sites (especially those pages listed in the Resource Guide). It may be helpful for you to investigate some of the recommended web sites to have a better understanding of the information found there.
Extensions
- > Have each fuel team build a physical model that represents how their fuel is converted into energy. For more information, check out the HowStuffWorks web site.
- > How do the fuel’s physical and chemical characteristics affect its practical use?
For example, how well can it be transferred via a pipeline? Can it be compressed?
Is it explosive or not? Does it contain or produce toxic materials?
ACTIVITY 5 - TEAM PRESENTATIONS AND CLASS DISCUSSIONS
Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling
Time
Four days (10 to 15 minutes for each team’s presentation and questions, plus 20 to 30 minutes for follow-up panel and class discussion)
- Make a list of stakeholders or special interest groups for the students to represent while listening to and evaluating the fuels being presented. Remind students that a wide variety of people are interested in these issues: physicians, resource managers, atmospheric scientists, emergency personnel, and even the insurance industry, as you discussed earlier in Who's Interested in AFVs? Who Cares about Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling?
- Decide if the students will evaluate the presentations as individuals or as part of a review panel. Then assign (or have the members of the class select) the stakeholders or special interest groups they will represent. If they’re working in review panels, allow
the panel members to sit together.
- Refer students to the handout Fuel Review Worksheet: Operation, Maintenance, and Refueling. They will use this worksheet as a guide for taking notes during a fuel presentation and writing down their (or their panel’s) conclusions. (They will need one copy of this worksheet for each fuel presentation given.) Before the presentations, allow students time to make note of their interest group’s chief concerns. After each presentation, allow them time to discuss and make note of their conclusions. How would each fuel affect their community and world?
- Presentations should last 5 to 10 minutes, with additional time for the audience to ask questions. Remind presenters to keep in mind the concerns of the stakeholders in the audience. Encourage students in their audience to ask questions from the points of view of the stakeholders they represent.
- At the end of each day and again after all presentations have been given, allow time for the panels to compare the fuels and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each. Taking into account the information gathered in all three lessons of this unit, which are the best fuels for their community? Which are the best audiences for each fuel and AFV?
- Have the review panels report their conclusions to the class and allow time for debate on their conclusions.
Resources:
Classroom Materials 
Web Sites
Source: "Cars of Tomorrow," Chapter 4, page 48, Northeast Sustainable Energy Association
