What a sad sad fact. :(

The photo op is no big surprise. The plan is better than no plan..... You're on the Prius forum, so you thought you'd toss up a link to that article and say poo-poo so that everyone can chime in and yell 'atta-boy', but I don't really think you know why you said poo-poo.. I hope you will take a bit to spell it out here if you actually do know why you kabosh this whole thing.

To pre-empt... Ethanol is a good thing. Fuel from corn and other crops is a good thing, but I also think having a US car fleet running on ethanol is more volitile than having the fleet running on middle eastern oil. The price of ethanol based fuel is 2.60/gallon and someone says they think there is going to be a drought in the heartland and tomorrow the price of fuel is 3.50 a gallon and the crop is only knee high. The next day they get a good rain storm and it takes 3 weeks for fuel to drop back to $3.00.

Hybrid is ok, the prius is the answer to very little. I've saved the planet a little over 1600 gallons of fuel in the 13 months I've had my Prius, but I'm not typical. I'm more of the poster child for a 50+mpg commuter car and would be even better poster boy for 130mpg vehicle, or an all electric that could get me 150 miles a day.

People commuting 50miles a day and under should be buying $18000 full electric plugins with 100 mile daily range. If the big 3 built them, we (America) wouldn't buy them in mass because Americans are for the most part really stupid when it comes to making good decisions.

So you take what they're doing in the dog-n-pony show and credit them for at least doing something... they have the development teams working on fuel efficient technology and we are now years ahead of starting research on all this if we ever do get in a real pinch with the mideast. We have new technologies in the bag so to speak and more coming every year as r&d rolls on.

As long as we're not in a real pinch, they'll move it along fairly slowly and Japan will likely beat the big 3 to market with just about every new technology that we see in the next 30 years. Don't buy big 3 stocks... Still no reason to poo-poo the effort.. just be happy they are making one.

Until you take your own 400mpg car to market, lay off the guys who are working on the new technologies that we all think we want. Once you point us to your website where your prototype with proven stats is ready for us to browse, feel free to hack at the big 3 all you want.

 

Makes sense to me. These loopholes need to be closed. There is no excuse for allowing less efficient, dirtier cars under the guise of running on alternative feuls that do not exist in general distribution.

As far as biodeisel, if the exuast smells anthing like regular diesel exhuast, and just as carsinogenic, then I don't see that as any solution at all. I think diesel should be limited only to vehicles that actually must use it.

This doesn't seem to have any relation to Hybrid Synergy Drive vehicles.

 

The effects reach farther still:

http://www.celsias.com/blog/2007/03/28/bio...g-annoying-now/

 

I acknowledge that many of you hold contempt for ethanol, but for the sake of arugment, lets assume ethanol is a good thing and that the problem with ethanol is there aren't many pumps that dispense it.

Therefore, how can government increase the production and availability of ethanol? Create more demand for ethanol so that more is produced and more stations distrubute it. OK, then how can the government increase the demand for ethanol? Increase the number of vehicles that can use ethanol. Alright, then how can the government increase the number of vehicles that can use ethanol? Give incentives to automakers to build cars and trucks that can run on ethanol. Finally, what will happen if every car and truck in the US can run on ethanol? Ethanol will start replacing gasoline and maybe completely replace it 5, 10, or 15 years down the road. What happens if flex-fuel vehicles are never built? Ethanol will never replace gasoline.

Of course, the above argument relies on the belief that ethanol is good, which I realize that many of you don't believe in. However, perhaps when they start making ethanol from non-corn sources, things will be better.

 

Cellulosic ethanol production, once perfected, has the potential to cover 30% of our transportation needs without changing any farming habits -- that means the "food or fuel" argument is mostly solved by cellulosic ethanol. Other barriers to ethanol efficiency are purely political (sugar imports). (source: Science, March 9 or 16, 2007)

My home state of Missouri has pending legislation that will give tax breaks to development of alternative fueling stations (E85). The article the OP links is at its base a chicken/egg problem. Personally I think it makes the most sense to have the flexfuel vehicles on the road before the fuels are widely available, because nobody's going to build the infrastructure if there aren't any customers. Fuel efficiency standards are a non sequitur in this conversation and still need to be addressed.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TeeSeeJay @ Mar 30 2007, 11:12 AM) [snapback]414817[/snapback]</div>

Hi TeeSeeJay,

Where would the cellulose go, if it was not made into fuel? Back into the ground, where it decomposes to refertilze the soil. While it may be possible for 30 % of transportation fuel to come from agriculture, I and very dubious if this is sustainable.

Butanol has ready customers and is able to be made from agriculural products. It can be burned in most if not all gasoline cars without modification. It requires no special fuel transportation or storage. Butanol also has more energy content for the same processing overhead input.

In light of Butanol, E85 seems like a way to con congress into special regulatory favors for the SUV maker. Especially, when these makers do not modify the engines to run at best efficiency on Ethanol, as well as gasoline. A true flex fuel vehicle would need a Prius like engine head, or other varbiable compressing technology (variable turbo charging ?) But this technology is not in these flex fuel SUV's! I do not think E85 has any impact on reducing oil imports or reducing green house gases. It does improve polutant emissions.

Get rid of the special CAFE exclusion of E85 vehicles, and I might change my mind on the con-job opinion. I think the E85 CAFE exclusion is totally inappropriate, as Ethanol requires fossil fuel resources (special transportation, fermentation, fertilization) similar to the end energy result.

Ethanol works in Brazil, because the engines are for the most part ethanol only (high compression ratio - inexpensive), and light weight vehicles.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daronspicher @ Mar 28 2007, 08:47 PM) [snapback]413897[/snapback]</div>

Yeah, this is what I'm thinking too.

I'm also not pleased with the push for CORN ethanol. I know that's a result of the corn lobby. see the other posts regarding corn, carbon sequestering, et al.