Don't buy your hybrid car yet

[pyotr]

Wait another couple of years get ONE OF THESE.

[Crystallas]

But it wont support E85.
Until Toyota changes their stance on supporting E85, I wont buy any over-rated vehicle that they make.

[starving_student]

Originally Posted by pyotr

Wait another couple of years get ONE OF THESE.

2009-2010 is in 4 years! At least I am making a difference NOW.

[abowers]

I'm a little skeptical of the 70-80mpg projection until I see that the actual 2010 car is really getting that kind of mileage.

[pyotr]

E85 is a bloated political/pork movement and will never fly because ethanol costs more to produce than gasoline even with it so heavily subsidized. The environmental cost of producing the ethanol is high and the final gas mileage of ethanol-based gas is 15-30% less than regular gasoline. Thus you have more expensive gas which gets you less mileage than regular gas and which will cause wholesale destruction of huge tracts of farmland requiring enormous inputs of precious and water and fertilizer which is another lecture in itself. It has been estimated that the only way for ethanol-based fuels to work would be for gas to rise about $5/gallon AND for the manufacturing processes to become more sophisticated and use waste weeds and agricultural waste plants instead of corn to produce ethanol - even so, the existing state subsidies by the taxpayers as in Montana or Wisconsin will need to continue to make the business models work, the Economist had an article about these ethanol-based fuels in the past month and estimated any potential large-scale models to begin only several decades from now. If ever ethanol-fuels become more financially feasible, the great oil countries/states/companies would flood the market with cheap gas in order to make the experiment fail - at that point if you owned a car which could drive 30mpg on $1/gallon fuel versus driving 25mpg on $5/gallon fuel, which one do you think most citizens would choose? So E85 is a bloated political/pork movement and will never fly with us consumers.

If you want to make a difference, I'd go join the Peace Corps; driving a trendy car which still uses gasoline and gets only marginally better mileage than an econo-car doesn't qualify as making a difference.

[abowers]

I agree with pyotr, I've heard E85 isn't feasible unless you're in the midwest. The difference in production and the added cost of transporting it outweighs the benefits.

I'm content with getting 25-35 mpg (worst actual city mileage and best actual highway mileage I've had over the past 7 1/2 months) on my '06 Ford Focus.

[Crystallas]

Right, so the economy in Brazil didnt grow at a record pace after E85 was standardized. Where crops that can produce ethanol arent nearly as great as the US.

Its underrated, not overbloated. With 1 Gallon of Ethanol projected to cost under $2.00 by 2007, but 1 gallon of gasoline will not cost that.

Ive been on racing crews and building cars for my whole life, there is no way that Ethanol is a bad idea. Hybrids = more moving parts, more parts in general, and less support for maintenance. If anything, hybrids are overbloated.


If you want to wait 2-4 years for a car that gets better gas millage, then forget the Prius.
http://www.loremo.com/ And the options dont start at their prototype. Sedans, trucks, SUVs, vans a like will utilize the technology that will grow out of this company that has allready taken on a lot of major investors.
Dont forget Smart cars. Which do plan on using E85 certified parts in the US release of the forfour.

[nanamom]

My husband made the comment the other day that maybe our next car should be a hybrid. I reminded him that we WON'T be buying a new car ever again. When these two are paid off we will only buy what we can afford to pay cash for or at least pay off in a year. He said we may have a long time to get one and I agree, let them work out the bugs first!!

[msnln]

These guys claim they have plug in hybrids (modified Priuses) that get 100+ MPG. I think this it totally cool.

http://www.calcars.org/vehicles.html

[pyotr]

I think plug-in hybrids are the way to go. Maybe using alternative fuels in combination only if technological advances in agriculture/production/transportation occur.

Back to the ethanol question - yes Indy has switched to ethanol-based fuels but since when has auto-racing been interested in gas mileage and money savings? They switched purely because 1) it would provide publicity for ethanol and spotlight Indy racing as an apparently "green" sport (wrong) 2) ethanol does promote higher octane performance at a higher cost (the $2/gallon for ethanol estimate is totally off-base unless you are completely forgetting about subsidies paid by tax-payers). Brazil switched to ethanol due to their horrible foreign debt - they basically had no choice and this plan failed horribly in the 80s-90s until it was given a second try in the past decade and they have been depleting their lands/rainforests with the huge swaths of sugar cane plantations this switch has cost them.

A 2001 USDA study concluded that with the additional heating required using coals or natural gas etc. in order to manufacture ethanol, gasohol was a NET GREENHOUSE EMITTER, not a reducer. Several studies including ones by USDA have shown ethanol is a marginal net energy value product, very probably a net negative energy value if you took into account the high heat production, transportation, the watering and fertilizing requirements. Without a huge technological advance, ethanol-based fuel is not feasible large scale for consumers. Ethanol will cause higher pressures in fuel lines and will dry rot fuel pumps thus requiring all car manufacturers to upgrade and raise the price of their cars also (at lower gas mileages too!).

[sweeps]

Not defending ethanol here, but don't all emerging technologies start off inferior to the incumbent technology? Fossil fuels have a 100-year headstart on other energy sources, so a little catch-up is needed.

[cptacek]

I don't think you can count the water / fertilizer / harvesting cost as one of the sins of ethanol. So, "wholesale destruction of huge tracts of farmland requiring enormous inputs of precious and water and fertilizer which is another lecture in itself" is at the least uninformed, at the most reactionary. The corn etc would have been grown anyway, and new farmland is not being produced...golf courses and city sprawl is guaranteeing that.

And, until the government stops using food as a stick-and-carrot to other countries in the form of embargoes, I think farm prices should be subsidized...if they can't sell to the whole world because of politics, then they should be reimbursed.

[abowers]

I checked out the Loremo website - I finally found a use for my 5 years of learning German! I understand some of it anyway. The car kind of looks like your typical ridiculous concept car though...

[Crystallas]

Theres an english link at the bottom of the page

If you find a solution to the vehicles that are on our roads the most(diesel powered trucks) that doesnt include something based from corn. Then I will be a huge electric-gasoline bandwagoner. Until you find that solution, ethanol will not be some overbloated idea, because its the best alternative on the market right now that has a byproduct(biodiesel) that can even add relief to the prices we pay on shipping any commodity to stores or to our door.
And for those comments about ethanol being less friendly to the enviroment, I take it that you havent thought about the bigger problem of disposing of all those batteries when these cars hit the junk yard. Were comparing Carbon monoxides to toxic materials.
Indeed both technologies have a way to go before they are eco-proof. Aswell as both being able to run hand and hand with eachother. I still think Toyota is making a big mistake by not supporting E85.

[abowers]

Originally Posted by cptacek

And, until the government stops using food as a stick-and-carrot to other countries in the form of embargoes, I think farm prices should be subsidized...if they can't sell to the whole world because of politics, then they should be reimbursed.

aren't farms heavily subsidized right now? maybe i didn't understand what you meant.

[pyotr]

The corn etc would have been grown anyway, and new farmland is not being produced...golf courses and city sprawl is guaranteeing that.

Why would you think that the quantity of corn (or other crop) grown would remain constant if we (and possibly other parts of the world) were to switch over to E85? Do you think the amount of oil drilling remained constant as we and the world began using petroleum for fuel? What does the number of golf courses and city sprawl have to do with our discussion about ethanol in automobiles? Your line of argument here is unclear. Thanks for calling me uninformed and reactionary, it makes me feel young again.

[Crystallas]

You can make ethanol effectively from grass clippings, farmland doesnt pose a long term effect.

[VJW]

Originally Posted by pyotr

E85 is a bloated political/pork movement and will never fly because ethanol costs more to produce than gasoline even with it so heavily subsidized.

No it doesn’t.

This was already explained in this thread “Hybrid vehicles isn't the answer....”, POST #18.

In addition, since then I’ve discovered that the wholesale price of ethanol is $.90/GAL and the wholesale price of regular gasoline is more than $2.00/GAL.

Quite viable TODAY.

#

[cptacek]

I was saying that the amount of farmland would not be increased by growing corn for ethanol. There is a set amount of farmland out there, and you can't make any more of it. The cities are squeezing out the farmers as it is, and so that is what the "golf courses and city sprawl" comment was about.

The type of corn grown might change to take advantage of specific properties, and there might be a change from wheat or soybeans to a different type of corn, but acres in production now vs. later would be the same.

[cptacek]

Oh, and farmers are subsidized now. I was saying they should stay subsidized because of the politics.