Wait, Ethanol is Good?!
A blog I’ve started reading lately has this post about Ethanol called, The Case for Ethanol.
It’s interesting to get this perspective because it flies in the face of a lot of what you see in the news (a point the author makes in his article).
For example, everywhere you read about ethanol, they always say it takes more energy to make ethanol that it produces. This author says its actually the other way around. He uses the analogy of comparing the fuel efficiency of an old Mercedes (which represent the methods of making ethanol in the 1970’s) to the efficiency of a modern Prius (the methods utilized today).
His point is that the people who are saying ethanol is too inefficient are using data from the 1970s.
If you like the idea of developing Ethanol, then you might want to sign the petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/declare-july-4th-energy-independence-day.
corny said,
July 5, 2008 at 12:07 pm
GM ’s sudden stewardship of the environment is simply a way to continue to make gas guzzlers thanks to E85 an extremely inefficient fuel. The CAFE standards call for all car companies to achieve an average MPG for all vehicles. I believe the most recent number is 27 MPG. Well if you make the biggest money off of 10 miles per gallon SUV’s you would hate to say good bye to them wouldn’t you?
The CAFE standards has a loophole, that being that an E85 vehicle operating on E85 miles per gallon are ONLY figured against the actual amount of gasoline in the blend (15%) if you divide 100% fuel by 15% gasoline you get the multiplier to the mpg (666) therefore a gas guzzling 10 MPG SUV is given credit for 66.6 MPG. If you sell one SUV like this you can have 5 vehicles only achieving 20 MPG and this gas guzzling SUV and you average more than 27 MPG overall while not one of their vehicles really met the standard.
GM is not the only one taking advantage of this free ride Ford and Chrysler are too. The big three are heading down the toilet and this is just their hands clinging to the rim
mccomb123 said,
July 7, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Well, corny, your post is interesting. But I think you’re missing some facts.
The car companies are losing money on SUVs right now, and I just read somewhere that GM is considering selling off the HUMMER brand.
I am a free-market kind of guy, so I think they were selling SUVs because that’s what people like to buy.
Now that gas costs $4+ per gallon, the market is going in a different direction, and the automakers are bringing the kind of cars they sell overseas (smaller, more fuel efficient), here to the states and rebranding them as U.S. cars.
Alex Tiller said,
July 9, 2008 at 10:44 pm
If you want some more info on the benefits of ethanol and energy independence, check out http://blog.alextiller.com.
Post by Alex Tiller