Filed under: Ethanol, Flex-Fuel, Legislation and Policy
Some politicians want to mandate 100% flex fuel capability
A bipartisan group of senators has drafted a new energy bill that includes a mandate that all vehicles sold in the United States would have to be flex-fuel capable by 2020. During the GM BioFuels summit last Friday in Detroit, one of the subjects that came up was the use of flex-fuel vs. dedicated ethanol vehicles. When Brazil first started moving to ethanol in the 1970s, manufacturers built cars that only ran on ethanol. Due some volatility in fuel prices these proved to be unpopular. It was only when everyone started to make flex-fuel vehicles so that drivers could select the fuel that was most affordable that such cars and use ethanol really took off. Now more than 90 percent of new cars in Brazil are FFVs.
However, some in the industry are opposed to the plan. Barbara Nocera of Mazda is concerned that government shouldn't mandate which technologies win out. The validity of this argument is dependent on how how the law is written. If it only mandates flex fuel capability without specifying particular fuels, this really shouldn't be a problem. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers president Dave McCurdy has said some engines are not easily adaptable to flex fuel capability. Again this seems a dubious argument at least for gasoline engines. There shouldn't be any modern electronically controlled engines that couldn't be flex-fuel capable.
GM spokesman Alan Adler told ABG that "In general, GM opposes mandates, including this one." The real problem is not building the FFVs, but rather a lack of filling stations. Brazil has mandated that filling stations must install ethanol pumps, but less than one percent of U.S. stations offer E85. Adler said that most new GM programs "are going to offer flex-fuel capability but some, such as diesel programs, will not." However, if the fuel isn't available to buy it won't make any difference.
[Source: Automotive News - sub. req'd]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
ale 5:54PM (9/03/2008)
2020, ahhh gotta love "timelines" or wait, are they now deemed "time horizons", which is a little more accurate, something that well never acheive when the week's news changes to abortion or immigration, the economy will take a back seat in the rotation
gotta agree w/ Mazda and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, as a government don;t choose what technology will win out let the market do that, just set the regulations to allow such to occur
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Steven 5:57PM (9/03/2008)
I don't see the big deal with this. Cellulosic is about to explode on the scene, and giving all vehicles the option doesn't cost that much. Just make diesels diesels and everything else flex fuel. You know we probably don't need a mandate. Suzuki just made it uniform across their fleet next year. It would be a good decision because any consumer who would say "I don't want flex fuel I want only gasoline as an option" at this stage of the game is insane. The car makers should be doing this automatically right now! That way gasoline die hards can go rioght on using it and the rest of us have a choice. Whether you like ethanol or not, this makes sense, because cellulosic is on the way and corn is on it's way out as an ethanol feedstock.
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Bill 9:31PM (9/03/2008)
It is much more difficult to convert cellulose to ethanol than starch to ethanol.
Companies working on it make all sorts of claims for several years in the future, but will NOT tell you what it is costing them TODAY to make a gallon of ethanol from cellulose.
doug 7:12PM (9/03/2008)
I totally agree with mandating flex fuel vehicles. Congress wants ethanol to supplant gasoline, but there is only so much gasoline to dilute ethanol into to get E10. If every vehicle was flex fuel, the pumps would follow. Gas stations can't be expected to install E85 pumps for cars that don't exist, and the cost is low enough for the automakers to include the capability.
I say make every new vehicle flex fuel starting in 2013, the mandate that every gas station have 1 E85 pump by 2015 - after about 32 million 2013 and 2014 vehicles hit the road. Those 32 million combined with the millions already on the road will create a market for E85.
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tim 8:13PM (9/03/2008)
"Some politicians want to mandate 100% flex fuel capability"
Would they be the Democrat-Socialists or the NeoCon-Fascists? Do we REALLY have any other choices?
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Trev 10:21PM (9/03/2008)
I think you forgot your point.
Andy 10:24PM (9/03/2008)
And the bi-partisan politicians are:
"Corny" Collins - Nebraskan farmers association.
Algenon Smythe III (Algae to his friends) - Green ventures inc.
Pablo Montez Sucre - Brazilian cane importers
'Grunt' Williams - Alage's college football buddy
There's nothing complicated 'bout US politics.
tankd0g 9:45PM (9/03/2008)
Great, worse mileage is the answer.
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ltclloyd 11:46PM (9/03/2008)
More fuel choices is always good.. even if we NEVER burn a single gallon of ethanol. having the power to tell OPEC to go shove it when they "defend" $100 Barrel. is going to help the consumer in the long run.. oh PS.. there is a HUGE untapped sugar market in the southeast that is itching to sell their sugar to ethanol plants... they almost give their sugar away as it is.
it's not a solve all solution... we need Gen-1 corn, Gen-1 Sugar, and Gen-2 Celulostic. and it'll all help America
Curt 12:14AM (9/04/2008)
There are 4 public E85 pumps in California, the largest car market in the US.
http://e85vehicles.com/e85-california.htm
Mandating E85 capability for all cars won't help build pumps.
Why would Shell, Arco, Chevron, etc. sell E85 if they don't control it ? Selling E85 will cut into their profits.
E85 is a product that competes with the gasoline that they control and sell.
They don't control the farms that grow the crops used to make E85 and they don't control the plants that make E85.
Only a law that forces gas stations to build E85 pumps and sell E85 will work.
Even if such a law passes, taxpayers will probably pay the bill for these rich oil companies to build E85 pumps.
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Carney 4:13PM (12/12/2008)
As Robert Zubrin has said, "Any gas station owner can mobilize the capital to install a new pump. Any group of small town entrepreneurs can mobilize the capital to build an ethanol plant. But what they can't do is make automobiles. That's why we have to tackle this with legislation at the demand end. Once we have the market in place, all the rest will follow."
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/6/12235/79208
PS - I do not endorse the DailyKos site overall.
episoe26 10:31AM (9/04/2008)
If congress mandated that all cars must be E100 capable, then our fueling options would be so much more flexible.
If your car was E100, then you would have the option of making your own fuel. Or it would make it easier to use those fuels that are derived from other fuel sources from plants, bacteria, or those other non-fossil based fuels.
It puts the consumor more in control.
And by doing so it allow us to have more options fuel wise in the future. By having E100 capable vehicles there may be other entities, market based, which will take advantage of these new conditions.
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Steven 12:36PM (9/04/2008)
Well, it is a different story here in Wisconsin. I have 1 e85 station that is exactly .9 miles from my house and 10 stations within 10 miles. I use e85 all the time and which given the energy content conversion or whatever I use 50% less petroleum than a prius driver in my 3.5L Impala. Now I consider myself "moderately green" and Curt, if you are in California, I suspect you'll see more availability soon. It burns me that I am using even a drop of imported petroleum in my e85 but that's the best I can do for now. I'll say again, and I don't favor a mandate BTW, that it is not fair to car buyers that they have so few flex fuel choices today. If I were the CEO of any of the top 10 auto companies I'd have flex fuel standard on my line. It doesn't cost much and would give us another fuel choice. Man regardless of how you feel about ethanol in general, Brazillians have a better choice than us here in the US. I WOULD LOVE TO BE DRIVING AN E85 CAPABLE CIVIC, ACCENT, OR COROLLA right now instead of my 3.5L IMPALA, believe me. But I don't have the choice and that stinks.
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Da Coyote 4:25PM (9/04/2008)
I would never go for a plan that comes from a group of folks having non-existent technical education and abilities coupled with no morals or judgement. Let the market do it. Market? That's the thing that actually works. Senators are here because they can do nothing else.
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George B 5:08PM (9/04/2008)
To maximize benefits vs. cost I would phase in a flex fuel mandate with a start date much earlier than 2020. I would propose a mandate that starts with vehicles with annual sales numbers exceeding 100k per year and gradually reduce the sales number where flex fuel capability is required. Second, I would propose an initial exemption for "California" emissions requirement cars. Alcohol fuels are expensive to transport from the center of the country to the coasts. I could drive from my home in Texas to my brother in Michigan using only E-85 from retail pumps, but E-85 is unavailable in New England and many areas of California.
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Larry 10:48AM (10/23/2008)
Part of the deal has to be eliminating the 54 cents per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Policies that are primarily based on politics instead of sound economics usually end up causing more harm than good. The ethanol issue is a prime example of such a misadventure in economic policy.
The protectionist economic ethanol policy of the United States provides very little environmental benefit and some economic damage. By setting a tariff of 54 cents a gallon for imported ethanol, Congress has blocked environmentally efficient ethanol from Brazil and other sugarcane producing countries in favor of an inefficient corn-based ethanol produced by farmers in the Midwest of the US. The economic damage is embodied in the higher prices for corn faced by American consumers. The environmental concern emanates from the 800 gallons of ethanol produced per acre of sugarcane versus only 328 gallons per acre for corn.
The situation is actually worse than implied by these gallons per acre figures. Corn is a starch and must use additional energy to be converted to sugar before it can be transformed into ethanol. Consequently, while sugarcane produces 8 units of output energy for every unit of input energy, corn produces only 1.3 output units. While ethanol from corn reduces carbon emissions by between 10 and 20 percent relative to gasoline, ethanol from sugarcane reduces such emissions by between 87 and 96 percent.
To make matters worse, the farm bill provides a special tax credit to US ethanol producers of 51 cents per gallon. This means that the full hurdle that imported ethanol must exceed has risen to $1.05 per gallon. That’s a significant addition to pain at the pump. How can politicians tell us that they “feel our pain” if they hit us with this double-whammy?
Protectionists argue that we must have these ethanol import barriers to protect the Amazon Rain Forest. This is a strange argument since wet areas like the Amazon would rot the roots of sugarcane plants. Sugarcane is grown on just 2 percent of Brazil’s arable land. The sugarcane growing regions are well over a thousand kilometers from the Amazon -- primarily in the southern state of Sao Paulo and along the easternmost tip of Brazil. Even with flex-fuel vehicles accounting for 72 percent of vehicles sold in Brazil in 2007, only 3 million hectares of land are used for ethanol production versus 200 million hectares for pasture. Moreover, the Brazilian government is acting to forbid the planting of sugarcane in the Amazon region or in the Pantanal swamplands, although it is hard to imagine that anyone would want to plant in such sugarcane-hostile regions in any case.
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Larry 11:14AM (10/23/2008)
Ask your senators and representative in Congress to pass S.1994 and HR.4409 revised to cover all new cars sold in the U.S. including foreign ones and a provision to drop the 54 cent tariff on imported ethanol from Brazil. Brazil has already freed itself from dependence on foreign oil imports. Its sugarcane-based ethanol is much cheaper and much more energy efficient than corn-based ethanol. Almost all Brazil's cars are already flex-fuel. Why keep sending oil money to Venezuela, Iran, Russia, etc. when we have good friends in Brazil who along with our own farmers can bring the cost of ethanol down enough to help us get rid of foreign oil imports?
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Carney 4:10PM (12/12/2008)
Hear, hear! Well said.
Carney 3:45PM (12/12/2008)
Provide the capability in the cars, and public demand for cheaper fuel will prompt gas station owners to provide the alcohol pumps.
It's that simple.
Without a sweeping mandate to include it in cars, consumers and fuel station owners are locked into a "you go first" stand-off. Car buyers won't demand flex fuel capability if no stations offer alcohol, and fuel station owners won't switch any pumps to alcohol with so few flex fuel vehicles on the road.
If ALL new cars are flex fueled, it's a whole new ball game.
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Larry 11:12AM (12/17/2008)
Check out this story about a new sugarcorn (yes, corn) product coming on the ethanol market.
http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/937292.html
This just goes to show that you never know where the energy solution may come from. It makes no sense to let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid decide which energy alternatives to favor. Put a high tariff on foreign crude oil imports with a tax-credit or stimulus check rebate and produce a profitable playing field for all environmentally-friendly alternatives.
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