Recent Comments:
Some politicians want to mandate 100% flex fuel capability {Autoblog Green}
Sep 4th 2008 5:01PM 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.
USPS will turn away (mostly) from flexfuel vehicles thanks to reduced fuel economy {Autoblog Green}
Jun 4th 2008 5:09PM "USPS' flexfuel vehicles not only saw a decreased fuel efficiency of 29 percent, but also ended up forcing the USPS to use 1.5m gallons more gasoline than before. Why? Because the USPS couldn't buy and use E85 everywhere it wanted to and so the flexfuel engines - which were larger than the ones they replaced - were thirsty and burned more fuel."
The reason the USPS used more gasoline with a fleet of flexfuel vehicles is the flexfuel vehicles were larger and/or had larger engines. The energy content of ethanol is a separate issue. Remember that flexfuel vehicles are generally built either to satisfy a government mandate and/or to get more favorable CAFE limits. As a result, only fleet quality domestic cars and thirsty trucks get the extra hardware to be flexfuel. The Chevy Tahoe and Ford Crown Victoria are available as flexfuel vehicles in the US. The 4 cylinder Chevy Malibu and all the consumer quality "foreign" models are not.
Making flexfuel vehicles isn't such a bad idea. You have to make the fuel system out of materials that can survive ethanol and methanol in addition to gasoline and you need an optical sensor to detect the relative gasoline/alcohol mix going into the engine. In the real world, flexfuel vehicles run on gasoline until someone figures out how to make ethanol or methanol at a lower cost than gasoline. If Coskata, etc. succeed, cars are ready to switch over and if they fail, the extra cost of the flexfuel hardware is low.
Top ten easiest-to-implement green technologies that already exist today {Autoblog Green}
Apr 23rd 2008 7:42PM "Petrol (Gasoline) or Diesel costs the equivalent of $8.50/gallon here (America should brace itself for rates at this price in due course ... it will happen!) so any vehicle needs to be yielding the best mpg figures which can be achieved!"
Paul, both diesel cars and low-sulfur diesel fuel are relatively expensive in the United States compared to their gasoline equivalent. Checked dallasgasprices.com and the best nearby diesel price today is $4.05 per gallon vs. $3.36 per gallon for regular unleaded gasoline. In addition to the higher diesel fuel cost, diesel cars and trucks cost thousands of dollars more than their gasoline powered equivalents.
Rational Americans consumers respond to changes in the total cost of car ownership which include large fixed costs for the vehicle and insurance that used to totally dwarf the marginal extra cost for fuel. Until recently, a pickup truck or SUV with low insurance rates and high resale value cost less to own than than many fuel efficient subcompacts.
UAW threatens to walk out on Chevy Malibu production {Autoblog}
Apr 19th 2008 12:35PM Unions generally have less power in Right to Work states where employees, in theory, can individually choose not to join the union, avoiding the cost of union dues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Right_to_work.svg
The Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kansas is in a Right to Work state. I would guess that plants built in areas where unions have less strength would have more value than a plant built near Detroit or Toledo.
"The worst moment in history to demand biofuels" {Autoblog Green}
Apr 15th 2008 7:04PM Why use living crops from today to make fuel when you have huge quantities of inexpensive dead plant material from yesterday, coal, to use as the alternative fuel feedstock?
Step 1: Make Syngas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas
C + H2O ---> CO + H2
Step 2: Use bacteria to make ethanol http://www.coskataenergy.com/process.html
Step 3: Separate ethanol from water http://www.coskataenergy.com/process-separations.html
Coskata promotes conversion of biomass to ethanol, but I believe that the actual commercial process is coal to coal gas to ethanol. There are several other chemical processes that convert coal into more valuable liquid fuels. There are also natural gas to liquid fuel processes, but natural gas is expensive relative to coal. As petroleum prices rise, synthetic fuels start to make economic sense.
Ashtrays and cigarette lighters going up in smoke {Autoblog}
Jan 26th 2008 1:32PM Maybe new car buyers no longer smoke in their car. There appears to be a strong economic class aspect to smoking. Educated upper middle class smokers hide their habit. They avoid smoking in their car to avoid "staining" it with the smell of cigarette smoke. Lower middle class smokers appear to have a different set of social pressures. Scheduled smoke breaks from and hourly wage job are an opportunity to socialize with other smokers.
It really annoys me when cigarette smoke gets pulled in by the A/C of my car when I'm stopped at a stop light. An obvious new car feature would be an A/C mode that automatically switches to recirculate when the car stops.
Apple refusing to accept cash for iPhone, limits 'em to two per person {Engadget}
Oct 27th 2007 2:09PM Are iPhones profitable without the business relationship with AT&T? If Apple doesn't make a profit on just the phone without a kickback from the AT&T contract then, yes, Apple doesn't want to sell iPhones that get unlocked.
