AutoblogGreen reader Michael recently sent in a question regarding the about-to-start "Cash for Clunkers" program. Officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), the program allows owners of some older and inefficient vehicles to trade them in and get a rebate check worth up to $4,500 from the government to buy a new car. The simple version of the rules are that the trade-in can't be more than 25 years old, needs to have an official combined highway/city fuel economy rating of less than 18 mpg (on the EPA's new mpg scale), be in drivable condition and you have to have owned and insured the car for at least the year prior to turning it in. Michael's question revolves around what happens when a car has two fuel economy ratings - one for gas and one for ethanol. Turns out, no one really knows yet. Find out more after the jump.

Photo by iboy_daniel. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

January was a simpler time for the relationship between Doug Pelmear/Horse Power Sales (makers of the HP2G engine that was in the Mustang we saw in Detroit a few months ago) and the Automotive X Prize. Back then, the two were happy neighbors in the NAIAS basement (the smelly, smelly basement). No longer.

Yesterday, Horse Power Sales issued a statement (read it after the jump) that said they had "officially withdrawn their team and their 1987 Mustang, powered by the revolutionary, 110MPG, V-8, HP2g engine, from the upcoming Progressive Automotive X PRIZE Competition, effective June 4, 2009" because the team "no longer feels it is in the company's best interests to compete in or be associated with the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE competition." Horse Power Sales also had a problem with a change of schedule, the change in prize purse amount, and what they saw as a conflict of interest in the way the rules were designed.

Here's the thing, though, Horse Power Sales never made the jump from a Letter of Intent (LOI) team to registered participant. Their name is not on the list of 111 official teams that the AXP released in April. We got some clarification from the Auto X Prize that says that Pelmear's criticism of the rule process is baseless and that every LOI team had a chance to give advice. The AXP said that, "no teams were involved in decisions about rules and procedures. It's very important to note that none of the teams are part of the judging panels for the upcoming Design Judging Phase of the competition nor were any teams part of a competitor evaluation process in the past" (read the rest of the AXP's comments after the break).

Also, in this week's announcement, Horse Power made no mention of their E85-powered Revenge Verde.

UPDATE: AXP's official response is here.


[Source: Horse Power Sale, Auto X Prize]

Driving around mid-Michigan over the weekend, I couldn't help but notice how much gas prices have jumped in the last few weeks. According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas has jumped up 50 cents in the past month to $2.50. Well, this is a good time to have a flex-fuel vehicle if a local Mobil station is representative of a national trend. Filling up with the biofuel around here will save you 38 cents per gallon, which is something to think about even though there's less energy in the corn juice. Actually, according to E85 Prices, the national average difference is about 42 cents a gallon. A gallon of E85 will cost you something like $2.08, they say. What do the signs look like in your neck of the woods?

Don't say ethanol never paid off for anyone. Summitville, Indiana resident Pamela Smith stopped off to buy E85 earlier this month and dropped a few bucks into the Indiana lottery. Luck was with her, and she won the $2.5 million Hoosier Lotto jackpot.

"I was looking for Ethanol gas," Smith in a statement. "I actually went inside the gas station to thank the manager for carrying Ethanol because it's so hard to find. It was an impulse buy for me to purchase one dollar of Lotto and one dollar of Powerball."

Indiana lottery officials said that Smith will take her winnings as a $980,296 lump sum (before taxes). Anyone seen any ethanol company executives down at the corner store lately?

[Source: via Domestic Fuel]

Back in February, Mascoma opened its first pilot plant for the production of cellulosic ethanol. According to General Motors, which invested in Mascoma and its unique method for producing the alcohol, Mascoma's consolidated bioprocessing process has proven successful in a laboratory environment.

Unlike most processes for creating cellulosic ethanol, Mascoma uses a specially developed strain of yeast that cuts a three-step process down to one single step, which allows the ethanol producer to reduce the cost of creating the fuel, improve the plant's throughput and lower the cost associated with building the plant.

Cellulosic ethanol may turn into an important piece of the larger puzzle of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. If nothing else, it's a much better solution than the corn-based ethanol we're currently saddled with. Want to know more about cellulosic ethanol? Click here to read our past Greenlings post on the subject.

[Source: General Motors]

GM has long been a proponent of using high-level ethanol blend, E85, in motor vehicles. But, with all of the talk of putting E15 or E20 (gasoline with 15 or 20 percent ethanol blended in) into the national supply - see these earlier posts about the EPA, the Minnesota Ag Department, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Underwriters Laboratories on the topic - GM's Biofuels Implementation Manager, Coleman Jones, has found "Seven Reasons Why Testing Mid-level Ethanol Blends Matters." The short version: E10 is working well, and we'd like to see more biofuels used, so let's test E15 before widespread introduction. The seven things that need to be tested:

• Catalyst durability
• Engine and fuel system durability
• On-board diagnostics
• Tailpipe emissions
• Evaporative emissions system durability.
• Emissions inventory and air quality modeling.
• Operability

Get the full details over at the Fastlane Blog.

[Source: GM]

There is a lot of controversy surrounding biofuels. Various studies have shown that crop-based biofuels contribute to global warming more than they help prevent it, that ethanol is no better than gasoline, and that South East Asian rainforests are suffering for biofuels, to name just three. The most dramatic recent claim was that ethanol was the worst type of renewable energy.

Currently, popular fuel crops include sugar cane (in Brazil), sugar beets (Europe), and corn (United States). The good news is that you don't need to grow crops for the express purpose of making them into ethanol to create the biofuel. You can also use beer byproducts or get help from sea grubs, among many other methods. When you use these non-crop alternative methods, the result is often called cellulosic ethanol. Since ethanol has all sorts of negative connotations, some suggest we rename the fuel. "Celluline" is one possibility, but for this post we'll stick with cellulosic ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol is the main face of so-called second-generation biofuels. It's called "cellulosic" because it is made from lignocellulose. Lignocellulose, in turn, is made up of lignin and cellulose that is present in the cell walls of woody plants. Follow us past the jump for an expanded primer on cellulosic ethanol and it's place in green motoring today.

A decision made last month by Underwriters Laboratories could put a big speed bump in efforts by states like Minnesota and the USDA and EPA to increase concentrations of ethanol in gasoline beyond the current maximum of 10 percent. Many states and municipalities require UL listings for fuel pumps. The UL ruling on E85 pumps specified that existing pumps certified to the UL87 standard are certified only for concentrations up to E10. That means that concentrations like E15 and E20 can't be dispensed from those pumps. Minnesota has mandated that gasoline blends in the state should be increased to 20 percent by 2015 and many in the ethanol industry had thought that the UL87 standard applied to blends up to E15.

The main part of the decision was actually related to E85-pump components. UL rescinded its earlier approval of certain components which means pumps with those parts can no longer be used. There have not been any known safety incidents with these pumps. However, pumps in areas that require UL certification will have to be shut down. It's unknown how many pumps will be affected by the decision.

[Source: Ethanol.org via Green Car Congress]

Want to prove that ponies like ethanol? Give Oklahoma corn farmer Brent Hajek a call. He helped get a FR500C Ford Mustang running on E85 up to 252.78 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats is Utah back in September. The record-setting drive (well, almost. It still needs to be duplicated to make the books) handily beat the previous record of 246 mph. The Mustang used a 5.4L Ford GT block, heads and various performance parts from Ford Racing, but that sort of support was not a given. NewsOK reports that there was little enthusiasm for the Mustang record attempt until Hajek suggested using the corn-based fuel. Once the biofuel was part of the plan, they [Ford] were hooked."

There's a video of the event -rocking guitar soundtrack and all - after the jump. For more alt-fuel Mustangs, check out these biodiesel and electric versions.

[Source: NewsOK via Domestic Fuel]

In spite of all the promotion from General Motors of E85 as an alternative fuel, the reality for most people has been that is simply doesn't make sense from an economic perspective. As the West Lafayette, Indiana police department found out last summer, the numbers didn't add up. There is of course the issue of fuel consumption. Due to its lower energy content, a normally aspirated flex-fuel engine gets about 10-20 percent worse fuel efficiency on E85 than on gasoline. Much of this differential can actually be made up with an engine optimized for E85, particularly if it's turbocharged, but most current engines don't fall into this category.

The West Lafayette Police also had to go to the one station in the area that offered up E85, meaning they wasted time and fuel driving out of their way to get ethanol. Even with the $1 per gallon difference between E85 and gas, there just weren't any savings to be had. Now that gasoline is substantially cheaper than it was last summer, the problem is even worse. Until we have flex-fuel vehicles optimized for ethanol and greater biofuel availability, it simply won't make a lot of sense. Then there is the whole issue of well-to-wheel emissions, but that's another story.

[Source: JC Online]