GM planning flex-fuel push
GM will launch a major advertising and consumer education campaign for its flex-fuel vehicles next month. Elizabeth Lowery, GM Vice President, Environment and Energy, announced the company's plans Tuesday at the 2006 Automotive News World Congress.
As we reported from the L.A. Auto Show earlier this month, GM rolled out a fleet of flex-fuel vehicles, capable of running up to 85 percent ethanol, in conjunction with a demonstration program with the California state government.
GM indicated its FFV promotion would expand to become a full marketing campaign later in the year. The full text of Lowery's presentation is available here.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that ethanol prices are rising, following oil prices upward.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alick 7:33PM (2/10/2006)
A few points to ponder:
The freshest study out there implies current (as in new equipment and techniques) corn-based ethanol is a positive EROEI and mitigates tail pipe exhaust:
http://rael.berkeley.edu/ebamm/
Corn is far from the best source of ethanol, Brazil proves that. Cellulose and algae feedstocks are currently being implemented.
Subsidies are needed in a country where everything is subsidized (name me one industry that is not, besides porn) to get it off the ground.
Almost all currently available biofuels are made by industrial farming, which has its own problems (water pollution run-off, deforestation, air pollution) and oil dependencies (fertilizers, water pumping, etc.). Organic and sustainable farming is not only better for the enviornment to start with but would probably help bring down the cost. Not to mention the price and natural impact of GMO soy and corn, thanks to Monsanto.
Engines with variable compression, are key to running alcohols. 12-15:1 compression burns clean and gets more bang for the buck. Volvo has a production car coming soon with a tilting cylinder head.
I hope to see biofuels as a sustainable american income, and sustainable environmental move with my life time. I am only 27 now, and I doubt I will, given the administration and the lack of public education that will affect the next 20 years or more.
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john lockamy 2:57PM (2/11/2006)
It may yeild less energy than petrolium, and it may be more expensive but we need to get away from petrolium. If this is the quickest and most stable way we need to take this course. The Chinese are growing in numbers and in their economy soon they will equal us in fuel consumption and then surpass us. once that happens the petroleum market will begin to sell the chinese more fuel than the US. The US economy is based on petroleum. your computer your plastics, tape, ink i could go on doubling the page on how much we use petroleum for. The nation needs to back away from the dependency not just on the foureign oil but on the unrenewable petroleum. If we use the E85 for a few years we could tap into the ANWR and possibly strech the 32-360 some days of fuel it contains for us. but we cannot do it fast we must do it at a slow and gradual pace. its all very complicated but it seems like this is the best for our economy. If the government supports it i support it.
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c-wright 9:08PM (2/23/2006)
#1 E-85 is not a net looser (lie). #2 I would be happy to give 2 bucks to an American than give 1 buck to an Arab. #3 E-85 burns a lot cleaner than gasoline. This is not only better for the air you breath but also keeps the inside of your motor cleaner = longer engine life. #4 The price of E-85 will come down as the supply gos up. #5 If you know anything about an internal combustion engine, you know that as compression ratio gos up so does horse power. the major limiting factor for raising compression ratio is octane. E-85 is 105 octane. If your car or trucks engine was made with a higher compression ratio it would actually make more horse power with E-85, or you could put a smaller engine in it, make the same HP. & it would be more fuel efficient. DONT FALL FOR THE LIES USE YOUR BRAIN & RESEARCH IT FOR YOURSELF!
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Tom 11:29AM (2/24/2006)
My response to above # comments:
#21 I saw a 167% net energy return on ethanol made from corn. They used more recent data.
#22 You may get more power from E85, but you will get about a 15% drop is MPG since E85 has less energy per gallon as compared to gasoline. I think e85 has about 83% of the energy as compared to gasoline, but since it burns better (highly oxygenated)you gain maybe 2-4% in MPG.
#23 Saab has a variable compression engine with tilting cylinder head. See www.saabnet.com/tsn/press/000318.html
Are you sure that it was Volvo not Saab?
#24 The growth of China and India's middle class will start to increase demand for Oil and even with stable supply price will go up. E85 is a great way to stretch oil used for transportation, helps the air (e85 burns cleaner), gets the American corn farmer a stable growing market for their products, Is made in the US (imagine if we could take just half of the $$ that goes outside of the US for Oil and get that back into our economy), and if we don't need as much oil from unstable areas we would be in a better position to not intervene as much......
I work in the Polymer (plastic industry)we are starting to see monomers/polymers/industrial raw materials that are made from agricultural products. They are currently more $$ than oils made from petroleum but the price is more stable is expected to drop as volume increases. There are several polymers that are made only from agriculturally produced monomers/raw materials that have properties that are in some cases more advantageous as compared to polymers made from monomers/raw material that cam from Oil.
#25 Just remember Brazil has been using E85 and even Ethanol without any gasoline added for twenty years (since the Oil issues of the early 1970's). It took them 20+ years to get to the place where some 50% of all new cars sold in Brazil run on E85 or Ethanol only. They have limited oil reserves but use sugar cane to make the Ethanol and keep the $$$ in their country we should do the same thing here. And with the new cellulose Ethanol process (that uses wastes such as grass, leaves, wood chips) that are converted to sugar with enzymes then that sugar is made into ethanol the process should lower the production cost of Ethanol and remove a significant amount of waste from land fills. This will also move Ethanol made by this process to more CO2 neutral as compared to Ethanol made from Corn, which is much much better in the case of CO2 compared to gasoline.
I just love the idea of using a waste product to make a transportation fuel. Bio Diesel does the same thing if you use used vet oil or grease!!!!
Come on America - We are the best in the World in Solving Complex Problems with New and Innovative Ways of thinking - We can fix the Petroleum Addiction that we all have if we are willing to!!!!!!
T
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MikeGR 5:28PM (1/18/2006)
Yep. We talked to a GM consultant about this a few weeks ago. Indeed something major coming.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/01/gm_serious_abou_1.php
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Fabulo 7:00PM (1/18/2006)
Given what it takes to make a vehicle feed on E85 (basically, alcohol resistant fuel line and updated ECU maps) it's surprising that all cars don't support it from the factory.
re: the price of ethanol going up with oil is raher funny, but telling: it's not what a good costs that matters, it is how much people are willing to pay for it.
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Anurag Sharma 8:22PM (1/18/2006)
Brazil already supports this technology for several years now. Every single car maker can run on 100% E85 fuel. It does not matter what blend of gas you put it in, car engine within few seconds adjusts the performance of the car. Driver does not even notice it. It's not new technology, and it's not something Major.
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Andrew 11:48PM (1/18/2006)
Ethanol is over-rated.
Ethanol costs quite a bit more than gas, but gets huge subsidies. So this is a case of hiding fuel costs with bigger federal and state deficits.
One thing not commonly mentioned is that ethanol only has about 2/3 energy per gallon. Thus fuel mileage will be worse. Check out EPA website, E85 fuel economy is typically much worse
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/bymakemodelNF.shtml
Who benefits? Companies like ADM. They make big profits on a fuel that could never compete without taxpayer support.
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Andrew 11:57PM (1/18/2006)
Ethanol is a crock.
It is much more expensive than gas, it can only compete because of huge subsidies.
Ethanol prices look good but remember 1. it has much less energy per gallon, so cars get worse mileage. Look at EPA website and you'll see E85 cars get much worse mileage 2. the price you see has hidden the true cost with subsidy
The only real benefit is to companies like ADM who belly up to the public trough
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Jeremy 1:44AM (1/19/2006)
Yes, Ethanol may cost more and not have the some potency as gasoline...but, IT IS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE!
It is made from corn and that is definately something we have enough of in this country. It also burns cleaner than gas. Also, with its 105 pump octane rating if all cars had to run it we could bump the compression up to 12 or 13 to 1 to offset any losses from going to that fuel.
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Joey (Kev) 6:45AM (1/19/2006)
Anyway Andrew, ALL the money made with the production of ethanol can stay in the US, and alternative fuel helps to counter the surging oil prices.
And as soon as the ethanol industry reaches a certain growth economies of scale will make it cheaper. Do you really believe that the oil, car, railway industry would have ever evolveled without so called state subsidies? Do individuals build bridges and highways? I hope you get what I mean.
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Steve B. 7:49AM (1/19/2006)
Joey (kev): Subsidies or Robber Barons. Choose your poison.
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Non-Bizarro Adam 8:23AM (1/19/2006)
Yes, ethanol is heavily subsidized, but I would rather all that money go to some guy in Iowa or Illinois than to the Ayatolla in Iran. As people have said above, it will get less expensive as well when economies of scale take over. And lets not forget the value of market stability; we won't have to see the economy go in the tank because Chavez gets his panties in a bunch, Nigerian oil workers are attacked, or Iran decides it wants to build nukes. E85 is just good ORM.
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M1EK 9:20AM (1/19/2006)
You guys aren't getting the problem with ethanol.
Because it's a net energy loser (takes more energy to grow/refine it than you get from burning it), you end up burning MORE petroleum than you would if you just put the petroleum in your gas tank to begin with.
The only real benefits of ethanol come from air quality (questionable given the gains in normal gas and hybrid vehicles) and possibly obtaining some of it from agricultural waste streams so the energy investment is lower (much more likely with biodiesel)
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Glenn Arlt 10:04AM (1/19/2006)
M1EK, I used to think that ethanol was an efficiency loser too, and it used to be, apparently - however, now it is not, I recently read. (It's called "technology moving on and efficiencies getting better.") I wholeheartedly agree that we need to keep our fuel money here and not export money to "those who would kill us all" (because, they said they'd like to, and have been for decades on a growing basis).
My problem with ethanol is that there are only about 1/2 a dozen fuel stations which offer E85 in my state and they are 150-200 miles away or so. Plus, of course, my car doesn't use it. My father had a Dodge Spirit (1992) which could use it, but it never saw a drop of ethanol unless he pulled into a station which sold "gasohol" (as it was then called, now called E10).
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OldCarDog 11:58AM (1/19/2006)
Ethanol is NOT a net energy loser. Whenever that statement is made they always point to an ancient study that used a lot of worst-case assumptions. Processes like BCI will be employing in the new plant in Louisiana are very efficient. If you switch crops to switchgrass, the yeild is 5 times the energy input. Switchgrass virtually eliminates soil erosion, and helps remove C02 from the air. 1,200 gallons of ethanol fuel can be produced per acre, and that's before genetic crop engineering is involved. Switchgrass is a perennial that needs re-planting only about every 10 years, and doesn't require the natural gas produced fertilizer that corn does. It's a better solution than oil shale.
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Dan McCullough 12:38PM (1/19/2006)
The issue for a lot of people is that instead of buying oil based fuel and sending the money overseas they'd rather buy E85 and kepe the majority of the money in the States , to Farmers and Agri business.
Also we subsidize oil dont think for a second we dont ..just look at al the tac breaks we give the big oil companies.
My main concern is keeping the Oil companies from being able to own the ethanol plants.. We're running a Poll here www.e85vehicles.com
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Bob from ALAMN 4:05PM (1/19/2006)
The American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest supports the use of E85 to reduce air pollution.
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M1EK 7:13PM (1/19/2006)
OldCarDog,
Ethanol is still a net energy loser. Biodiesel is not the same thing as ethanol; the switchgrass study is for future biodiesel use, not ethanol.
Biodiesel is the one which is a net energy loser if purpose-grown now, but holds some potential for becoming a net energy winner down the road, and of course today is created out of a 'free' agricultural waste stream, which ethanol doesn't get to use.
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Andrew 9:50PM (1/19/2006)
There are many possible ways of reducing oil consumption, ethanol is only one of them. The problem with subsidizing is that you don't get the best technology, you get the technology with the best lobbyist (ADM). Government should not pick winners.
Maybe the best alternative is simply to drive smaller cars. I drive a 4cylinder car to work, I average 30 mpg, and I don't require subsidies.
Some studies say ethanol uses more energy than it provides, some say less. But even the optimistc studies say it uses ~70 of what it provides. To replace on gallon of gasoline you need 1.5 gallons of ethanol that costs ~2.00 per gallon, this is 3.00. But you really are not replacing all the gasoline because you consume diesel, natural gas, etc with farming.
You can argue that oil industry gets some subsidies, but these are much, much lower per gallon than ethanol. Without subsidies ethanol would be gone overnight. Ethanol is now a purely political fuel.
If (when) oil prices go up more, and when alternative fuels become less expensive, we can start converting. But corn-based ethanol can never provide more than a small fraction of what we need, has almost no net benefit, and huge costs.
Maybe switchgrass.
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