Filed under: Hybrids/Alternative
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)
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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Tom 7:41AM (1/20/2006)
To be correct, All fuels gnerate less energy than they contain. Efficeny is alwas less than 100%. If one looks at the energy to produce any fuel, the energy it takes to produce will be more than what you can get out of it. Any gas engine is about 20-25% efficent, Diesels are maybe 25-30%, fuel cell with electric motor only maybe 40-45% efficent, fuel cell for home electric power production may approach 60-70% efficent if waste heat is used to produce hot water. So I would follow this route:
1. Go with the more effient engine - Diesel - power with Bio D, WVO (heated) or a mixture of Dino Diesel and Bio-D
2. Push for the production of Flex Fuel vehicles - educate the public about E85 - Educate owners of Flex Fuel vehicles so they will use E85 instead of gas - push for the expansion of E85 fueling stations (pay stations to have 1 E85 pump) - push for the development of a E85 conversion kit for cars on the road (something the car makers could do with Gov $$)
3. Push other Flex fuels for fleets - Natural Gas, Propane
4. Push gas electric and diesel electric hybrids with larger battery packs to allow for longer driving on 100% battery - charge the car at night at home - push Flex Fuel gas electric and diesel electric hybrids.
Just my 2 cents worth.
By the way I drive a escort that gets 30-32 mpg. I would love to convert to E85. But no conversion kit exists. My next car will be a diesel.
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M1EK 8:26AM (1/20/2006)
Tom,
No, you're still not getting it. Crude oil still comes out of the ground with more energy than it took to drill it out of the ground (enough that even the extra energy to transport and refine it doesn't make much of a dent). Its EROEI (energy return on energy investment) is very high - greater than 10. (In some fields, much higher than that; for instance, Saudi Arabia does better than Texas).
On the other hand, it takes more than one unit of energy to fertilize and harvest and refine one unit of ethanol energy. Whether that energy in came from ethanol or petroleum is irrelevant - the EROEI on ethanol is < 1.0.
That means that apart from air quality gains, if they exist, there's no valid economic reason to use ethanol, unless you can somehow get to the point where we have so much excess electrical production that we can run all the harvesters and refiners off electricity (from wind/solar or something). Even then, the benefit isn't economic, it would only be in avoiding foreign oil.
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OldCarDog 11:53AM (1/20/2006)
EROEI for ethanol is dependant on several variables, the largest being the feedstock. Corn currently is barely above a break even proposition. The facts I offered about switchgrass are absolutely referring to ethanol...Not bio-diesel. Many farming projects are starting up in states like Mississippi using land that is not currently used for food supply (lots of old cotton fields that are depleted due to soil erosion can actually be revived with switchgrass planting) Those that claim a negative EROEI for cellulose based ethanol are wrong...Way wrong.
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Tom 4:09PM (1/20/2006)
How could I find out more about EROEI (energy return on energy investment)?
Websites or file attachment? (coastalva@yahoo.com)
Tom
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