Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.

Especially when I bring up these weird automotive issues. She likes her 95 Impala SS, and doesn’t want to hear about changing to an Aveo or something to gain 10 mpg.

You should have heard what she had to say about my Insight idea!

It is going to take something really game changing like the Volt, with spectacular mileage and 4 door convenience, to move most people to change.

On another note… I still wonder how different things would be today if GM had NOT sold the Cobasys patent on those advanced NiMH batteries. See http://ev1.org/msg/10.htm

Please teach me more about why ethanol is a dead end. I’d like to be informed of this data. Do you have any good links to direct me to? I intend to modify my website if what you say is true.

I thought cellulosic ethanol could yield far more than 4x the amount from corn, per ton of plant matter.

How do you think the government and private industry was tricked into investing in cellulosic ethanol if it can never meet enough of our demand? Was private industry doing this because of the tax credits?

Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.

The EV1, a great car (I drove one) and the most efficient production vehicle in automotive history (GM’s words) used a 330-volt battery pack. Even the lead-acid original went over 75 miles per charge; the 1999 Gen II NiMH model went over 140 miles on a full charge.

Mr. Lutz, I’ll buy a 2009 Silverado (hold the truck) and one of your surviving EV1s (hold the lead-acids.) GM can make EVs now!

My wife calls me a mule from time to time… or some other name people use for mules.

Unfortunately, it will not. Cellulose can only yield 18 gigajoules per hectare at best. At current gasoline demand, it would require 15% more land area than is within the borders of the continental united states to replace gas. Clearly this is preposterous – but even placing the entire great plains under cultivation would replace only 19% of our demand. Even that is laughably unlikely.

It all comes down to the quantity of energy in your feedstock – and there is not sufficient energy in cellulosic feedstock to make it a practical gasoline replacement, even fractionally. 18 gJ/ha is the upper limit. Agricultural waste is lower. We might, by rigorously tapping every cellulosic waste stream and growing switchgrass where possible we can get our hands on, replace 15% of our gasoline needs. It’s a niche player, nothing more.

I’m offering these comments not as a doomsayer or because I’m anti-green. I’m an ecologist who’s interested in policy and energy, nothing more. And I don’t want to see the empty promises of greenwashing industry shills lead us down a path of different, but equal, thrashing of the environment to serve our energy needs.

Ethanol from cellulose may dramatically change things. Think of the current technology as a loss leader. Both biologists and chemists are working on the real ethanol research (cellulose based). So don’t write ethanol off yet.

There was a good article in the NY times a few days ago about this. Basically, chemists opened a full size ethanol plant, it takes in plant matter and puts out ethanol. It just might be the beginning of something great.

death to oil – http://www.oiljihad.org

And if you think it’s a greenhouse gas fighter, welcome to reality. The production of a gallon of ethanol packs a worse greenhouse punch than what you get from burning gasoline. Sure, it’s carbon neutral, in theory – but growing a field of fertilized crops releases nitrous oxides that pack 238 times the greenhouse punch of CO2. The microbes living in soil eat most of the fertilizer that gets dumped onto the field, and hey presto, they fart out nitrous oxides.

And never mind that intensive agriculture pollutes the air and water, destroys good agricultural soil, contributes to “dead zones” at the mouths of major rivers, and causes increased topsoil erosion. Are we really prepared to mine our farmland for fuel when, when it comes down to it, we need food more than we need mobility?

I’m not even getting into the economic fallout of devoting most or all of our farmland to biofuel production, either.

Ethanol can NEVER be anything but a small niche player, a few percent of our gasoline use. The energetics, ecological impacts, and greenhouse-positive nature of their production prevent it from being taken seriously by any informed commentator. As an ecologist and environmentalist, I’d almost rather we burn gas in smaller amounts than bother with biofuel production. Energy efficiency and ecological remediation will save us far more than “switching” to biofuel ever will.

Follow your own advice. That was a mild hybrid with a tiny battery pack that juiced a belt-alternator-starter hybrid. It wasn’t plug-in and it certainly wasn’t a fully hybrid system. So who is it that needs to do some damn research, again?