Auto Boston

A fishy smell?0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 31st, 2006

Ok, moving right along, bio-diesel is the third of four alt.fuel items about which I’m curious. You have to have been paying attention almost right from the start if you’re going to guess what the fourth is.

Basically, bio-diesel is filtered waste cooking oil. As long as there are donuts, you’ll never run out of juice again. For every Chinese restaurant that opens in your neighborhood, that’s another 600 miles per week of environmentally non-hostile driving you can do.

Now, because I was just at Reuters getting the low-down on ethanol, I searched their archives for the latest on bio-diesel and though articles weren’t nearly as plentiful as those on ethanol, one at which I looked amused me not a little for its scope of pure ambition. I mean this is oops-there-goes-another-rubber-tree-plant, high apple pie in the sky hopes kinda stuff. But anyone that ballsy deserves more respect than any humble blog will ever be able to bestow.

I’ve emailed the people behind this monumentally upstartish start-up and if all this is beginning to sound like free plugging, consider yourselves lucky I’m not doing a music blog, because I’d be thumping out Chris Brown news like there were no other musicians on the planet if that were the case. It’s stories like this that restore my faith in the future of… well everything really. It’s just gold medal winning gumption and frankly, it makes my frossets wipple.

No news is good news.0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 31st, 2006

Take that any way you like. Is all news bad news? Depends upon which side of the fence you sit. Also depends which fence it happens to be.

Today though, no news is good news for politicians and industrialists and you can take that both ways because there’s both plenty of news and none of it is good for them. Not the traditional industrialists anyway. For those with an eye for adaptation, it’s all good news.

News like this:

While politicians and/or industrialists say that a choice must be made between a healthy job economy and a healthy environment, Americans disagree. In fact, 49.4% of respondents slightly or strongly disagree that low prices and more jobs today are more important than protecting the environment for the future (vs. 15.9% who slightly agree and 5.5% who strongly agree).
(Source: http://www.mrweb.com/drno/news5351.htm)

Where do I sit on all this lefty greenie filibustering?

On the fence of course.

There’s no point harping on about having a clean environment if you can’t put food on the table. There’s also no point harping on about having jobs that make you too sick to work or eat or.. well.. you know.

Wake up, kiddies, there’s no point harping on about anything at all. Look at the problem, come up with a solution and work towards it in whatever way you can. Look for people who think the same as you; they’re out there. Think of homeschooling as just one example.

Now, you can join a rally and bitch at the government with 500,000 other people about anything you want, but the only language politicians (and industrialists) understand is money. When the price of oil hit $40 per barrel, a world wide conspiracy hit the internet. They called it “Don’t fill up day.”

They told us to fill up a day or two before “Don’t fill up day” so we wouldn’t be left high and dry, but the economic impact of hundreds of millions of people not filling up their tanks would ring some pretty serious alarm bells. The pollies and oil execs played it down, but they were scared. How dare consumers actually act in concert as a protest against being screwed on a day-to-day basis. How rude!

Now, I made a brief mention two days ago of a Reuters report which basically said the ethanol industry is pumping out its alternative to fossil fuel as fast as it can and is struggling to keep up with demand.

This is what Reuters said on the 29th:

Concerns about supplies of ethanol, a corn-based additive which refiners will blend into gasoline instead of MTBE to reduce smog, have also helped support markets.

Producers are ramping up ethanol output to meet the growing demand, but the EIA said supplies could be tight during the U.S. summer season, when gasoline demand rises as vacationers take to the road.
(Source: Reuters (The link is 4 lines long, you don’t need the whole thing.)

One day earlier, they had this to say about ethanol production:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. ethanol fuel makers “will be able to adequately supply ethanol to the markets that need it,” an industry trade group said on Tuesday, trumpeting another monthly record in output.

(Source: Reuters 1 day earlier)

I’m a bit unhappy about the figures quoted by Reuters. Someone’s not paying attention. The RFA, according to Reuters, is talking about producing 4.5 billion gallons of ethanol from the 97 operational production facilities. Gallons, not barrels. (A barrel contains 42 gallons.)

As I mentioned last week, motorists slurp through that much oil every fortnight. When the ethanol industry can start producing in terms of billions of barrels, the greenies can celebrate while the rest of us sit back and wonder what we’re supposed to do with trillions of surplus jumbo packets of Corn Flakes.

Ok, I’m getting a tad carried away here. Ethanol is just one of the alternatives to fossil fuel. Hydrogen is still in its infancy but it will, I believe, supercede ethanol because nobody wants every square inch of spare land turned into cornfields - no matter how excited the Amish get.

Another day, another hmm.0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 29th, 2006

First up, Orien Greene arrested and charged, driving 90 mph in a suburban Boston street.

After the headlines of the last two days, I just have not the words. None I care to repeat here anyway.

Stunts like that and cupidity? Bin ‘em.

Reading over the most recent entry to this blog, it seems I may have given the impression of a major left wing bent with an almost surreal tinge of green about it. It ain’t so. I’m a token gesture greenie. I reuse plastic bags by taking the ones I already have when I go shopping, I turn lights off when I don’t need them immediately and I’ll walk, rather than drive to the shops.

I don’t get worked up over pandas or glaciers or obscure beetles that live under rocks in far flung corners of Patagonia. I don’t get excited when some species makes a comeback and I don’t coo and gaa over pictures of small furry creatures. To me, if it’s smaller than a sequoia, it’s a weed and if it’s smaller than a leopard, it’s an insect. Fish don’t exist.

I get moved by mankind. I love it when someone achieves something or creates something. Right now, I wish we had ethanol cars yesterday. I mean lots of them. I really want ethanol cars on the road and nobody is paying me diddly squat to say so. I so badly want ethanol cars on the road, you have no idea. I want them so badly because every time I go hunting for information on new technology to do with the automotive industry, I get stuck in the eye with that P word.

Ethanol supremacy means P extinction and that’ll be a date to celebrate. P is a gas/electricity hybrid. Not an ethanol or ethanol/gas hybrid.

I have nothing against Toyota per se, let’s be clear on this. The MR2 is a nifty little beast and Landcruisers, especially those dirty big khaki things they drive around in African Safari films, they’re brilliant. I really like them because they run on diesel and if you think I’m enthusiastic about ethanol and hydrogen, I’m ecstatic about diesel developments. Those 5 cars that outdid the Prius in Germany last week were all diesel/electric hybrids.

Fancy having the temerity to test cars on the open road instead of the tv studio type thing! How was the poor Prius supposed to compete with *ahem* reality.

Anyway, following on from Sunday’s bit about the driving age, I’ve emailed half of Massachusetts with my opinion on that one, from the Governor’s office to the Boston Globe and anyone else I could find. The replies and subsequent discussions which went to and fro centered around two issues - driver education and experience versus the maturity of young hopefuls hoping to pilot their very own missiles.

Knowing the disinclination of parents to spend one minute more with their kids than the law requires is the deciding factor for me. I’ve had kids asking me to drive with them so they could get their hours up because their parents wouldn’t. Bear in mind, these are kids I’ve known most of their lives, so it’s not like I’m a stranger to them. Do I let them drive my car? Absolutely.

It staggers me the parents are more worried about what their kids might do to my car than anything else. They trust me more than they trust their own kids. What the hell is up with that?

So for all those with whom I’ve discussed this issue who’ve made clickage upon links I’ve left and now find yourselves here, when you can tell me parents are bursting at the seems to sit quietly in the passengers’ seats of their own cars while their kids gain that all important life saving experience, then I’ll back you up if you want to lower the age to 15. I agree 100% the main issue is driver education and experience for our kids. I couldn’t agree more. But the reality is too many of them can’t get it and unless that experience can be guaranteed, I won’t be happy knowing 16 year olds are unleashed and killing themselves. Somehow, I think parents can’t accept the fact their little darlings are that old already. Nearly 18 is almost an adult, 16 is not even half way through puberty.

It didn’t kill me waiting until I was 21 to get my license and that was by choice, not by law. I won’t say I was more mature than any of the younger drivers who got theirs the first day they were able, one look around my other blogs will confirm that. But I’d been in accidents when my friends were driving and I was well cured of the need to speed or act like Batman by the time I decided I did need my license.

The difference between a safe trip home and a fatal accident is less than half a second.

They did it1
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 28th, 2006

Well, GM has turned its engineering department on its head and on the street.

The Detroit Free Press tells a very sad tale. Associated Press provides the whole story, but as soon as GM denied it would happen, we all knew it was a foregone conclusion.

With management practices like that, is it any wonder the company lost 10.6 billion in the last 12 months?

Oh the stories I’ve told over 5 years of blogging…

Reuters says it’s crunch time for the ethanol industry with farmers, it seems, unable to meet the increasing demand for crops necessary to supply the industry. (Just thought I’d drop that in, since everyone’s concerned about the rising price of gasoline.)

Anyway, I’m well overdue with the continuing saga of alternative fuels, bubbling away amid all these side issues and just to show you against what I have to struggle to bring you the best info available, whilst poking around Associated Press for the GM update, I had a look for hydrogen fuel news. What’s the latest, according to Associated Press…

Climate analysts do believe that water vapor in the atmosphere — mostly due to natural evaporation from bodies of water — is already contributing significantly to climate change. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, atmospheric water vapor exacerbates warming caused by the emission of fossil fuels by as much as 50 percent.

However, the additional water vapor that might be created by millions of fuel-cell vehicles running on hydrogen — while it may sound like a lot — would constitute only a drop in the bucket compared to that which naturally occurs.

How tempted they were to say “a drop in the ocean” instead of a drop in the bucket is anyone’s guess. I wouldn’t have gone near that similie in the first place.

In news only 5 hours old at the time of my writing this, fresh out of Minsk if you don’t mind, “Iceland plans to become the world’s first all-hydrogen economy by 2030.” I have to cast a wry smile here. Minsk is in the news for more dire reasons than posting news about Iceland’s economy. It’s the capital of Belarus, into which Dubya has stormed because of rigged elections which I blogged elsewhere about 10 days ago and again last night.

Here’s the whole snippet:

Issues around energy infrastructure are raised in the technology card set and the question is asked: When will petroleum disappear from our energy maps? In 2004 fuel cells began to replace batteries in some portable electronic devices. It is predicted that hydrogen will start being used as a back up power source in remote locations, and in industrial and large commercial buildings over the next two to three years. By 2008, hydrogen could power specialised fleets of vehicles such as buses. By 2015, hydrogen-fuelled cars might be available to the mass market. Source: http://home.nestor.minsk.by/build/news/2006/03/2803.html

It seems like an eternity ago I brought you the news “a hydrogen-powered version of BMW’s current 7 Series will be on showroom floors within two years.” The source for this quote is South African, but what the hey. BMW are denying it so that means it’s going to happen, predictably when suppliers of hydrogen fuel get their acts together. Source: http://motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3169727&fSectionId=&fSetId=381

I also mentioned the other day Mazda have released the street version of the hydrogen fueled RX8. What I didn’t tell you is they’ve been messing around with hydrogen fuelled cars since 1991.

Why am I as enthusiastic about hydrogen fuelled cars as I am about the future of ethanol fuelled vehicles?

In a word: emissions.

Gasoline usage is making the planet sick. When China gets off its collective bicycle and behind the wheel of its collective Party version of the Lada Niva or whatever, can anyone envisage the pollution the world’s most populous nation is going to create? Sheesh. Maybe Duncan Armstrong can persuade them it’s not such a hot idea.

Did I mention emissions? Yeah? How about glaciers? Just to give you an idea how much the geological, meteorological and all those others with a slightly green bent are fretting over global warming, go to google and search glaciers. There are just too many sources to name, the good ones less than a week old, cowing on about disappearing glaciers due to warmer air and sea temperatures.

Glacier National Park in Montana had 150 glaciers 150 years ago, now they’re down to 26. A change of name is in the offing there, methinks. The Park formerly known as Glacier Park will now give you its very own rendition of Purple Rain.

Hmmm…

Ok, so what’s the real story on hydrogen today? Not all that easy to determine because so many people are having their say on the matter and about a dozen sources are all quoting the one example, that of Schwarzenegger failing to refuel next to LAX after hopping about the hydrogen highway in August of last year. Even Iran Daily is reporting that story verbatim from its orginal source.

This little number appeared in Littlespeck.com way back in 2004, which was when I first started getting interested in hydrogen fuel, having put aside water as a substitute for gasoline a lot of years earlier.

“By the middle of this century, all Icelanders will be required to run their cars only on hydrogen fuel, meaning no more gasoline.

Do you think I can find anything to back this up?

But once again, it’s 4am and maybe the road ahead is getting out of focus. I’ll be back tomorrow hopefully with more news on hydrogen fuel. Something more definitive. I can’t wait ’til I start delving into water as fuel.

Oh yay.

Driving age news.2
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 26th, 2006

Ok, so I lied about calling it a day at the end of the last entry. Only because a final check of emails found the late edition of The Boston Globe leading with the story of raising the minimum age for the holding of a driver’s license to 17 1/2 years.

Where I’m from, it’s 18. And even then they’re on pretty stringent restrictions for the first 2 years. One passenger maximum, unless accompanied by a fully licensed driver, zero blood alcohol content for the first two years, demerit points for speeding are doubled, and there is a maximum power-to-weight ratio allowed which, if breeched, can lead to the confiscation of the vehicle.

This is a personal bug-bear with me. Having seen many kids grow up and show off their new wheels to me over the years, I remind them, as any responsible adult would, to be careful on the road. They assure me they’re good drivers - as any teenager thinks they are. That’s when I tell them most earnestly, they could be the best driver on the face of the planet, but it’s those 4 million idiots out there whose sole purpose in life is to wipe you out - they’re the one’s of whom you have to be careful.

Lately, I’ve started telling them that all road builders are the ultimate in slack lazy toerags. They lay a bit of bitumen and think the job’s done. You onlyhave to look at all the car-scarred trees at the sides of those roads to realize that the bit of bitumen to which you’re entrusting your pride and joy - not to mention your life - is scarcely fit for a goat track.

Teenagers think they’re indestructible, if only they thought of themselves as indispensible, politicians might not have to be falling all over themselves imposing driving limitations. One method of tackling the problem which has been adopted in my burg is the concept of driver education before a kid even gets a licence.

Previously, all you had to do was know the road rules and prove you could control a car. Now you have to know what to do in an emergency situation, whether that’s when some duffer pulls out in front of you without looking or how to assist injured persons if you are involved in a stack.

Previously, you could apply for your learner’s permit at 17 years, 9 months and you only had to have your Ls for a minimum of 3 months and have had a minimum number of driving lessons in that time. Now you can get your learner’s permit at 17 but you can’t drive without a fully licensed driver in the vehicle and you have to have had your Ls for 12 months before you can go for your probationery license.

Harsh?

Humbug. Take them for a walk through any hospital trauma ward and see how many times you hear the words “I didn’t think it could happen to me.” Then come back and tell me what’s harsh and what’s just a bit inconvenient.

This is the sort of driver education campaign we’ve had in my neck of the woods for more than a decade:

TAC Media releases

These ads are quite often made by high school drama classes. Trust me, they work.

Another week at the wheel…0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 26th, 2006

Very very - no, make that HUGELY pleased to see Prius outperformed in the fuel economy stakes by no less than 5 vehicles after testing in Europe on - of all things - actual roads instead of dynamometers. Let’s just be absolutely clear on this; Prius didn’t outperform the others by a margin of 5 cars, that’s absurd. Prius was only 6th in the rankings of green cars of all those tested.

Saab reckon they’re going to have the greenest hybrid vehicle in the history of everything by 2010 but nobody doubts Toyota will come up with something better by then. I personally don’t care - as long as it’s not the next generation Prius. Anyway, the new Saab hybrid will be on display at the Stockholm Motor Show next month. Being somewhat enamored of the old Saabs, before Chrysler took them over and turned them into the EuroToyota generic design tinfoil roller skate, I’ll let you know what I think of Scania’s new brainchild.

Old news, but it strikes me as amusing that a particular corporate website, replete with messageboard appears not to have had any activity since 9/2005 and they haven’t updated the site - it looks like - since 2003. Most amusing to me is the appearance of 3 job advertisements. I feel like applying for one, just for the hell of it. Then again, the old saying applies; if it looks and smells like an old prawn cocktail, don’t ask it onto the dancefloor.

I also love it when someone poses a stupid question in a message board. “Which is your favorite gas station?”
I’m waiting for someone to say “The one that rips me blind and sells rancid milk.” Personally, I like my gas with artificial sweetener because sugar tends to mess with the engine’s guts something fierce.
Anyway, amongst the highly predictable, Sunoco, Marathon and Getty get the nod.

Courtesy of GM, a new term for mass firings is “Rightsizing”. No longer are we downsizing, issuing redundancies or rationalizing, we’re rightsizing. I wonder, is the opposite of rightsizing “Capsizing”? That’s what it is in maritime language - as any good yachtie would know.

So, GM’s engineering branch in Detroit is expecting to be capsized on Tuesday. GM seems to be denying it. Let’s just see shall we.

Ok, can’t ignore it because it’s all over the blatts like bees on honey… Ford is re-releasing the rent-a-racer.
It’ll be on show at the New York International Motor Show, April 12-13 click here for details

Lastly, because it’s getting on for 3 in the morning and it’s highly likely I’ll start swearing if I get any more bluff and bluster from the internet based automotive interest websites, the absolute latest news from autospies.com is, at the time of my writing this, already a day old.

For example, they haven’t caught up yet with Mazda’s release of “the first street legal gasoline-hydrogen hybrid vehicle, the new RX-8″. Should I tell them or just leave that as an example of Auto Boston one-upmanship? Here’s your linkage.

Heh.. you sleep, I’ll find stuff out so it’s ready for you when you wake up.

Next up, H2 Fuel.0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 25th, 2006

I said on Thursday that the ethanol industry, if it’s going to have a viable long term future, had better move very fast. Indeed, fast enough to get the oil industry spreading nasty rumors through the press because the next wave of fuels is already upon us - hydrogen.

Since I enjoy making predictions, and I enjoy watching them unfold in more or less the way I predict, I’m going to predict there will be two camps embracing the future of alternative fuels: The ethanolers (whom will probably be affectionately known as the auto-alcoholics) and the hydrogen fuel users.

Ethanol has a head start and hydrogen presents certain logistical and manufacturing problems which may see several accidents of the LPG ilk before government regulators step in to impose all sorts of weird conditions on suppliers of hydrogen fuel and thereby drive the price up. Those factors will weigh fairly heavily in favor of the ethanol industry.

I also mentioned last week that BMW (Germany) are going to go into production of high end hydrogen fueled vehicles. The information I’m gathering is rather fruity and deserves a whole day’s entry. And local auto news has been scarce on the ground this week - except I heard a nasty story about a local Jiffy Lube outlet and I’m keen to hear the outcome of the disagreement.

The Consumer Affairs website has this to say about them:

“Jiffy Lube is the McDonald’s of the automotive service business. It has standardized, cleaned up and branded the hum-drum routine oil change, making it something that’s now accomplished in a few minutes in relatively pleasant surroundings.

Unfortunately, things don’t always turn out as well as one hopes, as the many sad tales in this section demonstrate. “ Click here for full details.

I wonder, did the photographer whose services I am still hoping to procure get offered fries with his service?

Oh P.S. Click the link! There’s a Google Adsense ad for Jiffy Lube under this damning little article. How perfectly ironic!

And when they were up…0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 23rd, 2006

The NY Times reports this morning of more headaches for General Motors.

When I was scouring the planet for alternative fuel vehicle news yesterday or the day before, I read of China’s interest in green transport, peaking right now because of the Olympics in Beijing in 2008, and GM selling alt fuel cars in China for 13 times what they could sell them in the U.S.

I may not find that again, it would be understandable if whomever published that story suddenly found themselves in a dole queue if not at the bottom of a river in surprisingly heavy shoes.

The Peoples’ Daily website is still carrying this story from Feb 28 though…

“As the world’s largest automaker and one of the largest foreign investors in China, GM has set up four vehicle-manufacturing joint ventures in the country, along with one design joint venture and two solely-funded enterprises. It employs nearly 9000 people.”
Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200302/28/eng20030228_112481.shtml

The prot thickens.

*Edit 3/29 - checking this link again, I see this info from the People’s Daily is from 2003. So I checked there again today to see just what the latest news might contain. The answer is a nicery thickened prot indeed…

The top 5 car manufacturers in China TODAY are: (Shanghai) GM, Shanghai VW and (Beijing) Drive Your Way, the other two are Chinese manufacturers Chery and Geely who rank 3rd and 5th respectively. Making GM still the biggest manufacturer of cars in China today. Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200603/21/eng20060321_252352.html

More than that:

“A long list of renowned multinational companies, including Microsoft, IBM, Motorola, Siemens, Nortel, GE, GM, Volkswagen and Honda have established research and development centers in China, the Ministry of Commerce said. “ Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200602/13/eng20060213_242207.html

Just what’s going on out there?

In the pipeline0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 23rd, 2006

Those in the know, it seems, are more enthusiastic about ethanol than those with the power.

By that I mean users of ethanol - either E10 or E85 - are not only happier with the choice on their own behalf, they like the idea of helping the farmers and kissing off reliance on imported crude oil.

Not meaning to get carried away by all the hype and bluster of this marvellous fuel, but the ethanol industry itself says it’s providing 4 billion gallons of ethanol per year already and if that supply were suddenly to cease, the flow-on effects would trigger a 3% rise in the price of gas at the pump.
Source: http://www.ethanol.org/talkingpoints.html

Three percent.

Cars, SUVs and other light trucks consume 8.7 million barrels of oil every day.
Source: http://www.nrdc.org/breakthechain/chained.asp

Multiply that by 42 and that’s 365.4 million gallons of oil per day. The United States uses as much in oil in two weeks as the ethanol industry provides in one year.

Is it any wonder then, manufacturers aren’t falling all over themselves to throw ethanol fueled car production into top gear. And is it any wonder with that sort of demand, the ethanol producers could get away with charging whatever they liked if the manufacturers were in fact to do just that. The economic benefit to the average motorist would vanish in a puff of environmentally friendly smoke.

I’ll keep an eye on the discussions and the developments. But with BMW going into production of Hydrogen fueled vehicles as I mentioned last Saturday, if there is going to be any long term gain for anyone thinking ethanol, it had better happen a lot quicker than it is today.

Remember DAT? What a flop that was. Before the marketplace adopted it, cds came along and blew them out of the water before they’d barely got their toes wet.

6 of one?0
Paul Ritchie posted in Gas on March 23rd, 2006

I’ve lifted this little item from a discussion board and tidied the grammar for ease of reading.

For every 15 gallons of gasoline you buy of Super at the additional cost of 20 cents per gallon, you will be paying a $3.00 premium over the cost of 15 gallons of Regular. So if you can buy a bottle of octane booster with fuel injector cleaner for under $3.00 which treats 15 gallons of Regular gasoline, and put one of those in with every fill, you will be treating your car the same as filling it with Super.

But which alternative is better for the engine? That’s what enquiring minds wish to know. Is Super really that much better for the car than Regular, and is the booster merely the equivalent of the difference?

The gas station owner would make more money as well.

15 gallons of Super would net the owner possibly $2.10.

15 gallons of Regular with a $3 bottle of Treatment would net the owner about $2.70 ($1.50 profit on gas and $1.20 profit on treatment)

I’ve invited the author of this bit of info to contact me by email.

Who’s making what?0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 21st, 2006

As much as I hated the idea of going to this particular website, being generally ill-disposed toward hyperbole and that untelligible language of the people who write ‘reports’, I’ve ventured into the EIA DOE website - and even made it out relatively unscathed. Woo!

The very first head scratch I got from being in there was this:

“The ability to produce ethanol from low-cost biomass will be key to making it competitive as a gasoline additive.” (Source: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biomass.html)

*Sigh*

The L.A. Times had a slightly more hopeful leader today, with a lovely ironic twist which emphasises beautifully what I said Saturday, though I may have to write rude emails to them about all the wretched pop-up advertising on that site.

“Refiners are rushing to switch to ethanol because of what they see as a growing risk of lawsuits over the use of MTBE” (Source:http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-gas21mar21,1,3904465.story?coll=la-headlines-business)

Comes down to that all important bottom line again.

MTBE, for those who are unaware, is a fuel additive whose full name is methyl tertiary butyl ether but it pollutes groundwater and makes Erin Brokovich froth at the mouth.

If all this sounds lefty-pinko-commie-ever-so-slightly-tree-hugging-anti-establishment, think again. It’s called forward thinking. As soon as an ethanol manufacturer and a vehicle manufacturer start putting their heads together, the business opportunities have the potential to make Halliburton collectively shit itself.

And whose going to go to war over a lousy cornfield in the middle of a desert? Now, about those bottom lines…

Here’s what the Renewable Fuels Association homepage has to say on the subject…

Ethanol is sold nationwide as a high-octane fuel that delivers improved vehicle performance while reducing emissions and improving air quality. By reducing fuel imports, ethanol reduces our nation’s trade imbalance, improves our energy security, creates American jobs and provides value-added markets for American agriculture. Source: http://www.ethanolrfa.org/

But I’m not sleeping on the job here at autoboston.com, as I mentioned a few days ago, there were 1.2 million alternative fuel vehicles on the road in the United States as far back as 2002. They’ve gotta fill up somewhere. When GreenGas Kwik-e-Marts start popping up in strategic locations all over the country, I’m fully expecting crews like Modernista to start promoting cars that go 10 miles on can of soda.

The Summer Hummer - comes with free beach umbrella and a Colman cooler in case of emergency.

Just how big is this thing anyway?0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 20th, 2006

I’ve been scanning blog after blog on alternative fuels for the last day and a half - because I have that much time - and only two things surprise me.

Firstly, it doesn’t look yet like anyone has slotted alt.fuels amongst the literally millions of alt.binaries (etc.) newsgroups that exist;

Secondly, with all those who are supposed to be showing an interest in doing something about the price of fuel, including posting info such as this: “There are currently about 1.2 million of these vehicles on the road. Because manufacturers had to overcome technological challenges, nearly the entire increase in the number of these vehicles has been in the past three years. “ (1999 -2002) , why aren’t we seeing any publicity about this environment-saving industry? It should be bigger than Texas.Source: http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/rulings/CAFE/alternativefuels/summary.htm

The blogs tend to be saying the same thing over and over, which is that research is stagnating because of lack of funding and funding isn’t forthcoming because those who provide it are themselves heavily funded by the oil industry. The upshot of that is, there’s nothing new to report on the development of alternative-fuel vehicles. The most recent item in autoblog.com on the subject was a minibiography of Rudolph Diesel and his prediction that vegetable fuels will someday become as important as petroleum.

The biggest problem with developing the technology is obviously financial. R&D is hugely expensive and if the market doesn’t like it, the execs aren’t going to be able to give their kids the G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu grip for Christmas because of the massive losses the manufacturer stands to incur in production of a car nobody wants to buy.

Why don’t they want to buy them?

Two reasons. They don’t understand the technology and well.. where the hell do you fill these babies up?

Remember the early days of LPG? You’re running out gas and you can’t just go to the station down the road because they don’t have gas there. Enter dual fuel vehicles. Flick of the switch and you have 200 miles to go before you really have to stop and fill up.

The early problems associated with having an LPG flavoured vehicle were fairly quickly absorbed into the motorist’s collective consciousness - a gallon of LPG doesn’t go as far as a gallon of gasoline, you have to check the water more often because the converter freezes if you run low, and filling the things was a hassle because you had to go back to school to figure out this ‘bleed while filling’ caper. With the exception of the water issue, the mileage now is almost on a par with gasoline and filling the tank is dead easy.

Rather pricey now though, isn’t it.

Ethanol hasn’t had such an easy ride of it as LPG.

Firstly, who makes it in useful quantities except those who supply Formula 1 cars?
Secondly, the early problems of engine and fuel system damage caused by knocking generated such negative press, retailers in some parts are required to list the nutritional information label on their ethanol/gasoline mix products so consumers who don’t want ethanol aren’t forced or tricked into using it.

Ergo, right now, hardly anyone wants anything to do with ethanol and when they finally get around to tinkering at the edges of mixing a little bit of it with ordinary petroleum, the usual suspects get on their high horses about the implications for the motorists of this largely mysterious concept of fuel mixers.

Tomorrow, rather than just an outlook of the marketplace from this side of the fence, Autoboston will have a look at this from the point of view of the producers of ethanol fuels and if I have time, the industry that uses the fuel.

Weekly round-up.0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 19th, 2006

Imagine my surprise reading a nice little story from Thursday about the wayward moose. There was one moose on one highway and one woman managed to get it into the passenger’s seat of her car - via her erstwhile windscreen. Of all the luck, huh.

The humor of the story is removed by Associated Press here. Poor moose.

Ad agency Modernista appears to have picked up creative project work for half of Cadillac’s range of vehicles. (Modernista are responsible for those Hummer ads.) They’re taking the work from some crowd in Michigan. (Let me know if any good vids pop up in google - I’ll show you a beer ad that’ll leave you gasping.)

The Boston Globe had a big report on Wednesday about the kicking of the oil habit. It’s here if you want to read it, but I’ll be bringing you better news from all over the planet about non-oil powered cars anyway, so I’ll understand if you can’t be bothered making clickage upon the link.

Ok, so slow week this week. Come back tomorrow for the continuation of the alternative fuels news and hybrid vehicles.

I’m also getting curious about tinkering with the Galleries - I’m negotiating with a rather talented photographer, the Finance, the Reviews and Gas sections. The next show isn’t for ages and the last one was in Germany or somewhere. It’s the Finnish show I’m waiting for.

It’s 4.38am right now, time to crash.

Something contentious to start the ball rolling.0
Paul Ritchie posted in News on March 18th, 2006

A couple of years ago, I had an argument in an internet forum about how our future would look when the price of oil made it uneconomical to sit on the freeway for 2 hours as we make our daily treks to and from work.

Not surprisingly, the conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork saying the oil shortage was a media beat-up and the government is keeping the lid on the fact the world is so awash with oil, they could sell it for $3 a barrel and still make a killing.

I was moved to ask where all this oil might actually be.

For my pains, I was called gullible and naive for not accepting the government is just lying about the oil.

Click here for more good news for those who believe the oil will last forever.

That was $38 per barrel ago.

Whether there is oil or whether there isn’t becomes something of a moot point however, when one considers the emergence of China into the motorized transport era. Chinese demand for oil is going to dwarf everything we’ve ever seen before. Suppliers are in no way going to be able to satisfy Chinese demands for oil.

The parity price is going to going to skyrocket. I’m predicting $120 per barrel within 3 years and $10 per gallon at the bowser.

A little more than a couple of years ago, about 15 years ago to be precise, I heard a lovely little paranoia-based conspiracy theory about an engineer from New Zealand who’d invented an internal combustion engine which ran on water. Fill up at the garden tap kind of thing.

Having seen my highschool science teacher do that water distillation trick where the water disappears and you get one flask full of hydrogen and the other half full of oxygen - and knowing there can be no combustion without oxygen and that hydrogen is explosive (the Pop Test), such an invention didn’t seem all that far fetched to me.

But the story was this engineer met with foul play whilst on some far flung back highway and the blueprints were never seen again. The chap who told me plaintively asked: How would the world’s economies fare if we weren’t all hopelessly dependent on oil? All those taxes they wouldn’t collect, all those jobs lost etc etc etc. Not to mention the moguls of the oil industries themselves would be bankrupted overnight.

Nope, that engineer had to be silenced.

The man who told me was a lecturer in engineering at the University of Otago - Dunedin, N.Z.

Four years later, I heard the story repeated almost verbatim from a stockbroker in Melbourne - creepy or what?

I haven’t heard that story since 1995 now, but supplanting it have been stories regarding the rapid depletion of LPG and the subsequent quadrupling of the price of that alternative fuel source in 10 years, the drive to make ethanol fuel alternatives viable in the market place, electric cars - it was in the early 80’s I saw the first prototype of this beasty and it spectacularly failed to impress even me. There has been a fair bit of noise about hydrogen fuelled cars, probably because it’s part of the scenery if you ever happen to be travelling in Finland - and now, once again, the water fuelled automobile is beginning to bob up as a real alternative.

First things first though, before there was petroleum, there was ethanol.

A quick scan of through the archives of the Southern Illinois University, page 6 of The History of Ethanol Production shows Henry Ford used an ethanol burning engine before designing the Model T.

“Ethanol’s use as a transportation fuel can be traced as far back as Henry Ford and other transportation pioneers. In the 1880s, Henry Ford built his first
ethanol-fueled automobile called the Quadricycle. Ford’s Model T, produced in 1908,had a carburetor adjustment thatwould allow the vehicle to run on ethanol fuel produced by farmers.”

Produced mostly from the waste material from sugar refineries and even more recently from recycling corn stalks, ethanol is obviously a renewable fuel source. The battles rage over whether ethanol added to petroleum damages engines and fuel systems - knocking appears to be the biggest concern - and the unknown affect 10% of ethanol in a tank of fuel will have on (I have to scoff here) the environment.

More on ethanol in subsequent updates. Feel free to leave your own comments.

To hydrogen as an alternative, and since the Finns are loving their glorious clean cars and nobody’s exploded in a ball of flame from going over a speed bump too fast and making sparks as the chassis hits the hard stuff, and since they have hydrogen at the bowser, making it accessible to Joe Publikkenen, hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels has attracted the attention of the world’s largest premium car manufacturer, BMW.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday last, that BMW “will present such a vehicle to the public in less than two years,” a spokesman said, confirming media reports. BMW had said last year its hydrogen-fuelled cars, which emit only water vapour, would make their debut in 2010.” (Link)

2010… I could be dead by then. My kids will already have purchased their V8 rockets with 12 slotters and be leaving rubber on every clean bit of road they can find. (That is, if they can afford to run them.)

I think I have a bit of time up my sleeve before I have to start frantically digging up the juice on those little numbers.

Which brings me to what we have today. Thunderously boring by comparison, Toyota is making the biggest waves with the littlest cars. Hybrids.

More annoying than iPods and Avril Lavigne ringtones is - the Prius.

Everywhere you go, the one car they all eventually talk about is this gas-electricity hybrid.

CNN had this to say about it on Friday…

“By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNNMoney.com staff writer
March 17, 2006: 2:44 PM EST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - In a list of the 10 hottest cars now on the market, six of the 10 are products of the Toyota Motor Co. The Prius tops the list and all three of Toyota’s low-priced Scion models are on the list, as well.

The Prius scores big in all those areas. While all other cars on the list sell for at least some small amount under their actual sticker price, once incentives are factored in, the Prius still sells for 10 percent over sticker price.”

Source: http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/16/Autos/hot_cars/

My prediction? Everyone who buys one will regret it within 3 years.

One thing is for absolute certain: the industry is going to change. The focus will be on alternative fuel sources and whether that’s driven by those smoky figures in hats in doorways watching your every move, or whether - as I suspect will be the case - it’s driven purely by market forces fed to the back teeth with the spiralling costs of fossil fueled vehicles, the times they are a-changing.

The foreseeable future suggests the big winner will be ethanol.

“Some organisations and countries are using ethanol, however (they) are just tinkering around the edges by adding 15% ethanol to diesel (known as dieselhol), or adding ethanol to petrol, proving an insignificant reduction in CO2s.

Only Stockholm, Sweden and a small trial in Mexico City have embarked on a similar project.”

Source: http://www.venturabus.com.au/ethanol.html