http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1

Make sure you read the part where people offered to buy the car at lease end and GM wouldnt allow it.

 

Maybe in Bizarro land, but here in the US, we give our farmers PLENTY of help via subsidies. Oh, not to mention the 80% jump in the price of corn over the past two years. Has your salary gone up that much since 2006?

I've beat this topic to death already. The way we are currently producing ethanol in this country is wasteful and basically hurting everyone but the farmers growing it. But if you're a fan of spending more and getting less, than fill 'er up w/ E85.

 

I would not run any percentage of ethanol in a bone stock car in the risk of leaning out the motor, especially one that is already running "near the edge" like the S2000.

While it may be considered "safe" in a Chevy, I wouldn't want to make regular, long time trips into VTEC land

The problem with ethanol is that you require a far greater quantity to produce the same amount of power. This requires a larger fuel pump and injectors (or carb).

Example: our sprint car (360cid) burns close to a gallon of methanol per mile. Of course it also makes about 650 horsepower.



Mike

 

If ethanol is a solution, rather than a subsidy for farmers (which may be a good thing or not), why is there a tariff on importing it? Shouldn't we be encouraging its importation from friendly countries to cut our dependence on oil from the Middle East?

Brazil made a commitment decades ago to convert to ethanol. (Actually, E85 because pure ethanol makes cold starts difficult.) I think they've become largely energy self-sufficient using sugar cane to produce ethanol.

 

Sugar cane is a much more efficient ethanol source than corn.

And conversion of rain forest to fuel (with a sugar plantation as an intermediate step) is not necessarily a good thing overall. But the issue is complicated, and thus is not going to be "settled" in this forum.

 

Brazil did'nt need that rain forest any way. Can you say slash and burn.

 

I agree, and I know lots of you are not near the water but it really does a job on boat engines. Many boaters are having all kinds of problems with the fuel now.

 

BAD!!

 

Great find. I'm watching a documentry on how the Cia was importing drugs back in the 70's right now. Basically our government are the biggest drug importers. It's on Showtime. It's called "American Drug" Wont do much since most independant films are called lies even though they can document things suh as the article you posted

 

I agree that corn is an inefficient source of sugar. That is largely my point.

And while clearing rain forest to make fuel isn't a good thing for the planet as a whole, neither was clearing huge swaths of hardwood forest in North America to make room for cornfields. Nor is the leveling of mountaintops in WV for the production of coal for electricity.

And while corn or sugar cane is a renewable resource, the topsoil it grows in really isn't, at least over periods of time we can conceive. The topsoil in the eastern US took thousands of years to build; in 200 years we've seen about 1/2 of it wash away. And when the topsoil is gone, so is agricultural productivity. And I gather that rain forest topsoil is much more fragile than our topsoil in most of the US.

I do agree that no complex issue is going to be resolved in an Internet forum.