Read other letters about this article

• Saturday, August 23, 2008 05:47 AM

  Ethanol is a loser

  I love all this flex fuel rhetoric. Ethanol is a fair fuel additive but a lousy fuel and you have to burn a lot more of it compared with an equivalent amount of gasoline. There's no way we can make enough of it anyway, and to overhaul our infrastructure to use it would be incredibly costly and a waste of money. Carmakers (especially GM) love calling ethanol green because it costs very little to make a car E85 compatible. It's huge step sideways though in terms of both environmental conservation and reducing oil dependency. It never hurts to make the car able to run on ETOH, but it is not an answer to anything. If you live in the midwest, OK, fine. But the rest of the country? No way.

  What we need now is better public transportation infrastructure, and hybrids are a great answer until we get electric vehicles sorted out. Biodiesel, especially the stuff derived from wast oil products is also a real solution now that we have clean diesel technology. Older diesels do really nasty stuff to the air in terms of particulates especially.

  There are a lot of people posting on this subject who don't have a clue what they're talking about, especially the author of the original piece. The oil companies and Japanese auto makers are stopping ethanol from reaching the coasts? That's hilarious. Brazil uses ethanol because they have so much sugar cane available, and it makes sense there. There are many other factors down there as well. We will be still very dependent on petroleum for many years; we need to do three things: conserve, conserve, conserve. Every city in this country need good light rail and it would create a lot of jobs as well.

  —Wolverine Read Wolverine's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel