I can make ethanol from waste wood from the landfill without using any electricity. Try beating that claim!

I think what you meant to say is: “Rather than address any of the very legitimate concerns and complaints brought against ethanol and electric powered vehicles, I’ll just ignore them and post more useless information about “future cars” that are years away from being manufactured, and still subject to all of the aforementioned constraints. I live in Maine, I don’t need to travel more than 50 miles a day in my vehicle, I want my air clean and clear, and I’m thoroughly convinced that Co2 emissions are going to ruin my beautiful winters via global warming. If you disagree with me, you are a backwards oil-monger who probably takes bribes from Haliburton, and you’re clearly too simple to understand the complex information I’ve provided from unbiased, science-based sources like “The Ethanol Vehicle Coalition”. ”

Give me a break. Post back when there is an actual, physical, working, non-hypothetical, non-prototype vehicle that runs on something other than gasoline, gets at least 400 miles per “charge”, has similar horespower as a gasoline powered vehicle, and runs from a fuel source that is not derived from fossil fuels (keep in mind, that means electricity doesn’t count unless it’s generated by solar, wind, or nuclear power plants). I’ll give you one hint: it won’t be run on ethanol.

Harvest that and leave the corn for feeding the masses.

Despite years of cropdusting CUBA with all kinds of horrible stuff; the U.S. didn’t make a dent in their agricultural production…although you do have apoint on bio-terrorism…I prefer water supplies and pizza crusts as targets of opportunity.

A real conservative leaves the land in better shape than it was when he or she got it…this is a principal AMISH farmers have prospered under for many generations.

No! I do not want my fuel coming to me with such an albatross around my neck and around the neck of my country.

My bio-refineries use only a fraction of the power that it takes to, say extract oil from shale or ship LNG half way around the world or make that high octane full of additives fuel for your guzzler.

You might want to educate yourself before making a total idiot of yourself in front of a more knowledgable audience:
try–http://www.forestprod.org/smallwood04walt.pdf or
http://www.biomassgasifier.com/brief.htm

The first cars made were electric….Thomas Davenport’s 1834 car, Thomas Edison’s 1899 car, and the winner of the first auto race…the Electrobat in 1895.

G.M. introduced their Zero Emission roadster in 1996 to meet the new California emission’s standards.The car’s range using then present battery technology was between 60- 120 miles, easily within range of nearly every Californian commuter. The cost cost 3 cents per gallon to operate, based on a range of 100 miles and a charge of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour. Off-peak, solar or wind charging would drop recharging costs even more. Maintenance, based on end-user reports was nearly non-existant; requiring no gas, no oil changes, no mufflers, and a rare brake maintenance; typical maintenance was replenishing the windshield washer fluid and tire rotation.

The Tesla Roadster is 100% electric, does 0-60 in about 4 secs; goes 250 miles per charge–usually done overnight as a garage plug in, and costs the equivilent of 1 cent per mile.

The Cree AG(Swiss) SAM is an advanced design 3 wheeler, all electric, with a top speed of 85 KM/h and 0-50 km/h acceleration of 7 sec. with 2 passengers.

the WrightSpeed X1 prototyped is a futuristist sports car that does 0-100 mph in 6.87 sec. 1 gear takes you to 112 mph.seehttp://www.wrightspeed.com/images/X1-front-34-high.jpg

Tomberlin.net makes powerful electric ATV’s

The Dymac Vehicle group makes small trucks and utility vehicles for ‘campuses’…airports, universities, retirement communities, etc.

Renting “WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR” would give you a bit more of an understanding of the amazing performance of this sports car that many have named the perfect car for S. California commuting. It did outperform Porsches.

The ‘HUMMER” of electric vehicles is the hill climbing GORILLA…http://www.gorillavehicles.com/mountainiman3_small.jpg.

Back to the thread….ethanol is not a substitute fuel but an oxygenate, used to cleanse emissions. Maine is stuck on MBTE a toxic substance.

Burning straight ethanol does require fuel lines and gaskets which are impervious to alcohols and because E-85 is a blend, a sep. pump blending dispenser is needed at the fuel station.

It is possible to make ethanol and many other products out of cellulose…go google ‘fractionation’ and see just what a bio-chemist can do with wood!

If you want to educate yourself on this hot field, try an industry site like http://www.bio.org/ind/biofuel/

When I pass your hog, I’ll beep my horn!

Do try to retrieve some non-theoretical information (i.e., avoid articles with words like “near-future”, “within 3-5 years”, “in a short time”, “soon”, etc) from an organization that isn’t in the business of endorsing and promoting the very technology that they are touting. And even at 100 miles per charge, at some indefinite time in the “near future”, that doesn’t do much good for people in cities like L.A. or even Las Vegas where I live, where people commute that far and much farther in a single day. My 5 litre V8 in my Mercury Mountaineer SUV sports better numbers than that – to the tune of 4 times as many miles per “charge” – and it sucks gas faster than you can say “cow flatulence”. And then we get back to the issue of where the electricity to power these future-cars comes from. Or do they charge on energy produced by a wine turbine in my backyard that barely produces enough electricity per year to power a flashlight? Or the solar panels on my roof that can’t even get my pool temperature up to 75 degrees in the middle of summer in the Las Vegas desert? Fuel cells would be fun. But those are just mobile nuclear explosions waiting to happen, so we can’t build those for the same reasons we can’t build nuclear power plants. The environmentalists said so. So where does that leave us? Oh, that’s right, energy-independent, and free from global warming. I nearly forgot.

And all of this will be done in power-intensive manufacturing plants run on what? Electricity, right? Electricity produced from what? Fossil fuels, right? So great, we’ll build a billion new plants to perform the incredibly complex task of converting wood and corn into bio-gas and ethanol, and run them off of coal-fired electricity. We’ll consolidate the emissions of millions of cars into a few hundred factories – that’ll fix it! What’s our solution then? Build some nuclear power plants? THE HELL YOU SAY!!! We haven’t done so in half a century almost, and with Democrats and go-along Republicans holding the House and Senate, we won’t be doing so for many long years. Maybe we can just cover the entire middle east in solar panels and harvest the energy that way. Saying that it doesn’t detract from the natural beauty or endanger and microscopic organisms, that is.

Get the point…your ‘golf car’ mindset is obsolete.