Mandating Flex-Fuel Vehicles is a Good Plan
Posted: July 12, 2008
The idea of a mandate that all vehicles sold in the United States is gaining some traction, mainly due to the efforts of author and aerospace scientist Robert Zubrin and his book “Energy Victory.”
Zubrin contends that by mandating that all new vehicles sold in the U.S. be flex fuel we would effectively break the economic stranglehold the oil cartel has on the country and the world.
During last month’s Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Nashville, Zubrin made his point by using the analogy of a card game where there is a trump suit that defeats all others and the strategy is for your side to hold most the cards in that trump suit. “It’s the same way in energy,” Zubrin said. “There’s four suits, there’s oil, coal, natural gas and biomass. And right now oil is the trump suit.”
That’s because right now there is mainly one way to power vehicles and that is petroleum products. The key is to change that trump suit, he says, and biomass is the best alternative. The question is how to change the trump suit and Zubrin contends that the answer is to mandate the sale of flex fuel vehicles, which would cost at most $100 per vehicle. “If we had a standard that all new cars sold in this country had to be flex fuel, within three years we’d have 50 million cars on the road in the United States capable of running on alternate fuels,” and Zubrin says that would ultimately result in flex fuel vehicles being sold all over the world.
Others are picking up on Zubrin’s idea on their own, like columnist Clifford May of the National Review Online, and even talk show host Bill O’Reilly. Hopefully, the idea will eventually get to Washington.
Listen to Zubrin’s entire address to the 2008 FEW here and get fired up:
kum dollison Said,
July 13, 2008 @ 11:21 am
Today, all they do is take a gasoline “optimized” engine, tweak the ecu, make a couple of minor modifications, and call it “Flexfuel.” This leads to “crappy” fuel efficiency, and bad publicity.
If all cars had to be flexfuel the car companies would have to “Compete” to build the Best Flex fuel Cars. They would take advantage of ethanol’s higher Octane rating with higher compression, V V T, DI, etc.
We have the “Product.” If we had the cars the fueling infrastructure would Follow, Quickly.
Jim Burke Said,
July 28, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
This would provide consumer choice - the only choice today is drive/don’t drive - and often you don’t have that choice. We can only use oil today to move people and goods (air/rail/auto/trucks all use oil.)
This creates an open market of fuels that consumers may choose from. breaking the oil monopoly.
Hopefully Congress and ‘W’ can get this done - let’s not have to wait for the election!
David Roberts Said,
August 11, 2008 @ 7:25 pm
Rapid withdrawal of our dependance on foreighn oil could occur in less than 5 years. Flexfuel(ethanol, methanol) cars and plug in hybrids will do the job in less than 5 years. Remove the tariffs against ethanol so it can be imported, create ethanol in our country from corn or other biomass, drive 40 miles a day on one battery charge, keep coming out with hybrid plug-ins, a government subsidy($200-$300) for converting used cars to flexfuel, create methanol from clean coal, and in less than 5 years we will reduce oil consumption by more than 35%. Immediately no middle east oil dependance. Only the oil companies, special interests, and politicians can stop, but they can’t stop you if you want it. Why are we so afraid and ignorant?
Bill T Said,
August 22, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
I agree with this presentation. Although, I would add one additional item to the flex fuel mandate. That is, I would also mandate that all diesel engines sold in the US be able to burn 100% biodiesel, or any combination of biodiesel and petroleum based diesel. The engine modifications for this are as cheap as those for converting our gas engines to burn flexible fuels.
It truly is time to break the shackles of the OPEC Cartel….