Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Cellulosic Ethanol Pickup Goes Coast-to-Coast

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 04:46 PM PST

Tom Holm of EcoTrek recently drove a Ford Super Duty pickup truck 6,000 miles across country on cellulosic ethanol provided by POET for his “Best of America Tour.” He wrote this post for his blog detailing his arrival at the Atlantic Ocean.

Before even checking into my hotel in Manhattan, I drove straight to Brooklyn to officially complete my cross-country journey fueled by POET cellulosic ethanol. While I got close to my intended goal of touching my tires in the Atlantic Ocean at Coney Island, I was turned away just yards from the sea.

Just like in Santa Monica, California, one government agency failed to communicate with another, so I was literally stopped in my tracks. Fortunately, it pays to stay nimble. Thus, on both coasts I found alternate locations to complete my watery ritual. On the West Coast, I touched my tires in the Pacific at Half Moon Bay, CA. On the East Coast, my tires were dipped in the Atlantic at Lemon Creek Park, on Staten Island, NY. Both locations were unexpected, yet turned out to be immensely beautiful and memorable.

I see this experience as an analogy to our cause of advancing the use of renewable fuels and alternative energy. Obstacles are constantly being placed in our way by sluggish bureaucrats, disconnected government agencies and indecisive individuals. So, to progress our cause, staying nimble is imperative. If our target is blocked, we sometimes have to change our course, but never our objective. And, if we're lucky, the outcome may be even better than we've been hoping for.

You can follow Tom and his cellulosic cross-country adventures over at his EcoTrek blog.

Chicago to get 280 EV Charging Stations: Too Much, Too Soon?

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 12:03 PM PST

President Obama has thrown a lot of support behind electric cars as cities and automakers alike line up to provide the vehicles and infrastructure. Chicago is going to add 280 charging stations…for what electric cars?

Some electric car skeptics say that there isn't an infrastructure in place to support electric vehicles. What, you don't have electricity in your house? Apartment dwellers, however, face a more difficult problem of charging their vehicles, especially in large cities like Chicago. The city of Chicago has signed a $1.9 million deal with 350Green to install 280 charging systems around the city, which is great…except Chicago doesn't have any electric vehicles.

Nissan and GM are the only two companies actually selling electric vehicles right now, and neither the Leaf nor the Volt are available for purchase in Chicago right now, and probably won't be until late in 2011. Ford will launch the Focus Electric later this year, and while it will initially be available in Chicago, if the rollout is anything like Nissan and GM's, they'll be selling a few hundred cars a month. Oh, and these rapid charging stations won’t work with the Focus Electric (which will lack fast charging capability at launch), and by the time the each of the $65,000 charging stations are installed, they could be obsolete as the system will use a Japanese charging standard, even as the Society of Automotive Engineers works to establish a new fast charging standard here in the States.

I think installing public charging stations is a good idea. However, with many cities, including Chicago, facing multi-billion dollar budget deficits I've got to wonder about paying to install almost 300 charging stations in a city that, as of right now, has almost a zero electric vehicle presence and stations that could be functionally obsolete by the time electric cars are on the road en masse. I know Chicago is a big city, but perhaps a 100 charging stations consolidated in strategic locations might be a wiser use of the money. As it stands, Obama’s goal of a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015 seems like a moonshot, and I can’t help but feel like this is putting the wagon before the horse. Too much too soon, or is that the kind of support EV’s need to make it?

Source: 350Green via AutoBlogGreen

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to HEMI’s. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

Trevor Bayne Wins Daytona … on E15

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 11:00 AM PST

Yesterday’s Daytona 500 NASCAR race was a historic event in more ways that one.  For starters, it was the first time since the event’s inaugural running  that a first-time entrant had won, Trevor Bayne became the youngest NASCAR/Daytona race winner in the sport’s history, and it was the first Daytona 500 to feature cars fueled by E15.  Indeed, the race organizers actively promoted alternative fuels all weekend, in the form of the series “American Ethanol” sponsorship … which looks like this:

The “greening” of NASCAR is, of course, a matter of degrees.  Did the 43 cars running the E15 Sunoco race blend push out fewer harmful emissions than they did on last year’s blend?  Yes.  Does the American Ethanol promotion of NASCAR bring information about alternative fuels to millions of Americans who would, otherwise, probably ignore or avoid said information?  Sure.  Will the “American Ethanol” green flags waved at the start of each race continue to draw attention to ethanol-related causes all season long?  Absolutely.  Do NASCAR’s haulers, commercial flights, charter jets, news helicopters, safety vehicles, etc. make use of “greener” alternative fuels?

Not so much.

Keep in mind, all of this E15 flag-waving at NASCAR is going down on the same weekend that the House voted “overwhelmingly” to block E15′s use at gas pumps nationwide – a story that’s still unfolding on congressional floors, with lobbyists on both sides of the issue practically foaming at the mouth with pros on cons.  If this season is a success and a few million NASCAR fans reach out to their representatives in Washington in favor of ethanol … I imagine that would be hard to ignore.

We’ll have more on the developing E15 story soon, but – for now – let’s congratulate Trevor Bayne, the team behind the no. 21 Ford, and Growth Energy (the group behind the American Ethanol NASCAR marketing initiative) for helping to put on a heck of a show yesterday.

Source:  NASCAR, Detroit News.

Prius + Prius = Prii

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 09:30 AM PST

The votes are in, and Toyota made the official announcement yesterday:  the plural of Prius is Prii.

Sure, your Latin teacher may complain about it (here’s why), but I think the “Prii” name goes well with the brand, and – according to Toyota – it was the overwhelming favorite in Toyotas “Prius Goes Plural” voting campaign, earning over 25% of the votes.

The virtual voting booths were opened January 10 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, where Toyota showed off the full “family” of Prius-branded vehicles shown, above.  Toyota’s press release, announcing the voting results, is included below.

Decade-Long Debate Laid to Rest with Recognition of the Term ‘Prii’

TORRANCE, Calif., February 20, 2011 –Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), USA, Inc. today announced that the general public has selected ‘Prii’ as the preferred plural term for Prius.

The Prius Goes Plural voting campaign was launched on January 10 at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and challenged the public to help the automaker determine the plural nomenclature of Prius. The campaign coincided with the world premiere of the Toyota Prius family of vehicles. With 25 percent of the votes, Prii becomes the word not only endorsed by the public who chose it, but also as the term recognized by Toyota. As such, Dictionary.com has updated its entry for the word ‘Prius’ to reflect this.

Toyota unveiled the winning word at the Chicago Auto Show this morning. Jay Schwartz, head of content for Dictionary.com, was on hand to inform the public that, as the plural of Prius has now been determined, the term ‘Prii’ will be reflected in Dictionary.com.

After the more than 1.8 million votes were cast during the course of the six-week campaign, Prii beat out its four competitors: Prius, Priuses, Prium and Prien. Prius came in at a close second with 24 percent of the votes. A video recap of the campaign and winning word celebration can be viewed at www.ToyotaPriusProjects.com.

“Community has always been a big part of the Prius brand, so it was only fitting that we invite the online communities to participate in the plural discussion,” said Colin Morisako, advertising manager for Toyota. “The people have spoken-Prii will be the accepted term used to describe multiple Prius vehicles going forward.”

The plural of Prius has sparked debates since the launch of the vehicle 10 years ago. Now that the Prius family has grown, Toyota asked its customers and fans to help the company decide on a term to describe the plural of Prius vehicles, thus answering the decade-long question-what do you call more than one Prius? Online voting modules enabled the public to vote for their preferred plural of Prius as well as view real-time polling data. The campaign also featured an animated video, print ads and a web series hosted by James Lipton, host of Inside the Actors Studio and author of An Exaltation of Larks.

With the expansion of the Prius family to include the Prius Plug-in Hybrid vehicle (PHV), Prius v and Prius c concept, Toyota hopes to further increase acceptance of the Prius brand by offering a wider selection of vehicles that each maintain Prius’ core values of high fuel economy, low emissions, proven gas-electric hybrid technology and environmental stewardship.

Source:  Toyota, via the Autoblog.
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