More than a year ago, the ethanol industry hit the “blend wall”: the difference between what they could produce and what the market wanted to use. This despite billions in tax credits: direct and indirect federal and state subsidies. All enabled by a federal mandate mandating that the ethanol boys brew nine billion gallons of renewable fuels in 2008, rising to 36 billion by 2022. And then the gas price bubble burst and environmental impact studies arrived, revealing corn-for-fuel as a carbon positive endeavor. The ethanol industry pretty much curled-up into the fetal position. The small players went belly-up. The big boys—including Archer Daniel Midlands (whose corporate jet ferried candidate Obama around the Midwest)—put their hopes into E20.

Read More >

courtesy ricedexotics.com

Craig writes:

After checking out TTAC’s reviews and having a general distaste for sending a 
perfectly fine car to the clunker heap, I decided (even though I have a vehicle that qualifies for C4C) that the best car is a free car. I’ve been catching
 up on maintenance on the 1992 Lexus LS400 since I made that choice as
 I was letting the work slide. Saturday night’s project was a PCV valve replacement. Nothing major . . . unless you are clumsy. I dropped the PCV valve on what I’m assuming is my exhaust manifold (I’m kind of new at this). There is a metal . . . tray? created by the part and sure enough—3 point shot from downtown—the valve landed smack in that little trough. No biggie, right? Just get the magnetic grabber tool and fish it out.

Read More >

OK, so GM launches a money-back guarantee for its cars and trucks. A kind of riff on the old “Try it! You’ll like it!” campaign. Except of course, those of us who actually remember the old Alka Seltzer ad (before Kathy Griffin murderized it) will recall that the exhortation to experimentation was ironic. The line—repeated by tens of millions of people ad nauseam—came from the waiter. The waiter, the bad guy of the piece, led the protagonist to try food which later made him want to hug the porcelain god. And that’s the key difference. The Alka ad was selling relief from remorse. The GM ad is selling the customer on the idea that they won’t need relief from buyer’s remorse. The GM ad highlights the possibility of buyer’s remorse, on the second biggest purchase of their customers’ financial lives (after their house). Which makes the nationalized automaker’s buyback campaign as dumb as rocks on toast. The man behind the plan, Maximum Bob Lutz, is completely oblivious to this analysis. In fact . . .

Read More >

Who here would have been willing to spend $15,000 on a Dodge Dynasty? Oh c’mon now. Those trombone case red interiors were quite luxurious in the Imperial days of the Reagan era. But okay then. How about a few more Franklins for a zonker yellow Suzuki X-90? No? Maybe a Daihatsu Charade? Perhaps a Honda Ridgeline? Ten years from now I believe we’ll see a very long line of models epitomizing the worst of value and design. Your nominations? Oh . . . and no. Reincarnating the 1990’s aquatic Taurae and the Daewoo Lanos (and the hands of fate) don’t count.

MB Chris posits the following:

A straight EV at this point isn’t very useful to many people because of the current technology’s limitations. And, for me, hybrids are far too expensive and complicated to consider buying. I’m an ASE certified mechanic (25 years) and work in automotive manufacturing (nobody very important). The big thing that I can’t figure out about hybrids is why have a conventional drivetrain at all? Why not have the car operate similar to a diesel electric locomotive? Drive a large alternator with a combustion engine designed to run most efficiently at [a certain] RPM. Have no idle at all. It’s either on driving the alternator or not running. NVH engineering would only be needed to cope with that one RPM and startup/stop. Put an electric motor to drive each rear wheel. Mount them inboard so unsprung weight will not be increased. Even 4 electric motors or one on each axle if you want AWD. No transmission, driveshaft or differential is needed. That would come close to offsetting the weight of the battery pack.

Read More >

With only 524 speed cameras and growing budgetary needs, the government of Spain felt an urgent need to act. On Monday, Direccion General de Trafico (DGT) announced the purchase of an additional forty-three Autovelox 105 speed cameras from an Italian company, Saima Sicurezza, at the cost of 3,099,182 euros (US $4,552,600). The cash-strapped agency would recover the amount of money invested in these new devices by placing them on the highway and issuing just six hundred tickets for driving 8 MPH over the highway limit. This figure could be achieved in less than two days in a typical deployment.

Read More >

Thanks to Marko for the heads-up.

Hybrid Kinetic (HK) Motors and its chairman, former Brilliance chairman Yung Yeung, have announced plans to build a massive car plant in Baldwin County, Alabama in order to begin production of its fuel efficient vehicles by 2013. The $1.5b plant will produce 300,000 units per year and employ 5,000 Alabamans when it comes online with eventual production planned at one million units per year, according to a release from the Alabama governor’s office. A “full report” from Alabama Live states:

All the HK Motors vehicles will feature a 1.5-liter engine, but despite the engine’s size, the hybrid power sources will allow it to generate up to 400 horsepower, according to C.T. Wang, chief executive of HK Motors.

They will get at least 45 miles per gallon, Wang said, and the plug-in vehicle planned by the carmaker can go 600 miles on a single charge.

OK, is this starting to sound a bit strange? It probably should. The exact same scenario is playing out in Mississippi, where another former Brilliance boss is also building a huge, mysterious auto factory in the face of massive auto production overcapacity. Guess what else the factories have in common?

[Fundraising] will rely heavily on the U.S. government’s EB-5 program, which trades U.S. visas for $1 million invested in the U.S., or $500,000 in rural and high-unemployment areas.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that Geely has offered Ford $2.5B for Volvo, making the Chinese automaker the “leading contender” for the Swedish brand. Leading? Are there other contenders we don’t know about? According to the WSJ, “the offer is higher than Ford or outsiders had expected for a brand that has lost more than $1 billion in recent years,” and yet the latest news from China [via Xinhua] has Alan Mulally saying there’s been “no new progress” in the ongoing negotiations. Now don’t get it twisted: nobody expects Mulally to publicly accept this kind of offer within hours of being reported, but you’d think he’d at least send encouraging signs. Instead Mulally tells Xinhua, “Volvo is a good brand, but Ford will sell it in order to shift its main focus on developing the Ford brand.” Which is like someone on Craigslist talking about the sentimental value of an item with the words “or best offer” attached to the asking price. The fact that Geely has made an offer for 100 percent shows that they’re serious (that used to be a Ford negotiating point). So what’s Big Alan waiting for? Offload the money-loser, snag some cash and move on. The deal doesn’t look to be getting any sweeter.

You might be forgiven for thinking that a major lesson of GM and Chrysler’s kicking-and-screaming-and-sucking-down-tax-dollars reorganization was that less is more when it comes to brands. Only you’d still be wrong. Chrysler appears to be adding brands faster than GM shed them, as the Pentastar adjusts to life under its Italian overlords. We’ve already heard that the Fiat 500 will be America’s only Fiat-branded product, that Chrysler is supposed to become a Cadillac competitor, Alfas are en route, Dodge and Jeep will stick around, and somehow Mopar is a brand as well. Well, let’s throw another log on that fire. Edmunds Inside Line is confirming wild-ass rumors (by way of anonymous sources, of course) that Ram will become a standalone brand, selling pickups, vans, SUVs and commercial vehicles. Why? In order to “allow [Dodge] to develop as an affordable performance-car brand,” goes Inside Line’s insider’s line. So why not just throw Lancia into the mix and give ChryCo a GM-tastic eight-brand lineup?

An Oklahoma sheriff and his deputy were sentenced to two years and three months in jail on Tuesday for the crime of stopping and searching motorists so that they could steal their cash. An undercover federal sting operation caught McIntosh County Sheriff Terry Alan Jones, 36, and Under-sheriff Mykol Travis Brookshire, 38, red-handed. The pair were forced to resign their positions in May and plead guilty to Conspiracy Under Color of Law to Interfere with Interstate Commerce. “The court imposed the maximum permissible federal prison term, consistent with advisory federal sentencing guidelines,” United States Attorney Sheldon J. Sperling explained in a statement. “These sentences will not be subject to parole.”

Read More >

Honda’s U3-X was designed more with robots in mind than humans. Can you tell?

It’s ironic that on the same day Sajeev’s memory was jogged about driving one of the last built, dealer-lot-fermented Mercury Montegos in existence two years ago, I was piloting one of the last known Hertz-o-riffic Mercury Sables into its twilight. Again. Finally.

Read More >