Congress weighs in on ethanol

By Tim Lemke

With the Indianapolis 500 coming up on Sunday, a couple of U.S. Senators have written a letter to NASCAR CEO Brian France, urging him to follow the Indy Racing League in switching to ethanol fuel.
Evan Bayh (D-IN) and John Thune (R-SD) said NASCAR can play a role in reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil.
"We believe that respected American traditions, such as NASCAR and the Indy Racing League, have a responsibility to lead by example and help cut our ties to foreign sources of oil and embrace alternative renewable resources that are produced here at home," the senators wrote. "To this end, we ask that NASCAR consider converting its race car fleet to run on 100 percent American-produced ethanol, as well as start a long-term commitment to promote clean, renewable homegrown fuels." story continued

New York's yellow taxis to go green

New York's yellow cabs are to become hybrid cars within five years under a scheme to make the city the greenest in the US.

Michael Bloomberg, the city's mayor, announced the shift to hybrid technology – which powers cars using a combination of fuel and ­electric batteries – in a bid to cut emissions by more than half over the next ­decade.

Of the 13,000 yellow cabs on New York streets, only 375 are hybrids. Mr Bloomberg said that number would rise to 1,000 by the end of 2008 and a further 20 per cent of the fleet would go hybrid each subsequent year until 2012. The estimated 50,000 other licensed cabs in the city will not as yet be required to make the shift.

Mr Bloomberg, a potential presidential candidate, said the government had failed to act on fuel efficiency.
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Toyota thinks gas-electric cars are way of future

BY YURI KAGEYAMA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TOKYO -Toyota's commitment to hybrid automobiles was on full display Thursday when it unveiled its most expensive gasoline-electric vehicle yet - the $124,000 luxury sedan Lexus LS.

Executives at Japan's No. 1 automaker are fully convinced that hybrid cars are the way of the future. And they're betting that growing consumer concern about the environment - and higher gas prices - will lure even wealthy buyers to the new model, which went on sale Thursday in Japan for 15 million yen and will arrive later elsewhere.

Executive Vice President Masatami Takimoto denied hybrids were "a transitional technology" that will be replaced by more advanced ecological technology in the future.

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Toyota aims to sell 430,000 hybrid cars worldwide this year

TOKYO (XFN-ASIA) - Toyota Motor Corp aims to sell 430,000 gas-electric hybrid cars worldwide this year, 37 pct more than the 313,000 it sold last year, as it keeps its eye on its target of annual sales of 1.0 mln such vehicles soon after 2010, the company said.
At a news conference marking the launch of Toyota''s Lexus-marque LS600h and LS600hL hybrid sedans, company president Katsuaki Watanabe said: "Our plan to double the number of hybrid models is under way, and I believe our engineers will clear the tough challenge of halving [production] costs."
Toyota rolled out the new hybrid models in the Japanese market today and will begin selling them elsewhere in Asia, in the US and in Europe in stages, starting next month.
The company expects to sell 7,000 LS600hs and LS600hLs worldwide by the end of the year, 4,000 of them in Japan.story continued

Hybrid Pricing

I as a lover of the environment is always recommending hybrid cars. A friend of mine has been looking to get a new car. He loves american cars and will only drive american. So I told him to look into the Ford escape hybrid. He went down to the dealer and priced both the hybrid and the non hybrid, and what he found was a big difference in price. How are we supposed "go green" if we can't even afford to. If the automakers don't come down on there prices we as a nation will never be oil dependent.

Helping Canadians go green

Federal government's rebate plan for fuel-efficient vehicles could spur sales of cleaner cars
PEDRO ARRAIS, CanWest News Service
Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies drives one. Actress Cameron Diaz has one. So does environmentalist David Suzuki. They're environmentally friendly cars, and thanks to changes in federal policies, more Canadians will be jumping on the green bandwagon.

For the first time, the federal government is offering rebates between $1,000 and $2,000 for consumers buying or leasing top fuel-efficient cars and trucks, the best of which is the Toyota Prius with a combined fuel consumption rating of 4.1 litres per 100 kilometres.

Driving fuel-efficient vehicles means Canadians will produce significantly less carbon dioxide, nitrogen, benzene and other components that make up the bulk of greenhouse gases - a likely cause of global warming.

Under the Transport Canada program, called ecoAuto, gasoline-powered cars that get 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres or better, and light trucks that get 8.4 litres per 100 kilometres or better qualify for the rebates. More than half of the 17 vehicles listed as eligible for the $160-million, two-year program are gasoline-electric hybrid cars. But hybrids - cars that are powered by a combination of a gasoline engine and electric motor - are not the only vehicles eligible for rebates.

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Toyota says its cost of making hybrids will fall

TOYOTA CITY, Japan - Toyota Motor Corp. expects to cut costs for hybrid cars enough to be able to make as much money on them as it does on conventional gasoline cars by around 2010, a top executive said on Thursday.

Japan's top automaker has been keen to see the fuel-saving powertrain enter the mainstream since launching the Prius, the world's first hybrid car, in 1997, but sales have come at the expense of profitability given their high production costs.

But Masatami Takimoto, executive vice president in charge of powertrain development, said cost-cutting efforts on the system's motor, battery and inverter were bearing fruit, and the cost structure would improve drastically by the time Toyota reaches its sales goal of one million hybrids annually in 2010 or soon after.

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Pol-Ethanol

Ethanol has become very popular recently. Is it because of car manufacturers worried about global warming or is it just politics as usual. Ethanol which here in the U.S is made mostly with corn is a very hot topic in the presidential debates. The Iowa caucus has been an early indication of which candidate for President of the United States might win the nomination of his or her political party , and Iowa is where corn is largely produced. So when you think that we are moving ahead to oil dependency, think again.

Ethanol is booming, but is it too good to be true?

Alternative fuel dogged by questions about demand, fuel efficiency and its impact on food prices
By Jim Suhr - ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS — Corn-and-soybean farmer John Adams considered the pitch too good to pass up.

The 58-year-old Adams, who works 950 acres in central Illinois, didn’t immediately join the farmer cooperatives pooling together to build a 100-million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant. But when he dropped by an informational meeting a few months ago, he had to have a piece.

“I was impressed,” he recalled. “I had to do a lot of thinking about where the ethanol market was and where I think it’s going.”

Ethanol, for decades largely an afterthought in the global fuels market, is in the midst of a booming renaissance, despite a host of questions.

It is a hot topic from agribusiness boardrooms to Midwestern diners to world capitals including Washington. President Bush says the fuel additive distilled from mashed and fermented grain is a cheap-and-easy alternative to highpriced foreign oil, and some day it’s already been an economic boon for moribund rural stretches.

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Chrysler hybrid will be a gasoline saver

By Tom Krisher
The Associated Press
DETROIT (May 3, 2007)
Chrysler's famous Hemi V-8 engine, known more for power than fuel economy, will become more fuel efficient when the company rolls out a hybrid version early next year.

Chrysler Group said this week it will offer a hybrid Hemi in its Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen sport utility vehicles that will improve their fuel economy by nearly 40 per cent in the city and about 25 per cent on the highway.

Analysts have said the "two-mode" hybrid system, developed jointly with General Motors and BMW, could vault SUVs and trucks into the same fuel efficiency range of some larger sedans.

Current Aspens and Durangos get 13 miles per gallon in the city and 18 on the highway, but the hybrid versions should get an estimated 18.2 mpg (12.9 litres per 100 kilometres) in city driving and about 22.5 (10.45 L/100km) on freeways. Chrysler would give only the percentage increases and not actual numbers, saying mileage testing had not been completed.

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Global warming may begin to burn a hole in wallets

Eric Zimmerling
Would you still ask for a plastic bag to carry your groceries if you had to pay tax on that bag?

This was one of the questions asked by Professor Annette Nellen of the College of Business to nearly 100 students and faculty Wednesday in a lecture covering the business aspects of global warming.

"Only 1 percent of plastic bags get recycled," Nellen said. "If there was a tax on plastic bags, would you still have an immediate need or could we just bring our own bag to the store to carry groceries?"

Douglass Ikegami, a senior majoring in history, said the lecture gave him "a new idea of the impact that global warming has on society."

"I hear about the polar ice caps melting and the environmental impacts that global warming has on us, but I never really thought about the business impacts," Ikegami said. Nellen also talked about how the increase in the number of automobiles and oil usage affects global warming, and how insurance might go up as a result, he said.

The 60-minute lecture of the Boccardo Business Center featured Nellen discussing what she said is the impact global warming is having on businesses and possible solutions for the problems.

Nellen used a large projection screen with multiple slides to support her discussion that gave the audience an array of information.

Among the business impacts Nellen discussed were the amount of cars that have increased over the past 50 years and how that has effected global warming.

"In 1950, there were 55 million cars. In 2004, there were 551 million cars," Nellen said. "With the introduction of hybrid cars over the past few years and the healthy emissions cars, should a tax be imposed on oil in an effort to lead people towards hybrid automobiles?"
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