Biofuel musses up electric car fest
By Seattle Times staff
Rami Grunbaum, deputy business editor, and Seattle Times Business staff
At a Cascadia Center conference last week on the future of transportation titled "Beyond Oil," the star was the electric car.
Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids were lined up outside the Microsoft Executive Conference Center during the two-day conference: plug-in Priuses, converted SUVs, even a plug-in yellow school bus.
True believers on grid-powered vehicles happily exchanged factoids inside. In such a crowd, Rob Elam, founder of Propel Biofuels, stuck out like a sore thumb.
Elam's Seattle company is in the down-and-dirty business of distributing biodiesel, an alternative fuel made mostly out of vegetable oil that can be used in almost any standard diesel engine.
Biofuels, now based mostly out of soy and corn, have been criticized for not being cost-efficient — and some scientists have even cast doubt on their environmental benefits.
Others point out that biofuels are merely a halfway measure on the way to electric cars. That didn't keep Elam from telling fans of electric vehicles that biofuels are the right thing to adopt, right now.
In the U.S., there are about 14 million diesel vehicles and 9 million flex-fuel vehicles that can run on biodiesel and ethanol, Elam told the audience.
story continued
Rami Grunbaum, deputy business editor, and Seattle Times Business staff
At a Cascadia Center conference last week on the future of transportation titled "Beyond Oil," the star was the electric car.
Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids were lined up outside the Microsoft Executive Conference Center during the two-day conference: plug-in Priuses, converted SUVs, even a plug-in yellow school bus.
True believers on grid-powered vehicles happily exchanged factoids inside. In such a crowd, Rob Elam, founder of Propel Biofuels, stuck out like a sore thumb.
Elam's Seattle company is in the down-and-dirty business of distributing biodiesel, an alternative fuel made mostly out of vegetable oil that can be used in almost any standard diesel engine.
Biofuels, now based mostly out of soy and corn, have been criticized for not being cost-efficient — and some scientists have even cast doubt on their environmental benefits.
Others point out that biofuels are merely a halfway measure on the way to electric cars. That didn't keep Elam from telling fans of electric vehicles that biofuels are the right thing to adopt, right now.
In the U.S., there are about 14 million diesel vehicles and 9 million flex-fuel vehicles that can run on biodiesel and ethanol, Elam told the audience.
story continued
posted by anthony m, at Monday, September 08, 2008
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home