General Motors Pimping Ethanol On TV. WTF?

Trying to figure why GM is pimping ethanol on tv. They say they've developed cars that run on ethanol, so maybe that's their attempt to look green? Thing is, I thought essentially any car can run on ethanol.

Anyhow, it seems GM and AgriBusiness has hooked up.

:shrug:

It basically just keeps the screwed up status quo and benefits GM, Agribusiness, Petroleum.

It benefits GM, they don't have to spend $ coming up with new technologies to go beyond basic combustion engine.

It benefits Agribusiness, they get massive subsidies to grow corn using unsound, harmful practices.

It benefits Petroleum, which is burned and sprayed using current Agricultural methods. Also, helps keep us dependant on filling stations to keep our cars running.

I was reading somewhere (I want to say it was pop sci) that in fact CORN makes a lot of the fule it needs to made ethanol. It described that corn as a lot of waste that is very burnable. Stalks, husks, and so on help to offset the fule needs. There is also little (not a total) need for pest control given that it is not for food. Lastly, corn is not the only thing we can use here...

In fact, I read that one place was using chicken poop as a fule... so MMmmmmmm

While I think that there is SOME validity to your argument, I think that once the right plants get up and running, and the demand is up, the costs in energy and money will go down.

To the last of your argument, I want to go to a filling station. I DO NOT want to make bio-fule in my backyard. I would like to go less, and I want it to be cheaper, but they preform a service that I do not want to do....

I like ethanol idea. Put famers back to work growing corn, put Americans back to work building
plants and running them. Ethanol burns cleaner than gas also. I would like to own one of those E85
GM cars.

it runs on ethanol and yes it could beat out Toyota since they run on ethanol only... Prius still needs gas...

problem can be solved that would be the number one method. They can only think about one thing, cost cutting. If the product isn't attractive, no amount of cost cutting will produce a profit.

many hybrids they'll be making by 2010 or something too.

Cars cannot run on much over 15% ethanol without a few modifications or your car will run poorly (here in MN all regular unleaded is blended 10% ethanol by law). To get a vehicle to run on E85 (85% ethanol), it's simply a matter of adding a few new sensors to adjust the air-fuel mix properly, and valves that can withstand ethanol (it can act as a solvent on normal valves at high concentrations).

So, for a few dollars more in production costs they can now pimp their gas-guzzling SUV's as environmentally friendly instead of actually building fuel-efficient cars or hybrids.

My friends were enamored with the GM ethanol display at the auto show two weeks ago, until I pointed out that we burn 140 billion gallons of fuel in this country annually, and only produce 3-4 billion gallons of ethanol, or less than 3% of our fuel needs.

Also, the savings are not there: here in MN the gas stations sell E85 for only 20 cents less per gallon than regular unleaded, hardly a big savings.