April 2006 Archives

GM, DaimlerChrysler and BMW are team hybrid. It’s a story of corporate cooperation; combining talents and spreading out the risks. The three automakers have unveiled a group effort hybrid system that integrates two electric motors with a fixed-gear transmission.

Even better, the unit will be built locally at a flexible G.M. plant in Baltimore that can shift between hybrid and conventional transmission manufacturing depending on demand.

I made a survey of automotive commercials last night on prime time television. Aside from things crashing into Volkswagens and BMW’s SUV avoiding things to crash into, some of the automakers appear to be giving away profit to move metal:

-0% financing for six years on Explorer and Expedition by Ford.
-Up to $3,500 combined rebates on Jeep
-Up to $5,000 combined rebates on Dodge Trucks

These rebates are all on large SUV vehicles capable of below 20 mpg. Commercials and rebates are an indicator of what needs to sell and a precursor of market trends.

Matt Dunphy writes:
Here's what's going to happen (I thought this up sitting in traffic myself.) At some point, all vehicles will be gas/electric hybrids, with awesome mileage. This will not slow the amazing per-barrel prices, it just means that cars will have smaller fuel tanks.

The next generation Toyota Prius (2008) is rumored to be a Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV), so it could get in the 100 mpg range in the first few hundred miles of the day, which is all most of us drive in a day. After the added charge is used up, the car reverts to a traditional hybrid.

I happened to catch the president’s energy speech while sitting in Route 30 traffic today watching an Escalade burn gas.

Just the fact that Bush said something is good because it sends the oil speculators running to take some profit; gasoline and oil dropped a few cents. Oil fell 45 cents to $72.88 a barrel today in reaction to Bush's speech from a high of $75.35 last week.

Otherwise, the speech was somewhat useless.

Bullzeye responded with an insightful response to my Blog entry Red Light Green Light:

...“The solution model is in Brazil! How they (have) done this change to an ethanol fuel base is well documented...I suppose if we follow it, many in the world would think we're a 3rd world power...but would it change the "power of oil"...you bet.�

Brazil has reached energy independence after 30 years with the use of home grown ethanol. The United States is more oil dependent than it was 30 years ago.

According to a 2 year study by CNW Marketing Research, Inc in Bandon, OR., hybrid vehicles use more energy than many conventionally powered vehicles from initial concept to the projected time it is scrapped.

The study measures all energy needed for vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2005. Data includes supplier as well as brand manufacturer energy consumption for the listed vehicles; transportation at all levels of distribution; use of materials (plastics, steel, light-weight steel, aluminum, etc.) and literally hundreds of other factors. For example, a car imported from Japan requires a lot more energy to transport it to a consumer in York than if it were built in Pennsylvania.

A reader was interested in the specifications of Henry Ford’s Quadricycle...

Quadricycle (also spelled quadracycle, quadrocycle) is a four-wheeled vehicle. The most common layout is when the wheels are placed at the angles of a rectangle. The first experimental steam cars were sometimes called steam quadricycles, and a few very early internal combustion cars were called motor quadricycles. The terms automobile and car rapidly became universal, supplanting this usage. (wikipedia.com)

On June 4, 1896 in a tiny workshop behind his home on 58 Bagley Avenue, Henry Ford put the finishing touches on his gasoline-powered motor car. After more than two years of experimentation, Henry Ford at the age of 32, had completed his first experimental automobile. He dubbed his creation the "Quadricycle," so named because

With the price of a barrel of oil reaching a new high today, I was inspired to find the most creatively wasteful car on the face of the planet.

The Bugatti Veyron 16/4. - An 8 liter, 16 cylinder car priced at $1.2 million.

At EPA rated 9/18 mpg, the Bugatti can tear through a full tank of gas in 12 minutes when driven at it’s top speed of 254 mph.

In advertising, spin is everything. The cunning spinster believes that any idea can be sold if the packaging is shiny enough. In the automotive industry, image, performance and safety have always won the hearts of consumers. These are concepts that are hard to quantify and easy to spin.

Environmental consciousness is the new spin favorite of auto makers as the industry sees that early adopters of hybrid technology enjoy record sales of their thriftier models.

Green is cool.

It’s an SUV, sports a 5.7 liter Hemi V8, and will get 4 ¾ mpg better mileage than the non-hybrid model.

DiamlerChrysler has announced the basic specs on their first gasoline-electric hybrid in North America, a version of the Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicle. It’s an interesting two-mode hybrid system co-developed by DaimlerChrysler, General Motors and BMW that is better suited to towing than systems currently used in small cars.

An answer to a reader's question: Soy appears to yield 50+ gallons of fuel per acre. The oil plus the additives to make fuel (process input) equals the fuel minus the byproducts of production (process output). So squeezed oil is about what is produced in biodiesel

You can also make biodiesel out of different oils, like Rapeseed (Canola), Palm Oil, Sunflower and Peanut, all with different crop yields. Unlike owners of crude oil wells, farmers can change what they plant and grow where the market takes them. There is a plant that likes southern Texas called the Oil Seed that is said to yield 200 gallons of oil per acre.

United-Biofuels, Inc, a biodiesel manufacturer in Manchester Township, is an innovative company with an Old World economic twist.

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