E85 Hybrids: The Next Big Step

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It's no longer simply a case of comparing mpg, you need to divide it by the price per gallon of the particular fuel to get an order of merit.

What's the Right Blend?

Biodiesel sounds great, but most car manufacturers void the warranty if you use a blend which has more than five percent true biodiesel in it. So 'B5' does very little, strategically or environmentally, because 95 percent of it comes from oil. Ford endorses a biodiesel blend at, but not above, five percent. And in case you are thinking—'they would say that, wouldn't they?'—in March 2005, Volkswagen announced that they would extend warranty protection for the use of low blends of biodiesel fuel in all of its U.S. market diesel powered automobiles—also only to the five percent mark. Even if 'B20' emerges, it's not that significant.

Battery Price versus E85 Saved

Imagine you've decided to order a 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid, which could get an average of 50 mpg on E85. Do you tick the box for plug-in, assuming it's offered? The problem for plug-in proponents is that cost justification looks a lot weaker if the host hybrid vehicle gets 65 mpg on gasoline, rather than 18 mpg from a V-8.

Assume electricity costs nothing, so it's battery price versus E85 saved. In the three or so years you are going to keep it, how many 'E85 dollars' will you save? Unless you have your own solar panels or wind turbine, how much extra CO2 will be generated by the grid? What would the price of the plug-in battery need to be to encourage most of us to buy one? How many thousand deep-discharges will the battery survive?

If the economics don’t quite yet add up to the ideal (and realistic) automotive formula—the Plug-in Biofuel Hybrid—then the next step is to simplify the approach to an 'E85 hybrid.” E85 is already with us and the Senate has ensured that extra pumps will be deployed fast. And because E85 isn't expensive enough, yet, to justify adding a plug-in battery. (There's little doubt that biofuel hybrids are a much better approach than General Motors’ fuel cell program.)

What's the catch? Essentially, keeping up with the resulting demand for E85. The vehicles are the easy part. The production of sufficient cellulosic feedstocks will be a challenge the farmers of America will tackle with enthusiasm. The bottleneck will be the rate at which America invests in large scale biofuel processing plants.

Over to you, Wall Street.

Provided by HybridCars.com .