Why Ethanol--Not Electric Cars and Hybrids--Is the Answer

Hemp produces four times as much cellulose per acre than corn. That cellulose can be used to produce ethanol.

Laughable.

Please refrain from publishing this sort of ignorance in the future. Ethanol does NOT emit less CO2 than gasoline. It is not a low carbon fuel. This is nothing more than a rich guy trying to make more money for himself by either pushing bold faced lies or simply making stuff up.

Electric cars are not going to be impractical and expensive for long. Check out zapworld(dot)com. This company is going down the right path.

ethanol sucks it gives lousey gas mileage so u use more of it duh?

Corn was the wrong choice. Latin America is making three times more ethanol out of a plant the grows faster and has more sugar mash producing substance. But the government pride during the Bush years commited to one idealogy. So we now can look at other options now that we see more than poor people are suffering from raising corn prices. Yes, once the upper middle class starts suffering, changes now have to be made. Yes sir!

when there is a food shortage, don't cry.

I find this article hard to believe.

Headline: New Bacteria Could Make Cheaper Ethanol. Makes it from waste biomass. Check it out http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0847220620080909 It doesn't take much to make your car run on ethanol; just replace the rubber seals with silicone ones.

Khosla bought into corn ethanol in a big way and he is leaking money. His judgment on renewables is poor or insincere, but he gets a lot of press because the only ones who are more ignorant are the journalists - or maybe this is just paid advertising.

What a pile of garbage. Khosla is just trying to sell himself and make a buck. There are advances out there, but the problems are real and will continue. Let's say we have bio-fuels that are 4x more efficient than corn. Corn has been generously estimated to give a 1 - 1.3 energy to production ratio.

Khosla bought into corn ethanol in a big way and he is leaking money. His judgment on renewables is poor or insincere, but he gets a lot of press because the only ones who are more ignorant are the journalists - or maybe this is just paid advertising.

Ethanol will mean more expensive food. You can run modern diesel cars on waste cooking oil though and that solves the problem of what to do with waste cooking oil. USA needs to get efficient, Citreon, Peugeot and Toyota have been selling 65+mpg for 3 years, Fiat and BMW will have 100mpg cars by 2012. Is it no wonder GM and Crysler went to the wall they are so far behind.

Right, because powering cars with something that requires large amounts of water and farmland presents no possible problms down the road.

This is ridiculous. Corn-based Ethanol not only costs a fortune (relatively) to produce, pollutes more than standard unleaded gasoline, but is now being show to be very corrosive. It's eating engines. Do the research. Look around. And if you drive a Lexus or Audi, don't get near it. Not even the 10% blends.

the problem with interviewing luminaries is that the interviewer tends to not challenge the assumptions of their guest. khosla first assumption is that Li-ion batteries won't be cheap enough. tell us why. second he says electric cars in china & india will use electricty from coal-fired plants, of course ignoring arguments that it's easier to move millions of cars to lower carbon if you change the utility to renewables. third, he says the only cheap way to move 800M cars to lower carbon is liquid fuels. again the assumption that we need 800M cars. he talks about mis-perceptions. well, he is also a source of a few.

what a load of crap! Lets see...the fertilizers are made using petroleum, the equipment to farm uses petroleum of which 60% is imported to grow FOOD that will be converted to alcohol so that we can drive our cars. Do we have a moral hazard here or what? Alcohol has less energy per unit than gasoline, so you use more of the stuff in you normal driving. And, if you took all the corn we now grow we would still not meet our fuel needs. Also, we do not have enough land in the country to grow all the corn needed to fuel our cars.

You're right CBW, those farmers have it way too easy. I get so pissed when I see a farmer driving around in his gold-plated Ferrari.

It's all about money and who's making it. Electric cars can be recharged by consumers by having alternators, thus not going on the grid and paying to recharge the batteries. To the rich, this seems like going against the Americian way of making huge amounts of money off of the consuming masses!!!!!!

Crikes! Bush even killed ethanol. I bet it was because of all his oil buddies, huh?