As the presidential election draws nearer, Obama and McCain’s views on biofuels have been shoved under the microscope. Obama has taken some heat for his support of corn ethanol, with some suggesting that his more rural Illinois constituents, or Monsanto and other such agribusiness interests, are wearing him like a glove. Opinion sways back and forth on which entity is controlling him, which is odd because it logically can’t be both. And all this comes despite his preference for “cellulosic ethanol and other types of biomass-derived fuels.” He’s also pledged $150 billion and 10 years towards continuing renewable energy research, even though his specific goals are years in coming and won’t account for much of the energy market at first.

McCain’s approach is different; he favors eliminating ethanol subsidies and a closer relationship with Brazil’s booming sugarcane ethanol industry; sugarcane is a more efficient source of fuel than corn. It’ll work out great until they run out of rainforest and turn the entire country into an antebellum plantation. Beyond that, McCain’s decided to hang his hat on the electric car, offering $300 million “for a car battery that can ‘leapfrog’ existing technologies,” but he doesn’t offer additional tax incentives or research grants like Obama has.

So both plans have some faults - we prefer Obama’s for the time being - but it’s a good sign that each candidate is planning proactive steps towards biofuel development. Time can only tell what shifts in our fuel sources will do to the nation’s consumption, not to mention our political cartoon output.

Good news on the horizon for hybrid car owners; “BFS Retail & Commercial Operations, LLC (BFRC), which owns and operates the largest number of company-owned automotive retail generalist stores in the world, has begun servicing hybrid vehicles at select Firestone Complete Auto Care, Tires Plus, ExpertTire and Wheel Works locations.” Nearly 40 percent of BFS-owned service centers are hybrid-compliant right now, and BFS’ continued efforts will ease concerns that hybrid owners are in deep trouble when their cars break down. Considering that hybrid sales have risen in the Gulf Coast region, and more car buyers in general are considering hybrids, this development is rather timely. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that hybrids don’t have any specific tire needs.

We had a lot of fun thinking cool cars to hybridize on Wednesday, and evidently left quite an impression on our intern, who brought in a few ideas of his own. He’s currently on picking-dead-birds-out-of-the-gutters duty, so we’re going to post/take credit for his suggestions in his absence.

Knight Rider
Pro: A sleek, black number with built-in navigational system, super computer, and wireless internet access, all of which speak in William Daniels’ voice.
Con: The car’s artificial intelligence lends it an inquisitiveness that means you’ll get dragged into solving mysteries every week, which adds at least 30 minutes to overall travel time. William Daniels is kind of a smart ass, too.

The Mach 5
Pro: Incredibly fast and surprisingly efficient, especially on highways and other situations where speed is required. It’s also sporty, in a unisex kind of way.
Con: Not only is it from a cartoon, it’s Japanese. We’ve pissed off Detroit enough, don’t you think?

Oscar Meyer Weinermobile
Pro: Everyone in America loves, or at least recognizes, the ol’ Weinermobile. Plus, that kind of corporate sponsorship could really help hybrid fuel and battery research, to say nothing of the possibilities for bologna ethanol.
Con: Blind spots galore. And yeah, try getting laid in this thing. Go on, try.

Mystery Machine
Pro: Perfect for bands on tour, or even cross-country road trips with the family. Fits bunk beds and a camping stove in its spacious cabin, and the color scheme is totally retro.
Con: The chances of being waylaid by creepy old men dressed as ghosts increases exponentially with this vehicle. Getting all the dog hair and bongwater out of the shag carpeting will be a real bitch, too.

Werecar
Pro: Fuel economy that borders on the supernatural, good pickup, and roomier than it looks, the Werecar is great for families and comes in a classic gunmetal gray that hides stains and scratches.
Con: It’s pure evil and kills every time there’s a full moon. Expect higher insurance premiums.

We were sitting around at Corn Car HQ (also known as CCHQ) today, waiting for one of the interns to return with lunch, when the conversation turned to Neil Young and his brilliant idea to hybridize his 1957 Lincoln Continental. Pretty cool, yeah? We think so too, and we ended up tossing around ideas for what other classic, iconic cars could put a cooler face on the hybrid vehicle. Here’s what we came up with, taking care to include pros and cons.

1960 Ford Thunderbird
Pro: Just look at it, for God’s sakes. This car would turn Rick Moranis into a badass rebel who smoked unfiltered cigarettes and wore sunglasses indoors. When people look back on the halcyon days of big, American cars, this is what they have in mind.
Con: Hybrid cars have a pretty steep initial cost as it is, so god only knows what this thing would run you. Plus, guys like this would always be challenging you to races.

The General Lee
Pro: Sturdy, dependable, capable of outrunning county police vehicles and jumping over ditches or haystacks. As a promotional effort, each General could come with a CD of Waylon Jennings voice overs.
Con: Anyone who wants a hybrid at this stage of the game would balk at driving something with Confederate flags all over it. Also, the owner’s manual is probably written in Talladega.

The Bluesmobile
Pro: It’s got a cop motor, cop tires, cop suspension, cop shocks, and it’s a model made before the catalytic converter.
Con: The giant speaker would impact the car’s tires and overall fuel economy. Plus, the cigarette lighter doesn’t work.

Dragula
Pro: It looks awesome, and it’s made from a coffin, so your family will save on funeral expenses if you wreck it and die.
Con: It’s made of wood, which carries its own set of issues (rot, termites, etc.). Plus, you kinda need to be 7 feet tall to drive it.

The Original Batmobile
Pro: It has the body shape and flourishes of a 1960s sports car with the whole Batman aesthetic topping it off. Many of its features are voice-activated, and it’s pretty much indestructible.
Con: It’s one of the most conspicuous vehicles ever made. And Batman always wonders how his enemies keep finding him.

As you can see, it was an exhaustive effort. No rest for the wicked here at CCHQ. If any readers have cars to add to this list, feel free to comment.

Sir Richard Branson, the bajillionaire behind Verizon Group, has had a few things to say about ethanol recently. And luckily, they weren’t bad. He’s been advocating a switch from corn ethanol to sugar ethanol in light of rising food prices. Normally, we’d question the opinions of a guy who parachuted naked into Times Square to promote a cell phone, but he brought up some interesting points. Sugar ethanol, according to Branson, is “seven times more efficient” than its corny counterpart, plus “you wouldn’t have to eliminate the entire current fleet of cars on the road,” which is a problem some people have foreseen with hydrogen fuel. He also mentions how well Brazil’s sugar plantations could supply the U.S., but we should let them work out their myriad labor issues before singing their praises too loudly. And before Branson gets refitted for his nude suit, parachuting naked into the Distrito Federal on behalf of their working classes will not help matters. It’s probably more shocking to actually wear clothes in Brazil.

But Branson’s not the only one responding to rising food costs. An ethanol processing firm in Kansas is unveiling new technology that would allow its processing facilities to make both food and ethanol. The new tech uses “a dry corn fractionation process” to separate out the corn germ for human food before it gets contaminated by the ethanol production process. Good times. Not as exciting as the first news item, though. We’d better spice it up with some more hot Brazilian girls.

Looks like the only organization that isn’t dumping on ethanol is the USDA. They aren’t completely exonerating it, either, but USDA Under Secretary of Rural Development Thomas Dorr thinks that rising food prices are due more to transportation costs than ethanol production. According to Dorr, “the overall increase in food prices is about 4.5 percent and, at most, 10 percent of that increase is being driven by ethanol,” crediting the remainder of the food price hike to fuel costs. He went on to quote an Iowa State University study saying that “the reduction of the [ethanol production] mandate will have minimal impact on the price of corn,” provided energy prices stay at their current levels.

So yeah, we can make it illegal to do anything with corn beyond eating it off the cob; the prices won’t go down until transport is less expensive. It’s important that we figure out how to develop ethanol from stuff we don’t need elsewhere, but it’s more important to not let the current problems with ethanol production distract us from the need for reliable alternative fuel. Call us paranoid if you must, but it seems like the current flood of media criticism is intended to make people throw up their hands in defeat and just accept that gas is $4 a gallon. Just remember that the world we want for our kids is this, not this.

With ethanol threatened by sways in farm-belt voter opinion and continued food-industry lobbying for the “food before fuel” campaign, more fuel-conscious people are looking towards hybrids for their automotive needs. However, a lot of them are turned off by the price tags - there’s no denying that hybrids carry a higher up-front cost than their gas-guzzling counterparts.

But that might not be the case in the long run; Consumerist reports that hybrid cars are less of an overall expense than regular cars. Notable reasons for this include hybrids retaining more of their value over time, insurance companies offering discounted premiums for hybrids, lenders offering discounted loan rates for hybrids, and tax credits from employers and the government (but only for the first 60,000 vehicles). And, of course, less pain at the gas pump.

Hopefully the media will stop hating on ethanol long enough to point this information out. There’s been a frustrating lack of solutions to the fuel crisis and far too much nervous hand-wringing over how expensive everything is. Of course, all this could change if someone ever finds a reliable, low-cost source of electric corn.

It’s important to keep in mind that, even with all the progress being made in alternative fuels, most of us are still stuck with cars that run on regular gasoline, which might as well be made from orphaned puppies given all the recent bad press about skyrocketing oil prices. This fact begs the question of how to save money and be able to sleep at night knowing how much of your income is flowing into BP’s giant treasure vaults. With this in mind, the Corn Car Fuel Conservation Squad (CCFCS) decided to examine the tried-and-true fuel saving tips we hear on the news all the time. Each tip, as you’ll see, has its own pros and cons.

Cruise Control
Pro: Using cruise “smooths out the driver’s accelerator input by preventing nervous ’surging.’” Basically, it regulates your speed, forcing you to take a long view of the road rather than reacting to everything and burning up gas.
Con: It’s risking death to rely on cruise in mountainous areas, and it can lull drivers into a sense of false security. Like Mariah Carey, they could find themselves “flyin’, driving through yellow lights…ignorin’ every sign of caution that they provide,” and we don’t think anyone reading this wants to turn out like Mariah Carey.

Lower Speed
Pro: This one’s pretty obvious; driving faster uses more gas. Still, the differences in gas mileage between 65 mph and 75 mph are even more than you’d expect.
Con: Good luck convincing everyone else of this. The guys over at Edmunds.com tested this one and reported that “one driver became so irate that he tried to run our editor off the road.” Granted, they’re based in California, but driving slower is still a dodgy prospect.

Biking
Pro: It’s good exercise, doesn’t require fuel at all, is faster than walking, and bike maintenance is way cheaper than anything having to do with cars.
Con: It’s good exercise (Americans are lazy), and hard on the knees. Also, biking has very specific social problems, namely that it turns people into insufferable douchebags who never pay attention to the road and think traffic laws don’t apply to them. Not that we’re bitter.

Removing Excess Weight
Pro: The US Dept. of Energy says that “an extra 100 pounds in your vehicle could reduce your MPG by up to 2%,” but smaller cars can be affected by less weight. Cleaning out your car can do wonders for your tires and your gas mileage.
Con: Remember that “Americans are lazy” thing we talked about? Definitely applies here. Plus, there are other weight issues at hand here.

Flying Car That Runs on Freedom
Pro: It looks awesome and freedom is a cheap, renewable resource that we harvest by voting in open elections and not getting caned for littering.
Con: Hasn’t been invented yet; freedom-distillation technology is still decades away.

Make sure to consider all the facts before deciding which of these tips best suits your lifestyle.

We here at Corn Car (well, this writer, anyway) were pretty sure that - since we’ve made it a point to never eat yogurt or mushrooms - the only uses for fungus were giving Super Mario extra lives and providing ledges/springboards for Toejam and Earl. But ethanol has changed that, with the recent discovery that the fungus Rhizopus microsporus removes solids and organic material from the watery gunk left behind by ethanol production. With that detritus removed, said gunk (also known as stillage) can be recycled back into ethanol production, which hadn’t been feasible before.

Iowa State professor Han van Leeuwen, who’s leading the research project that made this discovery, said that “the process could change ethanol production in dry-grind plants so much that energy costs can be reduced by as much as one-third.” Successful application of the fungus would also reduce ethanol plant water usage, add value and nutrients to the livestock feed produced by ethanol plants, and improve the overall energy balance of ethanol production.

As we’ve stated in previous updates on ethanol production, it’s nice to see this kind of frontier ingenuity applied to things that aren’t computers for a change. We just hope that, should Earth ever reach Peak Fungus, we’ll be able to work out a trade agreement with Planet Funkotron.

We never thought we’d ever say this, but Neil Young made a really good point about hybrid cars. “With all this talk about gas, people are saying we should go to small cars,” he told the Wichita Eagle recently, “but I love big American cars with power. He went on to say that “America is never going to be frugal. It’s too big; the roads are long, the people are big, they like big cars.” The occasion for this musing of his was the conversion, thanks to H-Line Conversions, of his 1959 Lincoln Continental into a hybrid electric car.

God only knows what plugging that beast into his power outlets will do to his electric bill, but he’s right in principle. With the exceptions of cell phones, iPods, and strippers, Americans prefer things on a grander scale. And beyond that, it’s often hard for us to accept function over form in our consumer products; it’s not enough to have an environmentally sound car that gets incredible mileage, we’re going to need something with a certain aesthetic cool factor, too. Seriously, how are we supposed to pick up chicks in this thing?

But we digress. Young is making/has made a documentary about his new electric land whale called Linc-Volt. We’ll be keeping an eye out for it, of course, and suggest you do the same.