This hasn’t been a good winter for a lot of people, but Tesla Motors has had a particularly rough 2010 so far. First they cease operations on their Roadster, then three of their employees die when their plane crashed into high-tension power lines. CEO Elon Musk identified the three victims of the crash as “plane owner and pilot Doug Bourn, 56…Brian Finn, a 42-year-old senior interactive electronics manager…and electrical engineer Andrew Ingram.” Finn reportedly lived a couple of blocks away from the crash site; Doug Bourn “shared responsibility for the design and testing of the power electronics module for the Roadster.”

Since we’ve covered Tesla in the past, and rooted for them as a potential developer of mass-market electric vehicles, we at Corn Car send our condolences to the families and friends of Doug Bourn, Brian Finn, and Andrew Ingram.

Good news and bad news to start off the week. The bad news is that the Tesla Roadster, one of the sweetest electric cars ever built, won’t be built for much longer - according to Eco Auto Ninja, “the Tesla Roadster will cease to be produced in 2011 for the simple reason that Tesla won’t have anywhere to build the high-end electric sports car.” So if you were planning on getting one, uh, now’s the time. It’s a shame, not only because it’s something else for electric car haters to gloat about, but we wanted to see those Roadsters take off just for Elon Musk’s response. He’s more than weird enough to have delivered something hilarious.

But the good news is that GM is setting up electric motor production in, of all places, Baltimore. It’ll create around 200 jobs, which we desperately need, and it puts GM in the enviable position of being the only US electric car manufacturer to build its own engines. Apparently the Baltimore plant will be used to build “a new version of GM’s two-mode hybrid system destined for pickups, SUVs and rear-wheel drive cars,” which means they’re refining their current, heavier model into a better fit for consumers. They picked a good city for this, too - despite its other problems, Baltimore is making a lot of big steps towards sustainable living.

But that leads us to wonder: what other cities could use a shot in the arm from green industry, and which ones are the best prepared? Sounds like a list idea to us…

Hello? Is this thing on? We’ve been without Internet for a couple of days, but it looks like we’re back, and with a stronger Mbps rate, to boot. We’ve also been slacking on the cool, eco-friendly things Baltimore has been doing as of late, so let’s pause for an update.

Before Mayor Dixon resigned, the city introduced a fleet of DesignLine 2009 EcoSaver buses called the Charm City Circulator as part of an on-going plan to revitalize the city’s public trans., and there’s lots of rooftop gardening and urban sustainability projects going on locally, as well. B’More Green, the Baltimore Sun’s environmental blog, brought up a recent interview with Gov. O’Malley where he talked about doing more to strengthen solar power development and offer tax breaks for electric cars. The article also mentions the major budget crunch hampering many of the state’s green efforts, so who knows how far any of O’Malley’s plans will go. Hopefully he’ll do better for Baltimore as a governor than a mayor, not that we have much room to complain about his mayoral legacy in light of our current, rudderless City Hall.
But before we all go patting ourselves on the back about eco-friendliness, there’s also a story about how far the city still has to go: turns out local woman Maxine Taylor was cited last year for “having a driveway and parking pad made out of wood chips.” The city’s zoning codes still insist that parking areas have to be “dustless” asphalt, brick, concrete or stone block,” even as Baltimore’s Sustainability Plan hopes to engage residents in making the city a cleaner, greener place. Oops.

We’ll stop here, just short of jinxing our repaired Internet connection, but we’ll post again later in the week.

We’re back, as promised, with more book suggestions for our dedicated readership. Most fiction with an alt. fuels focus is sci-fi, so we’re not sure what to tell you if that’s not your thing. But if you’re reading a biofuels/alt. energy blog, you’re essentially telling the world that it is, so we’re not worried about insulting anyone with more traditionally literary tastes.

First up is Ben Bova’s Powersat; Bova has always been pro-space exploration, and this book’s plot hinges around “a terrorist conspiracy…to sabotage Astro [Corporation]’s plans to put satellites in geosynchronous orbit capable of beaming solar energy in microwave form to earth.” Bonus: the villains have ties to oil barons. Bova isn’t the most sophisticated writer on earth, but his science is plausible and he’s certainly a passionate environmentalist, to the point that he was hired as a consultant for Repo Men.

Along the same lines is Fallout!, by Lawrence Dunning; it’s about a disgruntled, drug addict scientist who plans to blow up a nuclear power plant near Denver. Yeah. Not exactly Gravity’s Rainbow, but what can ya do? Anyway, said scientist and another character discuss the pros of combined solar/wind energy around page 170, and lament the campaign against considering energy sources beyond petroleum and nuclear power. Don’t we know it.

Moving on, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sixty Days and Counting has a plot devoted to the issue of global warming and resource scarcity - as Publisher’s Weekly puts it, “time will tell if the world has both the scientific know-how and the political will to reverse the ongoing rush toward an ecological precipice.” Discussions of environmental science abound without killing momentum in favor of a shiny hardware exhibition (an unfortunate tendency of hard sci-fi), and the idea that a Buddhist liberal eco-dork (the main character) could be elected president ever is just precious.

Finally, Lyle Estill’s Biodiesel Power: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel isn’t a novel, but it does focus on the people in the biodiesel movement, exploring tensions between grass-roots activists/co-ops and their agribusiness counterparts. It also touches on ethanol’s technical properties, but this is much more of a Howard Zinn treatment of the subject than ethanol usually gets.

So there you have it. That oughta keep everyone busy for a while, us included. We’ll be back on Tuesday with some news updates, and maybe a movie recommendation or two if we can think of any.

Well, while Democrats try to force the global warming bill through the Senate and Republicans threaten to kill it in committee with a boycott, F.O. Licht’s World Ethanol 2009 12th annual conference is being held in Paris this week. Countries like the United States, Brazil, India, France, and Nigeria are being represented and sharing their views on global ethanol development. One of our representatives, Renewable Fuels Association CEO/President Bob Dinneen,  will look at “expanding ethanol markets and addressing unsubstantiated claims about the environmental impact of ethanol.” So at least SOMEONE can address the topic like an adult.

Meanwhile, the rest of us get Barbara Boxer and George Voinovich interrupting each other over a retarded semantics disagreement and conservative pundits smearing anyone who speaks up about the issue as a fanatic hippie moonbat. And that’s not even counting the Midwestern contingent who can’t debate this issue for more than ten seconds without tripping over their own dicks trying to monopolize it for political points.

Anyway, now that we’ve thoroughly bummed ourselves out, we’re gonna stop here and hope for the best. But we need something to cheer us up. Some hot chicks posing next to an electric car should do it.

Wow, sorry to be gone so long! We were celebrating a couple of birthdays over here and were, uh, distracted from biofuels ever so briefly. And, honestly, that’s still the case somewhat. But! They Might Be Giants have a track from their upcoming album (titled Hooray For Science) called “Electric Car.” Apparently the band is quite taken by electric cars; according to their manager, they feel that “the electric car is more efficient in terms of the total spend and has a long history that dates back to the turn of the century.” However, no one in the TMBG camp has ruled out biofuels, as they don’t know which alt. fuel technology will win out. A healthy attitude if ever we’ve heard one!

To watch the cool video for “Electric Car,” click the Corn Car logo! We’ll be back later on with a more substantive update, and hopefully we won’t still be wearing party hats. Or these.

As a follow-up to our last post about Obama’s electric car support, here’s an article from the Christian Science Monitor that makes an interesting point: many of the companies receiving federal money under the President’s initiative are battery manufacturers. Most electric and hybrid car batteries are foreign-made, even in cars assembled here, and Obama doesn’t want batteries to become the new oil, an import-only resource that leaves us dependent on other countries and colors our international relations. Not saying there will be battery wars or anything, but it is important that we produce at least some of these technological components here.

Although if there were battery wars, we hope America would seize control of the Giant Energizer Bunny before our enemies did.

In an effort to combine staving off economic woes with his pledge to continue bolstering alt. fuel efforts, President Obama has announced $2.4 billion in grants, divided among 25 states, to develop next-generation electric cars and recreational vehicles.
Obama made this announcement in Elkhart County, Indiana, an area that he’s adopted as a weathervane for his administration’s effectiveness; Elkhart jumped from under 10% unemployment to nearly 20% in a year, which has spurred the president to pay them a visit and let them know that he will do his best to make sure no new Detroits are birthed from the recession. This current idea of his promises to encourage new investments, create jobs, and continue greening up the American lifestyle. We’re glad he’s tying all those strings together, because as nice as platitudes about a greener world are, they don’t mean anything without funding behind them. And these technologies could - and should - be a way to revitalize struggling communities without propping up failed industries or creating new company towns around them.

Here’s a list of the grant recipients in PDF format, and just for fun, here’s what Obama was telling Elkhart County a year ago, during his campaign for the presidency:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

We’ve posted about China’s embrace of alternative fuel sources before; clean coal and widespread electric car usage are but two of their longterm energy goals. But China’s protectionism concerning its energy program is starting to worry the rest of the world, particularly Europe and the US.

For example, China built the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing industry and exported nearly everything they made to the West, but 80% of the equipment in China’s first solar power plant is required to be made in China. Their government also denied wind turbine contracts to every multinational company that submitted a bid, often for unclear reasons. But what comes off at first as just more Chinese bureaucratic arrogance is, in fact, heavy investment in domestic renewable energy industries. Whether they’ll agree to reductions in greenhouse gases is anyone’s guess, but they’re certainly committed to greener energy consumption at a national level.

Which is more than can be said for America. Like the labor movement, the energy debate is being hampered by stupid bickering. In response to President Obama’s call to update the grid by installing new power lines where solar and wind farms can be built. The best spot for these is widely considered to be the Midwest, where there’s tons of empty land waiting to be put to use. So of course, an influential coalition of East Coast governors and power companies…is…trying to block a mandate for transcontinental lines” because they don’t want their constituencies to miss out on the economic opportunities of solar/wind farm construction. And this isn’t even considering energy companies who like a weak grid because it means they can charge more in remote areas, or the Cato Institute types who suggest a “free market” solution, whatever that would be.

One of our readers made a good point on this subject; this divergence between American and China officially shuts up anyone who claims that “the Chinese and the Indians don’t take investing in renewable energy seriously.” They do. And they’re banking on U.S. complacency to allow them to dominate a burgeoning renewables market. In other words, we’d better get started on that Urinator.

Wow! Sorry we were gone for so long, but we decided to take a long holiday with our respective families and celebrate America’s birth by blowing up small chunks of it with fireworks. There was also environmentally responsible barbecuing. But there were also some alt. fuel developments while we were away, so it’s time for us to play catch-up.

First off, genetically-modified corn crop Corn Amylase has proven to be a boon for ethanol producers - specifically grown for fuel, it “borrows a heat-resistant protein from deep-sea bacteria to produce a kernel easily converted to ethanol without adding expensive enzymes.” It’s also been deemed safe for human consumption by the FDA and EPA, although Frankenfood skeptics are still wary of what would happen if Corn Amylase got mixed up with conventional grain to wreak havoc on processed foods. Can’t say there’s a big chance of that happening, given the separation between ethanol and food processing facilities, but after the Starlink Incident in 2000, the concern is understandable. Syngenta, the makers of Corn Amylase, intends to only grow the stuff in “closed-loop” settings, thereby removing it from any contact with traditional grain supplies.

Stepping away from corn fuel, the makers of Google’s G1 phone - not content with Google merely being a major investor in Tesla Motors - are developing an autonomous, self-driving car with “a glass-walled-like seating area on four hidden wheels” and no steering column, brake pedal, or driver’s seat. And since such a sleek, modern futuremobile needs a fitting name, they’re calling it the…ATNMBL? Really? Wow. Slicker than owl shit, those Google folks. The reason for this curious concept is the designers’ opinion that “today’s car industry is brainwashed by its own car culture,” which is an interesting point, but also an uphill marketing battle. Corn Car agrees with Neil Young about the car culture not being an inherently bad or wasteful thing, and that it can be tailored to fit environmentally safe ideas. Whether or not the ATNMBL fits that theory remains to be seen, but selling it as “a space for living” isn’t a good start - Americans have enough of those already.

And finally, McDonalds’ food might not be environmentally safe, but their company is getting there. They announced plans to open their first green restaurant this month in - of all places - Cary, North Carolina. A green McDonalds restaurant means not only eco-friendly materials, but electric vehicle charging stations. Not a bad idea at all, and I can see this really catching on with Sonic, whose car parks could be turned into charging stations so customers could order and eat while refueling. Plus, we love their chili cheese tots.