Lots of manly car chat in this update, but first here’s an amusing hater from Townhall.com - it’s clear from his directionless rant about cap and trade (and Obama, and unions, and all the usual GOP scapegoats) that David Harsanyi doesn’t really understand what he’s angry about. Not that it’s impossible to rationally oppose wind and solar power, but he clearly has no grasp of them beyond their convenience as buzzwords. Guys like this would get in the way if they weren’t so retarded.

Among actual adults, however, there’s a lot to talk about. Arizona’s electric car enthusiasts are soon to benefit from a $99.8 million stimulus-act grant that will help local company Ecotality Inc. roll out 12,000 charging stations and show people how to use them once the Nissan Leaf hits the streets later on this year. Whether or not Mexican residents will be allowed to drive them remains to be seen.

The Leaf won’t be the only option with a sissy name, though. Norwegian electric car maker THINK is $40 million closer to expanding operations to North America, and has plans to start production at its U.S. plant in Elkhart, Indiana next year. THINK cars are currently assembled in Finland. We didn’t get retail prices from THINK, but they’re probably (and hopefully) less than the current $50,000 tag on Toyota’s first hydrogen car. Not exactly the best way to deflate criticism that hydrogen car research is too expensive, but Toyota reps are insistent that “production cost should be covered within the price of the vehicle.” At least they understand that they have to cut that price in half before making any serious pushes to sell these things in America - we have enough reasons to hate rich people already without their cars getting fancier.

And with that, we must dash, but it’s good to see electric cars and similar tech. gaining momentum despite laughable resistance from guys like Harsanyi. Seriously, “three-cornered-hat-wearing Visigoths?” What a tool.

FINALLY.

As our faithful readers all know, Corn Car is concerned that talk of hybrid and alt.-fueled cars can get bogged down in retarded semantics about how impractical, ugly, expensive, and otherwise untenable they are when compared to regular cars. Now, we’ve already shared some ideas about how to appeal to consumers, but what about the auto industry? They’re the ones making the things, after all, and right now they’re stonewalling; they claim economic woes, but they’ve been achingly slow to progress beyond standard engines anyway. How do you reach people who both hate and fear change? Here are some ideas:

1. Require that some of their bailout money be spent on alt. fuels research. Auto manufacturers have been working the treasury like a slot machine for a while now. So have many troubled industries, of course, but they haven’t been as stupidly run as Detroit for the past couple of decades. Instead of just giving the auto industry money to continue making the same poor decisions and short-sighted mistakes it’s been making, which includes stalling on hybrid/electric car development, hang some conditions on those bailouts. They’re no strangers to extortion, so use it against them (in a purely legislative sense of course) to start building better cars that make use of newer technology.

2. Explain that they’ll have to hire people to build these cars. Hybrid vehicles have two motors and a bevy of electronics to power them, and electric cars make use of special batteries, and these will require a sizable investment, both in money and manpower. New people will have to be hired to build these things, in other words, and the employment opportunities created therein would be positive for both the industry’s image and precarious karmic balance. They’ll also need more technicians to design, install, and improve the electronic parts. The nostalgic, Ford plant assembly line imagery of a previous era might be gone for good, but the notion of the auto industry as a steady employer whose presence in the community is a net positive isn’t dead. It just needs an update.

3. Explore the marketing potential. American auto companies are currently lampooned as being outdated, irrelevant, and permanent silver medalists at best behind their Japanese competitors. By seizing new technology and developing it to its fullest potential, automakers can rebrand themselves as cutting-edge innovators with a legitimate hand in bringing the future to consumers. “Hybrid, electric, and flex-fuel cars began with science,” they can say, “but it took our industrial know-how to put them in your driveway.” Pair that with some plaintive acoustic guitar in the background and maybe a couple of happy blond children running through a cornfield and you’ve got yourself an ad. Hey, laugh all you want, it’s no worse than this Ford Edge spot.

4. Explain the bit about hiring new workers again, but with graphs and sock puppets. Auto industry executives, as history has shown, can be alarmingly dense. Thankfully, that’s nothing an informative puppet show can’t solve. Seriously. One of the interns explained the Biot-Savart Law to us over lunch that way. Amazing stuff.

5. Threaten to awaken Dread Cthulhu. We’re not sure what the current diplomatic relationship is between America and R’lyeh, but it’s certainly true that Japan, with Godzilla, Mothra, and Mecha-Godzilla at its disposal, has unleashed unimaginably horrific monstrosities upon itself more than once to spur production and lend additional incentive to its lagging industries. They do it without prior warning, but we, as the leaders of the free world, owe more to our citizenry. Simply letting Detroit know that we can harness the power of Cthulhu should be more than enough to get them back to the ol’ drawing board.

We’ll have more to add at a later date, but feel free to comment with any thoughts you might have. And keep away from Dunwich, just in case we have to resort to #5.

The year is 1978. The Cold War rages on, artificial insulin has just been invented, the city of Cleveland goes bankrupt under the temperamental eye of then-mayor Dennis Kucinich, and the world sees both the tragic death of Keith Moon and the equally tragic birth of Ashton Kutcher. And, weirdly enough, Jack Nicholson was driving a hydrogen car. Probably while wearing flared pants and a shirt with lapels large enough to threaten commercial aviation, and his bit about the car “revolutionizing suicide” due to the lack of poisonous exhaust fumes was in poor taste, but this is still pretty amazing. Even moreso than those taffy-thick Canadian accents. Yikes.

Returning to 2009, Daniel Sperling appeared on The Daily Show recently to explain the government’s role in advancing fuel-efficient cars. Sperling didn’t have too many nice things to say about corn ethanol, claiming that it doesn’t do much for climate change and that the money would be better spent on electric cars, but the more interesting portion of this interview was his explanation of what has kept electric/hybrid/hydrogen cars from rocketing into the mainstream; the technology is well on its way, but the auto and fuel industries (and consumers of course) need to accept it, and the government is the mediator between those two forces. We hadn’t really thought about it that way, but that does make a lot of sense and, really, that smacks of Obama’s approach to the issue. In our next post, we’ll suggest ways for the government to sweet-talk Big Industry into accepting flex-fuel cars, but feel free to comment if you have ideas of your own.

So a lot of ethanol source ideas are being thrown around these days, and while we’re happy with where current research is headed, the current dialogue boils down to corn v. switchgrass with very little deviation. Are there possibilities that we’re overlooking? Here are five suggestions we haven’t heard much about, along with some thoughts as to why.

Chocolate
Projected benefits: Aside from the basic idea sounding awesome, there’s tons of sugar in chocolate that can be converted into ethanol. Plus, chocolate smells way better than gas and the fumes aren’t nearly as bad for you.
Why it’s not happening: R&D is steering away from dual-use fuel sources like corn and sugar, and byproducts thereof. And that’s not considering the effect of menopausal women or World of Warcraft players on market prices and general availability.

Semen
Projected benefits: It’s plentiful, and the extraction process is really fun. And the water in semen can probably be put to good use through electrolysis.
Why it isn’t happening: No one is comfortable with the adult entertainment industry seizing this as a marketing tool. Besides, any halfway-serious endorsement of this idea would get you murdered in your sleep by Pat Robertson.

Pot
Projected benefits: It has 4 times the cellulose value of corn, and it can be grown anywhere by pretty much anyone. If some crazed ex-hippie whose brain is pretty much a shapeless clump of malted hops and bong resin can grow it on the side of a mountain, it shouldn’t be too hard for career farmers in Iowa to integrate into their crop rotation.
Why it isn’t happening: You know that crazed ex-hippie we just talked about? Well multiply him by several thousand. That’s the marijuana legalization movement; an unreliable coalition of college kids and glassy-eyed heshers who can’t package their brilliant ideas in a way that appeals to anyone. They’re like NRA members, only less motivated.

Urine
Projected benefits: It’s sterile, easy to come by, and the extraction process is simple, if lacking the thrills of semen extraction. Plus, it’s already been shown that we can power batteries with the ions found in urine, and apparently BMWs use it to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Why it isn’t happening: Gas stations are unpleasant enough, ya know?

Hydrogen
Projected Benefits: Hydrogen fuel cells are more efficient than internal combustion engines and don’t produce harmful emissions.
Why it isn’t happening: We’re still putting more energy into fuel cell production than we’re getting from the results. Also, certain faults of hydrogen, relevant to the topic or not, are still very much alive in the public consciousness.

And, we’re spent! Readers, feel free to suggest things we’ve missed.

Purdue University engineers have developed a method that uses aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water to be used to power fuel cells or combustion engines. This could be a replacement for gasoline. Imagine that, replacing gasoline with water?

 Read all about it here.