Happy new year, all! Sorry about the sparse updates, but it’s been a plague-ridden holiday for the Corn Car crew, what with the pink eye and flu and back problems and all. But it’s a new year, with a lot of challenges ahead for bio/alternative fuels in both economic and legislative terms, and we’ll do our best to keep up with them. Health permitting, of course. We’re not sure what’s been getting everyone sick this winter, but we suspect Freemasons contaminating our drinking water. Hope this isn’t one of those bad omens we keep hearing about. Anyway, keep checking back for more news and insightful commentary from us, and click on the Christmas cob for something a little more uplifting.

We’d summarize it, but the glare from the computer screen is killing us. We’re going to toddle off in search of antibiotics and hope we don’t run into anything pointy or sharp.

3. China (corn). China’s population is both large in number and highly industrious, so it’s surprising that they came up short behind Americans, who are eternally distracted by television, and Brazilians, who are eternally distracted by each other; none of them seem to wear any clothes larger than a bikini for anything except maybe state funerals. But on the other hand, the Chinese only now getting cars on the road en masse, so the lag is understandable. And given recent quality control issues they’ve had, we’ll be happy if they manage to produce ethanol without toxic amounts of lead in it.

4. India (sugarcane). India is another populous, industrious country who should be higher on the list, but they have some of the same issues China does, plus much of their time is spent being yelled at by frustrated Americans calling customer service. Perhaps they should take a page from the West’s playbook and outsource their nightmarish phone bank jobs to an even poorer, less developed country (Myanmar, perhaps?), which would free them up enough to crank out more ethanol.

5. France (sugar beets). France found the perfect, and perhaps only, use for beets, since they’re too disgusting to eat. But they’re still lower than they should be. History suggests surrendering their processing facilities to Germany.

6. Germany (rye). Hey, speak of the devil. The Germans need to find a stock that doesn’t compete with their world-renowned breweries if they want to compete with everyone above them. We’d recommend using waste beer, but we’re pretty sure that doesn’t exist in Germany. Those people will drink anything.

7. Russia (wheat). The assertion that ethanol processing wastes otherwise edible crops might be bunk everywhere else on Earth, but Russia is usually in dire enough straits to run counter to that line of reasoning. Luckily, they have an inexhaustible natural resource - sorrow - that they’ve been exporting across the globe for decades now. If they can somehow distill tears into workable fuel, they’ll be at the top of this list by Valentine’s Day.

8. Canada (corn/wheat). Canada has some pretty sweet oil fields that are still lucrative enough for them to downplay alternative fuel sources. But that won’t last forever, and they’ll probably go through the same stupid alarmism over food prices and crop waste that we had. But with a good portion of their country being a frozen hinterland, they don’t have the same capacity for cellulosic ethanol that we do. Unless they use snow, in which case they’ll kick our Yankee asses.

9. Spain (wheat). Spain’s priorities are tuned more to the electric car - they plan to have a million of them on the road by 2014. That’s probably for the best; their cars can charge in the afternoon while they’re asleep, the lucky bastards.

10. South Africa (??). No one knows what South Africa turns into ethanol. We’re guessing it’s corpses. If so, then stay the course - that’s not a bad allocation of resources for them.

Brazil, we’re certain, is pushing to team up with us because their own ethanol industry was hit by the global credit crunch pretty hard and they need to lean on our (generally speaking) more stable economy. But the more heads we put together on this research, the better, and hopefully the president-elect won’t allow us to depend on foreign ethanol the way we’ve depended on foreign oil in decades past. Plus, America and Brazil are the biggest ethanol producers on the planet, so it was only a matter of time before we combined forces in some capacity. And who knows, maybe their enthusiasm for flex-fuel cars will rub off on us.

Bradley cars, for the uninitiated, included the GT, Scorpion and GT II,  and could be bought as parts to be assembled by the purchaser. LaBorde bought his on eBay, of course, and got help from his hydraulics-repairman dad, but had never built or converted a car before undertaking this project. In fact, he doesn’t see it as much more than a hobby. But hopefully the major automotive companies were paying attention to this, because it will be brought up the next time they complain about the cost or timeliness of electric vehicles.

The economic climate has cast a pretty big shadow on ethanol’s future, and much of the reporting on the subject has been little more than “I-told-you-so” juvenile glee; the Wall Street Journal blogs, for example, ran a story on Nov. 3rd about how ethanol has already washed up dead on the beach, and only a total nincompoop wouldn’t have seen this coming. Hell, the reporter sounds happier about diminishing ethanol investment than her own sources do.

The Globe and Mail was even less objective, celebrating the news that “an industry that should never have thrived is getting its comeuppance.” The headline for their item is “Ethanol producers’ unworthy heyday finally over,” just in case anyone didn’t know where they stood on the issue. We’re surprised they didn’t include a picture of their editorial staff setting fire to a heap of corn cobs, their middle fingers extended towards the camera.

Neither item considers cellulosic ethanol and the huge strides made in its development as a legitimate biofuel, and the Globe and Mail clings onto the “ethanol raises food prices” fallacy, while shaking its fist at the ethanol lobby as though oil companies never have their phone calls returned from DC. They’re right that ethanol is on shaky ground, like many other industries are, but to ignore any and all advances made in favor of resistance based on vastly overstated data is absurd. So if you meet any of these people on the bus or something, send them here. And link them to this recent ethanol study while you’re at it.

If we can indulge our self-interest for just a minute, this is also a pivotal moment for ethanol, and biofuels in general. The economy has hit the ethanol industry hard (which we’ll post about later in the week), and while Obama has pledged his support for continuing to develop the technology, only time will tell what resources, if any, he can put towards this goal. But unless the Green Party or a similar organization can put together a coherent, workable plan for sustaining ethanol production (which isn’t likely), Obama’s all we’ve got.

Here’s to a good 4 years.

They’ll be happy to know, then, that hybrid cabs in San Francisco “had passed 300,000 miles of use with no problems.” Not only that, but the cabs’ regenerative braking system extends brake life by three orders of magnitude. In California, “hybrid batteries are warranted for 10 years or 150,000 miles, which is presumed to be the life of the vehicle,” and San Francisco Taxicab Commission president Paul Gillespie says that of his 182 hybrid battery packs, only two have been replaced since hybrid cabs were introduced to San Francisco, and one was due to driver error. He also brought up the fuel savings that had won over skeptical drivers – the city estimated a $9,000/year drop in transportation costs since introducing hybrid cabs.

Not that traffic or road conditions are the same in San Fran as they are in New York, but cab drivers keep a pretty grueling schedule in most major cities, and so far the hybrids are performing exceptionally. Besides, we’ve never actually seen traffic move in New York, so it’s safe to say that they’re overreacting just a little bit.

1. Offshore drilling - According to McCain, there are “21 billion barrels of proven oil reserves” that are sitting untapped, thanks to the 1981 ban on offshore exploration. According to him, “it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs,” adding that “it is time to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.”

Of course, we wouldn’t see any oil from those reserves for at least 10 years, so we don’t really know how much, if anything, we would save from their inclusion a decade from now. Plus, oil companies are already sitting on unexplored, leased land, and we think it’s safe to say that the cure for America’s crippling oil dependence isn’t oil. Christ, even other offshore drilling supporters think we should ramp up our ethanol production. But luckily, McCain has other ideas, such as…

2. Nuclear power - If there’s one thing that McCain loves more than talking about Vietnam, it’s nuclear power. He’s said that “the experience of nations across Europe and Asia has shown that nuclear energy is efficient. It is safe, it is proven, and it is essential to America’s energy future.” And we agree that tightly regulated, well-overseen nuclear power facilities contribute much to the countries they serve, but given the tone of McCain’s pro-business rhetoric, the invisible hand of the free market will probably end up with several extra fingers; until the government proves that it’s learned from what happened when Enron and other private energy companies were allowed to police themselves, we’re not comfortable pushing them ahead of other alternative energy sources.

There’s also the question of where to store the waste; according to McCain, Arizona is not an option.

3. Coal - McCain has obviously never seen coal beyond a barbecue pit, because he has a serious jones for the stuff, claiming that clean coal will dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can understand this to a certain extent, because states like West Virginia depend on coal mining, and McCain wants those people to vote against their own interests for him. But clean coal is an expensive technology still mired in development, which are two of his complaints about ethanol, and regular coal is simply disgusting. He’ll have to do better than this as a serious solution to our energy woes. Clearly, he’s considering…

4. Magic - It’s an inexhaustible resource that only a small number of gifted people can channel and distribute, which limits the impact that growing nations like India and China would have on its availability. And it’s also pretty much the only feasible way to fund any plank in McCain’s energy platform, unless one of our readers can suggest how to build dozens of fully operational nuclear plants in enough time to supplement current energy usage, or drill off the coast of California without damaging the shoreline and local ecosystem. Seriously, comment if you have any ideas.

So there you have it! Oh, and since McCain is so fond of bringing up his record, here it is. Have fun taking him seriously after reading through it.