Toyota pours a little cold water on ethanol (video)

Monsanto has had a good quarter from all the corn seed being purchased now in preparation for planting what many farmers, investors and political leaders -- including Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm -- hope will be the beginnings of an ethanol boom to run all the new alternative-fuel vehicles out there.

But Bill Reinert, Toyota's head of alternative fuel vehicles, poured a little cold water on the ethanol frenzy during a forum at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

For more information, see Rust Belt Blues:
http://rustbeltblues.blogspot.com/2007/06/michigan-craves-corn-and-i-dont-car...

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• ethanol
• cars
• energy
• toyota

[aaronready1]

BS....

[RattlerBK]

@pontepreta1965

I thought ol' Henry Ford first experimented with ethanol in internal combustion engines. Whether he made a patent on anything regarding it, I don't know.

[brianninneman]

Water? Ethanol production 'borrows' approx 3 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol.  Most of this water is released back into the atmosphere as steam. A typical 40 million gallon per year ethanol plant uses on a daily basis abou the same amount of water as an 18 hole golf course. By the way, 1 Sunday newspaper requires 280 gallons of water or 1 pound of paper requires 100 gallons of water.

[pontepreta1965]

America have been stealing patents all their life, including the atomic bomb. read my review on ethanol and then you can understand a little better about sugarcane ethanol. have a good day and peace.

[pontepreta1965]

Ethanol from sugarcane can be made in Florida,Alabama,Lousiana and Texas. All you need is rainwater and u can get up to 3000 gallons per acre. Corn only up to 600 gallons per acre and 3 gallons of water for every gallon of corn ethanol. Also you can make ethanol from switchgrass and anything else. My car in Brazil runs on both gas and pure ethanol. My brother's car also run on natural gas. It's 10% slower but the mileage it gets it's unreal, twice of gasoline... and cheaper...

[Juliusno1776]

This guy is not telling the truth. Corn for cattle feed and ethanol is DRY LAND corn. You don't use irrigation for feeder corn.

A better way to make all the ethanol we need is feed primary treated waste water to cattails. tinyurl com/56rrda

Only 20 million acres, free water, free fertilizer. Not one acre of prime crop land needed. 150 Billion gallons net as methane and ethanol.

[Sojaofdapepo]

distill ocean water, with energy from a free source!

[vmp777777]

Toyota is heavily leveraged toward technologies other than ethanol. Of course they are going to be against it.

The key is to diversify our fuel supply. Ethanol will never replace oil but when you can drive up to a gas station and choose between 5 types of fuel is when competition will force oil prices lower.

[dcat13]

Big oil pays big money to tell big (BS) things about ethanol.

I have a friend in Brazil, his truck and tractor runs on ethanol. He is not in the ethanol production but he makes the fuel from left overs from his farm. He modified his vehicles himself to run almost entirely on ethanol.

[Shultzgti]

I have been holding this idea inside for almost 2 years. The solution to our energy needs is right in front of us and it can be commoditized(Mr. CEO gets a big woody)

When we harvest trees we scrap the needles. If we could harvest the needles from evergreens we would have a good source of alternative energy.