At the Renewable Fuels Association conference in Florida, GM’s Vice Chairman for Global Product Development, Tom Stephens, said that GM is investing significant amounts of money into making their vehicles compatible with high blends of ethanol in the U.S. market, but that the large majority of those vehicles won’t be able to take advantage of their flex-fuel capability because the ethanol fueling infrastructure in the U.S. is drastically lagging.
“Today’s there’s 2,200 ethanol fuel stations that are out there but that’s not enough,” said Stephens. “Two-thirds of the pumps are concentrated in 10 states and those 10 states have only about 19 percent of the flex-fuel vehicles that we have on the road.” Not surprisingly, all of those states are located in the Midwest, the current heartland of ethanol production due to the fact that nearly all of our ethanol comes from corn right now—although that will hopefully be changing.
This lack of fueling stations is a “big problem” for GM because half of GM’s vehicle lineup will be able to run on E85 (85% ethanol/15%gasoline) by the 2012 model year, said Stephens. “GM is spending about $100 million a year adding flex-fuel capability to our vehicles,” he added. “We can’t afford to leave this capital stranded.”
Currently there are about 160,000 gasoline stations in the U.S.. According to Stephens, there also need to be 12,000 or more ethanol stations so that every American can have access to E85 within “2 miles of where they live,” adding, “So, we’ve got some work to do there to get the additional 10,000 pumps in.”
Stephens didn’t address how these additional pumps would be paid for, saying only that government support would be needed. Given that the Obama administration and the EPA recently released new rules to spur an increase in U.S. ethanol capacity, it seems that GM will have the political support they need.
One other item of note: Tony Posawatz, a Volt exec, also remarked that the initial model year of the upcoming Chevy Volt will not be E85 flex-fuel capable as previously speculated, but that GM was working to finalize the emissions specs for an E85 capable Volt in the near future. Seems like a cop out to me. Is it really that hard to add E85 capability to the Volt’s generator? It isn’t rocket science.
What’s very strange about this statement by Posawatz is that as recently as last October, GM was putting out press releases saying that the Volt “can extend its overall range to more than 300 miles with its flex fuel-powered 1.4L engine-generator.” In fact, GM was so abuzz over the fact that the Volt’s range extender flex-fuel engine would be built in Flint, MI, that I find it hard to believe Posawatz is correct. So which is it GM? Flex-fuel Volt or not?
I have a call into GM to find out what the real story is here. I’ll update as I find out more.
Update: I got the skinny from GM, you can read more about it here.
Source: GM-Volt | Image Credit: GM
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Corn ethanol is more environmentally destructive than gasoline. Your continued promotion of it seems misplaced. There is no cellulosic source:
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2010/02/broken-promises-from-range-fuels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+R-squared+%28R-Squared%29
Russ,
Actually, the debate over whether or not corn ethanol is more destructive than gasoline is far from over. The EPA/USDA/DOE just released the most thorough analysis of biofuels to date, and concluded that any new corn ethanol plants that are built can easily provide a 20% improvement in emissions over fossil fuels and have required that they do. We currently use and produce about 11-12 billion gallons of biofuels per year in this country. A very small percentage of them are powered with coal power. When you hear statistics that say corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline, more than likely those arguments are using the coal fired ethanol plants as a reference–and certainly coal fired ethanol plants are much worse for the environment than gasoline (54% worse to be exact, according to the EPA). The majority of our current ethanol facilities are powered with natural gas and other, cleaner burning fuels. Given the current record yields the corn industry is seeing, all of those plants that don’t use coal are producing ethanol that have better emissions, and cradle-to-grave energy use characteristics than gasoline. The new EPA rules and the RFS2 require that we are producing 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. Of that 36 billion gallons, 21 billion gallons of them will have to provide at least a 50% GHG reduction over gasoline. So you can see that if those are the regulatory requirements, certainly using biofuels will be better than gasoline.
You can read more about my feelings regarding biofuels here:
http://gas2.org/2010/02/04/breaking-down-the-obama-biofuel-plan/
Corn ethanol is more environmentally destructive than gasoline. Your continued promotion of it seems misplaced. There is no cellulosic source:
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2010/02/broken-promises-from-range-fuels.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+R-squared+%28R-Squared%29
Russ,
Actually, the debate over whether or not corn ethanol is more destructive than gasoline is far from over. The EPA/USDA/DOE just released the most thorough analysis of biofuels to date, and concluded that any new corn ethanol plants that are built can easily provide a 20% improvement in emissions over fossil fuels and have required that they do. We currently use and produce about 11-12 billion gallons of biofuels per year in this country. A very small percentage of them are powered with coal power. When you hear statistics that say corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline, more than likely those arguments are using the coal fired ethanol plants as a reference–and certainly coal fired ethanol plants are much worse for the environment than gasoline (54% worse to be exact, according to the EPA). The majority of our current ethanol facilities are powered with natural gas and other, cleaner burning fuels. Given the current record yields the corn industry is seeing, all of those plants that don’t use coal are producing ethanol that have better emissions, and cradle-to-grave energy use characteristics than gasoline. The new EPA rules and the RFS2 require that we are producing 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. Of that 36 billion gallons, 21 billion gallons of them will have to provide at least a 50% GHG reduction over gasoline. So you can see that if those are the regulatory requirements, certainly using biofuels will be better than gasoline.
You can read more about my feelings regarding biofuels here:
http://gas2.org/2010/02/04/breaking-down-the-obama-biofuel-plan/