AutoblogGreen

It'll be a long, long while (if ever) before the diesel market in the U.S. is anywhere near as big as it is in Europe, but if the European automakers have their way, we'll all be at least test driving oil burners sooner rather than later. As the Audi Mileage Marathon shows, diesel vehicles are a solid way to travel and the diesel push continues with the Mercedes-Benz BlueTEC diesels that are arriving at dealers nationwide this week.

Introduced in New York earlier this year, the three SUVs - the ML320, GL320 and R320 - feature MB's 50-state BlueTEC clean-diesel technology. While these vehicles are not cheap, the IRS saw fit to grant them tax credits of up to $1,800 for having "Advanced Lean Burn Technology." Mercedes announced that 750 BlueTEC vehicles are now in dealer hands. If you're interested in taking a test drive in one of these, there's good reason to: Mercedes-Benz USA will give $100 to The Nature Conservancy's Adopt an Acre program in each tester's name.

[Source: Mercedes-Benz USA]

Representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy and the USDA were present at the Platts Cellulosic Ethanol conference in Chicago last week and put the national government's biofuel efforts into perspective. Valri Lightner, of the Biomass Program at the DOE, and William Hagy III, deputy administrator of business programs USDA Rural Development, each spoke for about 20 minutes and

Lightner said the DOE's Biomass Program mission statement is to find ways to use biomass to produce fuel, products and power. The short term goal is to have cost-competitive cellulosic ethanol (i.e., a cost of $1.33 to make a gallon by 2012), while the mid-term goal is to have sustainable biofuel production by 2017. There are a lot of bioenergy crop trials going on right now – switchgrass, sorghum, and more – as you can see in the map above and in this map. The DOE plans to help push down the cost of feedstock logistics from $60/dry ton to $46/dry ton by 2012. Meanwhile, the DOE also wants to lower the cost of biochemical conversion from $1.60 a gallon in FY 2007 to $0.82 in 2012. The department also announced last week that it will soon focus on pyrolysis.

This post continues after the jump.

Stretching from Denver to Las Vegas, the third wave of the Audi Mileage Marathon has, I believe, the most beautiful landscape views of the 4,700 mile cross-America journey. Lucky for me, this is the leg that I'm participating in. I've been assigned an Audi A3 2.0 TDI and for the first day - Denver to Durango - my partner (Don Bufamanti of Autospies) - and I did OK, not great, on the mpg challenge. We averaged 44.4 mpg and 56 mph, which was beat by the other A3 team of Royal Ford and Lauren Fix, who managed 44.7 mpg and 59 mph. I'd like to say that our day two numbers will be better, but I fully expect them to be much worse. I came down with a terrible case of the flu (or something) in Durango and so we high-tailed to Sedona. Correction, Don drove while I slept and tried to ignore the upset feeling in my stomach. So much for getting to see the scenery. Perhaps the Sedona to Vegas leg will be where we make up some mpg. We'll get our day two numbers soon. Stay tuned.


Our travel and lodging for this media event was provided by the manufacturer.

OK, tell me who isn't on a mileage marathon these days? We're still rocking the Audi trip, and the Peugots and the Corvette were busy in the UK with the ALD event. Meanwhile, we get a note from Toyota that their fleet has "dominated" the ALD World MPG Marathon. ToMoCo's definition of dominating is that a Yaris got the highest overall fuel economy while an Aygo got the highest mileage with a petrol engine.

The numbers are pretty astounding: the Yaris, driven by Andrew Andersz and Gary Luton, got 84.66 mpg while James Sutherland and Richard Hill piloted the Aygo to 82.39 mpg. I'm not sure what, if any, modifications were allowed to the vehicles in this event, but you've got to admit that 80+ mpg is awful impressive, even if those are Imperial gallons.

[Source: Toyota]

Drive your electric SUV to the lake while towing a pontoon EV? We're getting closer to this image of a pure electron-driven traditional American summer weekend with a pair of new electric boat motors by SolidNav. The company has announced a new "green" line of motors, designed for sailboats and small watercraft. There are two motors in the line up: the Explorer (pictured) and the Traveler, both available now. The Explorer is as powerful as a 24hp diesel motor and is suited for vessels up to 30 feet long. The smaller Traveler weighs less than 60 pounds and "has been designed for sailboats, pontoon boats and small watercraft." An upside to battery-powered boating: no worries about E10 in your motor.

All that fun doesn't come cheap. The Explorer is $4,995 and the Traveler run $2,499. They are what they are. Don't forget you could just go canoeing.

[Source: SolidNav]

As promised, we got a chance to sit down with Wes Bolsen, the CMO and vice president at Coskata, during last week's Platts Cellulosic Ethanol Conference in Chicago. We wanted a little more information on the $1/gallon number for the Coskata process "cellulosic" ethanol (yes, Bolsen pointed out that it's really carbon ethanol, but he's OK with people using the cellulosic term, even though he prefers to call it "next generation" ethanol). About half of the cost is set aside for feedstocks, the rest is for things like utilities, maintenance, water, and nutrients. The Coskata process does not require buying enzymes, there's no pre-treateament, and there's no high-pressure chamber. Eliminating these items simplifies the process and, therefore, reduces the running cost to less than $1/gallon. I'm not sure if the fee for the microorganisms is included in this estimate or is part of the plant building fee (which is not part of the $1/gallon).

Because the Coskata process does not require sugars/cellulose, it can use input sources like trashed plastic bottles, tires, landfill gas, and steel mill gasses. Bolsen said that some estimates say 40 or 50 billion gallons of fuel could be created each year from these sources. Oh, and if you think ethanol will die out when we move away from liquid fuels, check out Bolsen's idea to use ethanol to produce hydrogen for fuel cellls. Want to hear more? Go ahead and listen in (13 min):



Our travel and lodging for this event was provided by GM.

Tweet-tweet.

If you're going to show up to the Twitter party, you may as well do it when you've got something to Twitter about. With the Audi Mileage Marathon continuing this week and the Austin Alt Car coming up this weekend (along with some fun stuff we can't talk about quite yet), this is a perfect time to introduce the ABG Twitterpost. Stuff that catches our eye, stuff that we want to write about later, and notices of posts that we think are particularly cool (in a non-spamy) will make up most of our Twitters, but it's also a way to interact with y'all. Interested? Subscribe to our feed here.

I hope you'll join us in the ongoining conversation, as it makes us a better site when we hear what you've got to say. Trust me, your on-site comments are great, we just want to expand how we communicate with each other. I'll admit I'm a total newbie to Twittering, so your helpful advice in the comments is much appreciated. Ready. Go on then.

Remember all the bravado that Bob Lutz unleashed when we got our first glimpse of the Volt back in early 2007? Lutz has been the car's biggest champion since then, but he's thinking that there could be some tough news coming soon for this kind of technology. While the Volt is not named in an interview with Lutz by the LA Times that was published last week (so don't go starting any rumors), Lutz was pretty clear-eyed about what the recent dip in gas prices could mean: "We may hate high fuel prices, but they've been driving us in the right direction when it comes to fuel economy. If we suddenly went to $1 or $1.50 a gallon, that would be really bad."

This is not a new topic, and we're in agreement with Maximum Bob on this one. We've written as much plenty of times, and we often refer back to this interview with David Cole where he talks about the benefits of an oil price floor for a barrel of oil. He suggested $40 or $45, but that was back in June 2007; more recent estimates I've heard from others put a reasonable limit at $60 or so. Whatever happens with oil prices, we can be pretty sure that a lot of old habits will return if gas keeps dropping. What will you change?

[Source: LA Times]

The county passenger fleet in Broome County, New York (halfway between Buffalo and NYC) used about 191,000 gallons of fuel, at a cost of $468,000, in 2006. While the county cut back and used 6,000 fewer gallons in 2007, the total cost for the fuel went up (we all know why) by $5,000. With numbers like these, it's easy to understand why county government officials were excited to see the Vantage Vehicle electric van last week. Government employees were able to test drive the Vantage and a peek at the county's 2008 numbers suggests that they're probably excited to give electric drive a shot. The county has already spent $497,00 on about 150,000 gallons of fuel in 2008. They expect to use about 200,000 before 2008 the year up.

The EVan was brought to Broome County by CleanVehiclesNY, a company that distributes EVs from Miles Electric Vehicles, Vantage Vehicles, Star Electric Vehicles, Bravo Electric Vehicles and EVS Electric Vehicles.

[Source: Go Broome County]

Back in 1993, eBay.de member goldlady77 imported the electric car you see above from Miami to Germany. Fast forward 15 years and the car is now ready for a new home. Similar to the old CitiCar, this boxy EV was designed for mail carrier duties (hence the right hand drive) and is likely the only vehicle of its type in Germany. One ironic angle is that the owner needed to install a gas heater in the car to defrost the windows thanks to motor vehicle requirements back in the day (all of this info is taken from the item description). There are 1,300 kilometers on the odometer, but the batteries haven't been charged in many years. Also, you'll need to inflate the tires.

There are two days left in the auction and the bidding is up to $1,490 U.S. Other details are available at the eBay site, and if you're thinking of buying this vehicle but can't read the German, just post a comment and I'll translate further. For now, I'll assume that if you're interested in this car, you're in Germany and can decipher the caveats. Actually, perhaps the former owner in Miami wants the car back now? Thanks to Max S. for the tip!

[Source: eBay]