Another reason Ethanol sucks

From MSNBC:
"Still, the conversation that Bush and the Big Three avoided was talk of fuel economy. In the short term, it's far cheaper for car companies to keep producing cars that seem environmentally friendly than to re-engineer cars to squeeze out more miles per gallon. Until the U.S. has much broader availability of alternative fuels, old-fashioned gas guzzling will continue to rise into the not-so-green future."

Basically, auto manufacturers in the US have been cranking out SUVs that can utilize ethanol fuels such as E85 and in doing so, they bought themselves the ability to not worry about actual fuel efficiency in these vehicles. By just being flexible-fuel vehicles, the government standards for limiting emissions and fuel consumption are trumped out. These gas guzzling vehicles are considered "clean" when in fact they aren't because most of the owners of these vehicles don't use the alternative fuel, largely because it isn't available to them.

More from the article:
"The result is anything but green. The more flex-fuel cars and trucks that are produced, the more gasoline is consumed—dramatically increasing greenhouse gas emissions and deepening the country's dependence on petroleum. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that without the policy in place, the U.S. would have burned 4 billion fewer gallons of gasoline since 1998. "Automakers have an [economic] incentive to sell cars less efficient than the law requires," says Don MacKenzie, a vehicles engineer for the Union's clean vehicles program.

Environmental advocates aren't shy about voicing their outrage. "It's a total scam," says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming program. "The automakers are trying to shield themselves from having to make more efficient vehicles. They're avoiding the path to cutting oil dependence, curbing global warming, saving consumers money, and ultimately saving Detroit from competitors like Toyota."

The culprit is a 1988 law called the Alternative Motor Fuels Act, which has been extended through 2008. It gives automakers extra credit toward meeting fuel-economy standards for making cars that can run on alternative fuels. It's cheap for automakers to make cars fuel-flexible; it only costs them about $50 per vehicle, whereas actually meeting fuel-economy standards (making cars travel more miles per gallon) can be much more expensive. So in recent years auto companies have been pouring out flexible-fuel, gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles without worrying too much about fuel economy."