[Jim727]

Yeah - I listen to them for the humor value. They are, unfortunately, pretty much exclusively partial to Japanese cars and don't really understand German cars.

Anyhow - I also thought the epic bit was a bit off-kilter. In reality, I would like a source for fuel ethanol. Before everyone gets their shorts in a bunch, I'm not talking about etoh made from corn or etoh mixed with gasoline. I mean real 190+ proof etoh made from something sensible like sugar cane. In Brazil it's produced very cheaply and it makes a great fuel.

Somehow we turned etoh production into a welfare program for ADM. It would be hard to imagine a more backward way of using the stuff than making it from food crops - and an inefficient source at that. Then we mix it with gas to try to burn it in engines with about an 8-9 compression ratio. Etoh wants about 14 - 14.5 c.r. and runs great at that. Of course, we could import etoh from Brazil where they make it efficiently, but instead we slap a $0.54 cent/gal import duty on it.

Turn a bunch of politicians loose on an engineering problem and you get stupidity.