I am not a pro but I love e85 too. I think your gems are e85center.com and e85expert.com, I also like your ethanolexperts.com name. I hope you do well with them! How long do you think you will need to wait before selling for a decent profit?
Hey,
I'm into car design, and my opinion is that ethanol won't be 'the future' for long.
I'd try to resell these within the next 2years.
electrical cars are winning the fuel battle, so no space for ethanol
Electric cars arent even on the Market ..other than the continual stream of prototypes. Certainly electric vehilces will have a place in the future but E85 is here and now and it's growth is astounding.
We went from just 400 Stations selling E85 a few years ago to over 1,500 today. There are 170,000 Stations in the United States ..e85 is a growth market that has Federal mandates already in place .
GM and Ford have both announced that at least half of their production will be e85 vehicles by 2012..not even 4 years.
To make any vehicle e85 ready generally means either a conversion kit or self conversion which simply requires larger fuel injectors and a reflash of the vehicles computer. This is why the Auto manufactures have choces the E85 route..it costs them very little (less than $150) to make a vehicle e85 ready and they get Federal credits to do so.
An electric vehicle on the hand requires massive investment with no return on that investment for decades down the road..thats if you cna convince car buyers to pay 10-30k more for an electric
I disagree here too. Electric cars may be the future, and I hope they are, but E85 is happening NOW, as as mentioned it is very affordable...hybrids are not. Even in these small mountain towns we are starting to see e85 pumps. Very soon every station will have one.
this is somewhat off-topic, but things gotta change with the way ethanol is produced and sold. right now it takes more than a gallon of oil to produce and sell a gallon of ethanol. doesn't make much sense, financially or environmentally. using corn to feed cars instead of people isn't a good thing either.
there's a place for e85; but i wouldn't discount electric and bio diesel either. there are also many fuel effiecient gas and diesel cars out there and on the way.
loads of cars will be electric within 5-10years, ethanol will be totally dead by then.
thats why i said he should sell the names within a few years, don't keep them for like 5-10 years..
Ethanol is here to stay and is a huge part of the solution for getting us off of Middle East Oil..bloody Middle East oil ... Today ..
Electric Vehicles will also play a part ..maybe 5 years maybe 50 years ..(thats how long I have been hearing we will be driving electric vehicles .Oh in just another year or so)
"loads" of electric cars ? well maybe ..but but not today and certainly not tommorrow ..
To continue off-topic: These are common misconceptions about ethanol. Quite frankly, the renewable energies association and ethanl producers are doing a terrible job at public relations when it comes to ethanol. I am a farmer that grows field corn that can be used for ethanol. It takes me an average of seven trips across the field in a year to plant, care for, and harvest the corn crop. Ok, that is seven gallons of diesel per acre. I can get an average of 200 bushels of corn per acres yield. A bushel of corn will produce 2.8 gallons of ethanol. So, that means for every acre of corn grown, we can get 560 gallons of ethanol from it. Far more than the fuel needed to make that happen.
Now, what you also don't hear about is that roughly 1/3 of that bushel of corn used to make ethanol is left over after the distilling process and used to feed livestock. In fact, there are stories of cattle operations and dairy operations starting up near ethanol plants because the livestock loves to eat the distilled grains left over from the ethanol process. It has been referred to as "cow crack" because they love to eat it.
Also, the vast majority of field corn that is grown in the US is not meant for human consumption anyway, it is destined for feed. So, even by using it for ethanol, it still ends up being used as feed anyway. Granted, acres have been increased in recent years to grow corn at the expense of losing acres to other crops, but isn't that the free market at work here? If a crop is more profitable to grow than another, it will be planted more.
Along with what hollyann pointed out one of our members broke it down pretty well..A Fox News guests was spouting off about how by stopping all bio fuels we could bring the cost of corn down 20% from $6 a bushel to $4 a bushel and how that would solve the food cost crisis..
So lets do the Math..
Corey..
Quote If leading nations stopped biofuel use this year, it would lead to a price decline in corn by about 20 percent and wheat by about 10 percent from 2009-10, said Joachim von Braun.
I won't debate how he came up with these numbers, how grain is supposed to be cheaper in the face of even higher fuel prices if biofuels were missing from the picture, etc...but simply assume he is 100% true, 100% of the savings are passed onto the customer and none of the higher energy costs are passed along (that should be the absolute best case scenario!!) Now lets look at the math:
Today:
$6.00 bushel corn, 56 pounds per bushel, 1 pound corn in a box of cornflakes, total cost of corn in cornflakes = $6.00/56 = 11 cents. Cost of cornflakes on the shelf $3.29
If this grand plan goes into effect:
$4.80 bushel of corn, 56 pounds, 1 pound box of cornflakes, total cost corn = $4.80/56 = 8.6 cents
Cost of cornflakes on the shelf $3.27 - wow two cents savings!
Next:
$6.00 bushel of corn, 2.6 pounds of grain used to raise one pound of beef, total cost of grain per pound of beef = 28 cents. Cost of hamburger on the shelf = $1.59/pound, New York Strip - $11.99/pound
The grand plan:
$4.80 bushel of corn, 2.6 pounds of grain/pound of beef, total cost of grain = 22 cents, Cost of hamburger on the shelf = $1.54/pound, New York Strip - $11.94/pound. (five cents savings!!)
Of course this is almost nonsensical as stopping biofuel production would lead to even higher cost of energy. But giving every possible 'benefit of the doubt' Joachim's plan is hardly worth the time it took him to put on paper, and higher energy prices would likely far offset these few pennies of savings on goods that actually contain a large amount of grain.
Edit: tweaked lbs/bushel of corn from 54 to the actual 56
And like HollyAnn is pointing out only 1/3 of the kernel is even used for ethanol(they simply pull the starch/sugers out) ..the rest goes right back to where it was going in the first place..feed for livestock,Poultry
