I came across another "plug-ins burn coal" article that touted the benefits of bio-fuels. The obvious answer is to burn the bio-fuels in the power plants instead of coal . . . pointing out the obvious. But I realized that today's new, hybrid skeptics, are playing the same pattern as earlier hybrid skeptics.

Past skeptics have attacked hybrids on fuel economy, vehicle life, mythical life-cycle cost and angst. They all depended upon folks not checking the facts and data and as these have become available, their nonsense has faded to urban legend. The latest "silent cars kill blind people" and "PEVH vs coal plants" are following the same pattern. So the best answers are simple facts:

• More pedestrians were killed in 1998 before hybrids than in 2006
• Burn bio-fuels instead of coal in the power plants

Facts and data are hard to argue against but they have to be presented to have an effect.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
Free speech, dialog and knowledge thrives without the poison of SPAM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z7Gh6ks4Ak

At 1:23

"Our current power grid has enough excess capacity in the middle of the night to recharge 180 million cars if they were all plug-in hybrids."
--Ed Furia, AFS Chairman and CEO

Very interesting video. I'd buy into the technology.

One thing to remember....many people are afraid of change and many people are afraid of new technology.

Very, very, very true. I see that among some mechanics who are resistant to change. They have every hybrid myth memorized, some perhaps on the theory that they are "too old" to learn something new so they'll try to fight it "long enough to reach retirement".

I just had a friend of my brother-in-law try to hammer me Sunday about the battery life expectancy (sigh--she drives a Jeep, go figure). WIth facts to refute her "worries" I easily kept the upper hand in the debate/ discussion. I just can't believe that we still need to use hybrid apologetics with ordinary people, even after the successful records of so many hybrids.

As a fairly recent hybrid convert, I had been watching the issue and waiting until there was "more" market presence. Coworker of mine has a Prius, and he and I would talk hybrids now and again. I started reading more on it and asking him more questions. Sometimes he came back with, "I just don't know that answer." He never once snowed me, and I just keep digging.

Now I'm the one who stumbles onto the various myths and passes them and rebuttals along to him. He asked me about Sudbury a week or so ago, and I started digging. The NASA Moon Rover thing did not compute the first time I read it. He had the same reaction I did. NASA? The Moon? Last there in the 1970s? How many Priuses were rolling around then? I found plenty to shred the argument quickly, but I spent more time and looked for certain things I wanted to find on Sudbury.

Sometimes it's a simple case of believing what one chooses to believe.

Other times it's a simple case of believing what others have told one--particularly in news stories.

Occasionally an argument is put forth which is plausible, and one simply chooses to accept the argument without challenge.

As long as bio fuel burns our food supply, I'm against it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai.../ccview126.xml
Many farms run on recycled animal waste, converted into methane. I read an article a couple months back about a farmer here in GA who have isolated/modified the enzyme from a cows digestive system that breaks down vegetation and creates the methane.

The article went on to say methane can now be produced from those modifyed enzymes without the need for the cow, or its waste product.

If it is factual, we can save our corn for food and convert everything from grass, tumble weeds, kudzu or anything plant in mass scale (Billions of barrels/day)

If I come across the article again, I'll post it.

Efficient drivers do it better.
1003 miles a tank personal record. 74MPG calculated. HCH1 CVT

I found these about such work at Michigan State University.
http://www.wwj.com/Cow-Stomachs-Hold...el-Key/1973662
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/20608/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0408085453.htm
http://environment.newscientist.com/...st-itself.html
http://www.herald-review.com/blogs/stuellis/?p=107

The corn goes to the ethanol plant and the good stuff of the corn gets stripped out and sent to the farm for cow/cattle fuel while the other stuff goes into the ethanol plant for production. The newest plants will be something like 40% carbon negative!

2005 AWD Escape Hybrid
Best tank trip MPG 39.02 (scangauge II) for 402 miles on I-70, 10.3 gallons used over mostly flat terrain.

Best tank trip MPG 34.6 for E30 for 271 miles along I-80 in Indiana and Ohio.

I think folks have the energy and food equation reversed. Industrial agriculture works by using energy for tilling, fertilizer, harvesting and processing. As the price of energy goes up, the price of food goes up much faster. Then comes the fuel->food->fuel feedback loop.

What happens is many of the petroleum exporting countries use the revenue to buy food. When the price of food goes up, so too does the cost of fuel. This is an unbounded feedback loop. We saw this in 1973 after the first oil embargo.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
Free speech, dialog and knowledge thrives without the poison of SPAM.