The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 180
Instead, they continue to favor electric power, a solution that won't be affordable
and in meaningful availability for 2, 3, 4, 5 maybe 6 decades from now.
CNG and ethanol are available right now - today - and can be used by the
overwhelming majority of passenger vehicles that are currently on the road; and
in the case of ethanol, these vehicles would not even require any engine conversions to use the fuel. Starting immediately we could make an enormous reduction in harmful emissions, while also saving the public billions of dollars.
Nearly three years ago, to the day, California’s Air Resources Board unanimously approved a package of new emissions rules that they claimed would
save drivers money, create jobs, and cut smog and greenhouse gases under
what was labeled “The Advanced Clean Car Program.”
This program only referred to electric. They never talked about the contribution
that ethanol and CNG could make. What was particularly ironic was that the
report from CARB stated that they relied in part on Ron Cogan and his GREEN
CAR JOURNAL to help them make their decision to support their electric car
program. But there was a problem with this: they never consulted Ron Cogan,
and Mr. Cogan was not in favor of CARB's program. I know this because my
business partner and I discussed it with him at the Los Angeles Auto Show that
convened a few months later.
Even more interesting was the fact that just prior to CARB unveiling this program, Mr. Cogan had bestowed (once again) his company's Green Car Of The
Year Award on the Honda Civic GX, a car powered exclusively by CNG. Honda
won this award for virtually the same vehicle just a few years earlier.
In addition, although CNG has received great press in the past couple of years,
California continues its refusal to allow existing gasoline-powered passenger
vehicles to be converted to CNG. If you purchase a vehicle that was legally
converted to CNG in another state, and bring it into California, you cannot register the vehicle. CNG conversions are performed every day around the rest of
the world. If there was a danger in doing so, we would be hearing terrible stories
about this every day, rather than the terrible stories we do hear every day
caused by people who are supported by oil dictators.
Moreover, although today's CALSTART article finally does mention CNG, they
never said anything about the dearth of available new CNG-powered cars. For
the past several years only Honda is regularly producing CNG-powered vehicles - that is, if you can describe annual production runs of about 2,000 vehicles
