# Elio 85mpg



## MishMouse (Jun 5, 2014)

http://www.eliomotors.com/

Kind of interesting, a car/motorcycle that can get 85 mpg that is not a hybrid.
So under $7K, it may be the future.


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## velvetfoot (Jun 5, 2014)

I looked at that web site, and I couldn't find a projected delivery date of the first car.


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## begreen (Jun 5, 2014)

The tech may be cool but there have been lots of attempts to achieve similar vehicles (Corbin Sparrow, etc.) that have failed due to poor financing. Looks the same for Elio according to this article. 

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/19/paul-elio-motors-releases-financials/


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## Mike Fromme (Jun 5, 2014)

I'm taking $1000 deposits on a bridge in Brooklyn. Anyone interested?


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## MishMouse (Jun 5, 2014)

I think some of the concerns that the author had had been addressed, though it will be interesting to see how it pans out.
I think they are going to have to increase the cost beyond 6.5K if they are going to make a profit out of it.
They do have an interesting model and will require a lot of government help if they are to ever become a viable car company.


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## velvetfoot (Jun 5, 2014)

Hopefully he doesn't wind up going down the path John Deloran did.


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## jharkin (Jun 6, 2014)

First though tat comes to mind is will thismeet crash safety rules (something that often stops small efficient cars form Europe migrating here), or will they get around that licensing it as a motorcycle?

And if they do, will an American public addicted to driving high in land tanks want to buy them?



(couldnt resist )


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## begreen (Jun 6, 2014)

That was a funny video. I like the one for the Peel too.


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## woodgeek (Jun 6, 2014)

The mileage seems a bit poor for something this size and functionality.  You could get similar mileage in non-highway drives with a full sized Prius.  I guess youget what you pay for.


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## Corey (Jun 6, 2014)

Will be interesting to see if they hit the road.  Mileage seems close to doable...  a 1999 Honda Insight uses essentially the same 3 cylinder / 55hp motor and those were rated at ~68mpg highway.  This thing is probably a bit lighter, minimal interior, no AC, maybe a bit lower Cd, and has the benefit of 15+ additional years of technological development.  Seems like it will be hard to get a whole car for the price of an entry level motorcycle, though.  

If they do come out, it would be a blast to bump the compression ratio up around 12 or 13:1, turbo it and dial it in to run E85.  Probably do the same or better mileage, pick up 30-40hp and run on cheap fuel.


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## blades (Jun 7, 2014)

E85 might be a bit cheaper at the pump but you are paying a tremendously high cost for any of the ethanol products applied to fuel. Something that is conveniently never mentioned or taken into consideration, par for the course now days. Want to know why staples are up along with everything else look no father than the production of ethanol from corn and you will have your answer.  Making things more energy efficient I agree with adding something that takes more energy to produce than it conserves is just so short sighted ( and I am being extremely kind here) that there is no way that I can conceive of to get on board.  ( yes I realize this not the only factor in affecting cost of goods but it is the primary whether the talking heads want to admit it or not)  I,m just an old guy that still remembers all the hoop and hollar about energy conservation  about the mid 70's, and then the increases  in basic cost started in as the companies groan about lower profits because we were not using as much, never ending battle of course.


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## Corey (Jun 8, 2014)

blades said:


> E85 might be a bit cheaper at the pump but you are paying a tremendously high cost for any of the ethanol products applied to fuel. Something that is conveniently never mentioned or taken into consideration, par for the course now days. Want to know why staples are up along with everything else look no father than the production of ethanol from corn and you will have your answer.  ...



"Tremendously high cost" could also apply to anything gasoline related ....Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines required to defend foreign oil fields (not only in $$$ but lives), some of the largest and most complex structures ever built just to drill oil and supertankers to haul it 1/2 way around the planet, I won't even mention 'Deepwater Horizons', Exxon Valdez, etc.  Seems like a pretty high cost to me.

You say ethanol is driving up the cost of food, the CBOT shows corn at around $4.60/bushel or about 8 cents per pound.  A 1lb bag of corn chips is $4.00+.  So even if corn is given away for free, the bag still costs $3.92.  Or if you look at it another way, the Recommended Daily Allowance of fruits and vegetables has recently increased to 5-13 servings per day (with 1 serving = 1/2 cup or about 2.5 ounces of corn).  If you eat your entire maximum RDA as only corn, that works out to about 2 lbs of corn, or 16 cents worth per day.

There is a big difference between what oil companies tell you / want you to believe and the actual truth if you look at the numbers.


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## begreen (Jun 8, 2014)

Not that I disagree with the first premise, but there are a few points wrong there. Ethanol corn and food grade corn are different. The 8 cents a pound does not include transport, refining, processing baking, bagging, shipping, transporting or grocery store markup for the corn chips. Last time I tried to buy corn by the ear it was 2 for a dollar. Canned or frozen corn is also much more than 8 cents/lb. for the same reasons as mentioned.


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## Corey (Jun 8, 2014)

All good points begreen.  Ethanol refiners aren't exactly raiding the frozen food / fresh produce aisle for feedstock.  Really, much of the fuel ethanol comes from GMO corn or other non-human consumable corn.  So in that regard, using GMO corn for ethanol doesn't drive up the price of sweet corn anymore than it drives up the price of tomatoes or avocados, etc. 

Some then switch over and wave the flag of 'increased animal food costs' as some of that field corn does go into animal feed, so it affects the price of beef, chicken, etc.  Though generally, corn is a supplement animal food at best, with maybe a little higher dosage to fatten the animal up before market.  (Hummm... wonder why they recommend humans eat so much of it? ...whole different thread, I guess!)  But at .08/lb, it's still pretty cheap feed - just be glad they don't have to feed wood pellets!  Seems like they run well over an equivalent of $160/ton most of the time.


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## begreen (Jun 8, 2014)

I think most US grown corn is now GMO with the exception of some organic grown. My understanding is that if fields of corn are switched to ethanol corn then there is less food grade corn on the market, thus driving up food grade corn prices.


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## woodgeek (Jun 8, 2014)

The ethanol thing has led a huge increase in US land under the plow, rather than fallow.  Huge negative impact on the environment, dead zones, wildlife, animal habitat, and little or no benefit to global warming.  A wasteful disaster.


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## BrotherBart (Jun 8, 2014)

Not to mention the concern of the GMO corn "infecting" the food corn stocks. In the grand scheme of things the reduction in petroleum usage is a fart in a hurricane.

The growing use of natural gas and coal to make ethanol instead of the slower and more costly fermentation process is making the environmental savings a non-event.


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## BrotherBart (Jun 8, 2014)

Appears Japan isn't too happy about small efficient vehicles.

"But industry and government officials are increasingly worried that these microvehicles have become a distraction for the nation’s automakers — still bastions of the Japanese economy — and are moving to wean drivers off them. In April the government took what its critics charged was a hard-line route. Kei drivers were hit with a triple whammy of a higher sales tax, higher gasoline tax and higher kei car tax, the last of which the government raised by 50 percent, sharply narrowing their tax difference with regular-size vehicles."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/business/international/japan-seeks-to-squelch-its-tiny-cars.html


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## Corey (Jun 8, 2014)

begreen said:


> ... My understanding is that if fields of corn are switched to ethanol corn then there is less food grade corn on the market, thus driving up food grade corn prices.



Oops... Hope I haven't steered the Elio thread into a pro/con corn thread, so this will be my last post on the subject. 

It may be that ethanol corn is squeezing out food corn, though I have not seen any data to that effect.  Plus, if I was making 8 cents/lb on ethanol corn and 50 cents/ear on food corn, I dang well know which one I would plant!

I won't go into the other nonsense too deeply... 'destroying animal habitat' - you should come visit a corn field and see all the deer, foxes, raccoons, squirrels, coyotes, birds, etc which call it home ...then go visit an oilfield... see many animals playing in the fracking mud ponds or licking spilled oil off the ground?  'global warming' is a hard sell, but considering every molecule of carbon in an ear of corn came out of the atmosphere during that growing season, the worst that can happen is it goes back into the atmosphere when burned, and is pulled out again in the next crop.  Every molecule of carbon in a gallon of oil or natural gas has been locked away underground for millions of years...it's also released when burned, but the next gallon of oil releases more and more carbon...no recycling.   Not to say corn doesn't have some impact on the environment...most any human activity does.  But painting corn as 'bad' in comparison to oil is laughable.


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## begreen (Jun 8, 2014)

Not painting corn as bad vs oil, though I do think we can choose better sources. Personally I prefer getting away from dependence on the ICE as much as possible.


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## Grisu (Jun 8, 2014)

begreen said:


> Not painting corn as bad vs oil, though I do think we can choose better sources. Personally I prefer getting away from dependence on the ICE as much as possible.



How about the most energy efficient mode of transportation that is generally available? http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/nTE/7Bx/nTE7BxkGc.jpeg 


Corey said:


> 'global warming' is a hard sell, but considering every molecule of carbon in an ear of corn came out of the atmosphere during that growing season,



That's true but for growing the corn and processing it into ethanol you need fossil fuels, at least currently. Hence, the energy balance of corn-based ethanol is barely positive at 1.3 meaning for 1 Joule invested into making the ethanol you get only 1.3 Joule back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested 
Without fossil fuels, you can also say that you would need to grow 13 acres of corn to get 3 acres worth of corn-based ethanol for other uses while 10 acres will be used to grow the overall 13 acres.


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## woodgeek (Jun 9, 2014)

Corey said:


> I won't go into the other nonsense too deeply... 'destroying animal habitat' - you should come visit a corn field and see all the deer, foxes, raccoons, squirrels, coyotes, birds, etc which call it home ...then go visit an oilfield... see many animals playing in the fracking mud ponds or licking spilled oil off the ground?  'global warming' is a hard sell, but considering every molecule of carbon in an ear of corn came out of the atmosphere during that growing season, the worst that can happen is it goes back into the atmosphere when burned, and is pulled out again in the next crop.  Every molecule of carbon in a gallon of oil or natural gas has been locked away underground for millions of years...it's also released when burned, but the next gallon of oil releases more and more carbon...no recycling.   Not to say corn doesn't have some impact on the environment...most any human activity does.  But painting corn as 'bad' in comparison to oil is laughable.



Sorry about the OT.

Yep.  Agriculture does more harm to the earth than any other human activity.  The amount of land used to produce food is vastly larger than the amount of land used for any purpose, and all of it was previously productive natural habitat.  Bigger than space for all cities, towns, malls, roads, landfills and oil fields....combined.

Those Amazon rainforest destroyers....are farmers.  Our ancestors did the same thing to the NA habitat.  Most of the existing 'natural habitat' in places like southern NE has been clear-cut and burned a few times in the past, and put into (marginal) agricultural production.  In Europe, it is more like 5-10 times.

Glad to hear there are some animals in the corn field.  There are squirrels and birds in NY Central park, doesn't make it a nature preserve.

The ethanol thing didn't compete with food....just led to a lot more acreage planted.  And that acreage increases soil depletion, fertilizer and pesticide runoff and yes, greenhouse gases associated with agriculture...NO2 from fertilizer and CO2 emitted when soil is plowed (versus absorbed when left fallow).  A tiny example: turns out monarch butterflies were living on milkweeds in fallow farm fields...the ethanol project is crashing the population of migrating monarchs.

Grisu makes the important point.  If it takes 0.6-0.8 gallons of actual oil to make a gallon of ethanol, then the bad far outweighs the good.

Don't get me wrong...many/most farmers are the heroes in this story...they want to conserve their soil, not waste fertilizer, and produce as much food per acre as possible, all of which minimizes their *100% necessary* impact on the environment.  My family eats their products every day.  I am for any tech that improves yields, and leaving unneeded land fallow.  I am generally against organic farming, as it reduces productivity per acre...it is generally a net negative for the environment relative to conventional. But minimizing the impact of conventional agriculture doesn't make it zero.

Public policy that ups the agriculture machinery of the US by 20-30% for no good reason other than politics? And dressing it up as a pro environment, energy security move when it is neither? Sick.

Don't get me started about bio-diesel...in the EU, it is mostly produced from palm oil coming from tropical plantations in East Asia.  The European bio-fuel aficionados have led to a lot of tropical rainforest getting cut down...and while palm oil is more energy positive than corn ethanol, the emissions from cutting down the rainforest....prob make the whole enterprise a net CO2 emitter.


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## velvetfoot (Jun 9, 2014)

I thought it was rapeseed for biodiesel in Europe, or is this something relatively new.


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## woodgeek (Jun 9, 2014)

velvetfoot said:


> I thought it was rapeseed for biodiesel in Europe, or is this something relatively new.



Looks like you are right for recent history.

info here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Environmental_effects

The EU rolled out biodiesel mandates 10 years ago when we rolled out Ethanol.  Did result in an increase in oilcrops in the EU and a surge of palm oil in Asia, the latter much more cost effective, but a net negative for the climate.  

Relevant from the above:
The Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) published data in January 2012, showing that biofuels made from palm oil won’t count towards the nation’s renewable fuels mandate as they are not climate-friendly.

green and protectionist at the same time == popular.


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## MishMouse (Jun 10, 2014)

In my area farmers have been cutting down acres of forest lands to plant corn.
The amount of chemicals used to kill weeds, and bugs are poisoning the environment.
The amount of water used to grow the crops are draining the aquifers.
The amount of propane used to dry the crops caused prices to sky rocket.
Needless to say I am not a big ethanol fan.


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## begreen (Jun 11, 2014)

Fertilizer is also usually synthetic, made from natural gas and petroleum and energy intensive. Whatever happened to using miscanthus as a feedstock? Did the science not pan out or did Archer Daniels Midland/Monsanto triumph on the hill?
http://deltafarmpress.com/corn/high-yielding-miscanthus-ethanol


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## woodgeek (Jun 11, 2014)

begreen said:


> Fertilizer is also usually synthetic, made from natural gas and petroleum and energy intensive. Whatever happened to using miscanthus as a feedstock? Did the science not pan out or did Archer Daniels Midland/Monsanto triumph on the hill?
> http://deltafarmpress.com/corn/high-yielding-miscanthus-ethanol



The affordable cellulosic ethanol process was and remains vapor-ware.  Despite a govt mandate for it to exist.


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## begreen (Jun 15, 2014)

Back to inexpensive and efficient cars, I think these guys stand a better chance. They are proceeding methodically and manufacturing the Urbee2 in a most  disruptive way. 
http://korecologic.com/about/urbee_2/


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## woodgeek (Jun 15, 2014)

Very cool.  And looks like a fun roadtrip. I'd like to see some numbers on the cost of 3d printing the body.


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