We are still a battery chemistry or two away from a fully competitive automotive battery technology. Improving around the edges will prove to be no more successful that improving the Pb-acid approach was. I don't know whether Li-Air chemistry will do it, but Li-Ion has arrived and replaced NiMH, but it isn't enough. Its closer to the target, but its still no cigar. Meanwhile the ICE technologies are making huge strides now. Efficiencies are rising, and cleanliness equivalent to (and even better!) then the EV have arrived, for the Otto cycle, if not for the Diesel cycle, as yet. (Clean ICEs cleanse the Air while EVs don't.) So there is a moving target to match or exceed, while concerns over fossil reserves has largely abated.

These figures are useless estimates, and don't square with reductions in the use of fossil fuels reported elsewhere on Green Car Congress. When you report only what people filing on your bureaucratic forms report, you don't know what was consumed, nor do you know if the answer is merely that a higher percentage of human users reported. I have yet to hear if the bureaucrats were any more successful in getting the mighty Oak and Pine or their saplings, to report GHG consumption/sequestration, nor whether the herds of wild dear, elk, and moose fully reported their flatulent GHG methane emissions. The Science of actually measuring CO2 in the atmosphere, and unheard of conceptual idea, to a bureaucrat, rather than stotalingalling forms reported by some humans, still says the North American continent is a NET CARBON SINK, producing less GHGs than it emits. Aside from the obvious axe to grind and larger budgets flowing from more reported, or "manufactured" GHGs reported emissions, all you can safely say is: Garbage In = Garbage Out !!

More useless liason and meetings, to chew up time for bureaucrats. Useless work expands to fill the useless time available.

This is paid govermental boondoggling. DOE bureaucrats had money to spend on a meaningless demonstration project, so Chrysler undertoook to do it, and gain "greenie points" and get paid while doing so. It proves little, except that you can construct a PHEV hybrid Minvan, that works. Using the 2nd generation FWD version of the GM/Daimler/BMW 2-mode parallel hybrid system, attached to a PentaStar V-6. We learn that it attains 53 mpge, while running on a combined charge and gasoline, for slightly more than half a days typical driving distance, or 22 miles. It then reverts to typical ICE mileage of 21-25 mpg, for the of a typical 40 daily usage. The composite fuel consumption for a typical days use is the average of 53 and 23 mpg, on a 22/40 basis or about 41 mpge daily. Not bad.

The typical Green living in his fantasyland, believes we use more and more fossil fuel. When in reality, the US has been leading the World in reducing fossil usage since the 21st century began, as this report affirms. At the same time leading the world in developng and using cleaner vehicles, that also use less fuel with better combustion through technological advances. The idea that syphoning off the R&D money by high prices generated by taxes, will change anything is mis-proven by the situation in Europe where prices due to taxes have been jacked up past $8.00/gallon. All that happened is that they drive slightly smaller cars, but not any smaller than they used to do, and use much more polluting engine technologies, like primitive un-clean diesels. There is little money available to invest in new technology in production or consumption methods, by those in a position to do so, the fossil producers or the producers of consuming vehicles. hence they get dirtier Air. We know from sad experience, the bureaucrats and politicians will not do so intelligently. The USA and North America will soon be exporting fossil fuels as it did in the mid 20th century and setting world prices, once again. The day of the monopolistic price setting by kleptocratic governments after nationalizing their oil companies in the Mid-East in the 1970s, has just about run its course.

More of the typical EPA phony "Science" of job justification. This report would be more believable if the rates of health and disease existed where very dirty so-called "clean" Euro diesels are the predominate means of powering autos. Europeans could be expected to be very sick, breathing all that black soot. But the incidence of disease evidence from there is curiously missing, or not studied, calling into question the validity and thoroughness of this EPA job generating report. Meanwhile US diesels are T2B5 compliant today, heading toward T2B2 compliance soon, while the EU diesels will not even get to relatively dirty T2B9-11 compliance for another three years or so. So they are even dirtier than that. The US has not allowed diesels that dirty, for the past twenty years or so.

Engineer Poet, Ypou are quite correct that it stil doesn no tequal the PGNV cars. But then they would nao tbre legal today wiht way too muchj pollution. To my knowledge no one has yet developed even a test bed diesel that can meet Lev III Sulev II level emissions. CARB will promulgate them this year for adoption circa 2015 for California which still has bad Air in the SCAQD, and the 14 mindless followers, unless they jump off that ship. At least 2 States of the 14 have proposals to do exactly that. With virtually all having Air emissions compliance today, there is little reason to drive up the price of cars, or eliminate diesel options, in their States for relatively artificial reasons.

For all you CAFE supporters, that means the Impala is now complaint with the 2020 CAFE legislation, in the Energy Act of 2007 for CAFE mileage, 7 years ahead of time. Really quite good when you consider that it is the largest automobile sedan that Chevrolet will make. All others except for performance machines sold in small numbers will also consequently expected to be compliant.

The days of "monkeywrenching" utility nuclear projects are over and done. And with it the decades long costly construction delays while demagogic lawyers wrangle and employ every strategem to delay in court. The Energy Acts of 2005 and 2007 produced lots of mischief, in order to obtain reform of those laws. Despite every delay imagineable imposed by the anti-energy Obamacites, while pretending otherwise, even they ran out of excuses, to delay eventually. The AP-1000 Westinghouse-Toshiba "Standard Design" Gen III+, walk-away, Passive PWR reactor was finally licensed last December. Combined Construction and Operating Licenses have now been assigned to Georgia Power in February and to Scana in March 2012 for contruction of four reactors at Vogtle and Summer Power Stations. Work is already proceeding. The GE-Hitachi even safer fully passive, ESBWR "Standard Design" is only a few month from similar approval. The new "anti-monkeywrenching" laws have been tested by several obstuction intended anti-nuclear groups already. In every case, the cases were summarily thrown out of court. A wonderful omen, it is indeed. It portends that the capital costs for an AP-1000 1114MW plant will decline from $ 4.9 billion, to nearer $3.5 billion, and not rise erratically from there, due to monkeywrenching. One 1970s plant reportedly had costs rise to $11 billion, before the near bankrupt Utility gave up, and mothballed/cancelled the almost completed project. Instead we got 30 years of coal fired pollution from even then obsolescent, and pollution spouting old smokers, 'grandfathered in' by the incredibly bumbling Carterites. Note that a single pair of thse new nuclear plants coming on-line in 2016-2017, will outproduce everyone of the thousands of windmills and solar power stations now in existence in America, combined. That is if any of today's windmills, will be still turning in 2017, as the windmill active life seems to be only as long as it takes the erector to get paid; and the owners to grift away any remaing funds and tax credits, before declaring bankruptcy. Meanwhile these nuclear fission plants will run 93% of the time for the next 60 years plus, well into the Fusion era, producing reliable electricity for millions.

If this process can be scaled upward to refinery practical volumes, it represents a good technological step forward.

This in contra-indicated by any elementary economics text. It could be only true if there is no loss of volume from selling more expensive vehicles. Patent nonsense. Please remember that it is Congress, the legislative branch, not bureaucrats agreeing amongst themeselves, that set fuel economy "CAFE" requirements. What ever civilization-hating, neo-Druids of the Obama mid-administration decree, their decrees are unlikely to exist much beyond their tenure. Unless Congress agrees with legislation.

Technological progress is slow, but cumulative. If a working full size pickup can achieve 17-24, 21 mpg combined, we should continue to celebrate that real world progress. Particularly on a webblog that applauds automotive efficiency. There is more news to come that was not announced by Chrysler. A new "lifestyle" compact pickup will be introduced next year. It will probsably be powered by an I-4 WGE engine, and achieve 23-29, 26 mpg combined. There is also the possibility that a small I-4 diesel likely a 1.9 JTDM diesel may be available option that could exceed 30 mpg. This is the "suburbanites" truck, useful for weekend DYI projects, and/or towing a small boat or camper. Considering that this Ram 1500 pickup produces 53% better fuel economy then that which could be obtained by the best 1970s era subcompact vehicles, it is quite an improvement. There is the prospect for a small diesel for thre Ram 1500 too. Likely they will produce slightly better city fuel economy and slightly better highway economy too. Likely 19-26 23 mpg combined, while meeting our much tougher T2B5 toxic emissions standards. But we must beware of the CARBite idiots. They have paid for new research that they have published that indicts diesel soot, PM 2.5; and predicts massive increases in horrible health, projected results. (Of course in Socialist Europe where dirty diesels two to 4 times dirtier than in the US, constititue 70% of the vehicles extant, no such horrible health results are prevalent.) That Truth has nothing to do with the need by CARBites to politically condemn diesel powertrains, more importantly protect their sinecures. Green fools are always fighting on the side of the perfect, in place of the merely good. With the predictable result that they get neither.

Barak is a genius. Just ask his paid PR publicists. It is a State Secret what his resume is, becaue he doesn't want to brag and so he won't intimidate the rest of us with his brilliance. Yeah, Sure. That has ot be the reason. The only true question is whether he had passing grades and whether misuse of Affirmative Action, got him promoted. The true question is whether he is merely very average, dull, or a genuine moron. I think his IQ is not as low as an imbecile, since he apparently can read what the teleprompters tell him to say, but not otherwise. Belief in a falsified econiomic system after 95 consecutive failures in 95 countries over the past 168 years, certainly indicates he isn't much of a subscriber to the scientific principles. He is The only guy in America, who got his job without having to produce a Resume or a Curriculum Vitae, thanks to what passes for Journalism today. His imbecilic troops can produce a Birth Certificate on a form with the name of a hospital that wouldn't exist until 20 odd years after he was born, and they, nor what passes as Journalists, see nothing curious or suspicious in that, either. Not that it matters. He was elected and is serving in that capacity.

Elctric are furnaces are enlarged tool steel furnaces that reduce CO2 output, as if that made any difference, no matter how constructed. If Siemens have improved them, so much the better. All electric arc furnaces promote the recycling of steel waste, enhance sustainability, and reduce by tremendous amounts, the raw energy consumed producing steel from 2% ferrous oxide. Only true, green, yammerheads delight in the non-use of nuclear energy, the cleanest and best use of resources. Go try living in your cave and delite in the wonders of being a naked Noble Savage, without tools. It would be a grand way to start culling the herd, of its most useless, moronic members.

Give me subsidies and more subsidies! Doh...

The USA and other advanced countries have not been exclusivly grown wealthy by extracting minerals. Manufacturing is a "Value-added" proposition. It doesn't matter whether that "value added" is provided by taking iron or aluminau ore as an input, and then exporting automobiles, airplanes or ships, there is "value added". The same thing applies to Petroleum refining. "Value added" comes from the refining process itself. A hundred dollar barrel of raw petroleum becomes several hundred or a thousand dollars of more value. "Value added" refined products are then used in fuels, polymers, pharmeceuticals of as components in other manufactured goods. America and every country needs to earn its foreign exchange to pay others for goods it can't or won't produce on its own. It is not criminal in any way to "value add" and then even export the "value added" product, even if it is Oil based.

Progress toward the ultimate theoretical efficiency of ICEs is continuing to occur.

More and more the enviro-greens become even more ignorant, hopeless, and inept in their predictions and forecasts. SJC is at least somewhat realistic, and is being roundly criticized for it. The best electric generator technology regardless of fossil fuel source,is near 60% efficiency. Present LWR nuclear efficiency isi about 42% and can't get better without major change in Thermodynamic efficiency. That simply won't happen before Fusion is ready to replace it. As it takes 20-30 years to merely license new nuclear fission technology, based on NRC history. Fusion is much safer, it can't runaway, holds no massive containment of radioactive nuclides, so its lead time to commercial approval will be 1/3 to 1/2 half the time required. To realistically adopt electric cars, a whole new generation of battery technology, like Lithium-Air, is needed. Even then, pure EVs will be substantially more expensive to purchase, for at least 15-20 years. Hybridization will continue to be refined, but the cost equivalent proposition is probably only 5 years less or 2015-2025. Until there is cost equivalence, there will not be mass adoption. Only then can we expect a real transition in about the time it takes to turn over the existing auto fleet or about 11 years, more. So no matter what the green-enviros hope, pray, inveigh, damn, or say, widespread adoption of EVs will occur no sooner than 2030-2040. But it will eventually come, even if it is when we no longer urgently need it. By then we will have lots of fossil available at attractive prices. The 40-50 interegnum years of expensive energy, will be long gone. Meanwhile, the target that EVs are aiming at will also improve, that technology is NOT standing still. It is a moving target. Already ICE's toxic-pollution, cleanup technology can produce ICE cars that are actually cleaner than any EV, at least in the USA. That technology will continue to get cheaper and more universal, and in only a single auto turnover generation or 11 years, virtually all autos will employ it, at least in the USA. Europe and the Third World have no plans to even adopt any of that technology prior to 2030 though. Even if it is available, any more than they have chosen to adopt the very good, but not perfect technology of today. A good technology that has alrgely cleansed the USA and could do so for Euroepe. Instead they have chosen dirty air, and other useless but tax-producing alternatives. Diesel technology thanks to the neglect of phony greens in Europe, where it is prevalent, is well behind in its technological development. It will not be for at least five more years before an equivalent cleanup technology is available for them, to cleanse them to SULEV II levels. Meanwhile fuel economy will rise somewhat, but not to the ridiculous levels the ignorant partisans in the EPA are predicting, and trying to mandate by executive fiat, without legislative authorization. Any technologist worth his salt, will tell you that any technology improves rapidly during its life cycle, until all the easy advances have been made. Then it gets progressivly harder and harder to get further improvements. It's sometimes codified in a "Law of Diminishing Returns". The ICE/Diesel has been around for 100 years and many but not all of the technological improvments have been made. But we are already in the end phase of a relatively mature technology, so despite the Gaian neo-Druids wishes and wants, it simply won't produce lots more advance. You need some perspective to see how far that the technology has advanced. Its fuel economy has improved and almost quintupled, since the early 1970s, but had improved almost as much prior to then. Year of Earth Day, 1970 was hardly at the beginning of its development cycle. It is somewhat obscured by the mileage/size equation. The most fuel efficient auto commonly available, in the USA in 1970 was the 42 HP subcompact Beetle. That VW obtained only 14 city-16 hiway by the somewhat optmistic CAFE rating when compared to teh EOPA Moroney measure. Today the largest passenger vehicle, the Suburban carrying 8 instead of 3-4 passengers, plus lots of cargo, and three times heavier, gets equivalent or better fuel economy. An equivalent subcompact of today can obtain 40-55 mpg, 3 to 5 times the fuel economy of the venerable VW bug. HCCI and PCCI technology will come for the various ICE technologies, and be adopted fairly soon. But those are the logical and theoretical end points of ICE/Diesel efficiency, not some interim target.

PeterXX, The actual PNV cars cost considerably more than those prices that I quoted. But it WAS the projected price that these cars would have to be priced at, if they were to be manufactured then. The GM EV-1 cost more than $1,000,000/copy for the few hundred that they built. That is the reason that they were never sold, and only leased. That as well as the warranty problems. It would have been awkward to offer the EV-1 and have NOBODY buy one. Other manufacturers simply did garage shop elementary conversions of existing vehicles to meet the CARBite mandates for a few tens of thousands, instead. All these mileage ratings systems are not real, anymore than the mileage obtained in the old Mobil Economy run. But NEDC is inflated over CAFE; and CAFE is inflated over Moroney EPA. Unlike you conventional thinkers, I do watch and see the industry and the trends, and see the consequences. Domestic oil poroduction has increased by some 3 million bbls/day in hte last few years, and will get to a combined 10+3 =14 from Canada for 14 million bbls/day from N. America with in 6-7 years. That production level makes North America, not Saudi Arabia or Russia the big determinant of pricing power. Open your eyes.

SJC, The diesel hybrids of the PNGVs obtained about 70 mpg for much larger vehicles then this. They were almost mid-size cars. But the technology of the time made them cost $600,000 to $750,000 per copy. Comparative 'clean' cars of the era were no cleaner then present, and dirty Euro V, autos. Today's Volt costs $40,000 per copy. Its pollution rating is equivalent to a AT-ZEV. Still too expensive but much closer. In another 5-10 years these cars will be fully price competitive; and American ZEV ICEs will be just as clean if not cleaner then any EV. But that will be just when we don't need them at all. By then the US will be approaching energy independence, the OPEC Cartel will have collapsed, and Oil prices will be in the range of $2/gallon. Oil will be available from friendly, non kleptocratic regimes that do not hate us. But also World reserves will be sufficient for a Millenia or more, and everyone will know it too. The relatively brief period, of some 50 years of which we are 40 years into, of expensive and limited Energy, will be drawing to a close.

You gentlemen are all wrong. The Euro NEDC rating is almost 20% more optimistic than CAFE; and CAFE is 15-20% more optimistic than Moroney EPA window sticker. A 71 mpg NEDC rating, would be about 57 mpg CAFE, which would be about 45 mpg EPA Moroney. So this is, in reality, not all that much better than other Fiesta ratings that get 40 mpg EPA. And it is for a polluting, 2.5 soot generating, vehicle that is illegal to sell in the USA as it is way too dirty. Big deal about n-o-t-h-i-n-g at all.

Another Obama boondoggle that seems to support nuclear Energy but is, in reality, just an excuse and a front to cover its anti-development of anything stand. None of you appreciate just how much money and how much time it will take to get a new reactor certified by the NRC, and approved for construction to begin. From current experience it is about 15-20 YEARS! Moreover, that is to merely cetify an improved model of currently operating design, like the PWRs and BWRs from Westinghosue and GE respectively. A wholly new technology like the so-called "safer Thorium designs", which are not anywhere safer, nor proliferation proof, as they produce fissile U-233, would take 25-30 years, to certify, starting today. In addition, there is ALREADY a smaller, factory constructable, certified design in existence right now; and has been for a decade. Except nobody bought one of the Westinghouse AP-600 PWRs, as the capital costs and operating revenues are just not in sync. Nor would they be in sync, for any such new design as is proposed to be funded and wasted here. Westinghouse thought originally that you could sell these AP-600, 600 MW, 1/3 of the output of a GE 1500 MW BWR, like cookies, and have a smooth upgrade path as needed. It didn't work. This proposal is just a way to waste money, expend pre-allocated funds, burning a hole in some bureaucrats account, and pay off campaign donors, like Solyndra, EverGreen, Solar General, Fisker, Bright Automotive, and a dozen other such scams. After delaying the construction and COL licensing of the first new reactors as long as possible, with every delay possible, almost an additional three years of the Obama Administration, excuses ran out. At Vogtle in Georgia they had to license the construction of a pair of new "standardized design", Westinghouse AP-1000, Gen III+ "passive PWRs" in February 2012. Construction has just commenced, and operation will begin rpoviding electricity to the grid, in 2016. That is considerably different from the 15-18 year history of the monkeywrenching and then legal delaying actions that raised the cost of so many bad, but also good nuclear projects, indiscriminately, in the 1970s and 1980s. That is what happens when you have ignorant Leftist demagogues without a brain in their heads, leading chanting mobs of sky-larking college kids in NO NUKE!! demonstrations. What they got instead, was the continued operation of an even then, aged fleet of pollution abatement free, very dirty coal plants continuing to run for an additional thirty years. All of them protected by the ignorancy of the Carter era Grandfather clauses, with their well-intentioned, but useless "best available pollution improvements", that really meant no improvements at all. We shall see if these partial factory built plants can be built in the same time it is taking for 4 identical designs that are being constructed in China. Those then legal but bankrupting, delaying tactics are no longer legal. That was one of the reasons that the Obamacites had to reluctantly, license Vogtle. The legal period for delays finally expired; and the Courts simply threw out the cases attempting more delay. Welcome to the delayed but coming Nuclear Renaissance starting at Vogtle, and soon spreading across America. Remember that these two plants when on-line, in mid-decade, will generate more electricity then every single one of the thousands of Windmills and Solar installations in North America, COMBINED. That is a mere restatement of the total inefficiency and boondoggle aspects of the ignorant and juvenile Energy programs we have been pursuing, in the name of Green.

The urgent effort and request to make E15, is just a sign that the synthetic manufactured fuel industry has been successful, amid all the subsidies afforded them. Their annual production has now exceeded 10% of total US oil demand, and they are desperately seeking more markets. It's also indicative that if fossil fuel were no longer availble at all, and were all the auto vehicles to eventually adopt VOLT technology, there would be no problem. The US civilization would not need to return to the caves, as the synthetic fuels industry can alresdy provide enough fuel for All our Ground Transport needs. So the fears of Peak Oil, are fantasies too.

Boondoggle! I assume both the governor's and the Director of CARB's yachts will qualify for and just about exhaust these funds...

The problem is overcapacity in Eureope and all the European makers all face the same issue. Sclerotic socialist governments, do not allow the closing of old, obsolescent facilities, except with massive cost. Since neither automaker wants to face facts, like the Americans did a few yearsa ago, they hope to save enough in joint purchasing to overcome the massive losses due to retaining useless over capacity. In effect subsidising their losses, from the losses impssed on their suppliers; and possibly driving them into bankruptcy. It sort of like the drunk looking for his dropped keys under the street lamp, even though he dropped them up the street, in the dark. He did so, merely because the light is better there. I predict that this "solution" has as much potential for sucess, as the drunk's under the street light, search did.