U.S. Automakers

The U.S. Automakers are getting their butts handed to them. Toyota is expected to take the top notch for American auto sales in 2007. They are already getting very close in 2006.



While everyone speculates on why the automakers are losing market share, I suspect that it is mostly a function of style. American automakers have historically made some pretty ugly cars. The reliability is definitely better than some of the German automakers, but they just lack style. Meanwhile, Japanese autos are solidly built, with nice features and affordable prices. You can see that the major Japanese brands are solidly in the top of the J.D. Power Vehicle Reliability Ratings (defects per 1000 vehicles).

My Issues with Ethanol

I felt that I could start a solid blog based on how much time I spend on Swivel.com. One of the first topics that I wanted to talk about is the debate over Ethanol. So far, the massive (government funded) corn surplus that the U.S. currently produces is being depleted by ethanol production. It seems that people are going crazy over using corn to fuel their vehicles, but it is simply not an effective solution. As you can see in the graph, corn is among the least productive crops for growing ethanol.



Furthermore, according to people from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) state that producing Ethanol from corn uses almost as much (coal-fired) energy as it actually puts out for powering automobiles.

Now I know that producing Ethanol is a way for the U.S. to use its excess coal reserves to move away from foreign-produced petroleum, but it doesn't seem like it is moving in a long-term sustainable direction.

This is further hurt by the gas mileage of some of the Ethanol fueled vehicles. In the latest fuel economy studies by the U.S. government, it seems like the flex fuel vehicles (FFV) that use Ethanol have poor gas mileage. Some of the FFV vehicles that are 4WD get between 9 and 11 gallons per mile on E85 Ethanol, and are the lowest on the graph.