[PSYCHO-FREEP]

What you fail to understand is the FACT that Ethanol requires 1 gallon of fuel just to produce 1.2 gallons of Ethanol. A net gain of .2 gal., is dismal.

Not only that, it is also a fact that if every single acre of land used for agriculture in this country were converted over to nothing but Ethanol production, it would only provide less than 30% of our needs. The land cannot produce the demand. (We also have to eat, don't we?)

The technology you speak of is not cheap in any shape or form.

This ignorant notion that a barrel of oil is mostly, only fuel is quite annoying as well. Not one vehicle can or will be built without it. There is just no raw material on the planet that provides us with so many compounds, chemicals or manufacturing potentials as does oil. Just try building a car without it once, at the current demand, if you still think you have it all figured out.

[taildragger]

Ok... These engines use 3 to 5% ethanol, so existing production land/refineries could be used with greater efficiency. and then we are not even going into the various waste based Ethanol possibilities. I do not disagree with your oil assessment, you are spot on. But note, this is being touted as a Diesel replacement, that price point might still be an advantage over diesel and get rid of all it's downfalls.

I happened to see the published results of Ricardo's results as well on the web. Something like 722 lbs of torque out of an Euro V6 they converted to this system. Lets divorce ourselves from the metallurgy to make it happen for a moment. Those numbers spell "bye-bye" to diesels IMHO and quite possibly the survival of the pickup.