“Given that a gallon of gasoline now costs $3, then methanol costs ($1.6/67%)=$2.5 and is cost competitive even in a mix with gasoline, but not by a lot.
I don’t think anybody counted profit in the methanol supply chain or fuel taxes into this.”
You got your numbers wrong. Zubrin says that methanol currently sells for $.80 and he goes on to divide that number by .50(to account for methanol’s lower bang for your buck than gasoline) to come of with the $1.60 figure. So he already factored that in and at an even lower rate than you did. Now if we use your figure of .67 and divide that into $.80 for the current price of menthanol then we come up with $1.19 per gallon comparable price of methanol to gas’s 3 bucks per gallon.
I didn’t do the numbers, I just asked if profit all the way to the pump and taxes are figured in. I just looked it up, and the average price for wholesale gas was $2.34 when it was over $3.10 at the pump.
And the taxes will remain. The government loves its taxes. The most hypocritical ones will be the Europeans who call their gas taxes “environmental taxes.” There’s no more reason for these taxes when what you’re pumping is no longer bad for the environment, but they’ll remain because government budgets rely on milking the drivers in the name of environmentalism.