MTV and Chevy Team Up for E85 Love-Fest
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 08.30.06
General Motors' Chevrolet brand is teaming up with MTV for a night of biofuel awareness and ethanol promotion. As the “official vehicle” of tomorrow night's Video Music Awards (VMAs), Chevrolet will provide a customized fleet of 60 E85 (85% ethanol) compatible SUVs to transport talent to the Awards telecast at Radio City Music Hall. Chevrolet has also designed a multiplatform program centered around the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards to include the branded fleet, in-program content (Chevy will present the pre-show “Top of the Rock” concert and provide the “Chevy Fly-Cam” with aerial shots of red carpet arrivals) and on-line/off-line advertising. The show will be available to a potential viewing audience of more than 1.3 billion people via MTV’s global network of 50 channels reaching 481.5 million households around the world as well as through syndication, essentially galvanizing GM's stance on alternative fuels and reduction of foreign oil dependence through ethanol use. While we tend to disagree that ethanol is a viable fuel for the future, it beats the gas-guzzling inefficiency that has become the carmaker's trademark. Will the MTV viewership stand up and take notice? We'll have to watch: tune in to MTV tomorrow night to check it out. ::Paddock Talk via ::AutoblogGreen
Nobody who wins these vehicles will put E85 in them. Why? Because except in the midwest boonies, you can't buy E85. Even if you live in the midwest boonies, it usually costs more than gasoline, especially you factor in ethanol's 25% decrease in efficiency. E85 is just a way for GM and other automakers to thwart CAFE standards.
Ironic because the VMAs are in LA, which has no E85 stations. There's only one in the entire state of California.
**Author's comment**
You're right about the ethanol in LA, though I have to point out that that the VMA's are in NYC, at Radio City Music Hall. Still, your point is well-taken; ethanol isn't available to the public in NYC yet either.
CD
It's ironic this is being pushed as a green solution when a growing number of eco-mentalists are starting to campaign AGAINST Biofuels due to the land use growing the crops would require.
If I didn't know any better, you would thing that they didn't like cars!!
I'm fairly convinced there are environmentalists out there who are not satisfied by any progress towards "green". They will just complain about something. Oil sucks, no wait bio fuels suck...
Can't blame Chevy for trying to make a buck. What is the big deal with this bio or elect. stuff? We still are producing garbage in the air, junk/plastic for the earth and still having cars on the road. The only way to slow the polution is to stop driving or go to mass transit...most every other country does it except...USA. Also, last I check elect was produced by fossil fuel.
Ethanol which will made from corn is a questionable investment from an energy point of view. You only get 20% more energy out than you put in and you deplete the soil, use pesticides, etc. Biodiesel is a better deal from this point of view. Ethanol is becoming a substitute for farm subsidies of the already unsustainable corn monoculture in the Midwest. Either we need to develop higher yield, sustainable ways of making ethanol from other crops or think of other options.
By the way, if you put solar panels in a field you would get 100x more energy out of it per unit area than you would out of corn. Solar panels are not yet cheap enough but this is the direction we should be going in. Electric propulsion where possible.
While I don't give a crap about celebs driving around in e85 vehicles anything that gets the word out can't be to bad.