GM Promotes Flexfuel When You Can't Find Ethanol

Life is full of coincidences. On the same day we see a two page spread in Wired promoting GM's initiatives in flex-fuel cars, we read in the New York Times that even in corn country in the Midwest, supplies are difficult to find and it is almost impossible to drive from Chicago to Kansas on E85 fuel. So why is GM promoting Flexfuel? It turns out that the Government gives GM a bonus in the average fuel economy standards, whether or not the pickup truck or SUV ever sees a drop of the stuff. Some purchasers don't even know they are driving flex-fuel vehicles. “Ethanol should be saving us twice as much oil as it is today because we are letting really big, inefficient flex-fuel vehicles on the road,” said Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. So GM can keep selling big pickups with lousy mileage by making them flex-fuel. That makes sense. ::New York Times