[Biofuel] Sen. Lieberman: Biofuel + Plug-In Hybrids on threshold of commercialization

[Felix Kramer]

Sen. Lieberman plans biofuel PHEV bill: legislative breakthrough
This is by far the most specific and far-reaching proposal to date.

--  Press release followed by news story:
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news/message/169

-- Speech excerpts, outline of plan and full text of speech:
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news/message/170
(WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO FORWARD)


EXCERPTS
This reality is bipartisan. My staff and I have spent as much time talking 
about these proposals with Republicans as with Democrats. My colleagues 
Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Evan Bayh of Indiana are particularly 
interested in setting America free from foreign oil dependence. We are 
ready to get serious, set the serious goals that eluded us in the past and 
take the bold steps necessary to reach those goals.

... we get the flexibility to power a car with fuel made from corn, prairie 
grass, or agricultural waste from our own heartland that will cost a lot 
less than gasoline does today Making them flexible fuel cars, as I’ve 
already said, can save us more than 2 million barrels of gasoline a day.

But we can do even better – dramatically better – with the plug-in hybrid 
that is just now on the threshold of commercialization. ...Plugging in your 
car during off peak hours –when power is in surplus and cheaper – would 
soon just become part of the modern daily routine, like plugging in your 
cell phone or PDA before you go to bed. And off-peak electricity can be the 
equivalent of 50 cent a gallon gasoline.

This isn’t pie in the sky. These vehicles could be in your garage within a 
couple of years. Some of the incentives for achieving this were included in 
the Energy bill signed into law in August. But they did not go nearly far 
enough. We need to couple these incentives with real performance standards 
and sales requirements to ensure that as soon as possible new cars are 
running not just on gasoline but on biofuels and electricity.

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   Felix Kramer  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Founder  California Cars Initiative
 http://www.calcars.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/priusplus
 http://www.hybridcars.com/blogs/power
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[Biofuel] TIME mag story on plug-in hybrids + biofuels

[Felix Kramer]

http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1069470,00.html

Breaking That Dirty Oil Habit An unlikely alliance of hawks, doves and 
greens has a plan to help america guzzle less gas. Could it work?

TIME Bonus Section, Inside Business, July 2005

Here are the excerpts we've put on our website:

 A 500-m.p.g.-of-gas car may sound like a pie-in-the-sky dream. But in 
fact, it is technologically possible. Green-car enthusiasts in California 
are experimenting with innovative plug-in technology, while DaimlerChrysler 
will soon be testing its own plug-in vanCould it be that the motley 
coalition of tree huggers and hawks is on to something? ...Hanssen was 
approached last year by Felix Kramer for help in building a dashboard 
monitor for a Prius that he and CalCars, his group of plug-in advocates, 
had converted into a crude plug-inHanssen recently showed off his 
prototype at the 2005 Tour de Sol, a green-car race in Saratoga Springs, 
N.Y., where it didn't win but did deliver a fuel economy of 102 m.p.g. over 
a 150-mile course. The cost of charging the batteries? A buck. EnergyCS and 
Clean-Tech have launched a start-up called EDrive Systems, which plans to 
sell by next year kits to convert the Prius into a plug-in (though the 
modifications will void the warranty) Several U.S. utilities are 
supporting the technology. Plug-in cars would open a new market for 
electricity at night, when utilities have excess capacity. Ed Kjaer, 
director of electric transportation at Southern California Edison, argues 
that plug-ins represent a natural evolution of hybrid technology, which 
today essentially burns gas to generate electricityGeorge W. Bush, the 
former Texan oilman, has begun talking up corn ethanol and clean diesel and 
has endorsed a $4,000 tax credit for purchases of hybrid cars. That has not 
gone unnoticed by energy's new coalition of convenience, even if the 
President hasn't yet mentioned plug-in hybrids or bioethanolMaybe 500 
m.p.g. isn't so crazy after all.


We will have a downloadable/printable PDF of the scanned version of this 
TIME article at
http://www.calcars.org/kudos.html as soon as we get a print copy (joining 
the Business Week, Newsweek-Zakaria and other stories already available).


If you subscribe to the CalCars Newsletter at the URL below, you'll get 
full-text forwardable copies of major news.


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  Felix Kramer  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Founder  California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
   PRIUS+ PHEV Conversion Group
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/priusplus/
  CalCars-PHEV Newsletter
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/calcars-news
  PO Box 61045 Palo Alto, CA 94306
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