What should come first: Raise the MPG of cars, start demanding more Hybrids, drill more oil, or invest in E85?

The markets will move to alternatives to the problem (this especially as prices get higher and higher and higher).





Power is where the government should put more of its focus. In transportation markets will adjust because individual consumers are the heart of those choices, but in utilities there is little choices, and specifically the form of power used is not the choice of individual consumers (IE. You and I cannot ';choose'; to buy power produced by nuclear energy, or solar, or wind etc....we simply purchase power provided).





The markets are said to correct themselves, and alternatives will be offered as prices rise (in a supply-demand free economic model). People will start buying higher MPG vehicles, use alternative transportation options, demand more hybrids, etc as they realize prices are never going to significantly fall on gasoline again. As to what would be best for the markets, I think movement to more complete alternatives to petroleum would be the best option and the most profitable. There needs to be as much movement away from petroleum use as is possible.





The government can also use regulation to make sure oil companies do not interfere to disrupt these alternative markets, and to keep them from slowing or halting alternatives, (and likewise at the same time encourage alternative development and innovation). There is absolutely no excuse in the future acceptable from our politicians claiming that big oil disrupted the market and they did not expect them to do that. We all expect them to do that, they do it each and every time alternatives become viable. The government must crush and punish such attempts.





Further drilling will only delay the problem, and will not significantly drop prices. E85 is a poor alternative source currently.What should come first: Raise the MPG of cars, start demanding more Hybrids, drill more oil, or invest in E85?
I work in the automotive industry. If you want more fuel efficient cars, take away the comfort and safety features. A modern 6 cyl. engine usually gets 29 mpg right? Wrong. Take away the AC, air bags, automatic transmission, heated seats, and other safety and comfort features and that 29 MPG car gets 45 MPG.





A 35 MPG 4 cyl can get over 55 MPG if it is stripped down.





The Ford Festiva of the 90's got 55 MPG but no one bought them because they were boxy and were poorly equipped. The biggest problem in this is the consumer. Why do you think that a Lincoln Towncar gets worse mileage than a Ford Focus when they both have the same v-6? It's weight. For every hundred pounds a 6 cyl engine loses a mile per gallon of efficiency. This is why mopeds and motorcycles get 80 MPG.








EDIT: Hybrids are the LEAST efficeint vehicles on the road. The average car buyer trades every five years. A hybrid vs a traditional V-6 saves $2000 in gas over five years on average. They cost between $5 and $10 thousand more. You pay more in finance charges, sticker price, insurance and repairs. It's financially not worth it.





EDIT: E-85 does not work. It actually drains the aquifers under the midwest at a higher rate, raises crop, grain and grocery prices, and worst of it all burns faster and hotter than traditional gasoline. If we are going to move to another fuel, it needs to be hydrogen. It burns clean and is more efficent than any other fuel we have today.











The answer is to build lighter cars. Use less metal and more plastic. Take away frills like navigation, DVD players, heated seats, AWD/4X4, leather seats, interior trim coating, amps and subs, power everything. A loaded car has between ten and twenty electic motors. Those add up in weight quickly.





Another answer is to drive less. I used to manage a convenience store. I would see the same people two, three and four times per day to get soda, cigarettes, snacks. Car-pool or take public transportation when you can.





The problem is the consumer.What should come first: Raise the MPG of cars, start demanding more Hybrids, drill more oil, or invest in E85?
Drill for more oil. We have the resources, why aren't we taking advantage of them. China is drilling 50 miles off of our coast. Do we really think they will be more concerned about our environment than our drillers would be?


We had great mpg cars 30 years ago, but global cooling caused changes to be implemented that cut the mileage in half.


I guess we fixed that global cooling problem so good we now have global warming.


As for E85 - how's that working out? More energy needed to produce it than it gives, lowers fuel efficiency by 20%, has its own polluting effect, and we're burning food! What kind of maroon thinks it's a good idea to use our food source in a basically unvetted way so the costs of everything goes up? Sorry, I forgot we were talking about Congress.


As for electric cars, don't you have to plug those things in somewhere, and where does that energy come from?
1. drill oil in the usa and off it's coasts.


2. find a real alternative to oil. it will take decades.


3. drill oil in the usa and off it's coasts.


4. forget e85. corn is for food, not fuel.


5. until number 2 is found, continue to march with 1 and 3.





On yahoo news today was a clip about a japanese company that has developed an automotive powerplant that only needs water to run. it separates the hydrogen from the oxygen to power the car.
Nuclear energy, renewable energy sources and more all electric cars.





The efficiency of the IC engine can only be raised so high, hybrids have inherent wastes in them that I can't even start describe (mainly you can get more efficiency out of a diesel engine), oil and e85 give us the same old problems of non renewal.
NONE OF THE ABOVE: WHY? The dollar is weak which causes oil to be more costly. Now why is the dollar weak.





As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation s economic machinery (EMPAHSIS ON NATION-IE-AMERICA). Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This serves them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denies to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit run out, the game stops.





This debt is provided by the large growth of business savings as well as savings by individuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes are relatively low. When private debt outside of the banking system increases about fifty per cent. Taking the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotel structures, consumer installment debt, brokers' loans, and foreign debt. The stimulation to spending by debt-creation of this sort is short-lived and cannot be counted on to sustain high levels of employment for long periods of time.





Money being loaned, for instance, to investment banks, corporations and wealthy individuals for stock-market speculation were distributed to the public as lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to the corporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatly moderated the economic collapse that we see and therefore the gas would not (or anything else) be as outrageous as it is.





That should be first! The prices will come down in a perfect world. I really do not know what the administration has gotten us into. BUT IT IS A VERY BIG MESS. I know that for sure.
We had more efficient cars 20 years ago. My '89 Horizon got 35mpg commuting, and 42 or so on road trips. The cars Chrysler replaced it with got/get much worse mileage.





Manufacturers added weight and power drain in the form of add-on doodads. Some of these were government mandated, some of them are ';conveniences'; that airhead consumers fell for. I don't have power windows, power doors, or powered/heated seats in my house, why would I think I need them in my car?





Then on top of that, consumers also compensated for lack of organ size and personality deficiencies by opting for bigger vehicles, bigger engines, and 4 wheel drive. I never had any problems with my Horizon in Chicago winters....





Hybrids are a bad compromise, adding more weight, complexity, cost, and potential repair nightmares, in return for a very small mileage improvement.





Yes we need to drill AND do flex fuel, but getting the excess weight out of vehicles is the first thing. Weight kills mileage. Period.
Well start demanding more hybrids cars as they now are doing





friend just got laid off in SUV plant to make way for this





Raise the miles per gallon





Drilling any where would take 15-20 years and not solve the short term problem





Invest in long term renewable energy is the way of the future


and time is now





No candidate can do ANYTHING to help lower the costs now before the election nor in 2009





It is supply and demand.....all the top economists repeating this but no one hears





Win profits are a drop in the bucket to the oil industry and they will still rule the world...but ould assist by putting those profits back into infrastructure.....meaning jobs
We should start drilling more in the U.S. pronto. The damned polar bears can walk around the oil rigs it will not hurt them in the least. The refuge is millions upon millions of acres give us 2000 acres to drill on.





We should start building more 50+mpg cars like the honda crx and volkswagen rabbit of the 80s.





Scrap the hybrids. Those things are less efficient than a few cars (listed above} we built in the 80s. They carry quite an extra weight premium. The extra energy it takes to build them is astronomical and cannot be recovered over there normal lifetime. Battery disposal is another concern.





We should invest in cellolosic ethanol. Food should not be used for fuel.





We need to get back into coal gasification we need to invest more in wind and solar as well.





This should be done in no particular order. It is all overdue. We have the manpower to tackle it all.





Change some of our zoning ordinances so the cities can be built more bicycle and pedestrian friendly. Build more mass transit..
Japan already has a car that runs on H2O, that should be the first step, Second step should be for us to drill for more oil, so when the Arabs run out, they will have to beg from us, instead of the other way around. E85 is just going to cause a food shortage and raise the price of food to match the price of oil increases.
Your best choice is to drill more oil. The glib answer is, once we run out the mother of necessity will take over and we'll have to find an alternative source of energy. My choice would be for us to start developing alternate sources of energy now, while drilling more oil. Perhaps we need a Manhattan Project style study. Bring all the great minds together and give them a billion dollars each to develop cold fusion. Even if that were a yearly salary, the long range cost savings would far outweigh our initial investment, not to mention the positive impact on the environment. If we can spend a trillion dollars to bomb people who really didn't do much to us, then we can spend at least that much on energy.
I wonder how many folks answering your (very good) question were around in the 70's when we (america) had it's first major gas crisis. Back then, most of the arguments/solutions proposed were the exact same ones we are seeing today--find alternative sources, make cars with better MPG standards, drill in alaska/off the coast. And for awhile, the public did seek better mileage, smaller vehicles, but as for sustaining this effort to conserve, as soon as gas became plentiful, it was back to bigger cars, trucks, SUV's. And in each attempt by congress to make fuel efficiency better, it was met with automotive industry lobbyists who fought any kind of meaningful legislation. Oh, and gas was less than a dollar a gallon. We were warned by the likes of ralph nader and conservationists that we (america) consumed too much, but the public scoffed at him (and others), ridiculed, denegrated and ignored these ';alarm-sounders';.





So, today, we, as a nation, are beginning to pay the price (no pun intended) for our past inaction. And gas is now well over $4/gallon and surely headed higher....and what to do? First, we need to wean ourselves off of foreign oil dependency, and DRILLING IN ALASKA IS NOT THE ANSWER. The solution is to find alternative fuel sources--which means investing in research and development. E85 is a start, but as others have said, do we use corn for fuel or food? It is only one small source. We can swallow our macho-america-is-the-best- pride/attitude and seek out how japan can make fuel efficient cars and we can't (or refuse to). What's wrong with learning from other countries? We can study how brazil weaned itself from oil dependency and learn from them. We can demand a certain level of fuel efficiency from detroit--without sacrificing safety (as someone above said). We can take public transportation instead of driving (we're seeing more of this). We can pass windfall profits taxes, but the oil companies will cry foul (they like these record profits), but it is a necessity. Drilling in ANWR will give us a mere drop of our daily consumption and will only destroy the planet further. But above all, we need a change in attitude across the political spectrum and this will be the biggest obstacle we face--just look at how the republicans blocked the climate bill from being amended, for purely political purposes. This tactic needs to be changed and every politician not putting the planet/environment first on there priority list needs to be booted from office (and i'm talking BOTH reps and dems here). It won't be easy, but we can start by first electing a new LEADER as president, and not someone who will simply follow the rules of the past.
It appears there will be more natural demand for higher mpg's and hybrids. With the current cost of gas, a hybrid actually makes sense if you keep an auto less than 100,k miles. I'd be afraid to keep one longer than that since they aren't mass produced at a great level.





E85 seems like an incredibly bad idea. It competes with food pricing and it doesn't create a very dynamic fuel.





I think we need to drill for more oil, build more refineries, build more nuclear plants and it would be great to see a plug in car that was affordable yet dependable.





fs
No, I think we should all live like you want us to. We should have no free choice at all.





You freaks need to THINK about what you say. You are essentially saying we must live as YOU think we should.





I do not think we should live like YOU want us to any more than I think YOU should live like any of the rest of us think you should.





The market will take care of it. If people continue to buy large vehicles, that's what manufacturers will make.





Consider what Japanese imports were like for the first 40 years compared to what we have now. Not long ago it was very easy to tell a vehicle was a Japanese import simply by its size. American made cars have become smaller while Japanese cars are larger.





The cost of fuel has little to do with US Demand. While our use has increased, it has increased far less than that of other developing countries.





You want the honest no BS answer?





1. Convert as much electrical production to nuclear as fast as possible.


2. Do NOT start drilling here, except where others are, like between here and Cuba. Only compete, save our supply.


3. Continue to improve non-food derived ethanol like that from switch grass.


4. Continue/increase funding on research for other fuel sources.


5. Cease immediately ALL foreign aid, whether it be military or monetary.





Finally begin the systematic removal of the reproductive organs of all idiots who have no idea how much they depend on oil.





Ty, tyvm.





You can write me in for president if you like.





Oh, almost forgot. Immediately put all prisoners/welfare recipients to work, they need to earn their keep. Begin rounding up illegals, the cost to this country is far greater than the cost of getting rid of them. Use them to build a wall, not a GD fence, a freakin wall. Charge them room, board and transport costs. Pay them a fair prevailing wage for where ever they happen to be stationed to build our wall. They can be sent home when they have earned their way home.
None of the above.





We need to demand that 100% electric vehicles be put on the market IMMEDIATELY and demand that the US government both subsidize the auto manufacturers to make them and also Solar Panel manufacturers to make better and cheaper Solar panels.


Also every US citizen should get zero interest loans to help pay for the cheaper Solar panels to power both the car and their house.





This technology is here TODAY, my wife and I started building up our Solar Array 8 years ago (soon as Bush stole office we knew oil was going to sky rocket).


We are now 100% off the grid and we have a Prius converted to a plug in which is charged by our Solar Array, I have spent about $9 in fuel in over 6 months and that was only because of a couple of long trips.





Solar and Wind power is the answer without any question, it works perfectly for us.


We are thinking of adding a small wind generator just for added extra in case of weeks of rainy weather.
raising the mpg's of cars and making more hybrids would be at the top of my list. even if we drill for more oil, it's a limited resource and we're going to have to get around without it at some point, lets start focusing on ways to stretch what we do have while we come up with a solution. E85 is a partial solution, but it raises a lot of other problems (raising crops for fuel when there are food shortages)
Drill for more oil- That's got to be #1. We have more here than in Saudi Arabia (including shale oil)- we just need to get it.





Then work on alternative fuel (I think hydrogen is very promising) and encourage the free market to come up with solutions (see the aptera and tesla roadster)





If I can afford it, I'm going to get an Aptera in a few years- 300 MPG! That's better than my little motorcycle!
e85, if used will be 3.50 cents/gallon. I dont get what the hype is. It wont stop the high price. Second, e85 causes the same emmissions, plus the factory and the machines making or growing it produce a gratuitous amount of c02. H20 cars cost a million dallors a piece to make. Try selling that one. and the only way to answer what ur saying is by making a lot of hybrid cars. we have trillions and trillions of gallons left that is unotuched. We wont run out, this world is huge and people dont understand how much oil we really have. There is plenty of oil in the gulf too.
solar,wind and tide power,and start building less(smaller) cars.get our light rail and train infrastructures in place while steel and other supplies are still ';fairly'; cheap,hydrogens a joke its not a energy supply,its energy storage,ethynol is even worse takes more energy to produce then u get out of it
Regulate the markets oil is traded on 1st. Prevent speculators from driving up the price of a barrel of oil








http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/bu鈥?/a>





E85 is a good solution. Ethanol from corn is not. In Brazil they use sugar cane and get 8 units of energy out of every 1 they put in, with corn you only get 1.5 back for every 1 you put in.


Lower tariffs on ethanol from brazil.


And invest more in ethanol from non food crops, there are lots of cellulose ethanol projects going on right now-%26gt; http://blogs.edmunds.com/.eea6b92
I think my answer is none of the above. Some sort of limitation or rationing of gasoline such as was used in WWII might begin to address some of our immediate problems since a good part of our economic trouble and fuel shortages are related to the war in Iraq. We all buy and spend as though we were in the middle of Utopia. The government seems to want to make war which citizens think we can afford. They seem to want us to believe an endless war will be without negative consequences for our way of life and our standard of living. In directing the country's response to 9/11,


the President said ';Keep on spending';.





The war in Afghanistan brought the Soviet Union to her knees in ten years. That was the reason the Berlin Wall came tumblijng down. We are on track to end up the same way from our war in Iraq. The scarey part for me is that ruining the economy of the U.S. was the precise goal stated by bin Ladin which was the reason he attacked the World Trade Center, the symbol of U.S. domination of the global economy.





Now that strategy seems to be working supported by hawkish attitudes in the government.. OBL calculated our corporate greed and lack of personal discipline quite accurately. Our problems with energy put us at tremendous disadvantage in relationship to other countries like China, Russia, India, and the Muslim countries in the middle east. I hope you understand that I have a different grasp of the problem than the price of a barrel of oil. More oil or more miles per gallon won't address what i see as the problem.
1st should be drill for more oil but that doesnt mean it is the most important just the most immediate impact ethanol isnt the answer probably best solution would be hydrogen fuel cell and electric cars hybrids really are just a feel good not much of an answer either but pushing for higher mpg standards might help a little
Conservation is the key. So raising mileage standards is good, mixing in more hybrids is also good, but drilling for more oil is only a short term solution.





E85 is suicide. It is 10% cheaper than gas, but gets 20% less miles per gallon = major looser.
I would drill now, the oil won't reach the pipeline for years. In the meantime the price of gas will promote the MPG and Hybrid demand.





Do away with ethanol, go electric, bio fuel or hydrogen cell, do all three.
Drill more oil.





If you ask me, all these puddle jumping hybrid pop cans are more 'status' vehicles than any hard working pick-up.
Make cars run off batteries that you could rexchange for a charged battery waiting for you at your home being charged by soar power.
in my opinion whatever the choice be, one should alwas try to use anything only when needed. humans should control culture and nt let culture control them.
Install a HHO gas kit and double your mpg.
1 Raise the MPG - this would have the most effect


2 Hybrids - they're good for some drivers


3 E85- I'm all for biofuels but I think this is a joke


4 Drill more oil - its time for alternatives
THE APTERA CAR 320 MPG http://aptera.com





It is here and no one seems to be interested, only complain
All of the above.