University of Minnesota: Ethanol no better than gas

The University of Minnesota has released a study on the benefits of three types of fuels: gasoline, corn-based ethanol and cellulosic ethanol. The conclusion was what most readers know: corn-based ethanol doesn't have that many benefits. Corn still needs tractors to be harvested, and some kind of fuel and/or electricity for distillation. However, the study doesn't discard biofuels entirely and puts an emphasis on the benefits that cellulosic ethanol could bring. For instance, the study calculated the total environmental and health costs of making each type of fuel. A gallon of gasoline was about 71 cents, compared with between 72 cents and $1.45 for corn-based ethanol and 19 to 32 cents for cellulosic ethanol, depending, of course, on the technology and type of plants used.
Reactions took very little time to arrive. Mark Hamerlinck, communications director for the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, responded with the benefits of producing domestic fuel and also on how farming techniques could be improved in the near future by farmers themselves. Martha Schlicher, vice president of Illinois River Energy and former head of the National Corn To Ethanol Research Center, also published a press release severely criticizing the study, stating that it put too many hopes in cellulosic ethanol, which is yet-to-be proven at on a large scale, and that the report authors forgot that corn ethanol can be made using sources of non-polluting energy.
[Source: Star Tribune and Martha Schlicher]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Tim 11:05AM (2/06/2009)
This is absolute CRAP!
Ethanol is MUCH better than gas if you're RECEIVING taxpayer money to, grow, research, or distribute it. Ain't socialism (statism) fun? Ready for MORE "change", comrade? How about another $Trillion in taxpayer debt for PORK!
Global Warming = Global Socialist Gov't of, by and FOR the banking elite and YOU'RE paying for it!
Don't like it? STOP DRIVING!
(in other words... we're all screwed)
Reply
Beavker 11:17AM (2/06/2009)
Leave this blog, for I think you were looking for the Autoblog "Greed", and immediately continue watching your CNBC.
Have another glass of Kool-Aid.
That was one of the most schizophreniz replies to a simple article on a single study that I've ever seen.
Tim 11:37AM (2/06/2009)
Beavker,
Sound words from one who can not (lacking capability) or will not (programmed) step back and look at the big picture of freedom vs. Statism. Gov't CHOOSE corn ethanol and only an astringe, a thief or a moron would be surprised that it isn't self-sustainable.
Apparently liberals/progressives/socialists/Statists hate free exchange of ideas as much as they hate every other type of free competition. Please go back to your bong and stop drinking the water.
noz 12:56PM (2/06/2009)
TIM:
I can't figure out nutjobs like you. When Exxon makes profit, it's OK. They're cool. When scientists and environmentalists say the planet is in peril, they are greedy, lying, and self-motivated. What a joke you are. But anyway...
Guess what buddy. I'd rather listen to a greedy, self-motivated scientists who actually may help us clean up your shit instead of listening to a self-indulgent tool like you who only cares about beating another moron beside you to the next traffic light with your chest-thumping V8.
Get a grip...and then get a life. If you don't want to be part of the improvement...please, send your lame ass to Venus and suck up all the CO2, Sulfur, and Methane your heart desires.
People like you are more dangerous to humanity than any bomb ever devised. Sadly, there are plenty of people like...which is very very worrisome.
Tim 1:01PM (2/06/2009)
Noz,
"I'd rather listen to a greedy, self-motivated scientists who actually may help us clean up..." (bad words left out because they show ignorance of the English language)
I'm glad to hear you say that! If you're NOT a progressive hypocrite then listen to these scientists:
FACT, 31,072 American scientists have signed this petition REJECTING the "man-made global warming junk science DOGMA as a giant SCAM designed to replace our freedom with a totalitarian “New World Order”.
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Bottom line:
Be GOOD STEWARDS of your environment and be FREE from dependency on foreign ANYTHING. Don’t take more than you need and clean up after yourself. Just like mamma said. She also said “don’t take any wooden nickels.”
In other words, don’t get scammed!
Tim 1:26PM (2/06/2009)
Noz,
"I'd rather listen to a greedy, self-motivated scientists who actually may help us clean up..." (bad words left out because they show ignorance of the English language)
I'm glad to hear you say that! If you're NOT a progressive hypocrite then listen to these scientists:
FACT, 31,072 American scientists have signed this petition REJECTING the "man-made global warming junk science DOGMA as a giant SCAM designed to replace our freedom with a totalitarian “New World Order”.
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Bottom line:
Be GOOD STEWARDS of your environment and be FREE from dependency on foreign ANYTHING. Don’t take more than you need and clean up after yourself. Just like mamma said. She also said “don’t take any wooden nickels.” In other words, don’t get scammed!
Chris M 10:17PM (2/06/2009)
Tim, how many of those 31,072 American scientists are working for coal companies, oil companies, auto companies, industries heavily dependent on coal or oil, or right-wing groups that want to supress anything challenging the status quo? For that matter, how many are real scientists and not just pretenders?
Lets make it easier: are ANY of those 31,072 "american scientists" real, honest, unbiased scientists with expertise climatology? I sincerely doubt it.
Tim 8:26AM (2/07/2009)
Chris M,
Good point! Let’s follow this to its logical conclusion with a balancing question…
How many of Al (Green) Gore's 2,000 scientists are NOT receiving money from the same entities you mentioned and are NOT dependant on taxpayer money to "further" their research AND are not receiving money from entities profiting or receiving power from “progressive” Statist entities with a goal of global top-down gov’t?
Answer: ZERO
I see you have not even bothered to do your own research or even look at the petition and look up some of the names on it. Liberals/progressives/socialists are afraid to look at the light of truth because that same light exposes the fallacy of their dogma.
Here's another chance:
http://www.petitionproject.org/
Education is like a neurotransmitter. Use it or lose it but never abuse it with false information like the junk (transfer the wealth & power) man made global warming dogma. Always RESEARCH both sides of every argument and then look out of the contest to form you OWN opinion instead of swallowing someone else’s BS.
noz 1:27AM (2/09/2009)
TIM:
I've seen that joke of a website that claims 31000 scientists are against global climate change. I guess that makes the scientists and engineers I work with here at NASA liars and idiots. They have an agenda but the oil and ethanol companies don't right? Is that what you are saying?
You're a total fool if you think global climate change has not been accelerated by what we have been putting in the air.
Get real man. The data is there. The facts are in. The only thing we have to debate about now is screwed are we and how far will the climate swing one way or another thanks to our nudging of the system into an unbalanced state?
Chris M is right in calling you out on that stupid website you sited. What a joke...seriously.
Carney 10:04AM (2/12/2009)
Tim, if you're as opposed to socialism and statism as you claim, you should be a foaming at the mouth enemy of oil, while all but ignoring ethanol.
Our total subsidies and government breaks for ethanol combine to less than $10 billion, including tax breaks.
By contrast, OPEC rakes in hundreds of billions of dollars from Americans as a result of state-dictated market distortion. Those states being the members of OPEC.
OPEC's whole PURPOSE is to restrict production below market demand so as to artificially spike the price. And every member of OPEC is not a company but a government, and IIRC a government operating a socialist, state-owned oil company with which all competition in that country is banned. These government monopolies dictate production levels according to decisions made by the state's politicians and bureaucrats rather than market demand. Furthermore they do so deliberately in order to make us pay as much as possible.
Saudi Arabia, according to its own oil minister in a public speech in 1999, has an all-inclusive cost of production, including exploration, of $1.50 a barrel. This makes the $130 a barrel that oil reached in 2008 a monstrously egregious tax on the productive, humane, and free portions of the world, flowing directly to the coffers of the petro-tyrannies. The huge run-up in oil prices from 1999 to 2008 was the equivalent of a 40% tax increase on the average American, and it didn't even go to national health care or universal college or some scheme for people here at home; it flowed OUT of the country to FOREIGN governments.
And what did they spend it on?
First, on the most egregious and decadent display of wallowing in luxury in the history of the world - palaces, yachts, personal full size passenger jets, racehorses, concubines, drugs, you name it. Our money.
Second, on promulgating vicious violent propaganda. The Saudis alone have funded tens of thousands of madrassas around the world, luring poor village boys with free food and the only education they will ever have, into mental slaughterhouses where they are taught only rote memorization of the Koran and the notion that the way to paradise is to kill all those who are not fellow fanatical Islamists. These terrorist factories have turned Pakistan from a relatively secular and liberal state into a roiling cauldron of Islamic zealotry, baying for an apocalyptic bloodbath.
Third, on the actual means and methods of violence. Iran's #1 priority is its nuclear weapons program which is proceeding at frantic speed while we dither and naively imagine talking will accomplish anything other than further delay useful to the mad mullahs. Iran also funds Hamas (which has declared war on America) and Hezbollah (which conducted, among other operations, the destruction via bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aries). The latter is swiftly setting up training camps and bases in the lawless tri-border region of South America, with the help of fellow OPEC member Venezuela, which is spreading chaos and violent narco-Marxist terror throughout Latin America, with the prime target of destroying the United States. Finally of course nearly every Sunni terrorist group is funded in one way or another via oil, including al Qaeda, and all the lunatics who are sawing off heads on the web, raping women and telling them that the only way to wash off the stain on their honor is to be suicide bombers, etc.
This is what oil funds. We were 30% dependent on foreign oil in 1973 and are 60% dependent now, an outrageous failure by our entire political class.
Nor is the solution to "drill baby drill" - the Saudis have the cheapest and deepest reserves anywhere and can undercut expensive remote operations in the high Arctic and deep ocean. Furthermore our reserves are tiny; only 4% of the world's compared to the Mideast's 70%. The status quo going forward will result by 2020 in us having 1% while the Mideast has over 80% - and that's WITHOUT spending down our last-ditch reserves in ANWR and offshore; if we do that, our reserves will go down even faster. ANWR has 16 billion barrels; we import 5 billion a year. Let's keep our basement emergency rations for a truly tire contingency rather than idiotically eating them just to keep business as usual going for a few more years.
The REAL solution is alcohol fuels. And if that involves enriching US agribusiness and some corn farmers, SO WHAT? Reserve your ire for our nation's REAL enemies, for the REAL statist tyrants.
Tim 10:59AM (2/12/2009)
Carney,
Even the EX Soviet KGP head is warning us about Porkzilla moving us to Socialism.
Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.
“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”
Read the rest here:
http://www.therightperspective.org/?p=1472
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!!!!!!
Carney 12:50PM (2/12/2009)
Wow, Tim. I just went through a great deal of effort to show you how piddly and insignificant our market intervention in favor of ethanol is compared to the massive intervention in favor of gasoline practiced by OPEC. Not even $10 billion / year that stays in America compared to HUNDREDS of billions going to our worst enemies, which are complete statist tyrannies.
And instead of responding to the points I made, you just hastily grabbed a totally irrelevant talking point, and dusted off your hands, job done.
Are you that terrified of changing your mind in response to evidence? Is your petty pride dragging you around behind it over every bump in the road? How about YOU instead of your pride mind regaining control?
Besides, you don't even have to abandon your hard core free market zeal in order to agree with me on this one, as I went through considerable effort to carefully explain.
Tell me, if you won't listen to others and engage with them on what they talk about, why should anyone listen to you?
PS I will also note that many OPEC states seized what oil assets they do have from American and other Western private property owners, just sheer brute force expropriating property from its rightful owners.
Tim 1:55PM (2/12/2009)
Carney, (alright, something a little longer)
Your reactionary arguments are irrelevant to the Big Picture. I’m sorry your vision is so narrow. While you worry about OPEC market manipulation, I’m concerned about how and why we got addicted to oil in the first place and the FULL consequences of that addiction.
The fact is that if it weren't for Statists in gov't ignoring the Constitution and intervening militarily on behalf of oil companies (central planning), oil would have been done away with YEARS ago due to simple economics of supply and demand. (I have other, more interesting examples of the harm in central planning, but I'm trying to stay on point.)
Why does central planning maintain our addiction? If the REAL costs of oil including military, health etc were shown AT THE PUMP instead of hidden in the income tax or inflation tax (printing fiat currency), it would simply have become too expensive and the consumer would have moved to mass transit and/or electric cars decades ago.
The REAL cost of oil is over $20gal. once you factor in military and health care costs NOT including pissing-off the world and CREATING radicals who are sick and tired of our occupying THEIR countries so we could steal their oil. 911 was a REACTION to OUR Statist policies and so is our addiction to oil, our national debt, the collapse of the financial market and the collapse of the FIAT $Dollar. Now let’s talk about the unPatriot Act, America spying on Americans, Real ID, loss of Habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, unlimited military action abroad, activating troops IN the us, PORKZILLA etc.
Carney, you worry about OPEC market manipulation while I worry about why the market exists and it’s global ramifications.
Necessity is the mother of invention and Statist intervention retards necessity and regulates invention until the problems are so large that only a collapse of the State can solve them. Remember that EVERY empire collapses of its own military debt and production stagnation as the US is collapsing right NOW!
Do I stand on stubborn Principal, YES!
Do I read and learn from history and see the Big Picture? YES.
Have I read and understand the founding documents including the ANTI-Federalist papers? YES!
Was I given them to read in school? NO. (they won’t even teach you how to balance your check book)
I would rather act and you would rather react.
Carney, if you can't STAND for CORE FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPALS then YOU STAND FOR NOTHING and YOU STAND ON A FOUNDATION OF SAND!
One can choose to OBEY law our INTERPRET law. A law Interpreted is no law at all and that is what has happened to the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Liberty in the USA!
What law is congress, the President and the Judicial system following now?
The law of “whatever the hell they want to do”. THAT IS TYRANNY!
That is why Statist redistribution short-circuiting the market is dangerous and CRIMINAL and everyone who supports it is an ENEMY of liberty!
Carney 3:51PM (2/12/2009)
Tim, so you engage in a great deal of shouting about how our efforts to secure access to overseas oil have caused wars and driven significant growth in the size and scope government here at home.
Then you refuse to DO anything about it. So why bring all that up in the first place?
We're stuck in a chicken and egg dilemma. Gas station owners don't provide alcohol at their pumps because only 3% of cars on the road are alcohol compatible. Drivers don't demand that automakers include alcohol capability because there are so few alcohol pumps.
We've waited 20 years since flex fuel cars were invented in 1986, and they remain a tiny niche despite costing only $100 more if that (a rounding error!) and with world game-changing capability. Meanwhile thanks to the continued failure to make alcohol capability standard equipment, we're more dependent on foreign oil, and the Mideast has become more dangerous, than EVER. OPEC rakes in hundreds of billions of extra, unfair money from us each year and gives lots of it to our enemies. In fact we spent more on foreign oil in 2008 than on our defense budget.
So I'll make you a deal, Tim. For a net reduction in Big Government.
You give me a mandate that all new cars sold in America have flex fuel capability, combined with the occasional willingness to tariff foreign oil from nations that engage in acts of war against us like funding terrorist groups.
In exchange: I'll give you a dropping of an equivalent mandate, Liddy Dole's center rear tail-light, and dropping an equivalent tariff: our stupid 51 cent / gal tariff against Brazilian ethanol.
So no net gain in Big Government there, right?
Still not happy? OK I'll sweeten the pot by tossing in a zeroing out the entire Hydrogen Hoax, cancelling the billions the federal government hands out to auto companies to produce useless hydrogen showroom cars that can never and never will make it in the real world,
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax
, and apply the same amount to cutting the tax or taxes of your choice.
Still not convinced? Now recall that my program will result in massively de-funding the Mideast, Venezuela, and Russia, collapsing the Iranian nuclear program, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, Chavez's narco-Marxism, Russian aggression.
Furthermore the whole Middle East will be drained of strategic significance, making the stakes there much lower and our likelihood of intervention lower as well.
For instance salt used to be a major strategic commodity because it preserved meat and allowed armies on the march to carry their food with them rather than scattering to forage and losing discipline. Wars were fought over salt mines, and it was so precious Roman soldiers were paid a "salary" in salt (the word comes from the Latin for salt). Today, thanks to technological advances, such as the free market but also state intervention such as Napoleon's prize for coming up with canned food, salt has lost its strategic significance. Are we "salt independent"? Who knows, who cares?
That's what all this would do for oil, ending much of our need to be involved, draining the petro-tyrannies from their ability to spread terror ideology and supply terrorists, thus allowing government to ease back here as well.
So, net reduction in Big Government, net reduction in the need to be involved overseas and so closely monitoring things at home. Deal?
Tim 5:42PM (2/12/2009)
Carney, you STILL don't understand what's going on, do you?
You can't be an honorable thief. You can't be a part time whore. You can't be a liar "sometimes". You can't be partially pregnant. You can't make a deal for freedom with a rabid Statist because they will never honor it and that’s why our founders had to do write down a Bill of Rights after they wrote the Constitution.
Here’s the deal…
The Statists WILL Read and Obey the Constitution or this nation's fiat currency and economy will collapses resulting in a Revolution to purge this land of all statist oligarchy tyrants! The blood in our streets will make Iraq look like the garden of Eden in comparison. The Statists will NOT win in THIS civil war.
Watch and learn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nJ7LM3iyNg
The Statists were warned. They broke their promise. WE HAVE A PROBLEM!
Lawmakers in 20 states move to reclaim sovereignty
Obama's $1 trillion deficit-spending 'stimulus plan' seen as last straw
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=88218
Can succession be far behind?
If you don’t understand, you will within the next 12 months so stop fiddling while the Titanic sinks. Buy gold, food, guns AND ammo while the fiat $Dollar still has perceived value. It won’t be long before the Chinese refuse to buy our worthless paper. Then the store shelves will quickly empty of EVERYTHING.
Now, you’ve been warned.
Chris M 5:47PM (2/12/2009)
Well Tim, it turns out that some of those scientists warning us of the effects of greenhouse gasses and the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming work for NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), so they do work for the government. Does that mean you've proven your point? Not quite.
Back when the alarm was sounded on greenhouse gasses and global warming, the Congress was controlled by the Republicans and Bush jr. was President. The Bush jr. administration and the Republican party opposed the Kyoto treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and the Republican controlled government attempted to censor and silence talk of global warming. So, what benefit did it give those NOAA scientists to warn of global warming? It didn't increase their income at all, and some Republicans tried to cut the NOAA budget which would have meant layoffs or salary cuts. In short, there was no profit in it for them.
So, Tim, are you going to try and claim those scientists really wanted their budget to be cut? That they were risking their careers and reputation just to promote bad science?
Tim 7:26PM (2/12/2009)
ChrisM
read my posts above yours. look at the links. we have a much bigger problem than left vs right, repubs vs democrats, childish "I'm right, no I'm right" bickering.
The union is dissolving of it's own debt and civil war will be the result. We are talking months, NOT years and millions will die in bloody confrontation.
This will spill over into a global event.
Brother, please look around. the beast is right behind you.
Carney 1:14PM (2/13/2009)
Tim, what in the world are you talking about?!
Here's a refresher for you: I'm talking about alcohol fuel and the need to move to it and away from oil. You objected, citing your devotion to free markets and limited government.
I pointed out that a) the economy-smashing high prices we paid for oil in recent years are a result of massive [foreign] government intervention in the marketplace; and b) our response thus far in favor of ethanol is miniscule by comparison and far more justifiable.
You failed to respond with anything directly relevant; after which I offered you a deal that would in no way increase big government or market intervention and would actually eliminate a government activity that costs us billions.
You then responded with more shouting about IRRELEVANT issues like the proposed stimulus plan, finally ending up shrieking about civil war, blood in the streets, and buying guns to prepare for the coming collapse.
Do you have the remotest clue how incoherent and frankly crazy you sound?
Here's a splash in the face from an ice cold bucket full of clue juice: our tiny ethanol subsidies are NOT going to cause national collapse and bloodshed. If anything, doing nothing while we are raped by OPEC as it funds terror could well do so, especially if in our current weakened state we see another horrendous run-up in oil prices like the TENFOLD increase from 1999 to 2008; or we suffer from major or scattered and sustained "minor" terrorist attacks.
And yet you propose in response... what? Nothing but screeching about how ethanol subsidies, or a flex fuel mandate are "statism", while continuing to carefully ignore the far greater statism of our nation's enemies, and carefully ignoring my offer to offset the mandate by eliminating another one.
You seem to remain blissfully oblivious about how in effect you are a useful tool of our enemies (although you'd be more useful to them if you didn't sound so googly-eyed).
PS: If principle is so important to you, if you're going to ignore concrete reality and the effects of policies by clinging to abstract principles above all (even if effective action does not violate them, or does far less violence to them than the status quo thus representing a net improvement), then LEARN TO SPELL THE WORD "PRINCIPLE". Also "secession".
Aureon Kwolek 11:46AM (2/06/2009)
This University of Minnesota study will have little or no effect. It is based on false assumptions, slanted data, and omissions. For example, the study used domestically made gasoline data, which is not based in reality. 60 to 70 percent of our gasoline comes from importing foreign oil, which is shipped long distances using additional dirty fossil fuels. And a significant portion of our oil comes from energy intensive Canadian tar sands and offshore drilling in deep water. This defective study is also based on the false assumption that farmers will expand corn acreage dramatically into lands now laying fallow in the land Conservation Reserve Program. The reality is that corn ethanol is capped at 15 Billion gallons, and is now at about 10.5 Billion gallons at 80% capacity. And we now have a large surplus of feed corn. Making more ethanol from corn will come from a combination of: improving the yield of corn per acre, cutting edge refining technology, extracting starch from more surplus corn and export corn that we already produce, and adapting ALGAE production to consume corn ethanol refinery waste products, CO2, waste heat, and nutrient rich water effluent. That may just trump all other forms of ethanol. The University of Minnesota study is also based on the flimsy concept of rural fertilizer exhaust whimsically floating hundreds of miles into urban centers and doing more damage than gasoline. This is also a false assumption. ‘Claiming that this fertilizer exhaust, which is diluted thousands of times as it travels miles and miles in the air, is somehow more dangerous than sucking up the exhaust of the fossil fueled gasoline powered vehicle right in front of you. Furthermore, the corn farming and ethanol industry is working on making agriculture and refining environmentally safer. For example, refineries are being equipped with cutting edge exhaust filtration systems and fertilizers are being developed that are friendlier. The Minnesota study does not compare apples to apples. Carbon dioxide from corn ethanol gets recycled. It’s carbon neutral, where as fossil fuels such as gasoline continue to bring up new carbon from deep underground, which is accumulating in the atmosphere, causing global warming and addition damage to the environment and health. The Minnesota study does Not account for that. An accurate study would also account for the fact that corn ethanol byproducts supplement the livestock, dairy, poultry and fish farming industry with high protein distillers grains. For example, supplementing dairy cows with distillers grains produces 10 pounds more milk per cow per week, and makes 10 to 14 percent more meat on livestock. Corn oil is also extracted, either for human consumption or for biodiesel. The corn ethanol industry produces food and fuel, not just fuel. But these anti-ethanol studies typically make their comparisons only in the context of fuel. Two recent studies are much more accurate than the defective Minnesota study. These are: “Improvements in Life Cycle Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Corn Ethanol”, published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, and “Biofuels, Land Use Change, and GHG Emissions: Some Unexplored Variables”, published in Environmental Science and Technology. If you want accurate information on these issues, see: “NCGA: Minnesota Ethanol Study Is Faulty; Nebraska Study Much More Valid” and “ACE: University of Minnesota Study Bases Results on False Assumptions About Corn-Based Ethanol”.
Reply
Beavker 12:09PM (2/06/2009)
Tim,
You seem to be the one full of hate. I'm just stating that someone else will come out with a study that proves that the Minnesota study is the sham you say it is. However it will be full of far less anger and inflammatory remarks I imagine. This is the Auto Blog "Green", which I'm affraid to inform you will unfortunately be chalk full of these Liberals/Progressives that you seem to fear. And 'go back to your bong' is a pretty good Right Wing/Conservative thing to say. Why are you even on this Blog? It's progressive Tim. It looks at alternatives to the current, mainstream automotive world.