President George W. Bush enjoyed a high-profile photo-op Mar. 26 with the heads of the Big Three automakers and their latest clean-car models. The impressive lineup included a General Motors model that can run on ethanol, a plug-in Ford powered by hydrogen, and a DaimlerChrysler Jeep filled with a biodiesel blend. It was smiles all around as the automakers announced they would make half of America's vehicles ethanol-ready by 2012. "If you want to reduce gasoline usage—like I believe we need to do so for national-security reasons as well as for environmental concerns—the consumer has got to be in a position to make a rational choice," said a beaming Bush.
But there's a dirty secret about clean cars. The policies for flexible-fuel vehicles—those that can run on mixtures of gasoline and more than 10% ethanol—are written in such a way that they result in a number of unintended consequences. One result is that automakers gain some leeway in meeting fuel-economy standards if they produce flexible-fuel cars and trucks. So Detroit's automakers have been pumping out hundreds of thousands of the vehicles, even though most consumers have no access to alternative fuels because they're available at only a fraction of U.S. gas stations.
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