Mr. Khosla still misses the point.  The Prius is not celebrated because it answers all of the world's transportation needs, but because it is currently the best available environmental option for most American drivers. Apparently, it is a well made, modestly priced car (under $30K) that gets excellent gas mileage (about 45 MPG). The popularity of the Prius is a very good sign that Americans are beginning to value fuel efficiency when purchasing consumer products.

for a planet of 9 billion people is no car at all (thanks for reminding us Elizabeth Kolbert).  

I'm wondering why there is not more VC money going into things like light rail, if, as you say, public transportation will likely be one of the long-term solutions to global warming.  You may not be aware, for instance, that there are currently no companies in the US that make subways, and that when NYC called for bids a few years back for their multibillion dollar contracts, only Japanese and European companies were even able to bid.  Why should cars be the only target of entrepreneurial zeal in this country?

Grist is located in Seattle.  Our grid is almost totally carbon-free old hydro power.  Further, your Ausra solar power is promoted as cheaper than coal.  Are you planning to use Ausra to reduce carbon emissions via solar cooking and distillation of ethanol?  It seems you are missing a brilliant opportunity to connect the dots, solar heat powered ethanol and solar electric powered transportation.

That's the synthesis Vinod.

Good to see you back.  I plan on convincing you that plugin hybrids deserve all the capital now going into fuel farming.  Be forewarned!  Hehehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Not only is Mr. Khosla accused of it, he admits it, and piles on...

But some of the statements made here, even if accurate as stated, are misleading. Khosla says:

"one can get the same carbon reduction by buying a cheaper, similar-sized and -featured car and buying $10 worth of carbon credits"

But it's not the CO2 reduction that's making us Prius owners smile. A typical car is driven something like 15,000 miles/year. The CAFE number for new cars now is 27.5 mpg (not even going into the SUV mess). That comes to 545 gallons of gasoline per year, or about 5.5 metric tons of CO2. Which you could certain offset (say at $15/ton CO2, a typical price now) for under $100/year.

Now if you get a Prius instead, with say 45 mpg average, that's 333 gallons/year or about 3.3 metric tons of CO2, saving 2.2 every year. Sure doesn't hurt.

But what Khosla doesn't include is the cost of the gasoline itself. At 3.30/gallon, 545 gallons amounts to about $1800/year, while 333 gallons is about $1100/year, for a difference of $700. That's a 14% yearly return on even a $5000 price difference, and in my experience the $5000 is a significant overestimate of the price difference from a comparable non-hybrid (the other cars I was looking at when I bought mine would have been only $2000-3000 cheaper than the Prius).

The carbon offset/CO2 reduction effect adds another $50-$100 to the annual payback, so it helps a little, but it's not the main reason so many Prius's are being sold.

The higher gas prices go, the better the deal.

And as for the Tata Nano, it gets 50 mpg now - why would we have a problem with that car?

No, hybrids can't "solve our problems". The Nano won't either. Nor will ethanol. As Khosla points out here, the long-term solution is electrification of ground transport. To the extent hybrids are a step along that path (and they surely are at least as much as corn ethanol is a step on the path to cellulosic), they should be applauded. Why not push for bio-fueled hybrids, instead of trashing the concept, hmm?

The Prius is the corn ethanol of hybrid cars, and we should recognize that. It has increased investment in battery development, but beyond that it is no different than Gucci bags, a branding luxury for a few who want the "cool eco" branding (70%+ of Prius buyers make more than $100k per year).

I appreciate that this might be a "tough crowd," Mr. Khosla, but I was going to try to cut you some slack, and to see what logic you could offer.

This isn't it.

First, upper income buyers are more mobile and quicker to respond it is true, but nonetheless the Prius at $23-30K brackets the average new car price in America ($28K).  In fact it is on the low side.

Second, it is the most efficient mid-size car on the US market.  This is true with gasoline fuel, but it has been tested and done well with ethanol blends as well.

That leads into the third point as well.  Why, when the Prius (and other small hybrids) can run on ethanol blends would you set up their efficiency as enemy of ethanol blends?

The Prius works, and if you can make ethanol work, they could actually work together.

Skimming further ... I'm put off again.  Gucci bags?  Maybe my extra effort was wasted.

I'd say ethanol has use in the near-to-mid term, when we've still got millions of existing "used" vehicles. Take my parents, for example, who expect to drive their 2003 Honda Odyssey minivan (16 mpg) into the ground. They don't plan on buying again until 8-10 years from now, unless gas becomes so expensive that it justifies buying new.

In the meantime, cellulosic ethanol can be produced from waste, to fuel our existing fleet during the transition period. New cars, especially fuel efficient ones, still make up a fraction of the total vehicles on the road.

Mr. KO: "Corn ethanol (which I don't believe is a long term solution) has been framed by the oil companies' marketing machine, farm policy critics, and impractical environmentalists"

Is it possible that the "impractical environmentalists" are saying that the long term solutions are the most practical and that impractical solutions may not be the best building blocks or precursors of practical solutions.  Is it impractical to note that putting flex fuels into FFVs getting 15 mpg is not environmental?  Is it impractical to point out that all the calculated CO2 "reductions" from using corn ethanol can be vastly outweighed by the corn to ethanol sink's stimulating the destruction of diverse natural ecosystems in the developing world?

Mr. Khosla, would you please quite dicking around and tell us what your real agenda is?  You are just confounding the issues with your screwy rhetoric.  Is that your real purpose for writing here?  

If all of the food crops in the world were devoted to ethanol it would produce a tiny fraction of the liquid crude oil based fuel the world now uses.  But demand for fuel would drop dramatically, because ever one would starve to death, and thus demand for oil products in transportation would drop drastically.  

Corn ethanol now basically competes with the world's poor for food.  The poor are loosing, and sooner our later they are going to starve to death in large numbers if the ethanal corn hogs are not stopped.  What the corn ethanol advocates really are selling are starvation and death to the worlds poor.  And they wonder why hybrid cars get a good press.

Charles Barton

It is not appropriate to present this as a conflict between pragmatists and environmentalists.

A pragmatist is someone interested in a practical approach to problems and is concerned primarily with the success or failure of her actions. Shouldn't every environmentalist be interested in real success, really solving problems, not doing what they ASSUME is best? This is serious business, not a game.

Vinod Khosla, whether or not correct, is describing a conflict between pragmatists and ideologues.

There are environmentalists interested in trying variety of approaches -- based on reason, gathering additional information, revising their approaches -- for actually protecting the remaining scraps of biodiversity. And there are those who believe we should employ only a certain set of tools -- based more on tradition and revealed truth -- to accomplish the same goal.

I think the former are more flexible and will succeed if allowed to. The latter will will destroy the biosphere if allowed to.

Khosla says:
The primary question is one of cost: how many people will pay $5,000 more (today's typical parallel hybrid premium) for a hybrid that reduces carbon emissions by 25%? Especially when they can get a flex-fuel car that costs about the same as a regular ICE car and can reduce emissions by 75% or more when run on cellulosic biofuels?
Cost is certainly a question. But as is so typical of efficiency, you have to pay upfront to lock in future savings. Khosla totally ignores the fact that  reducing the amount of fuel used over the lifetime of a vehicle may dramatically reduce overall costs. But then, he does understand this, that's why he's investing in biofuels. He wants to keep the top-down oil hegemony and shift some of those profits from the hands of oil companies to his own. Those who want long-term economic growth understand the value of people owning their own power (solar panels to charge your car), which will increase income equality and, in my view, vastly increase long-term economic growth.

Also, Kholsa, you compare hybrids today versus the cellulosic fuels of the indeterminate future. Your point will hold if this comes to pass, and only if. For now, I don't care how many E85 vehicles detroit crams down my throat, because they'll all be filled with gasoline or carbon-intensive(2/3 that of petrol), water-intensive, land-intensive, subsidy-intensive corn ethanol.

Also, these biofuels are going to need a hell of a lot of water, something that will only become more precious. Especially for us Californians who know  which way the snowpack is going. Yes, perhaps brackish water can be used. My understanding is that the water needs to be filtered though, which will be an incentive to just hook up to the municipal supply.

Infrastructure, infrastructure, and... oh yeah, infrastructure. Ethanol is too acidic and can't be  shipped through existing pipelines. Plug-ins require the plug that is already installed in your garage.

Your point of first costs is understood. But biofuels that don't screw the environment in other ways are a hell of a long way off. I think you'd be better off making this argument after that one gets figured out.

Even though first costs are less, long term economic and social equity costs will be higher. Is your vision for the future really just the same one with you at the top instead of big oil? Wouldn't a more inspired vision of the future be one where people own their own power and efficiency in order to increase their real wages? This is where I hope the future come from, bottom up.

Does your argument about the speed with the car fleet can be replaced matter if the environmentally benign bio-fuel comes along and still requires cars to be built specifically to handle it?

Now, parallel hybrids aren't going to get us anywhere. We can all see that. If every car sold today were a parallel hybrid we would still not be lowering overall emissions from transportation.

Also, the cost premium could be lowered with options like battery leasing and so on.

What about smog in cities? Ethanol has a pretty bad emissions profile.

By the way, I'm from Iowa, and I see monoculture of corn as a problem and ethanol as a way for us to swat at the symptoms and not the sickness. See the Omnivore's Dilemma.

As for the media message, ethanol was a baby doll up until just a few months ago. When some decent reporting finally got done. Its not being positioned as anything its not, and this doesn't seem to be affecting subsidy levels anyway.

Vinod, I understand that you're trying to take the big picture into account, I just think you're doing a poor job of it. And anywhow, reductions on the level we need will likely require bio-fuels and hybrids of all kinds.

Mostly, I appreciate you coming to this forum and delineating your views even after a less than even handed analysis by one Grist poster.

Keep your posts coming! I've got plenty of answers to prove you wrong!

carbonsnumber.blogspot.com

While I may disagree with his politics, rarely do I have an issue with the clarity of thought that went into a particular initiative.

And, tarnation if is he is willing to have a dialogue.

Does it have to be either or?  Can't a car be a hybrid-elec, but be a flex-fuel hybrid-elec.?  Or be a diesel hybrid-elec.?

Why the argument that parallel hybrids aren't worth it compared to cellulosic fuels?  Why not just make use cellulosic fuels in your hybrid-elec.?

You are arguing about a comparison that isn't a comparison.  They can both be added in one vehicle.

   Is anyone investing much actual money in cellulosic biofuels?  I agree with Charles Barton,
corn based ethanol will kill the poor.

   Almost all of the commercial biofuels come from palm and corn oils.  We need to stop this insanity before it becomes embedded.

patrick in Beijing

I came back a day later, and this essay looks even worse to me.

I'm going to consider you a lobbyist, Mr. Khosla, for your own investments.

I don't really think "Food versus Fuel" is the issue.

There will always be marginal producers which find it profitable to increase food production "elsewhere". (eventually)

The problem being the "elsewhere" might completely cancel out the emissions reductions of the biofuel itself. (Many times over)

Food versus Fuel is only temporary.
It's more like "Forests versus Fuel" in the long run.

(Come to think of it, if Cellulosic ethanol really does go mainstream, whats stopping them from ACTUALLY turning whole forests into liquid fuel.)

I think it would be swell if Jerry Taylor (and/or Dan Becker) was available to answer this post.

Food price inflation is the main economic pain of fuel farming.  That is caused by food versus fuel.

Yep falcon, the more fuel that comes from chemical farming, the more biomass is burned.  Biomass should be recycled back into the soil to provide maximum carbon sink activity.  That happens with conservation land, wetlands, and forests and even with farms, organic farms that is.

Fuel farming results in more GHG in the atmosphere, mainly because it takes carbon stored in the soil and releases it.  And it releases GHG that would normally be removed from the atmosphere.

When corn is grown organically, compost that stores carbon is added to the soil.  Everything but the corn kernels are put back, the styalks, roots, leaves, maybe even most of the carbon locked up in the corn kernels are returned if the manure from the animals it is fed to is composted too.

The balance depends upon returning the same amount of carbon to the soil as was extracted.  Productive living soil, like that under natural prairie grass, extracts 1.8 tons of CO2 per acre per year from the atmosphere and stores it underground.  The prairie soil was 20 feet thick when farmers first plowed it, now it is an inert chemical layer that blows in the wind, wherever chemical farming has ruled.

All that millenia of soil storing cO2 was burned off by chemical farming, chemical burning.  And now each year the amount it used to store stays in the atmosphere.  The dynamic balance is the thing here.

The self and mass deluding idea that because corn stores CO2 then it is released as ethanol fuel burned in cars, but is reabsorbed again and again, over and over.  Similar to the cycle of rain and evaporation in the water cycle.  The idea that constitutes zero emmision fuel is erroneous.

The land used, not to mention the fossil fuel for tractors and chemicals, results in more and more cO2 in the atmosphere every year.  At least 1.8 tons per acre per year from prairie land converted to chemical fuel farming.

Now compare this process of fuel farming and gas guzzling..  to..

Charging up plugin hybrids with solar power harvested from already used land, rooftops of buildings all over the country.

It leaves the land that is removing cO2 from the atmosphere alone.  It is only mounted on roofs.  And it supplies enough kwh to replace 90% of present liquid fuel use, through the plugin hybrid's 40 mile battery range.

Renewable electricity charging plugin hybrids is technology ready to mass produce now.  Diverting any capital away from that solution dilutes it and slows the eventual cut in fuel consumption and GHG release.

Plugin hybrids have the same utility as gas guzzlers and can be fueled at regular gas stations.  The additional investment by auto companies to add plugin power to existing vehicle lines is minimal.  An electric rear axle added to a regular front wheel drive car, plus batteries is it.

Better to apply capital to this, than ethanol, Vinod.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Good points grey falcon,

Especially on price, which I called Khosla out on as well. Total amortized cost of ownership is certainly  lower, but as our economy is stuck in the here and now, it can be an issue. The upfront cost of renewables and efficiency is something we'll have to contend with as a society if we want to see a long term decrease in energy costs.

I contend that, as a good businessman, Khosla understands this and is trying to benefit from it. The car companies don't want electric cars because they require less maintenance and don't make the owner beholden to big oil, which is bad for profits. Khosla sees this and realizes that if he can get you  to buy a car that makes you beholden to him for twenty years, it will be very good for business.

Big Oil, biofuels, and hydrogen - all these fuels keep you beholden to a top-down corporate hegemony which concentrates profits upward and out of local communities. When people own their own power (solar panels) and can plug their car into them, the money stays with them in a bottom-up economy with greater income parity and a better chance for long-term economic growth.

But as this distributed wealth can't be captured as easily, its much harder to fund with venture capital. Hence, Khosla.

carbonsnumber.blogspot.com

If we used public transport more, there would be less crisis for the oil short-age and the environment. I have lived in the UK, where Public transport is used very well, and it also helps people be healthier by walking to and from the bus/train stops.

But here in the US - out side of major cities - public transport is seen as a poor mans option, and so often I see many SUV's/large trucks with only one person sitting in traffic.

I car pool - with two other people! its great for saving money, great for the earth and great for traffic!

My 2008 Civic Hybrid w/o NAV MSRP = $22600.
A 2008 Civic EX Automatic w/o NAV MSRP = $19510.
For a difference/premium of $3090.  A far cry from $5000.  Also came with a $2100. tax credit for 2007 (purchased Nov. 2007).  Pretty good incentive I'd say.

 - Loren

I forgot to add that I compare the Civic EX to the Hybrid as they are the closest in standard features.  The DX and LX don't match up as well.

 - Loren

    One of the problems is that we don't exist in a steady state world.  There are two things happening in our future that we should all be able to see.

    The first is that before population peaks (probably just shy of 9 billion), we will add that extra 2 1/2 billion people.  Do we expect to try to feed them or watch them starve or fight them door to door over food?

    The second thing that is coming (clear as day) is increased prosperity not only in China but across the developing world (including Africa, which has lagged, but is beginning to move).  This means more cars (and hopefully a lot more mass transit).

    More people, more prosperity and more cars.

    We can see them coming.  They will happen.

    So, the question becomes what kind of prosperity and what kind of cars?  Investing any money into biofuels (when we shall surely need that land to account for 1) increased population and food demands 2) land lost to the stresses of global warming, which will happen (to an uncertain degree)) is foolish.

    It is a direction driven by greed and nothing more.  We need to stop it now.

patrick in Beijing