E15 Is Great If You’re A Farmer, Less If You Drive A Lot
I’d wager that most people in the United States reading this are putting E10 gasoline (that’s fuel with 10% ethanol) in their cars, whether they’re aware of it or not. Whether or not E10 is good or bad is not something I’m going to engage with right now. Technically, the use of E10 violates federal limits on air pollution in the Clean Air Act due to its volatility (you can read about Reid vapor pressure here, which is how they measure volatility). E10 fuel has an ongoing waiver to allow it to be used. Whether this is for environmental or political reasons—Iowa is an important swing and primary state and produces a lot of corn, which is used to make ethanol—is a debate I’m not going to engage with, either. There are only so many hours in the day and I’m very busy lately. E15 (fuel with 15% ethanol/85% gasoline mix) has no such permanent waiver and the amount sold has to be limited during the summer. E15 did get a temporary waiver from the Biden administration last year when the White House was trying to bring gas prices down. Now, some governors in Corn Belt states (Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) are asking for the E10 waiver to be removed. Wait, what? About 2,800 gas stations sell E15 but way more sell E10 and corn belt states want more E15 fuel being sold and so want to make it a more level playing field. Alternatively, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine this summer just asked for the E15 waiver to be permanent. That seems like the more obvious solution. The EPA will probably have to do it, eventually, but they can delay it if they want. So where do the high gas prices come in? Here’s a good explanation from a Bloomberg article highlighting the tension between governors, the Biden administration, farmers, and refiners: They go on to explain how this could do to the Midwest what California’s fuel requirements do to that state’s gas prices: “Because it takes time to move from refinery to retail, refiners are generally reconfiguring and adjusting refinery production in February and March to be able to produce summer gasoline,” said Patrick Kelly, with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. Ethanol supporters insist the oil industry is exaggerating the potential disruption. “These are sophisticated companies that have been operating these systems for decades” or more, said Renewable Fuels Association head Geoff Cooper. “They know how to run multiple products through these systems and how to make changes quickly.” If I had to put money on it, the EPA will do whatever the Biden Admin thinks will lower gas prices.
Skoda Delivers 731,300 Vehicles In 2022
It’s a tough year for automakers, especially those of the affordable variety. If you’re a company like the Volkswagen Group and you’ve got a handful of chips you’re going to send those chips to Bentley and Porsche where the profits are and not, necessarily, to value automakers like Skoda and Seat. Many of those are re-skinned VWs, but they look great and sell at reasonable prices in their markets. So, it is with a heavy heart, that I report sales of Skodas worldwide dropped 16.7% from 2022 to 2023. This isn’t the worst drop and there are bright spots (Germany was only down 1.8% and India was up 128%). If you so desire, you can read the company’s full press release right here, but I’ll take out the key part from their CEO Klaus Zellmer: New Superb, y’all. Get excited! I am legit excited. This isn’t even a bit. I love Skodas.
Tesla V. BYD
If I had my druthers, I’d spend less time talking about Tesla and more time talking about BYD. And I already talk about BYD a lot! We’ve sort of created a dichotomy, as journalists and pundits are wont to do, pitting BYD against Tesla. Is that fair? They do compete, but aren’t they actually two very different companies? There’s a column I think you should read. Patrick suggested it to me. It’s titled: Not All EVs Are Equal. Look at the Tesla-BYD Rivalry. It’s written by Anjani Trivedi and it challenges some conventional wisdom on the topic, specifically among those who lump all EV-related companies together. It’s an extremely valid point, even if I’m not sure we do that here very often. She does a good job in this piece of pointing out the reality of the situation: Tesla is decontenting cars and slashing prices in China at the same time BYD is going upmarket with cars that can moonwalk and raising prices. This, though, I think is the key point: The world is complex and accepting that is a good thing.
Elon Musk Might Not Be The Richest Man In The World Ever Again
Elon Musk famously lost $200 billion but, like, as long as he’s still got more than $340,500, does it really matter? The way he got rich, with SpaceX and a complex compensation package from Tesla, is also the reason why he may never do it again, at least according to this Bloomberg analysis. (Side note: we’re Bloomberg-heavy this morning!) In buying Twitter, Musk cornered himself and likely can’t play showman to raise the value of those companies in a way that’ll be as beneficial to him. From the analysis I linked to above: The irony of the Tesla compensation deal is that it was supposed to keep Musk’s singular “genius” focused on Tesla and instead it helped him get rich enough to buy a distracting toy. It’s the same reason we mostly pay Jason in Subway coupons; that way he doesn’t buy a Tatra and fuck off forever. “The board has made millions, and he has made billions,” Diamond said of Musk. “But there was always a risk that he would exploit this in the short term and leave the company hanging.” At this point, the bedrock of Musk’s fortune is his 42% ownership of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket launch company he founded in 2002, before he got involved at Tesla. The value of the closely held company continues to climb, most recently raising $750 million at a $137 billion valuation. But, crucially, Musk likely can’t leverage SpaceX, nor his Boring Co. and Neuralink, as aggressively as he can publicly traded Tesla. His margin loans turbocharged his ascent up the wealth rankings by helping him raise cash to fund his other expensive ventures. His initial plan to buy Twitter involved using the debt too, but he restructured the financing package in May after market volatility sent Tesla shares falling.
The Flush
Ethanol fuel. Lemme have it. What do you think?
Even CarMax’s CEO Thinks Used Car Prices Are Too High The Auto Industry Thinks The Future Of Cars Is Everything But Driving The Mazda CX-30 Plug-In Rotary Hybrid Is Coming And The Logo Is Amazing Mercedes To Challenge Tesla’s Supercharger Network Here’s What You Need To Know About Tom Zhu, Tesla’s New ‘Number 2’
Got a hot tip? Send it to us here. Or check out the stories on our homepage. Photos: Tesla, Hagerty UK, Skoda BYD I have to disagree with that statement. I’m pretty sure Skoda went through much bigger challenges leading up to and during WW2 when they got taken over by the Nazis and then subsequently got repeatedly bombed by the allies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Auto#World_War_II Anyho, but they surely have problems with supply line. Year a go they delivered 3 Octavias in Finland and year before that they were like top3 most sold vehicle. Also my Enyaq 4×4 (ID4 with more trunk space and less touchy things) delivery moved about a year. It went from about 5 months to 17 months. First it was because the wire harnesses were made in ukraine. Then there was sourcing problems for awd components. Welcome to the world post Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which set the stage for commodity investors (i.e. middlemen whose main interest is in creating volatility) who have no intention of taking delivery of the commodity to speculate on critical commodities like petroleum. So when you talk about this seemingly innocuous (except to our fuel systems) and boring change, what really matters is if enough speculators think other speculators or consumers of the product might get upset about it and rightly or wrongly decide it will impact prices. It sounds complicated but it really boils down to this: complete and total bullshit can impact the price of gas if it sounds scary enough. https://www.pure-gas.org/ You can search by state or open a map to find your closest E0 pump. Also, for power equipment use, you can find ethanol-free fuel sold in stores by the quart, gallon or 5 gallon bucket, 4-cycle or 50:1 and 40:1 premix. I use this for my snowblower and it works great. We sell this in our NAPA store, I’m sure you should be able to find it locally. VP fuels markets it as well as a brand called TruFuel which is a Royal Purple product. Also, for power equipment use, you can find ethanol-free fuel sold in stores by the quart, gallon or 5 gallon bucket, 4-cycle or 50:1 and 40:1 premix. I use this for my snowblower and it works great. We sell this in our NAPA store, I’m sure you should be able to find it locally. VP fuels markets it as well as a brand called TruFuel which is a Royal Purple product. Ethanol fuel is good for V2 Rockets and for cleaning stuff (in my case mostly the highest proof everclear I can get) but besides that it’s not good. Also new studies have shown that the production for ethanol for fuel pollutes more than just burning straight gasoline, and at least burning gasoline doesn’t perpetuate monocrop agriculture and with that the removal of nutrients from the topsoil which kills the ability for crops to be grown on that land for a long while which is very likely to happen in my lifetime.
