The biggest problem of GM and Ford is their commitment to big engines and beeing outclassed in alternative engines.
Toyota´s hybrid engine technology is a way better technology when it comes to lowering fuel consumption then the Flexi Fuel, Bi Fuel, what ever you call it technologies that the others are using.
Basicly the hybrid engine is a fuel, electricity engine when recharges its batteries while driving on the fuel engine. At lower speeds and lower accelleration the engine uses the electrical engine and if you throttle up the fuel engine kicks in gradually.
The most expencive driving, fuel cost and environment wise, is rush hour city traffic. This is where the hyrbird engine out classes anything in both polution and buck per mile.
The Flexi fuel, bi fuel what ever you call em engines allow you to use alternative fuels. This makes the engine less dependent on oil based fuels. These engines have a big environmental benefit as the ammount of CO2 converted into Oxygen by the sugar canes (to create methanol) is the same as the ammount of CO2 created by the combustion.
There is a problem of using methanol as a fuel source compared to oil based fules in the fact that methanol contains less energy. So you need more fuel to produce the same effect in the engine.
This results in Flexi fuel cars not beeing much cheaper to operate then gasoline cars. They are cheaper but not nearly as much as the hybrid.
What I expect to see in a VERY near future is that you can use methanol in Toyotas hybrid engine.
Though dont fool your selfs not even methanol+electricity hybrid engines are the engines of the future.
Using methanol as a gasoline replacement has potentially HUGE enviromental problems attached to it.
Since methanol is mostly created from sugar canes the increased need of sugar canes can produce huge agrecultural problems. The desire to grow more and more sugar canes and at a higher pace will result in onesided agreculture and over fertilizing. Onesided agreculture drains the soil and will render it useless, over fertilizing also has huge negative side effects (mostly on rivers and lakes).
But at short term the company that first has methanol+electricity hybride engines in their entire lineup will gain a huge upper hand over the others.
Personally I predict that if GM and Ford dont have have a hybrid engine out within two years at least one of them will file bancrupcy.
Tex
