TRAVERSE CITY – David Cole, the host of the Management Briefing Seminars, kicked off Friday?s Powertrain program by praising bio-diesel, ethanol and other cellulose-based gasoline brews. Such new fuels ?don?t need invention,? Cole says, ?they need aggressive investment and development.? He criticizes CAF� standards as misconceptions of ?politicians in fantasyland.?

Cole?s recommendation? The U.S. government should place a $40 to $45 floor on oil prices. This, he says, would limit OPEC?s pricing games and maintain pressure for perfecting alternative fuels that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

ALTERNATIVE FUEL FOES

Loren Beard, Chrysler?s Fuels Program senior manager, cited ?five groups who want to stop alternative fuels.? He points at Big Oil which wants to maintain its marketshare dominance, Big Agriculture which seems married to feed stock biofuels such as corn and soybeans, Silver Bullet automakers who want the solutions they invent to prevail, certain environmental groups who need crises, real or imaged, to justify their own existence, and OPEC?s band of oil-rich would-be economic puppeteers.

60 CENTS PER GALLON?

Barbara Goodman of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory voiced optimism with newly developed enzymes that happily transform sawmill trimmings, switch grass and nature?s other cellulose-rich junk foods into alcohol. By 2020, she hopes, we could be making biofuels for as little as 60 cents per gallon.

TURBO! TURBO!

MIT senior research scientist Dan Cohn predicts a role for ethanol-boosted, small displacement, high compression turbo gasoline engines. Featuring on-demand direct injection of ethanol while running on regular gas, Dr. Cohn beliueves such engines could deliver a 25 to 30 percent mileage improvement at a cost of about $1,400 per vehicle. With 87 octane priced at $2.80, and assuming a per-gallon increase to 30 miles, a tiny turbo would appear to pay for itself in about 15,000 miles of driving.

HYBRID! HYBRID!

Toyota Technical Center engineer Justin Ward says, ?Hybrid is the core technology for the 21st Century.? But . . .

ALL-ELECTRIC! ALL-ELECTRIC!

Frank Weber, leader of GM?s E-Flex Systems development team says all-electric vehicles will play a major role because, ?they take the vehicle out of the environmental equation.? Well, maybe, sort of, because an electric powertrain requires batteries, and super high-capacity batteries capable of 300 miles? driving (GM?s target for the Chevy Volt) may be made of spooky stuff that you can?t just dump in the trash when it dies.

Big advantages of driving an all-electric include no CO2 and no particulates (at least from the car), and joltingly low fuel cost. Weber says at current gasoline prices, the cost of driving is about 10 cents per mile. Plug-in electrics would slice this to about 2 cents per mile.

With 550 engineers now assigned to developing the Volt, it?s easy to believe Weber?s claim that the Volt isn?t a concept anymore. It has become a production vehicle project.

RALPH GILLES RACES MINIVANS.

According to friends, Chrysler?s youthful vice president for Jeep and Truck design, races minivans (we assume Chrysler

brands) against BMWs and Porsches, and sometimes wins! Part of Jeep?s

marketplace victories with new models, says the straight-spoken Gilles, is that his new engineers are innocent of conventional thinking and ?are not yet infected with success.?

ADVICE FOR THOSE ON THE CAREER LADDER.

Dave Cole cautions, ?Don?t become irreplaceable. If you do become irreplaceable, you?ll never get promoted.?

ON DISPLAY:

GM dramatizes its ethanol vehicle capabilities with a huge E-85 Chevy Silverado equipped with a Vortec Flex Fuel V8 and painted to look like a giant corncob on wheels. No one will miss seeing this baby on the street.

SUMMARY:

Presenters at CAR?s annual Management Briefing Seminars are becoming more frank and open with their commentaries and forecasts. By admitting shortfalls, clarifying the industry?s challenges and outlining realistic solutions, they reward their audiences with worthwhile perspectives. This conference offers real value to all who come and pay attention. Golfing and networking opportunities are great, too!

This column was written by Neil Jackson of Hudson Mills Communications and Press

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