The Obvio 012 is a very striking vehicle for styling. Gas mileage is nothing to write home about but with Ethanol perhaps a marginally better eco-choice.

What are we looking at in terms of price? I'm trying to figure out why somebody would buy one of these instead of a Ford Focus or some other fairly cheap 30+ MPG vehicle...

The Obvio 012 has a pretty cool design, reminds me of Lexus concept from "Minority Report".
But the 828 is almost the ugliest car on earth. Who should buy this thing?
Anyway, MPG is unacceptable.

There are far better small cars in Europe, and I thought the ugliest was the Renault Twingo. The Twingo looks good compared to the 828 and apparently gets better mpg and of course its probably cheaper.

I applaud zap in TRYING but their gas cars seem irelivent. Why get a small overpriced smart that only gets a few more mpg then the Prius? I like the smart but its just to expensive at $20k+ when brought in through an importer like zap.

Hehe,. The obvio 828 is not ugly. Click on the link to see a bigger picture. Reminds me of a micro machine (the Hotwheels toy).
If I was made of money I'd buy it and put an RX8 rotary engine in it (because it might fit). But since I'm poor I'll agree with Little Shop and Chuckie's comments.

It remind me of the Smart. When the french company got into a technical bankruptcy for not paying the engines supplier (Italian), they raised the price and start exporting it to Canada with a limitation on availability in order to keep the price up. Nice deal n'est-ce pas? I suspect a similar fate for those cars.

Giles

Ethanol from Corn is a poor choice. Just think of it as being a temporary patch due to political reasons. There are better ways. Here's a note I received from an expert:

Ethanol (aka grain alcohol) is made from corn starch currently. That's the stuff inside the kernel. Production has soared in recent years thanks to
high oil prices, low corn prices, and generous state and federal policies that encourage its production. Congress just passed a law requiring 5 billion gallons of production by 2010, up from about 2.5 billion now.

My foundation is launching an effort to promote making ethanol from cellulose rather than starch. To do this requires using enzymes to convert the sugars present in cellulose into the type of sugar present in starch.
There is one plant in commercial operation doing this presently, a company called Iogen (majority owned by Shell) in Canada. Iogen is considering opening a second plant in Idaho using wheat straw. We hope that advances in biotech will drive down the cost of the enzymes and make this process more competitive.

Why do we hope that? Because the world supply of cellulose is enormous compared to the world supply of corn starch. Cellulose is found in grasses like switchgrass, in woods like poplar and willow, in garbage, and in agricultural wastes like corn stalks. All of these are available at extremely low cost and in large quantities. Some take much less energy to
grow and process than corn starch, so yield much more energy. Because of this, they also reduce global warming emissions more effectively than cornstarch ethanol.

Estimates of maximum US ethanol production from corn starch go up to about 10 billion gallons, or about 8% of US motor fuel demand. After this it starts to compete with corn's primary use, being fed to cows. This would drive up prices for meat, milk, and cheese, not to mention the other outputs like corn sweeteners.

Corn requires substantial energy and chemical inputs, and has serious effects on wildlife habitat, soil erosion, and water quality. Switchgrass (and other prairie grasses) are the opposite on every count: low energy and chemical inputs, they ARE wildlife habitat, they BUILD soil, and they IMPROVE water quality.

If ethanol from cellulose were cost competitive it could produce up to 20-30% of current motor fuel demand. Combined with more efficient vehicles
it could take a serious bite out of US oil consumption, oil imports, pollution, and global warming emissions.

So, you cannot produce ethanol from switchgrass in your garage unless you are a biochemist. You could use corn starch I guess: this is called "a still." Moonshiners used them to make whiskey from cornstarch. Or you
could buy whiskey at the store and put that in your tank.

And yes, farmers could use biofuels to run their tractors which would reduce fossil fuel inputs to corn farming. And trains and trucks could run on
biodiesel to reduce fossil fuel inputs to shipping corn. And processors could replace natural gas and electricity with bioenergy inputs. But first we need to produce lots of biofuels.

And presumably the many new ethanol plants being built now are meeting stringent state and federal environmental rules. Like the one near Gowrie, Iowa.

To learn more, NRDC has a nice report on cellulosic ethanol on their web site, www.nrdc.org

Here in Indonesia there is a lot of research going into the possible use of palm oil as a form of automotive and industrial fuel....a renewable green resource. They expect to have the details worked out by early 2008. The company doing this research is Musim Mas, the largest producer of palm oil in the country. They are active ecologists, who recognise the complications of balancing the fine line between business exploitation and smart business.

As a native Texan, I know far to well about the correlation between Texas & Oil. But an old rancher once told me, there was the "Land" before they discovered oil & the land would still be there when the oil was gone. I, for one am sick of Big Oil & their bought & paid for politicians. It's obvoius they've sold us down the proverbial river to line their pockets at our expense. Using & improving upon Brazils technology in producing Ethanol, we would be able to free ourselves from terrorist oil suppliers, & bring this country back to energy independance. Now is the time for a new American Revolution, not volience, but new political parties with people elected to office vowing to observe a strict ethical code of honor, including dismantelment of Congressional perks, such as health care & retirement. This way something might be done about health care & Social Security. I'm sure the politicians think this is sedition, considering how many of them leave Washington as rich men & women at the tax payers expense. However, the facts are that oil is too valueable to waste as auto fuel. We will still need petroleum based lubricants, and the demand for plastics will continue to expand. However, plastics & carbon fiber plastics can be completely recycled. I wonder how long the American Automotive Industry will be the lackies of Big Oil, given the number of times they've the Oil Industry has kicked them in the face. Just look at the market share the U.S. Auto Manufactures have lost since the 1st oil crises in the 1970's. Then even after the U.S. Auto Industry has been abused, they've deep sixed inovative inventions & power sources that would free this country of having to purchase oil for fuel from countries that want to destroy us. It makes me question their patriotism and how much are they are paid by the Global Oil Empire to keep quiet. The idea of golbal economics, give the state mankind is in now, is foolish. In order for America to remain strong, we must not bee put in a position of feeding the "Oil Terrorist" in the Middle East. It is time for all of Americans to rise up & let our voices ring to the rafters. Our freedom is being usurped. It is time for a new American Revolution, and with God's will, a peacefule revolution to change this government & it's bought & paid for political parties.

Great site and pretty colors!
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IF... the debate was about ethanol, cellulose is the ONLY option... get rid of waste and provide over 50% of US consumption of fuel/ new markets for our farmers without raising food prices.
BUT...this is just another diversion (not as hoaxy as hydrogen). If you read a little farther, the real hope is that the 828E and the 012E will arive in the States, and popularity and mass production will bring the price down a little farther...over 200miles a charge, over 100 miles an hour. gas motors canNOT match the power specs of electric motors.
Don't give me the polluting power plant arguement. If you consider the pollution and mess made drilling. The pollution made refining, The pollution made transporting- you reallize the snow-job. This doesn't even consider where we would be if you applied the new solar technology that absorbs 4x the energy, and if we started to focus our intelligences on real solutions instead of ways to perpetuate pocketbooks.

and one more thing do you ever stop to think not only of the human's but of the environment too i think thet if you think of the environment it will be a reward of it's own (paper,home's ,clothes) basically every thing we own has a part of the environment in it

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