I've seen the claims that "it would be better to have the whole USA at Exx" but I'm not so sure that's true.

For one thing, ethanol shipping doesn't do so well by pipeline, and therefore is more expensive to ship than gasoline. Furthermore, since it's grown in the breadbasket, it's probably more difficult to ship by water, particularly to the east and west coasts.

I agree that widespread Exx (E5, E10, whatever) would be great, but that doesn't preclude also having pockets of high E85 usage, particularly in the heartland.

Solving the energy problems of the 21st century will require many different approaches. There's no sense in poo-poohing any of them... encourage all of 'em!

If they can transport ethanol to California to get us to E5, I think they have that transport issue solved. To sell a few cars to a few people that have E85 does not seem like a strong business proposition. I agree, we may need all methods that work applied, but the motives here are not clear.

...and VW/Audi are only following in the footsteps of Mitsubishi whom have had a turbocharged direct injected gasoline engine for 6 years now in the Japan market Cedia-Lancer.

The Ferrari engine is a hand built motor not something based off of mass-production techniques. There are guys out there who have 2.0L, 4 cylinder, turbocharged engines pushing 400 to 500hp at the crankshaft as well (for atleast 10-15 years).

The Mazda CX-7 and Acura RDX are gaining interest, with their direct injected turbocharged I4 engines. A 2.3L that gets 240 hp is pretty impressive. When you read the reviews, you see that people want better gas mileage. Maybe hybrid versions and smaller displacement would help there.

Why is Ford continuing to push powerful ICE when we need to embrace an electric dominant drivetrain? in 2006 we only produced 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol while we used over 160 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel to drive our cars. The solution is both simple and clear:
Get the best electric drivetrain in the american market: AC Propultion
Get the best battery in the market: Altair Nano or A123 Systems
Make a genset with a small turbocharged ICE (40 or 50 hp) that uses E85
If they have trouble with the first two, contact Tesla Motors for advice...

Allen the motor Sid is mentioning is naturally aspirated. I can't think of too many turbocharged Ferrari engines off the top of my head. Of course he doesn't mention that the 400hp would be made at a very high rpm with significantly less torque than the 6.0L motor and gas mileage just as bad or worse than a 6.0L V-8.

Carbon-Carbon brakes have come down in price. Now you can get a complete braking system for a manufacterer at around $1000. Then again a complete steel braking system for a manufacterer runs under $100. (This would be rough estimates of FOB pricing to a vehicle manufacturer).

I too await the breakthrough which allows carbon fiber to be mass produced rather than the labor intensive methods currently required.

Last time I checked carbon fiber reinforced ceramic and metal braking pads and rotors, it was mentioned that these products have inconsistent braking performance. Simply put, such materials should be substantially heated-up to begin perform. It makes them superior for racing, but lousy for regular vehicle applications.

Am I wrong?

I'd have to wonder why Ford hasn't looked to use the same 2.3 GDI Turbo from the Mazdaspeed 6 in the Fusion yet. They are the same platform, and it would really draw a lot more attention to an otherwise boring car. While the peak HP isn't that much more than the 3.5 used in the Lincoln MKZ AWD, it's a more powerful engine that still gets better mileage in the city (19 vs. 18). I know Mazda uses very short gearing on that car, so I'd have to think that the gearing of Ford's new 6-speed auto would give it much better highway mileage than the 26mpg the MKZ 3.5 gets.

You folks are missing something regarding ethanol, which is this: the only reason it cannot be shipped by pipeline is because it picks up water, and the only reason water is a problem is because it causes phase separation in ethanol-gasoline blends.

The solution is to eliminate the blending.

Ford has the key to this, with the turbocharged engine concept developed with MIT. It uses a separate supply of ethanol for knock management under high load, and that ethanol supply does not have to blend with gasoline. This would allow shipment of ethanol through the same pipeline network used today. Mileage gain was projected to be 30%. And an engine which burns ethanol 5% of the time for bursts of power could just as easily burn it 50% of the time, or 95% of the time; it just depends what's available at the moment. And it would have no loss of efficiency as the fuel mix changed.

Since it costs so little to make autos FFV, I think we should mandate that in the U.S. Last I heard, it was about $300 per car. We mandated safety devices and polution controls, why not national security? Once we start selling all FFVs it is just a matter of time until most of the cars on the road are FFV. Then you have created a market for alternate fuels.

I like the idea of being free to make your OWN fuel, I don't care if it only gets 5MPG and you have to get out and push on some hills, anything's better than the perpetual dependency garbage we've got right now. I'd like to see at least one automaker grow some 'hair' and build a car that recharges itself out there in the nice sunny parking lot. A 30HP electric motor will do just about anything you need to do for city driving, even more if it's geared right, old cars and trucks used to move tons(not very fast), but they did it on low-power gasoline and diesel engines. Truckers in the Great White North add ethanol to their fuel reglularly to keep it from gelling, we can add it to our fuel to keep from going broke, or, OR, we can get all smart on using both ethanol AND methanol from bio-waste, and have all the fuel we'd ever wanted. It may not be Dr. Emmet Brown's Mr. Fusion, but it'll be close...imagine owning a car with a built-in still, or a built-in hydrogen charger, or integrated solar panels in all the flat surfaces, that got the aero treatment like they were going to paint a tail number on it. R. Buckminster Fuller had that aerodynamics thing going on waaay back when with a car called the Dymaxion...I've also yet to see any passenger car prominently feature a high-RPM flywheel system...you can recover quite a bit of energy with the regeneration systems, too.

Most of the energy used(wasted) is spent idling at stoplights. Your city council could do quite a bit for city energy efficiency by re-timing their lights to be more energy-efficient. Also, the simple stuff comes first, tires, oil, alignment, filters, injection/carburetion system, brake check(to see if they're dragging), bearings, the whole trip that'd allow your car to use about a pint of gas on a long freeway downhill, just idling, without you having to
constantly crack the throttle open, overdrive transmissions do their job if allowed to, driver training is every bit as much a part of this as anything else. What's YOUR driving style like? Hmmm....how fast do you go on the freeway? That kind of stuff all adds up to a lower fuel bill at the end of the month, you have to give an energy-efficient vehicle the opportunity to do its' intended job, but a lot of people are just too plain ignorant or impatient to do it. So, moral of the story is, it doesn't really matter how efficient the equipment is, a vast portion of REAL efficiency lies with the nut behind the wheel...you don't need 18 computers to tell you where McDonald's is...I'd like to get an old BMW 2002 and refit it for ethanol, light car, put a 6-speed trans in it, not the most aero shape in the world, but you're not dragging 4,900 extra pounds of car with you, either, that counts for a lot. 1% here, 3 % there, pretty soon, you've whacked about 35% of your monthly fuel bill. That's good juju there, I think...