xjodiex, the Telsa is one sexy looking car. Darn, aint life unfair?

I'll have 6 of those please, and one for my mother ;-)

Brazil has some more immediate solutions for an oil crisis. We have the sugar cane farms, more refineries are being built, we only need a few more. With more demand on sugar, maybe John Howard could go back to the US while W Bush is still in Government to reconsider the section of the US and Australia FTA to include sugar. Both countries are going to be using lots of sugar very soon. Good thing it rains up north. Lucky Sugar farmers.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0417-23.htm

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1007/p05s01-woam.html

The Tesla is in fact built on a Lotus chassis.
Of course it is left hand drive.
There is a company converting cars commercially in Sydney.
It is Blade Electric Vehicles. I suspect pretty new on the scene.
I saw one of his very professional conversions at the Elecric Vehicle
Ralley a couple of months back. Have a look at
www.bev.com.au
It was a converted Toyota and cost about $20,000.
It had a 240 volt plug in the petrol filler and the batteries were in the engine bay and
under the back seat.
He had a trailer with a petrol generator and extra batteries for interstate trips.
It is a dream if you think you will get 300km for around $20,000.
The batteries to do that would cost nearly that much.
Other than conversions there is a real design problem with electric
cars as a realistic design cannot meet Australian Design Rules.
This is what happened to the Indian Reva.

Oh I forgot,
The US is not using sugar cane but maize for ethanol
and the demand is causing riots in Mexico because of the increase
in totilla prices caused by ethanol plants outbidding food processors.
It was a news item on BBC last night.

Why is the US using corn when they have plenty of sugar? If they signed the full FTA with Australia to include sugar, they would have plenty.

Market forces should balance this one out. They'll grow more corn and sugar: supply and demand.

A nasty glitch it is, but the market should work it out.

Maybe we should think about exporting corn to Mexico, once the drought is under control (if)...

I can see why water is key to all of this working to grow more in this country.

Actually saintfletcher the US doesn't have plenty of sugar, most of their sugar comes from sugar beet and most of their sweeteners (like in coke etc) mostly come from corn , i.e. high fructose corn syrup. Corn is cheaper to produce over there due to good rainfall especially in the midwest. The standard water issues that Australia has do not apply there. Sugar was not included in the free trade agreement for various reasons, not the least of which was the protection of the US sugar industry and also the encouragemnet for our industry to diversify cropping systems.

Thats right saint fletcher, the US is too far north for largescale sugar production on that scale anyway.
There are two problems with using maize, first the EROEI is not very
good, around 0.8:1 and they will have to devote too big an area, at least
the size of two midwest states to ethanol production and forget about
corn flakes for breakfast.
To attempt to do more than supply a small proportion of their car fleet
is impractical. There are some problems with soil depletion also.
Also they are starting to feel the effects of peak gas so there will be
a restriction on fertiliser availability.

Cornflakes for breakfast or drive to work, their and our choice ?
The politicians simply do not understand. There are plenty of sources
which go into this ethanol problem quite deeply.
Sugar cane and palm oil seem to have the best EROEI although they are not good.