From Detroit, a Biofuel Breakout

There were snickers aplenty here last week when General Motors joined hands with an Illinois company to announce a major biofuels initiative.

Cynics in the audience at the 2008 North American International Auto Show joked that the union between giant GM and relatively small Coskata has about as much chance of succeeding as a Hollywood marriage. Others found smug comfort in the theory that the whole GM-Coskata affair was little more than a green publicity stunt.
Admittedly, on the surface, the joint venture, in which GM has an undisclosed equity stake in Coskata, seems audacious. Coskata would use a proprietary, three-step conversion process to turn diverse, carbon-based feedstock — corn, sugar cane, waste from processed sugar cane called bagasse, used tires and other commercial and municipal trash into ethanol, thus making production of that fuel possible almost anywhere in the world.

Not only that, but Coskata would work its fuels magic at a production cost of less than a dollar a gallon, giving it a tremendous price advantage over traditional fossil fuels, such as gasoline and diesel.

Here’s the kicker: GM, which is to flexible fuel vehicles what Toyota is to gas-electric hybrids, would work with Coskata to set up a global distribution network for Coskata fuels. Imagine that! GM annually produces more than 1 million flexible fuel vehicles capable of running on ethanol and other biofuels. Globally, GM has 3.5 million flexible fuel vehicles in operation, 2.5 million of them in the United States.

By 2012, GM plans to make half of its global vehicle production flexible-fuel ready. GM-Coskata, this could be the start of something big!

Or could it?

Washington Post