let me get this straight. Europe has reduced polution and consumption by making advances in diesel technology. I understand that. BUT....You'd still have to buy a new car for you to reap the benefits....so its really the same either way you look at it. buy a new E85 car or buy a new diesel. I't would be cheaper to convert a car to run on E85 than it would be to buy a new diesel car or truck.

The point I'm making is you cant retrofit most of todays technology, so the only option to see the benefits of the new technology is to buy a new car or truck. Both here in the states and across the pond in europe, you'd have to buy a new vehicle to see any sort of gain over what we all have now.

you are still missing the same point about fuel pricing. the fuel companies are not going to give up their profits. they will merely roll the lower costs into better margin and leave you and i stuck paying the same or with in a few cents of what we pay now.
need proof, diesel. it costs about 40% LESS to produce diesel as it is sold at the pump in the US. is teh price 40% lower? no, it is usually with in $.10 of regular gas. why? because they know a captive market when they see it.
this is high school level economics. if someone NEEDS something, you can stick it to them as hard as you want, and if you competitors follow suit(anyone who watches gas station prices knows how this works) then you can just keep on jamming penny after penny out of them.
ethanol as an additive or as a primary source only has a shot at changing the prices at the pump for a very brief period of time, if at all. as of right now every BP and Luk i see is priced the same as the gas station they are next to. so that 10/15/whatever percentage of ethanol is that they are saving produciton costs on isn't helping anyone.

Profit > Being fair to consumers

my point is that the changeover to ethanol technology is more expensive than existing technology for production, research, and end user purchase(because we get to pay for the first two)
diesel already exists and is a mass market item. you do not need to build brand new refineries to produce european diesel fuel at volume, you just need to change some things to create the higher quality of diesel that they see in europe. it is a higher quality of fuel with less sediment that will go right into any existing diesel engine and only create a better runnign vehicle with no component upgrades needed.
there is also the existing technology of better diesel engines in europe. most make more power, all get much better mileage, all require less maintenance, and most burn just as clean or cleaer than their gasoline counter parts.
i am not talking about far reaching boutique companies, i am talking about Ford, MB, BMW, VW, GM, Hyundai, and prolly a few dozen other companies that have this technology already in hand and ready to sell.
why should the government drop billions into grants and subsidized(sp?) loans to pay for research and development of new technology that won't save me any money when technology that would help me buy less fuel in the first place already exists?

Low-Sulfer diesel is not yet ready.
E85 is here now, they just need to expand it. If a 3rd world country like Brazil can do it, something tells me that the richest country in the world can do it too.

I think you missed the point of Tim's post.

Expanding the availability of E85 will be more expensive than making some changes to current refineries to produce low-sulfur diesel. Gas stations all over the country are already selling diesel fuel, so switching is easy. There are also already lots of vehicles on the road ready to accept this new diesel fuel, whereas very few cars on the road today can run E85.

Low Sulfur diesel will be coming out in the fall, and there should be a large increase in the amount of diesel passenger cars sold here to take advantage of this new fuel. This would save a considerable amount of money over trying to switch over everything to E85.

I'm not saying that E85 is bad, it's just going to be more expensive to implement.

- Justin

the brazilian government took over the enitre oil industry. brazils domestic fuel system operates at a loss that they recover by exporting oil, most of it to the USA.
that is how a second tier economic nation with half the number of consumers to account for can do something like that.
since the US government has no plans to take aadvantage of any of our own resources, that system won't work here.