We’ve written a lot here at Fuel Advantage about the rapid advance of hybrid diesel-electric drivetrains in medium-duty work trucks, and how major manufacturers are starting to produce these trucks in larger and larger volumes. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t receive a press release announcing that one fleet or another has just added medium-duty hybrid trucks to their fleet–most recently I’ve gotten news that Red Bull Energy Drink has added a fleet of hybrid delivery trucks to their fleet, and a high-profile wine distrubutor in Napa, California, has taken delivery of two new hybrid delivery trucks. The surge is quickly becoming a tidal wave.

With all this activity in the market, it was inevitable that major OEMs would start to advertise their hybrid products, but I was nonetheless surprised to see an ad in this week’s issue of “Transport Topics” for Peterbilt’s new Class-6 Model 330 and Class-7 Model 335 Hybrids! There it is: a glued-in, full-color advertisement from a major American truck OEM for a diesel-electric hybrid that is in full production. When a company commits major marketing dollars to a new product, you know it has arrived. The trucking industry will never be the same.

That didn’t take long… No sooner did we find out that $4 a gallon gasoline and diesel fuel was THE tipping point at which Americans would change their transportation habits than gasoline and fuel prices started to drop. Of course, they’re not dropping back to the $1.50 a gallon range that we enjoyed back in the day (before Bush was president), and they never will, but they have dropped down below $4 a gallon.

Is anyone surprised by this? It was inevitable that, as soon as Americans started driving slower, buying smaller, more fuel-effeicient vehicles and driving billions fewer miles, the oil companies would bait the hook with lower prices in an attempt to tempt us back to our old habits. The question is: Will we fall for it? We have in the past, over and over again.

I for one think that we’re not going to backslide. I think Americans are finally getting that our oil resources are finite and we have to change our ways. This time, I don’t think that the oil companies’ bait-and-switch tricks are going to work. What do you think?

The next issue of Fuel Advantage Magazine will feature a story on Odyssey Day, a national event put on by the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium (NAFTC) to teach fleets and consumers alike about alternatives to gasoline and diesel fuel, but I can’t wait til the Fall issue comes out to talk about this. The event takes place on October 3rd this year, and it’s going to be huge! If you’re a fleet manager who needs to start reducing fuel costs but you don’t know where to start, Odyssey Day is here to help.

Odyssey Day isn’t any one event; it’s a whole network of alternative fuel training events held at colleges, city garages and NAFTC training sites all over the country. If you live near a major metropolital city, chances are you can reach one of this year’s Odyssey Day events.

What will you find there? At a typical event, you’ll meet a whole lot of people who can answer questions about biofuels, hybrids, natural gas, fuel cells, infratsructure & supply issues–in short, everything you need to know to start your own green revolution (And if you’re already heading down that road, the Odyssey Day folks might want you to come and share your story at one of their events!). And this year, Odyssey Day is partnering with the National Clean Cities Program to celebrate Clean Cities’ 15th anniversary, so it’s going to be the biggest Odyssey Day yet!

To find out more about this event, go online here, or call Amy Gandy, Odyssey Day Event Manager, at (304) 293-7882.

When plug-in hybrids become commercially available (in 2010, if Toyota and General Motors can be believed), there will, in all likelihood, be a tax credit ready and waiting for early adopters. This is great news for the new technology, and a good sign that the government can still make the right moves when it comes to promoting alternative energy vehicles.

There are actually two bills in the House of Representatives that could, if passed by the house and Senate, and signed into law by the President, provide up to $5,000 per vehicle in tax credits. That’s still not enough to cover the incremental costs of a plug-in hybrid, but it’s a start. Obviously, for plug-in hybrids to succeed, more incentives may be needed, as well as a whole lot of energy-conscious consumers who are

willing to pay a premium for a car that may only need to visit the gas station three or four times a year.

What about you? What would you pay, either as a private consumer or as a fleet manager, for a plug-in hybrid?

I just came back from a fairy-tale world where people drive around in cars that don’t need gasoline, except that this place really exists. The city of Vacaville, California, halfway between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay area, holds the distinction of having the highest concentration of electric vehicles (and public electric vehicle charging staions) per capita in the United States. And we’re not talking about “neighborhood electric vehicles” that can only go 25 miles an hour on certain streets; we’re talking about highway-capable vehicles that can go up to 60 mph for up to 120 miles.

Yep, the people who made the documentary movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” could have found the electric vehicle alive and well in Vacaville, which has earned the nickname “Voltageville” in the local press. The city has 25 electric Toyota RAV4s in its fleet, and at one time boasted 100 electric vehicles on its streets, owned both by the City and many of its visionary citizens.

Of course, that was back in the early part of the decade when electric vehicles (EVs) were still being sold in California by Ford, Nissan, GM and Toyota. Today, sadly, EVs are scarcer than hen’s teeth, but Vacaville’s diminished fleet keeps buzzing along, thanks in large part to a network of charging stations installed throughout the city, where anyone with an EV can charge up for free. We’ll be writing more in our October issue about Vacaville and Ed Huestis, the pioneering city management analyst who turned it into Voltageville, but some news can’t wait: Thanks in large part to work by Huestis and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vacaville may land the new Tesla Motors electric vehicle plant. The plant, which could employ up to 400 people, would produce Tesla’s Model S highway EV, a five-passenger electric sedan with a range of 225 miles on a charge. If this dream comes true, Voltageville might have to rename itself High Voltageville.

I can’t help thinking that the worst job in the world right now has got to be “Hummer dealer.” Not only are sales of the behemoth SUVs tanking, but GM is making loud noises about shedding the now-embarrassing division completely. Would anyone really buy Hummer right now?

When I drive past the local Hummer dealership I shake my head… A few short years ago, the local Cadillac dealership cleared away half of its valuable commercial property to build a bright, vast, stunning new Hummer showroom, a modern-day interpretation of a quonset hut with the huge Hummer logo beaming out across the city. For the first few years, I’m sure the trucks sold like hotcakes; GM even introduced a series of smaller, “fuel-efficient” Hummer models based on their Chevy/GM pickup and SUV architecture.

But today, none of that matters. The quonset hut is quiet, and GM is belatedly questioning the wisdom of selling huge, hard-to-drive, gas-gulping SUVs.

Now, if Hummer fades away, not many fleets will be affected. But you have to wonder who’s next. Are other brands and models in danger? Could Ford’s plans to produce a lightweight, fuel-efficient F-100 pickup truck eventually doom the F-150? If bread-and-butter brands and models start to disappear, how will your fleet’s purchasing plans be affected?

In my last blog entry, I wrote about a friend at work asking me recently why diesel fuel is so much more expensive than gasoline, and the answer was somewhat sinister. Well, later that very same day I was at a dinner party with friends, and another sinister issue came up. Since we were all eating, it was only natural for the conversation to turn to the high cost of food. Inevitably, someone asked why food prices were rising, and someone else said, without any trace of doubt in his voice, “Well, it’s because all of our crops are going to biofuel production.”

I had to break in when I heard that. “No,” I said, “You’re falling for big oil’s propoganda.”

Big oil would like us all to blame the biofuel industry for high food prices, but it just isn’t so. I explained to my friends that far more of our corn and soybean crops are used to feed livestock than to produce biofuels. And then we eat the livestock. And nobody wants to give up their Whoppers.

Does this mean we should blame the livestock industry? Do we all become vegetarians? No, that would be just as silly and ignorant as blaming the biofuels industry (although it wouldn’t hurt any of us to eat less meat). So, as you’re cooking out this Fourth of July weekend, if you want to look for something to blame for high food prices, don’t blame biofuels. The real culprit is the high cost of transporting food to market, and that, my friends, is caused by skyrocketing fuel prices. Which takes us full circle, back to the question of why diesel fuel has become so much more expensive than gasoline. Sinister, isn’t it?

Today in the office, a friend asked me, “Why is diesel so much more expensive than gasoline?” It’s not the first time I’ve been asked that, and it’s not the first time I’ve wondered it myself. Diesel fuel has historically been a relative bargain compared to gasoline, so much so that I used to wonder why more automakers didn’t offer diesel engines in the North American market, as Volkswagen and Mercedes did. A year or two ago I thought that anyone who bought a diesel car was a visionary.

So why is it that today, in 2008, those visionaries are feeling completely ripped off? Why is diesel so much more expensive than gasoline? To find an answer, I did what any good journalist does: I turned to the Google. What I found there was less that satisfactory, to put it mildly, but it was a start. I found a couple online entries that quoted this statement from the Energy Information Administration:

“Until several years ago, the average price of diesel fuel was usually lower than the average price of gasoline. In some winters when the demand for distillate heating oil was high, the price of diesel fuel rose above the gasoline price. Since September 2004, the price of diesel fuel has been generally higher than the price of regular gasoline all year round for several reasons. Worldwide demand for diesel fuel and other distillate fuel oils has been increasing steadily, with strong demand in China, Europe, and the U.S., putting more pressure on the tight global refining capacity. In the U.S., the transition to low-sulfur diesel fuel has affected diesel fuel production and distribution costs. Also, the Federal excise tax on diesel fuel is 6 cents higher per gallon (24.4 cents per gallon) than the tax on gasoline.”

At face value, the reasons stated in this quote seem reasonable. Growing global demand and tight production… sure, sure, I get it. But those market conditions are also affecting the price of gasoline, so how is it that the price of diesel fuel has leapfrogged that of gasoline?? If the same forces are affecting both, shouldn’t the two prices be growing at approximately the same rate, and in approximately the same relation to each other? And the argument about the switch to Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel Fuel doesn’t quite sit right with me, either… After all, ULSD was introduced to the market in mid-2006; why didn’t the price skyrocket two years ago?

Is there an answer to the question? Is it supply and demand, or is there something more sinsiter going on? What do you think?

My little town in southern Wisconsin is almost completely shut off from the outside world this week. As the Rock River continues to rise as a result of two weeks of torrential rainstorms, roads in, around and out of town are being overcome by the rising waters, and we are faced with the prospect of limiting–and perhaps even eliminating–travel for the foreseeable future.

It’s going to take a long time–long after the flood waters have descended–to determine the full extent of the damage, but there is one effect we may see fairly soon. Here in my town, E85 ethanol has been selling for a full dollar a gallon less than regular unleaded gasoline–$2.99 vs. $3.99–but I wonder if that may change. This morning I heard on the radio that the floods are taking a very heavy toll on the corn and soybean crops in the midwestern states. The report stated that as much as 21 percent of the corn crop may already be lost, which, of course, will put upward pressure on the price of E85.

Losses to the soybean crop are harder to estimate, since the problem there is that the traditional June 10 planting day for soybeans now has to be pushed back indefinitely, and no one can say how that delay will ultimately affect the harvest. It is safe to predict, however, that the price of biodiesel will be adversely affected by a smaller than expected soybean harvest.

Of course, Hurricane Katrina taught us that Mother Nature can be a much more menacing foe than OPEC when it comes to affecting energy costs. Now here we are, a few years later, facing a similar threat, only this time two of the best solutions we have to our energy crisis–ethanol and biodiesel–may soon become part of the problem.

After being gone for some vacation time, I’ve returned to my desk to find that my last blog post has stirred up quite a response from our readers. The response has been so strong that I feel the need to address some of the comments that have been made.

First of all, I’d like to say that it is possible to disagree with the the national defense policies of this administration and still support our troops, AND, yes, still be a patriot. The propensity to equate disapproval of the invasion of Iraq with a lack of patiotism or a lack of support for our armed forces is part of the divisive sickness that has infected our country and our public discourse for the past eight years, and I for one will be happy to see that end. In no way did I mean to criticise our troops or denigrate their work. By not using gasoline over Memorial Day weekend, I was showing my sincere support for the work that our soldiers are doing and the risks they are taking in the name of our wonderful country, and I can’t believe that anyone would criticize me for that.

I would also like to say that there is not a single Iraqi that I’m aware of–from Saddam Hussein on down–who has ever directly threatened my freedom of speech or my freedom of the press. You may not agree with me over that, but I think you’d have a hard time proving that I’m wrong. Likewise, you may not agree that not using gas over Memorial Day weekend is a fitting tribute to our troops, but how does reducing our need for oil from the Middle East, even in my small way, hurt the situation?