Trust the French to come up with stylish BioPower website.

Why is French stuff always so alluring and classy?

The website is called PlusPlusPlus and is available at www.plusplusplus.fr.

Yes, it’s in French but there’s some stuff there that requires no foreign language skills, too. Click on the note pinned to the tree that reads Voir les spots pub and you’ll get an ambient 8 minute video. It doesn’t say that much, but it’s all nice and natural and shows the 2008 Saab 9-3 off very nicely in spots.

The three Pluses in the title stand for PlusEcologique, PlusEconomique and PlusPerformante. You’ll figure those out as you go along, I’m sure.

A very classy site. Given the expanding E85 infrastructure in France, it makes sense that Saab would be pushing it there. I hope a lot of French customers get to see the site as it’s a very nice production.

Thanks Claude!

One of the things Saab USA have most likely been waiting for before bringing BioPower to the market is for E85 to become more available in California. Cali’s got an economy bigger then most countries all on its own. It’s a big market and Saab would be more comfortable knowing that some people will actually be able to make use of their BioPower technology there. Or maybe they don’t care at all and I’m just saying that. Anyway….

Today, GM sponsored a two-hour E85 sale at one of the few public outlets where you can purchase E85 in the whole state. And given that it was E85 that was on sale, it was appropriate that they’d charge just 85 cents for it. Well, 85.9 to be exact.

1985 Gripen headed on down to fill up his flex-fuel company car:

What a freakin’ nightmare that was. The good news: yes, I got my company a tank of fuel for only 85 cents a gallon. The bad news: the line was over an hour and a half long! The line wrapped around the block and backed onto San Vicente quite a ways down.

So totally NOT worth it. If I’d known it would be such a wait I wouldn’t have stayed, but it was one of those things where I kept thinking, “well, I’ve been waiting THIS long, it’d be a shame to leave now…”

I got into the line at 12:20 and got up to the pump at 1:55. I drove out at 2:00. There was still a long line of cars when I left. I was so relieved to be done with it that I left instead of stick around and see if there was a riot when the station stopped selling at 2:00pm!

All the suits there, who I assume work for GM, looked giddy about the turnout but I kept wondering if the whole experience being so stressful now makes people associate buying ethanol with waiting in line! At 85 cents a gallon you’re going to get a lot of takers. At $2.97 a gallon, I’m not so sure.

There was also a big article about E85 yesterday in the LA Times.

Gripen spoke to the reporter on the phone for around 40 minutes a few weeks ago while whe was putting the story together, supposedly providing background and his piece of public opinion on the fuel. Unfortunately his contribution was left out in the final edit.

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In other news on E85 in the US – There’s going to be 20 new E85 outlets opening in Texas soon.

Gripen here. This is a long post, as is my style, so consider that fair warning. I figure if you’re reading this blog you have a little free time on your hands anyway.

As many regular visitors to Swade’s blog know I’m the resident “treehugger” at TS. Now, let me temper that statement by pointing-out I’m not a nutcase extremist like those Greenies in New Zealand, Australia, and Belgium attacking Saab for trying to do the right thing. Like my political beliefs, in regards to my environmental beliefs I tend to fall smack-dab in the center between extremes. For example, I wouldn’t own a HUMMER, but I wouldn’t own a Prius either. I might own a Chevy Volt, Opel Flextreme, Tesla Roadster, Tesla WhiteStar or Tesla BlueStar if I could, though.

So due to Saab’s traditional ethos of “rightsizing” they’re a good fit for me.

There’s a big political push in the U.S. right now for “reducing our dependence on foreign oil” to achieve “energy independence and security” and we’ve heard previously that Sweden has a goal in pushing ethanol – to wean itself off of petroleum by 2020. Could it be that driving a BioPower Saab running on E85 would help further that goal more than driving a Toyota Prius?

Absolutely. Read on.

Continue reading →

The following video covers the announcement of GM’s partnership with Coskata in a new process for the manufacture of ethanol, a process that’ll use waste resources rather than corn, will use much less water, and will cost less as well.

Saab’s own Kjell AC Bergstrom features in part of the clip, talking about Saab’s BioPower engines and ethanol as a fuel source.

With Bob Lutz being so bearish about diesel in the US recently (more to come later) it appears that BioPower will be the next ‘new thing’ after the XWD rollout later this year. Hopefully Coskata can get the process online asap.

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And by the way…..

Our own 1985Gripen did a phone interview with a newspaper in Los Angeles today.

Gripen’s been an early adopter of E85 in his company-provided Chevy Impala and I had the pleasure of riding in it, with E85 in the tank, from LA to Santa Barbara a few weeks ago. The LA Times did a hatchet-job on ethanol not so long ago, but now that the fuel is actually available in LA they seem to have more of an open mind in exploring the E85 experience.

The interview went well and hopefully we’ll have something on the site as soon as it goes online.