Is this BS?

Consider too that in the middle eastern countries with oil, they did not drill their fields, they did not pump the oil, they do not maintain the equipment that keeps everything flowing. If the west was truely dishonest as has been aledged, the middle eastern countries would all have been merely conquered and there would be no rich middle easterners and the oil stolen. Are there any rich people in the middle east? Then the west is not basically dishonest because we could have easily stolen all that oil. We still could but that is not who we are. Iraq had the biggest strongest military in the entire middle east. They stood up to American attack for less than 30 days. That all the oil in the middle east does not now belong to the USA is proof we aren't all crooks. I'll concede we have a few! :-) But anyway, anyone know if the linked article makes any sense? I don't know enough about to cars to properly figure this out.

Great post, as usual! As far as the article goes, yes - it makes sense. Gearheads have for years played around with ways to get more power from less fuel. There are carburetors that Nascar banned from racing back in the early '60s. Why? Because their performance was like that of a fuel injection system and that was against the rules. Back in the heyday of American racing, turbine engines were used at Indy and subsequently banned because no one could keep up with their speed, power and fuel efficiency. Different kinds of "witches brews" were played with to try to achieve the most power and gas mileage from different types of fuels that were not petroleum based. Both Champ Cars and Indy cars, amongst others, have achieved over 1000 horsepower from 1 to 2 liter engines that run on methanol. If it weren't for the fact that the cars were running up to 270 mph (Champ Car), the fuel mileage would have been impressive (still they average between 3 - 5 mpg at those speeds). I'm THRILLED to see someone not only bring this back to the forefront, but that the slug of them all in Detroit, has shown some actual interest. I hope this guy goes far with his brilliance. And that the rest of Detroit hops on this band wagon!

I was an independent trucker from 1977 through 1985. Then I drove part time for others until 1992. So, I've got experience with diesels, too. I completely agree that diesels are under-rated and under-utilized. It is fantastic technology. During the 8 years I ran my own truck, I put over 500,000 miles on each of the 2 trucks I owned. Minor maintenance is all that either required. Diesels rock!

Yes, diesel cars can be fantastic. As to the Saturn, my wife is a mail carrier and her friends who have tried Saturns were not too happy with them for the most part. Currently, believe it or not, my wife drives an Impala and it is working out mostly ok. There have been minor problems with the cheap raditor (aluminum & plastic) and the instrument cluster (electronic grounding problem). Engine and transmission are fine. Hope I didn't just jinx the vehical.

Yes, competition, freedom, and capitalism combine to produce wonderful things. This guy will invent ideas that other companies will adapt before GM if GM does not get smart. Of course, GM will try to steal his work. Read the story sometime of the slow kick windshield wiper. I use to know a guy who had a family member that was a GM engineer. He said the problem was mostly management did not care what the engineers had to say about much of anything.

All too true that management doesn't support the engineering staff. For example, the Buick Grand National and the Pontiac GTO had to be pieced together in secret in order to be brought to life. Both cars were formally proposed to GM management and both promptly denied any support. Yet look at what happened once they hit the market. The top execs. have some sort of forecasting that almost never has any consumer interests or demands included in it. They strictly see the business, their targets (production numbers, gross profit, etc.) and where the overall results are in comparison to these goals. They don't like change because change costs millions of dollars, let alone if the change flops, the board of directors and other investors will have them for lunch. This is why the American auto makers seem so far behind the competition. Back in 1928, George Washington Carver had developed ways to run cars on peanut oil, vegetable oil and other alternative fuels. Henry Ford thought it was great and made a few running examples of his own with George running the project. It was shelved however due to gasoline being so cheap and plentiful. Let alone the oil companies then, as it is now, saw this as a huge threat to their business and did the usual political tricks to influence Uncle Sam to let them have their way. Of course this also hampers change in Detroit. It's a mess. But the technology has been with us since the teens of last century. Fuel injection was invented by Robert Bosch in 1917, Caterpillar went diesel in 1928, Ford had an overhead cam engine in the Model T, turbo and super charging had become the proven, efficient way of increasing power and thermo-dynamic efficiency back in the '30s. It's business politics that has stopped the flow of progress in Detroit. Fun fact: The Model T, which ended production in 1929, got 25 miles to the gallon!

Okay, so we need to really let entrepenurship out of the cage to reform our technology!

Indeed Red. I could attempt to try a reconfiguration on my own car but that'd be quite a risk on more than one level. Society and the automakers really need to get on this despite the current paradoxical dilemma. If not, stateside can expect higher gas prices (not just from supply but also if more taxes are put in). One can expect a ripple effect across the economy (one that lightly happened during late summer and is expected to pop up again soon). One can expect travel, work, city/suburban development and other related transportation aspects to change if oil dependency is still put obliquely at the forefront.