Bailout Draft sent to White House

Late this afternoon, Congressional Democrats sent the White House a draft of a roughly $15 billion auto bailout. The draft stipulates a "car czar" who is appointed by the President and is responsible for the oversight of these loans. The draft bill has other conditions, such as limits on executive compensation and a prohibition against shareholder dividends while the loans are pending. The bill also prohibits loan recipients from challenging state greenhouse gas emissions rules. Apparently, there are no deal breakers in this initial draft and we should have a vote before the end of the week.

More from Automotive News:

"Negotiations continued Monday night on legislation that would provide an estimated $15 billion in emergency federal loans to General Motors and Chrysler LLC.

Although differences remained between Democratic leaders of Congress and the White House, no issue emerged as an obvious deal-breaker.

"I'm very encouraged," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a late-afternoon briefing for reporters."

Of course, nothing happens very fast in Washington, so we will have to wait and see if the Senate can get the 60 votes it needs to overcome any filibuster effort.

GM News re-cap

Let's have a look at the events surrounding General Motors this past week. The biggest news is that the company petitioned the FAA to prevent public tracking of a corporate jet it leases. This is a strange request, don't you think? A GM spokesman, Greg Martin, had this to say, "We availed ourselves of the same option as others have", meaning the ability to ask the FAA for tracking exclusion. He went on to decline giving a reason for the request. Instead, we get to guess at the reason and all I can come up with is that tricky Rick Wagoner wants to jet-set without us knowing. You have any ideas?

In other news, GM is looking to raise one quarter of a billion dollars from the sale and leaseback of some of its European offices and other property assets. Normally, this would seem like a large sum of cash, but these are not normal times for the auto giant. When we last checked, General Motors was burning though 2.5 billion dollars in cash per month and nearing bankruptcy. This 270 million dollars it is trying to raise is apparently part of a push to raise 4 billion in asset sales and capital market transactions. I wish them well and hope they secure these funds to help them through these hard times.

I promise to keep you posted this week as the Big Three make their final pitch (at least the final pitch in 2008) for emergency government assistance. It should be fun to watch!

The Future of Ethanol

By now I am sure that you have heard the hype surrounding Ethanol. General Motors is one of the biggest advocates of E85 (85% Ethanol and 15% gasoline) and they offer many of their models with this option. Recently, I found out that it costs GM about $150.00 to add the hardware necessary to the engine that allows it to burn E85.

That amounts to a small price to pay for big automaker to claim it is doing its part in the Green movement! Give GM credit though, at least they are trying to give us some alternative.

Currently, E85 is somewhat hard to find, even living in the Midwest. I live in Ohio and I believe there are about 65 or so stations that offer this fuel and I am desperately trying to find all the convenient ones.

E85 use is great for our farmers but basically impossible on a large scale since we need grain to feed ourselves before feeding our autos. Some of the alternatives being studied are cellulosic ethanol, which is being derived in many different ways. The goal is to find a renewable source of ethanol that will not take food from our mouths, Plants such as switch grass are proving to be promising.

I like using E85 as I know that the majority of the product comes from local sources and the monies are not heading overseas. I also like the price at the pump and today I filled up for about $1.61 per gallon.

What do you think? Is Ethanol a boondoggle, waste of time or is it a viable fuel alternative utilized in our quest to live oil free?