Yesterday POET made a convincing argument to the city they should switch the city fleet to Flex-Fuel E-30. While I understand the reasoning, there are two opposing arguments; 1) there would be issues with warranties, 2) E-30 still contains 70% petroleum based fuels.
My thought was if we were going to go to the expense of starting to change the fleet over we should start bold.
My suggestion would to outfit all the city garages (parks, public works, administration building, etc) with solar panels and charging stations. We really should be switching our car and small SUV and truck fleet to electric. Not only is electric reliable, it would save the city millions in fuel costs. The city already gets affordable electricity from our own electric department, what electric recharging the solar panels could not provide could be subsidized by our own power grid.
On top of that, we would probably have the fastest patrol cars in the state. An electric vehicle can go 0 to 60MPH in 4 seconds. The initial investment would not be cheap, but it would pay huge dividends. Corn fuel, not so much. Don’t the Broin Brothers have enough money from government subsidies?