it’s kind of hilarious how reckless this is.

I'm also thinking of how reckless it is from a resource perspective. Even if US politics manages to slow the spread of renewables, oil is a finite resource which is becoming harder and more expensive to extract by the year. If your vehicle needs 40 gallons of that stuff every week, you're putting yourself in a very vulnerable position.

It's also a fucking repeat of the auto-bailouts nearing 20 years ago. At this point its pretty obviously a wealth extraction grift. With fascists and liberals in power they will get socialized bailouts, probably forgiven like the covid trillion dollar wealth transfer.

It goes back to 1910. Henry Ford wanted to make his Model T run on ethanol, which any farm could easily make. Standard Oil and government forced him to use petroleum, and then government passed laws to control any ethanol production under the guise of prohibition and even today, you can't make alcohol without a licence or a strange agency that enforces tobacco and firearms laws will get you.

Go to the interweb, and the evils of alcohol fuel are botted everywhere from oil companies through NY PR firms, then parroted on Reddit, Youtube and Lemmy.

Meanwhile, in South America, all cars run on petrol or ethanol. In Brazil, E100 is 80 cents a litre, gasoline is $1.20/L. Gas is cheaper than North America because it has competition at the pumps. Ethanol burns clean (nets C02 and water), and is carbon capture cycle for the C02 it does generate. Cars run cooler, and have no carbon deposits and oils last a lot longer.

Indy500 has run on methanol or ethanol since the 50s.