If money talks, then a terse deal announcement by Daimler and Volkswagen in October spoke eloquently about the car industry’s growing interest in biofuels. Europe’s two largest automakers said they would take a minority stake in Choren Industries, a German biofuel company building a biomass-to-liquids plant in partnership with Shell.
Carmakers, under pressure from regulators on both sides of the Atlantic and in Asia to improve their vehicles’ fuel economy and cut carbon emissions, are investing heavily in cars that run on alternative fuels or electric power.
