Running your car on E85 reduces your mpgs up to 26 percent. Common sense tells you the price of E85 must be lower by the equivalent percentage to cost the same as normal gas. It must be lower again to save you money. It behooves the entire ethanol industry– from corn field to pump– to make sure E85 consumers know this fact; once bitten, twice shy. Meanwhile, any media outlet that doesn't mention E85's relative lack of efficiency when covering the retail end of the biz is acting irresponsibly. But a story specifically touting E85 as cheaper than gas without highlighting the fuel economy penalty is entirely reprehensible. To wit, 11alive.com's "Fuel For Under $3 In Metro Atlanta." "'I couldn't believe it,' said [Mike] Hamilton. 'I couldn't believe it they were selling fuel that cheap.' He's one of the lucky ones. Hamilton drives a vehicle that runs on E85 fuel. At the Safa Express BP station on Highway 20 in Lawrenceville, E85 is selling for $2.99 a gallon. Hamilton estimates he saved over $20 with one fill-up." Still, E85 is "not for everyone," as "the majority of cars on the road today won't run on E85." And then, this "Some drivers have complained their gas mileage is down with E85. Not Mike Hamilton. In fact, he's looking for a way to convert his other vehicles so they'll run on the ethanol blend, now that he can find it." He likes it! Mikey likes it! I'm in!
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I know you guys have a serious beef with E85, but your own “sin of omission” is the problem with E85 isn’t in the fuel but in the engines people are running it with. E85 is effectively 100 octane. What good is running 100 octane in a Chevy Impala with a 9.5:1 compression ratio.
Down in Brazil where they use primarily alcohol, their little Chevy Corsa run at a 12:1 compression ratio which takes much better advantage of the high octane level of the fuel. To put that in perspective, the only car I can find sold in the US that isn’t an Italian exotic with a compression ratio that high is the BMW M5 V10.
Saab recently fielded the Biopower 9-4x concept with an engine that got more horsepower running on E85 because the engine could detect the fuel change and correspondingly turn up the boost on the turbo.
So while you are correct that running E85 through a gasoline engine produces lower efficiency per gallon of fuel. What you don’t state is that the alternative fuel can be used to make a smaller engine more powerful and thus replace a larger engine…. and THAT is where the savings come from.
So stop trying to poo all over an alternative fuel simply because your Tahoe gets 12mpg on ethanol instead of 16mpg on gasoline when it wasn’t even originally designed to run ethanol as a primary fuel in the first place.
Mike Hamilton probably sucks at math.
Oldsmoboi : So while you are correct that running E85 through a gasoline engine produces lower efficiency per gallon of fuel. What you don’t state is that the alternative fuel can be used to make a smaller engine more powerful and thus replace a larger engine…. and THAT is where the savings come from. So stop trying to poo all over an alternative fuel simply because your Tahoe gets 12mpg on ethanol instead of 16mpg on gasoline when it wasn’t even originally designed to run ethanol as a primary fuel in the first place. So we’re supposed to factor in the E85 compatibility of vehicles that don’t exist? That makes about as much sense as shifting already heavily subsidized corn for food and feedstock production to even more highly subsidized corn for fuel production.
He likes it!
One of my sister’s state fleet vehicles (Taurus) is required via a recent obscure interoffice memo to be refueled by E85 every 3rd or 4th fill-up. Apparently it was supposed to be every fill up initially, but the county place they went to get it at was a hassle, and the local Air Force Base didn’t like them coming on base after 9/11.
Last month she was in a part of Ohio where the nearest E85 station was 75-100 miles away. She called in, and they told her to drive there. “I might run out of gas, the light is on.” So they called around to local counties trying to find a local gov’t E85 refueling area. 2 hours of downtime with someone calling around and 40 miles later, the next county over had one.
The E85 they had in the ground tank, they later found out after the Taurus died 10 miles away in BFE without cell phone coverage, was original to when they put the tank in 4 years ago, and nobody had touched the stuff in over a year.
The Taurus is still off-line. Tax payer dollars hard at work.
My 38-year-old salaried (not by the hour) sister was berated my a few levels of middle-management (the worst kind of middle-management, government middle-management) for driving the car to a point where the fuel light came on. To go to an inspection that was time-critical.
Well, Olds, I have to say you are technically correct about the compression ratio thing.
But, can you imagine trying to sell exclusively ethanol vehicles in the United States when it is virtually impossible to locate E85 stations?
Let me put it another way. Natural gas cars (CNG) can’t and won’t take off in the US due to a lack of infrastructure. You can’t simply say “oh well, I’ll top up with gasoline” with CNG any more than you could with an E100 car.
The other salient fact is that ethanol as currently produced in the United States (from corn) IS removing a LOT of cropland from food production.
To my mind, it is simply unconscionable for anyone to grow fuel and literally starve people or leave them in privation. It’s greedy, selfish to the ultimate degree and if it isn’t a sin to any god or God you worship, then I don’t know what could be.
When you factor in the efficiency drop-off of even using E10 in gasoline vehicles, according to what I’ve found in personal experience since 1979 with E10 in some two dozen vehicles, you’re essentially not only taking food from mouths, but actually INCREASING oil imports. Every vehicle I’ve tested has lost between about 5% and 25% efficiency when using 10% ethanol, most in the range of 8% to 15%. Only one vehicle “only” lost 5% efficiency on E10 compared to gasoline, and that was a 2002 Daewoo 2 litre Nubira, which my son owns and which is not a paragon of efficiency even on gasoline. About 26 mpg overall for a small compact is not brilliant.
Yawn.
It’s a free country. No one is forcing anyone to fill their tanks with E85.
Leave it to the market to decide who and how much E85 will sell. E85 does not equal Satan.
menno:
Not all vehicles react badly to E10. I drive a Dodge Ram with a 4.7L V8 and for the first 4 years of ownership I ran “G100” but had to use fuel injector cleaner in the tank a couple times a year. Then at ~4.5 years of ownership I moved to VA in an area where E10 had recently been mandated. Initially my efficiency went UP 5% over the same VA-GA highway trip during the move, and since then I haven’t had to use fuel injector cleaner once to maintain my efficiency.
A perfectly-tuned engine may very well lose measurable efficiency on E10, but the reality is that most engines are not perfectly-tuned, and folks who never clean intake/fuel systems would either see no difference or potentially an improvement, even if a temporary one.
Now A-Rod hit on a point that would make the E85 thing far less of a boondoggle than ethanol in general. I don’t care if E85 continues as a motor fuel, but STOP subsidizing it, STOP taxing or prohibiting its competition (Brazilian sugar ethanol or sugar beet ethanol) and do NOT mandate ethanol for anyone. Once market manipulation of E85 is eliminated, the market *will* decide to kick it’s sorry can to the curb. Now I’ve heard good things about Butanol…
May I direct everyone here?
http://www.joesherlock.com/blog.html
Specifically, the May 1 “Gas Up Your Car; Kill A Third-World Urchin” section. Also “Stormy Weather” and “Perfect Storm”.
I read Joe’s almost daily blog, and enjoy it.
You are all correct that no one is forcing E85 on us, but they are forcing E10 (atleast in Missouri) on us, and have made noises about E15 and E20 taking the same route. My car is less efficient (in a dollars and cents sort of way) on any kind of ethanol, so I resent having my choice to fill up with E0. If it is really the savior they are touting it as, let the free market decide.
Yes, Butanol may be a logical way to go just so long as we are more intelligent about not shifting food production land to fuel production land.
http://www.butanol.com
At least Butanol has some advantages:
1) It is more-or-less a drop-in substitute for gasoline. Almost no car modifications needed.
2) It can be shipped via pipeline, unlike ethanol, which adds to the costs dramatically because it must be trucked (using diesel fuel, if I have to add that)
3) Sugar beets can probably be grown in places where corn could not, possibly (?) helping in allowing butanol production without taking food off the worldwide table.
4) Recent developments in butanol production technology may make it viable and economical without having our taxpayer monies poured into it as ethanol.
5) Current ethanol plants can be converted to produce butanol. So they are not entirely wasted.
But of course, we have a bunch of imbeciles in Washington so the likelihood of seeing B10 fuel at my local gas station or B100 is virtually zero.
But in Britain, BP and Dupont are collaborating on the mass production of Butanol instead of ethanol. Sugar beets are grown in England, near Cambridge. I used to drive by the processing plant where sugar was made from the beets and you could smell it for 5 miles. It was awful. Hopefully by now, they’ve fixed the stench!
menno, cars that run on CNG/LPG (same stuff, butane/propane) can also run on gasoline with the flick of a switch (while driving, even). It’s quite common in Australia. Conversion costs more, but you get the best of both worlds.
I don’t know how E15 or E20 can be forced on us when every late-model car manual I’ve read says not to use any gas with more than 10% ethanol in it (for non flex-fuel vehicles, of course).
Menno:
They haven’t fixed the stench. My mom lives near Boise, Idaho. You can smell the sugar beet factory up there from quite a distance, and it don’t smell good.
Well, Olds, I have to say you are technically correct about the compression ratio thing.
But, can you imagine trying to sell exclusively ethanol vehicles in the United States when it is virtually impossible to locate E85 stations?
Let me put it another way. Natural gas cars (CNG) can’t and won’t take off in the US due to a lack of infrastructure. You can’t simply say “oh well, I’ll top up with gasoline” with CNG any more than you could with an E100 car.
The other salient fact is that ethanol as currently produced in the United States (from corn) IS removing a LOT of cropland from food production.
To my mind, it is simply unconscionable for anyone to grow fuel and literally starve people or leave them in privation. It’s greedy, selfish to the ultimate degree and if it isn’t a sin to any god or God you worship, then I don’t know what could be.
When you factor in the efficiency drop-off of even using E10 in gasoline vehicles, according to what I’ve found in personal experience since 1979 with E10 in some two dozen vehicles, you’re essentially not only taking food from mouths, but actually INCREASING oil imports. Every vehicle I’ve tested has lost between about 5% and 25% efficiency when using 10% ethanol, most in the range of 8% to 15%. Only one vehicle “only” lost 5% efficiency on E10 compared to gasoline, and that was a 2002 Daewoo 2 litre Nubira, which my son owns and which is not a paragon of efficiency even on gasoline. About 26 mpg overall for a small compact is not brilliant.
Build it and they will come. GM already produces engines that run primarily on ethanol and use gasoline as a backup secondary fuel. They just don’t sell them here. Those engines do not suffer the mileage penalties that US market FlexFuel vehicles do.
As for the corn ethanol subsidy. I’m all for yanking every last penny out of any subsidy that pays for fuel from food with the possible exception of sugar. Ethanol can be produced from a great many products that aren’t used as food. That is the beauty of it.
IMHO, one of the best sources for ethanol is kelp. It requires no fertilizer, no irrigation, we have a huge amount of coastline, it grows just about everywhere, doesn’t compete for space with food crops, the entire plant can be used for fuel and isn’t a major source of food.
My original point still stands. Don’t poo all over E85 just because some of the early adopters didn’t get it quite right.
P.S. The story about the government Taurus is sadly laughable but has nothing to do with E85 viability and everything to do with government imbecility.
210delray :
May 1st, 2008 at 9:40 am
I don’t know how E15 or E20 can be forced on us when every late-model car manual I’ve read says not to use any gas with more than 10% ethanol in it (for non flex-fuel vehicles, of course).
What’s that got to do with the government’s ability to force E15 or E20. The use of ethanol is for the benefit of all. It will save the world and the children; what’s a few years of engine life in your old worthless car anyway compared to that? What we really need is E100 Prii.
E-85 isn’t always E-85. Cold weather and the amount of ethanol must be reduced. You would wonder why they don’t use a turbocharger to raise the compression and more power out of the ethanol.
Gallon vs. gallon – isn’t more fuel expended (from fossil fuels) than created when producing ethanol?
That coupled with the fact that a gallon of ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline really does make for a boondoggle.
You’re losing energy AND making MORE pollution.
I’m all for alternative fuels and I do still believe that ethanol is a technology worth pursing – that, if improved, could be a viable solution to the energy issue. However, the way its marketed today and subsidized is just plain wrong.
Gallon vs. gallon – isn’t more fuel expended (from fossil fuels) than created when producing ethanol?
That coupled with the fact that a gallon of ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline really does make for a boondoggle.
You’re losing energy AND making MORE pollution.
I’m all for alternative fuels and I do still believe that ethanol is a technology worth pursing – that, if improved, could be a viable solution to the energy issue. However, the way its marketed today and subsidized is just plain wrong.
When derived from corn, yes. Corn is one of the worst sources of ethanol. There are many other sources that use waste products or low maintenance crops that are quite viable.
The energy per gallon issue is a red herring as long as the fuel is being produced in an efficient and ecological way.
E-85 bashing would be much more credible if it came from people who have real world experience as opposed to having (a) already made up their minds and (b) only cite sources that back up their prejudices.
I used to have a flex-fuel Ranger, and I’m anal about keeping gas mileage data. In my experience (not opinion, but experience) the drop off in fuel economy is more like 12-15% when compared to regular unleaded gas (which is often E10, at least here in CO.)
The easiest way to calculate whether E85 is economical for the consumer (I’m going to ignore all the doom-mongering about biofuels because it almost all comes from people with an ideological axe to grind) is to take the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded, and divide it by your average MPG to come up with fuel cost per mile. Do the same with E-85 figuring in a 15% decrease in MPG.
Here are the “real world” numbers for my Ranger:
Average MPG with gasoline: 19.5
Average MPG with E-85: 16
Current (as of today, 05/01/2008) price of unleaded at the cheapest station in my area: $3.41
Current price of E-85 (last time I checked): $2.49
So, 3.41 / 19.5 = 17.4 cents per mile on gas
and 2.49 / 16 = 15.56 cents per mile on E-85.
Considering that I drove 11,000 miles last year, that 1.84 cents/mile difference yields a savings of $200, which isn’t spectacular (works out to $16/month) but it’s not chump change, either, especially to someone who’s trying to save every dime. Of course, more miles driven = more savings, and a greater price differential between gasoline and E-85 will also yield greater savings.
Martin Albright:
While I don’t doubt your calculations, and wouldn’t be so churlish as to ask you to factor in tax subsidies (and open the door to talk of oil subsidies, Iraq, etc.), I think you should check the EPA numbers as well.
And even if you ARE right across the board, it doesn’t obviate my main point: the fact that E85 is less energy efficient should be more widely known. Leaving it out of this report– skimming over it and misleading the reader/viewer– is just plain wrong.
E85 as it is currently produced is less energy efficient. That just means we’re doing it wrong.
Brazil has been doing it for years using sugar quite convincingly.
And even if you ARE right across the board, it doesn’t obviate my main point: the fact that E85 is less energy efficient should be more widely known. Leaving it out of this report– skimming over it and misleading the reader/viewer– is just plain wrong.
“Should be more widely known?” My God, it’s trumpeted from the rooftops by every E-85 basher in the world (and often with inaccurate numbers like 33% or even 50%.) If there is anyone who doesn’t know E-85 returns less MPGs than regular gas, it’s due to their own ignorance, not some sinister conspiracy to “mislead.”
When I bought my Ranger in 1999 (long before most people had even heard of E-85) the salesman patiently explained the flex fuel technology and explained that my MPG would go down but my power would go up, slightly, which was pretty much my experience.
Martin Albright:
“Should be more widely known?” My God, it’s trumpeted from the rooftops by every E-85 basher in the world (and often with inaccurate numbers like 33% or even 50%.) If there is anyone who doesn’t know E-85 returns less MPGs than regular gas, it’s due to their own ignorance, not some sinister conspiracy to “mislead.”
Mikey missed it. And this article clearly glossed over E85’s relative efficiency to the point where reduced mpgs seems like some kind of urban myth or debatable point.
E85 basher or no (clearly, yes), I can tell you that there are plenty of industry stories which purposefully obfuscate the mpg penalty. And much of the media coverage “neglects” to mention this discrepancy. Intentional? Doubt it. Irresponsible? Absolutely.
Ethanol can be produced from a great many products that aren’t used as food. That is the beauty of it.
In theory yes. In practise, not quite. At least not the way it is currently made (fermentation & distillation). The problems include the difficulty of breaking down cellulose to fermentable sugars (hence cellulosic ethanol remains a politician’s [wet] dream), and the energy required for distillation.
There is one potential exception: Range Fuels is building a plant in GA that would use gasification & “alcoholization” to produce “mixed” alcohols, where “mixed” alcohols would be a mixture of C1 to C4 alcohols. As mentioned above the higher numbers (C4 = butanol) makes better fuels, and can be used more easily as a replacement for gasoline.
Unfortunately Range Fuels are also contributing to the confusion by calling their technology “cellulosic ethanol”, where most would consider “cellulosic ethanol” to be ethanol produced from cellulose via the inefficient fermentation & distillation route.
I guess the bigger question would be: how did we get here? Why are we converting food into fuel? Nobody is stupid enough to burn food when they need heat (or another form of energy). Why does uncle Sam sponsor such idiotic behaviour? And why is the president sold on an inefficient “cellulosic ethanol” technology that nobody seems able to make work?
Maybe shoddy journalism, that leaves a lot of the harder but important questions unasked, has a lot to do with it.
Bottom line: Nice job, RF! Keep it up!
Ethanol has fewer BTUs per volume than gasoline. Substituting ethanol for some gasoline would yield a product with less inherent energy than gasoline alone so you get less performance.
110,000 Btu’s per gallon for butanol
84,000 Btu per gallon for ethanol
115,000 Btu’s per gallon for gasoline
Substituting ethanol for some gasoline would yield a product with less inherent energy than gasoline alone so you get less performance.
Define performance.
E85 allows higher compression ratios than gasoline. Saab has demonstrated that they can make an engine have more power when running on E85 then when running on gasoline. Of course they used that as a way to showcase a 300hp 2.0 litre engine. (Where were all the HP/L Honda boys on that one?)
Extrapolate that out. If Saab had made a 1.0 liter engine it would have produced around 150hp. What kind of fuel mileage do you think a Cobalt might get with a 150hp 1.0 litre engine? How much benefit in weight savings would result when compared with the Cobalt’s current 2.4 litre.
Everyone is worried about how much mileage economy would be lost when running E85 through their current engines. How about looking towards the future where Cadillac is fielding a 375hp 2.5 litre ethanol burning CTS that can get 33mpg highway?
Furthermore, if we’re going to base our fuel decision making on BTU per gallon, why are we not bringing diesel into this discussion?
Just remember, it takes more fossil fuel to MAKE E85 as well… it is a well timed marketing ploy by GM (and to a lesser extent Chrysler) and George Bush. We will be able to celebrate when BOTH are gone.
So what are the E85 bashers proposing to do about Peak Oil and the eventual decline of availability and the high price of gas? Nothing.
Granted the price of ethanol should more accurately reflect it’s energy content to compensate, but is that the fault of ethanol or the distributors/retailers who pirce it?
RF may not want to get into the subject of oil subsidies but they are massive. We have had 3 Presidents from Texas over the last 45 years who set the agenda in favor of oil. All three had major wars on their watch and 2 of them were for oil security.
It is unreasonable to expect biofuel to compete unsubsidized with such heavily subsidized competition.
Not to put words in RF’s mouth, but I believe the original intent of this article was to point out that media coverage of ethanol does not properly cover all the facts of this wondrous product.
As previous posters have mentioned E85 bashing (er, facts?) is readily available. And yes, it is, if you search for it on the internet. What’s being spoon-fed to most consumers is that Ethanol is the solution to the energy crisis. We’ve done it! No need to change your lives! Just run your car on food!
Hell, a few years ago I thought Ethanol was all those things AND I’m a car nut. Then I found the light at TTAC. Hallelujah!! (Well, just kidding on the whole light thing.) My point is that right now general consumer Ethanol knowledge isn’t what it should be.
Too quote Stephen Colbert, most media coverage is: Corn + Magic = Gasoline!
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/29/colberts-word-discusses-the-magic-of-ethanol/