My answer is they would simply run on regular gas and the thieving car makers would not give a damn. They would lose the flex in their flex fuel status

In any sense I'm enjoying the e85 for however long it is here. Personally it's existence initially was primarily politically driven IMO so if there is no agenda then who knows what will happen regardless of what is right for the environment etc... Do research on Archer Daniels if you truly want to know more. I did a bit of reading before deciding to make the switch just so I would know more about it not to mention this dude at work was trying to make the flase claims of no corn on dinner table costs too much etc....

It is interesting ( I guess) if you are into politics but I run it purely for the performance benefits and it is way more accessible and so much cheaper than race gas to boot.

Oh personally I don't thik Ethanol is going anywhere anytime soon as long there is money to be made by the powers that be.

 

32 public stations:

http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/locator/stations/state

 

They could run normal gas, wouldn't have to return them, whole point of FlexFuel.

I've met people that have FlexFuel trucks that didn't even know what it meant and they always fill up on regular pump gas.

 

Yet the closest on to me is over 80 miles away.

Hopefully one of the new 55 will be local.

 

My experience actually talking with as many owners of FLEX fuel vehicles as possible...

1. Most flex fuel vehicles are very large SUVs and pickup trucks. 2009 Flex Fuel Vehicles. There are 34 flex fuel vehicles this model year. None are economy cars. Three are large cars, the rest are all SUVs and trucks.
2. Most of these get relatively poor fuel mileage on gasoline.
3. When the owners "flex" to E85 their poor MPGs plummet by 20-30%.
4. The owners all shriek and immediately switch back to gasoline.
5. In the year+ I've been on E85, I've only met one other person filling up at the E85 pumps. He was driving an early model flex Explorer and always uses E85 due to his personal commitment to ethanol.

The US automakers experiment with E85 has been a VERY one-sided joke. Serious economy car uses have never had a chance to even participate.

 

My point above is that the kinds of people who might be motivated to make a serious commitment to E85 for performance, economy, geopolitical, or environmental reasons would not typically be driving any of the aforementioned vehicles. Detroit has missed the FLEX fuel market entirely.

 

Unfortunately, as with many things in the world, misinformation and a lack of knowledge play a big role in peoples' decisions. A relatively car-savvy coworker of mine recently bought a Ford Fusion, so I asked if it was a Flex Fuel car. His immediate response was that he would "never run that garbage in any of my cars." Because of the need for more fuel and the lower fuel economy, he somehow had the idea that the car would not run well and would somehow hurt the car in the long run.

I obviously explained how I ran it in the Evo, and he asked what I had to do to convert it. After I explained a little bit more about E-85 (also mentioned that regular gas now had ethanol content anyway), he seemed to have a slightly more positive view of it. I'm sure I didn't change his mind to run E-85 in any future cars, but it's slight progress.

As a side note, I think I have seen only 3 cars in the area use E-85. They were, not surprisingly, all big SUVs. After all, I do live in the metro Detroit area.

 

E-85 forever!!! Too the death!

 

I totally agree. If Detriot would make compact cars that were flex fuel that would be great. A cobalt with 11.5:1 Ecotec flex fuel would be great. It would be atleast able to take advantage of the octane that E-85 provides.

Another idea is to stop making low compression engine period. Force people to buy 91-93 octane. 10+:1 That way the car/truck runs like crap ie. lack of power, knocks, poor fuel econ. Like when clients bring their Benz in for me to work on and I go drive it after repairs. Oh what is that noise I hear from the engine? Could it be the knock? I think so.

 

Straight from the Fam. Ethonal production is not going to STOP. There is a push on Capital hill to increase the ethonal percentage from E10 to E15.

Anyone else have anymore questions for me to ask?

 

Theres no E-85 stations near me, so it wouldn't mater to me if it went away. As far as price and corn goes, they government pays the farmers to grow corn so it lowers the price for everyone. The bad news is, it actually effects beer prices which DOES concern me. The farmers that usually grow hops, convert there fields to corn because the government will pay them, so theres a hop shortage and beer prices go up. It's all economics.

 

E-85 can be made from trash too.......Does anyone see a shortage in garbage lately?.....lol

 

Is that why there is soo much E-85 in Sac??


LOL JK

 

I love E85, I went as far as to get a still and a federal permit to produce it. As time has passed by I do believe it is probably another poor movement by our government though. First off it is subsidized by our tax money. Next I think the studies are probably right on it requiring more energy to produce than you save by using it. It makes me wonder how burning 15% or more fuel is going to really produce less emissions. If the corn was planted and used for other purposes no matter what then there is no added polution or energy used from the tractors that have to plant/harvest/fertilize and spray pesticides on it, IF we would plant it anyway. Then you have the energy required to produce it. Not sure how many of you understand the process to make it but it's fairly intensive.

I argued this point in the defense of E85 a few years ago with my father, now looking back he may have very well been correct. My arguement at the time was IF I used a horse to pull my plow, planted by hand, harvested by hand, smashed the corn by hand, then used all manual labor to place it into the fermenting containers, emptied it by hand, placed it then into the boilers and used wood you cut by hand to heat the boiler to run it to finally go through the still and come out ethanol, you could produce ethanol without using more energy than you were trying to save..............as you can see, unless you were on a very small scale, pretty impossible. Of course with very large scale operations there comes more efficiency which saves some energy too.

I think unless you had someone honest and unbiased to actually do a study on both sides of the arguement, it's nearly impossible to figure out what is best.

Now that I am on a roll it makes me think about my diesel Ford. It has a Diesel Particulant Filter in the exhaust. HUGE canister that traps all the particals in the exhaust, according to the manual every 100 miles or so the truck goes into a filter cleaning mode that greatly increases the EGT's to burn this filter clean. I'll tell you, 1400 miles on the truck and the exhaust tips INSIDE look as clean as they did the day I got the truck, it is truly amazing to me. BUT the flip side is this filter costs atleast 3 mpg to have it on the truck. The truck has a 38 gallon tank. That means each tank I am losing out on 114 miles or using about 7 gallons more fuel each fill up than I could have without this filter. Which way is worse for the environment? I bought a programmer to remove the filter and cat as soon as I bought the truck to gain the extra 3+mpg, after driving it for 1400 miles and seeing how absolutely spotless the exhaust is inside I can't bring myself to install it and know it is going to blow black smoke. Sorry, a little off topic.

I hope they don't stop making it, it's an exceptional performance fuel, E85. Maybe not the best for the environment was my point. Our tax money is what makes it cheap, atleast those of us using it get to benefit from some of the money we pay in taxes!

 

I've met three within a few months! Then again, they were all Evo owners.