whats the point of E85 gas anymore?

[OutHouse]

when it was first being pushed hard with vehicles that could use it and all the stations that sold it, the price was about a buck cheaper per gallon than unleaded. I got gas today and there is only a 7 cent per gallon difference now. seems irrelevant now.

 

[Strk]

It has always been more expensive because of loss of mileage and farm subsidies since we use the worst source for ethanol in this country.

 

[HeXen]

I only know of 1 station that even carries it and don't know of too many vehicles that can use it, at least it's not very well advertised. I only know of chevy's talking about it a few years back. I have heard some not so good things about e85 anyway, seems logical there would have to be some kind of con with using it.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Must depend on where you are. It generally runs .50-1.00 cheaper here. However, the price/worth of it is highly dependent on current gas prices. As regular gets lower, the worth is less as it doesn't drop in price the same way.

 

[saratoga172]

It's about 60 cents cheaper per gallon here.

 

[Markbnj]

Was the point that it should be cheaper? Here in Jersey we have a mandated 15% ethanol for all grades of gasoline, and it never seemed any cheaper to me.

 

[OutHouse]

Was the point that it should be cheaper? Here in Jersey we have a mandated 15% ethanol for all grades of gasoline, and it never seemed any cheaper to me.

im not sure what you are blabbering about or what point you are trying to make.

 

[rudder]

It costs just as much if not more than regular. The government covers the difference.

 

[DrPizza]

Was the point that it should be cheaper? Here in Jersey we have a mandated 15% ethanol for all grades of gasoline, and it never seemed any cheaper to me.

You sure about that? I thought it was 10%. Once you go over that, a lot of vehicles start having problems.

 

[DesiPower]

it harms engine and they want to increase the %, screw it, nuke from orbit.

 

[DesiPower]

You sure about that? I thought it was 10%. Once you go over that, a lot of vehicles start having problems.

New regulation is 15%, iirc its not implemented yet

 

[Markbnj]

You sure about that? I thought it was 10%. Once you go over that, a lot of vehicles start having problems.

That's just what I was told by my small engine guy the last time he cleaned water out of my mower carb. He might have been talking about the new rule. In any case, whatever the percentage, it's not leading to a cost reduction.

 

[Markbnj]

im not sure what you are blabbering about or what point you are trying to make.

If you have trouble understanding what I wrote, ask the person who reads the forums to you.

 

[PliotronX]

There was no point from the onset, mileage is worse with it so you end up burning more fuel to travel negating any feel good measures for implementing it.

 

[sdifox]

cuz corn lobby

 

[OutHouse]

If you have trouble understanding what I wrote, ask the person who reads the forums to you.

I was talking about E-85 flex fuel, and yes it was suppose to be cheaper than E10 and decrease our dependency on foreign oil. so i dont know why you brought up E15. go troll someplace else.

 

[DrPizza]

I was talking about E-85 flex fuel, and yes it was suppose to be cheaper than E10 and decrease our dependency on foreign oil. so i dont know why you brought up E15. go troll someplace else.

He said 15% ethanol. You do realize that E85 *is* 15% ethanol, right?

 

[lxskllr]

He said 15% ethanol. You do realize that E85 *is* 15% ethanol, right?

According to Wikipedia, E85 Flex is 85% ethanol. I've never seen it around here, and glossing over the wiki, it looks like you need a special engine to run it. In any case, it's another failed socialist program.

 

[DrPizza]

Wow, I stand corrected.

And, I'd never subject a motor of mine to that crap. Hell, even the 10% can wreak havoc on a lot of older engines.

 

[mizzou]

it was never designed to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. It's all about $$$, subsidies, and lobbyists.

If anything, it just increased our exports of the filthy shit.

Anything that involves corn, which is pretty much everything, rockets in price because of this.

I have NO clue what the current deal is with its distribution, because I never consume it

 

[darkswordsman17]

I was talking about E-85 flex fuel, and yes it was suppose to be cheaper than E10 and decrease our dependency on foreign oil. so i dont know why you brought up E15. go troll someplace else.

Chill out. Not everyone knows that E85 is 85% ethanol. That's a big reason why the 15% was also stupid as people didn't know which was which.

The 15% was never a mandate other than that places could offer it, not that everywhere had to replace E10 with E15 (although that was actually the goal they had in mind, but that was just an awful idea as way too many cars would have issues with it). The goal was to push overall ethanol mix to 15% though, but that's fallen off (I believe they've mostly killed off the ethanol gasoline subsidy that was in place, which is why ethanol in quite a few places is not any cheaper). They had reduced the subsidy quite a bit and that had left E85 being only about $.50 cheaper here in Northeast Kansas, which made it not really worth it.

The whole thing is a fucking mess. Unless they were pushing for waste conversion, or pushing for a more viable source and didn't tie it so much to corn (and/or other food crops).

This would be great:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-04/whisky-to-fuel-cars-as-professor-drives-recycling-plan.html

 

[sportage]

Around here it was usually $1 or more cheaper. But E85 was only sold by one chain of service stations. But for me it was nice to save $1 or more per gallon.
And having a newer car, I found E85 gave excellent gas millage with newer cars.

Now, the price difference or gap has slowly narrowed to where E85 is right now just .47 less than ethanol unleaded.
When and if the difference narrows to down .20 a gal, yes I too will say whats the point?

And makes you wonder why car makers went to the trouble to re-design engines to use E85? That had to have been costly to implement that change.
And in the future, I doubt many car companies fall for that one again, to re-design their engines just because a new gas product type has been created.

 

[LTC8K6]

E85 was never about anything but money for the corn lobby. Just like E10 and E15.

E85 reduces mileage by 25 to 30 percent in flex fuel vehicles. So even at 25% cheaper, it just breaks even on cost, but you lose a lot of range.

Look in your owner's manual. You probably need to make changes to your maintenance if you run E85 often.

 

[LTC8K6]

Differences in acceleration times were insignificant (although GM says E85 improves horsepower by as much as three percent). On the downside, the fuel economy on E85 was diminished more than 30 percent in two of the three tests, about what we expected. The EPA's numbers suggest that fuel economy worsens by 28 percent on E85 compared with regular gas. On any Tahoe equipped with a 5.3-liter V-8, the E85 flex-fuel feature is a no-cost option, but running E85 reduces the driving range from roughly 390 miles a tank to about 290.

Flex Fuel's Big Pay-off

With fewer than 600 stations selling E85 fuel in 37 states, why have GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler been cranking out these flex-fuel vehicles by the millions?

The answer is the mandatory Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Federal law requires that the cars an automaker offers for sale average 27.5 mpg; light trucks must achieve 22.2 mpg. Failure to do so can result in substantial fines. However, relief is available to manufacturers that build E85 vehicles to encourage their production.

The irony here is that although E85 in fact gets poorer fuel economy than gasoline, for CAFE purposes, the government counts only the 15-percent gasoline content of E85. Not counting the ethanol, which is the other 85 percent, produces a seven-fold increase in E85 mpg. The official CAFE number for an E85 vehicle results from averaging the gas and the inflated E85 fuel-economy stats.

Calculating backward from our test Tahoe's window-sticker figures (which are lower than but derived from the unpublished CAFE numbers), we figure the E85 Tahoe's CAFE rating jumped from 20.1 mpg to 33.3 mpg, blowing through the 22.2-mpg mandate and raising GM's average. What's that worth? Well, spread over the roughly 4.5-million vehicles GM sold in 2005, the maximum 0.9-mpg benefit allowed by the E85 loophole could have saved GM more than $200 million in fines. That's not chump change, even for the auto giant.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/ethanol-promises

 

[darkswordsman17]

Around here it was usually $1 or more cheaper. But E85 was only sold by one chain of service stations. But for me it was nice to save $1 or more per gallon.
And having a newer car, I found E85 gave excellent gas millage with newer cars.

Now, the price difference or gap has slowly narrowed to where E85 is right now just .47 less than ethanol unleaded.
When and if the difference narrows to down .20 a gal, yes I too will say whats the point?

And makes you wonder why car makers went to the trouble to re-design engines to use E85? That had to have been costly to implement that change.
And in the future, I doubt many car companies fall for that one again, to re-design their engines just because a new gas product type has been created.

Actually they were already making the engines better, it was fairly trivial for them to offer the E85 compatibility as quite a bit of these newer engines are much more robust (mostly thanks to the computer management that can adjust air/fuel mixture ratios and things much better). Several car manufacturers have engines that can run on a lot of different fuels right now, but there's no infrastructure in place for most of them and plenty don't have suitable fuel tanks/delivery systems either, and they don't want people just putting whatever the hell in as that'll obviously cause a lot of problems.

I do believe Lexus actually advertised that at one point though.

E85 was never about anything but money for the corn lobby. Just like E10 and E15.

E85 reduces mileage by 25 to 30 percent in flex fuel vehicles. So even at 25% cheaper, it just breaks even on cost, but you lose a lot of range.

Look in your owner's manual. You probably need to make changes to your maintenance if you run E85 often.

Also I believe you do not want to use ethanol in marine engines. They might have made changes to newer ones, but I remember reading that quite a bit of people were having problems because even the 10% ethanol mix was eating through certain parts in boat engines.