Listing the wide variety of Ethanol blends would quickly become a nightmare, especially when E## only indicate an up to value, not an exact quantity. It can differ from fill to fill. E15 and E20 testing has been going on for years now, due to upcoming mandates. Including them next to the E0, E10, and E85 values currently in play wouldn't really benefit anyone. The situation is confusing enough already. Keep the ultimate purpose in mind. The EPA estimates don't actually represent a MPG expectation. They are really only provided as a standard basis for comparison.
How valid will the tests be, year to year, if you change the parameters? The automakers have CAFE requirement out to at least 2025, it would be hard to plan to meet a requirement you did not know what fuel you need to test with. I bet the EPA continues to use the same fuel as they have since 1975. Corporate Average Fuel Economy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cost I believe is one reason given for sticking with the E0 standard. But ultimately you are correct, I feel.
I have many years of fuel consumption mpg records of 10% ethanol blends AND many years of fuel consumption mpg records of 100% gasoline(ethanol free) for 3 gasoline automobiles, 1988 through 2007. 100% gasoline has given 8%, 7% & 5% better mpg than 10% ethanol blends. A recently purchased gasoline engined 2013 Elantra, bad-mouthed for poor mpg, is averaging 39+mpg with few(10-15%) city miles, using 100% gasoline. All engines run smoother, quieter & with a bit extra low rpm torque, such that less downshifting is needed while ascending hills, using 100% gasoline. When a smooth section of "quiet pavement" is encountered, Elantra is like a magic carpet of quiet. This is not rocket science, but it is good 100% gasoline science! Gasoline engines are engineered & built to use 100% gasoline. Ethanol is a foreign element in gasoline engines. Ethanol works best in high compression ratio ethanol engines, like INDY cars. All this is obvious....... & is NOT rocket science.
That debate point sounds like it was taken right out of a 20th century review... My E10 data from today was that I enjoyed a quiet & smooth 35-mile drive which resulted in a return of 68 MPG. Had I plugged in, the outcome would have been even better. Get use to blending of gas, ethanol, and electricity.
>>I just went through the 259 Ethanol Free (E0) stations in Virginia: 147 Unbranded NoName80 Small brands Non-TopTier (Spirit, Royal, Liberty, etc etc)24 Majors Non-TopTier (16 Marathon, BP, Sun, etc)8 Majors TopTier (6 Shell, 1 Exxon, 1 Phillips) 259 Ethanol Free in VA So it's pretty rare to find a E0 TopTier major brand that I would normally use. I am confused if TopTier means anything but a fan club of the majors, but the trend is clear. I remain confused about why the TopTier majors would not offer much E0 in say VA. I can only assume they find it difficult to make both E0 and E10, whereas E10 is the universal donor (sort of like O-neg).
With one 35mile drive, you disregard my years of data, showing the superiority of 100% gasoline vs. 10% ethanol blends, which is the subject of this thread. However, your 35mile drive represents 0.51 gallons. I took a similar drive & my trip computer registered 51mpg, representing 0.69 gallons. Our consumption difference is 0.18 gallons for 35 miles. At 200,000 miles, you'll use ~1000 gallons less than I will, which might pay for your new battery pack. Meanwhile, you'll still have paid, what.......... $9000...... or more for your Prius, than I paid for my car. ///////// I know my calculations are silly. What I want to point out, is econo cars used to be cheap. The auto industry has figured out how to make lots of money on econo cars, that are no longer cheap.
I have over 260,000 miles of data collected, documented in great detail, showing the benefits hybrids have to offer. That's almost 13 years of continuous E10 use. The price of a new hybrid has dropped to under $20,000. The econo-cars from the old days were dirty & unsafe. Some were considerably smaller too. None weren't anywhere near as reliable. What is purpose of this thread?
I'm the OP. The purpose of this thread is to discuss E0 gas vs. E10, not to Prius vs. other car. I just want to hear people's experience regarding whether E0 yields a higher mpg than E10 and whether there are any other advantages to using E0. It is definitely very hard to come by and at the one station where I've found it the price has gone up to about 20 cents over the E10 when it used to be just 10 cents higher. From purely the cost perspective, it isn't worth it for me unless the price goes back down again because I'm not getting that much more in mpg, but I'm also interested in knowing whether there are other benefits. From an ecological point of view, while I assume that E10 is greener because it is -- I can't think of the word -- (it comes from corn which is grown, not from fossil fuel) -- if you have to burn more to travel the same distance, it isn't really saving anything.
You get to decide the purpose of your posts, the tread is a combination of everyone's posts. In theory you lose just over 3.5% of the energy of pure gas in 10% ethanol. Owners who do not do double blind testing get numbers all over the place. If you pay less than 3.5% more for pure gas, it is a good deal. Do not use ethanol in engines not designed for it, for cars this would be pre 1991 engines. .Blind experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Actually, it takes as much or more petroleum to make a gallon of Ethanol as it does to make a gallon of gas. Corn has to be planted, maintained, harvested, hauled and then processed into Ethanol and finally shipped. Each step requires petroleum. Ethanol is a scam, and is fully supported by the oil industry because they know the truth. Ethanol may be cleaner to use and burn, but it doesn't save any oil and ultimately causes more pollution, not less. The only reason we have E10 is because the oil and corn lobbyists have pushed legislation to require it. Ethanol also drives up the prices of every other corn based food commodity.[/rant]
That may be true for you in your state, but that blanket statement most definitely does not apply here in Minnesota... where there's been a great deal of effort to use waste material & energy to produce ethanol. Also, when corn is used, think about how much electricity it takes to refine oil to gas.
I went to the Energy Information Administration and worked up retail numbers for gasoline and E85: $0.0310/1000 BTU - gasoline price $0.0403/1000 BTU - E85 price But when I looked at wholesale prices, the gap decreased significantly: $0.0258/1000 BTU - gasoline $0.0262/1000 BTU - E85 price What we find is the markup: 30% - the retail price markup of E85 over gasoline 2% - the wholesale price markup of E85 over gasoline Priced by wholesale BTU, ethanol would be within 2% of gasoline. But the retail markup (who controls that?) makes E85 about 30% too expensive relative to straight gas. However, ethanol has one advantage over gasoline: ethanol is often made using a mix of coal, diesel, natural gas, or other non-gasoline fuels ethanol production technology continues to improve we can grow more ethanol feedstock but fossil fuels are one-time only Competitively priced, I would have no problem running E50 in our Prius today. I've verified it works just fine. Today, our Atkinson engine has a 13-to-1 expansion ratio. Tuned for higher levels of ethanol, the expansion ratio can increase making up for the lower energy content. With more advanced variable valve timing the same engine could run everything from straight gas to E85 without a problem. Tomorrow, fossil fuels will continue to be more and more expensive while ethanol and other biofuels will continue to have lower costs as our bio-technology and processing improves. So I'm not the least bit worried about an ethanol fuel future. Bob Wilson
Bob- Did you see any data about wholesale cost of Reformulated Gasoline vs. regular? I am trying to pin that down. Re: ethanol, one limitation is of course fermentation makes like 13% ethanol and 87% water, now you got to distill all the water out which is hard as it makes 95% azeotrope with water, so special distillation with lots of energy input...not quite sure how the new plants do it. Brazil of course burns the sugar cane itself to get the energy.
Here, they are setting up ethanol plants next to sources of waste energy. One example is using wood scrapes & dust from a nearby mill. Small, local production definitely breaks the status quo of major refineries... which contributes to some backlash.
