More importantly, regular on the window sticker wouldn't scare away potential buyers here. The premium requirement for the Volt was always counted as a negative, because most couldn't get past the increased fuel price to see that what they would spend of gasoline in a year would drop. The regular octane will need to raised or taxed more in order for the nation to move to higher compression engines. Otherwise, people will just buy the cheapest stuff they can.
Cars and gaso are so much nicer now...the old days your car would hesitate, stall or knock , and you'd have to fiddle with different brands and different octane to keep the engine happy. Then get a tune up to see if that helped. But R+M/2 might make more sense in USA due our more complex refineries. Without the spec it might be possible to have a really low motor octane...not for the EPA controlled recipes...but the less controlled small company blends. Not sure.
I'll bet it doesn't cost more to refine premium than regular. The huge gap is due to marketing, branding and distribution cost. They don't have to put additional cleaners in premium, but they do b/c it is perceived as "premium".
You probably didn't read the article, and I am not sure if this is correct, but the thinking is MON mainly applies only to carburated engines. Just doing one test RON should be more accurate for vehicle manufacturers. RON is generally higher than MON, and never lower. Using more butane for the high MON and low cost is one reason winter blends have less energy (evaporative emissions are too high in summer blends to use as much) but cost less. Changing rules and allowing less ethanol and more methanol, would likely add more methanol to boost RON. Two tests not only require more work than one, but they are less accurate than one in determining use in cars. anti knock sensors mean that engines out of tune will simply provide less power, not stall or knock. The lowest RON today is probably around 90 in regular gasoline, changing labeling and raising it to 92 would add little to the cost of the fuel. Many European and asian countries have a minimum of 95 ron, which would add a little bit more, but it would probably be a savings on new cars built for it.
Hmm...you may be right historically, but now, especially the reformulated gasoline many of us have to use, refineries have to make Premium octane and it also has to meet EPA clean burn recipe so they cannot use the usual ways a refinery would naturally make higher octane. This is why in the USA, we do not hear much promotion of Premium anymore. Pretty much everyone even oil cos. say only use the grade your car requires (USA only - Canada and EU still have promotion of Premium I'm advised). The way I look at it EPA has taken control of the US gaso recipe and its hard to make. Premium reformulated gasoline has been much more expensive and I think its cause they don't want to make any more than they have to.
Nope. Not right. If you actually refine the fuel to a higher octane it takes more steps in the process; more expensive. If you "cheat" and increase the octane with an additive, like ethanol, then it might be cheaper, depending on the cost of the additive.
Believe I was correct...you just said the same thing I said....harder and more expensive to make Premium, Then you said, unless you cheat by adding ethanol or octane booster additive. But mostly we are E10 mandated, everywhere, so there is no way to cheat. And there is no octane additive other than ethanol allowed, so that's not a valid cheat option either. So we are left with your first sentence, which I agree with.
For heaven's sake. Excellent example of over-analysis. My "cheat" was in quotes. And except for the "he might be right", I was agreeing with you.
They both take the same number of steps. The straight gasoline fraction of petroleum only has an octane of around 60. Plus, there is only enough of it to meet maybe 20% of gasoline demand. So to get the amount that we need, we are going to be cracking larger molecules and reforming smaller ones. Doesn't matter the octane. Premium costs more, in part, because the common ingredients used to boost the octane is solvents like xylene and tuloene. Both of which have a higher effective octane rating than ethanol, but are in demand outside of use in gasoline. 10% ethanol will bump the blends over all octane by maybe 2 over the gasoline fraction's. So Premium will still need 91 octane without the alcohol.
