Ethanol In Your Gasoline Tank: The Pros And Cons

Flex fuel vehicles have been around a while (Source: Wikipedia)

A really nice summary of ethanol as a replacement fuel for automobiles and light trucks over at Green Car Reports:

Conclusion If you want to use ethanol as a vehicle fuel today, you’re already getting up to 10 percent of the alcohol fuel in your “gasoline” every time you fill it. That percentage may slowly rise to 15 percent, but it’s far from settled as to whether occasional–or regular–use of use E15 may damage cars built since 2001. You can buy a flex-fuel vehicle, especially among full-size sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks, and larger sedans offered by U.S. carmakers. Your challenge will be finding E85 to put in it, since only about 2 percent of all gas stations offer it, and those stations are not geographically dispersed. While ethanol offers numerous benefits as vehicle fuel, it comes with quite a number of drawbacks as well–and increasing its use to the levels mandated by law for the next decade may prove challenging, even impossible.

Meanwhile, you’re likely buying at least a little ethanol every time you fill up with regular gasoline–making it the future fuel you’re already using today.

via Ethanol In Your Gasoline Tank: The Pros And Cons.

Fortunately, I do live in the Midwest, and there are E85 stations reasonably close; unfortunately, I don’t own a flex-fuel vehicle (FFV). In fact, there are only about 10 million on the road in the US – out of over 247 million registered passenger vehicles.

And of course, situations like the one current drought affecting more than half the country will impact availability of corn for conversion to ethanol and exacerbate the “Food or Fuel” conundrum.

Hey, I didn’t say I had all the answers.