E-85 Going Away?
 

:confused: So I heard that E-85 might be going away. I know GM is going to stop making E85 cars and trucks. There is also talk about how E-85 effects corn food and prices. Does any one know if this is just talk or just roummers running around the internet.

not good news

I know I hope its not true

rumors/./.

GM is getting out of flex-fuel vehicles? Interesting, someone should tell their marketing folks, since they seem to be under the impression that they want 50% of their production to be E85-capable by 2012. Do you have a citation for the idea that they'd suddenly stop production of flex-fuel vehicles?

Plus, with cellulosic ethanol production starting to ramp up, and even Wal-Mart getting in on the action, it's hard to see E-85 going away any time soon.

(Also, Mitsubishi is getting in on the action, albeit in Thailand, which I thought was pretty amusing.)

I'll check with my in-laws in Kansas. My brother-in law's father was the President of the National Corn growers association. They are huge lobbyists for Ethanol.

Previous thread on the same topic. https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/al...-stations.html

Obama is our number one E85 man. And we know he is all for change. Now, is that change from gas to E85, or change from E85 availability to no E85 availability?

:mitsu:

Ethanol is relatively cheap in Thailand because there is so much biomass in that country. The Thai government has been pushing it for a while. Most stations now sell E20, and many are carrying high percentage blends.

California to open 55 more E85 stations...

"AE Biofuels, Inc., a global vertically integrated biofuels company, and Pearson Fuels, an alternative fuels provider, have been awarded $6.9 million by the US Department of Energy to build 55 E85 fueling facilities in the state of California. The alternative fueling sites will be built within the next 42 months."

This is on top of the 34 we already have.

- Bryan

I seriously dont see e85 going away.

It is a relatively easy solution to the every growing oil consumption problem.

E85 requires VERY little technology change as far as the internal combustion engine goes.
electric cars sill require electricity to work which is largely very harmful to the environment, and consumes a very high % of fossil fuels

Hybrids are even worse, I am 100% against hybrids, because they are just an excuse, prolonging the inevitable, we are going to run out of oil, we are consuming it very fast.... Lets come up with a solution instead of band aide that reduces our consumption...

The problems related to Ethanol manufacturing is in its production, but considering its relatively new, there is likely still very easy ways to improve the production process, aka the algae method

everyone has the mind set that its has to come from corn, thats untrue, Brazil produces it from sugar cane if Im not mistaken, all it takes is a few smart people to figure out a way to improve the production of ethanol, and we will have a very good fuel alternative to gas.

Just my $.02 on the issues

It must be, who/where did you hear it from?

E85 is the future my friend, its not going anywhere anytime soon.

What a 5min Google detective can produce...

http://ncga.com/killing-myths-ethanol

--------------------------

Myth: Ethanol production wastes corn that could be used to feed a hungry world.

FACT: Wet mill ethanol production facilities are also know as corn refineries—and they also produce starch, corn sweeteners, and corn oil—all products that are used as food ingredients for human consumption.

The corn used for ethanol production is field corn typically used to feed to livestock. Ethanol production also results in the production of distillers grains and gluten feed—both of which are fed to livestock as well, helping produce high quality meat products for distribution domestically and abroad.

There is no shortage of corn. In 2007, U.S. farmers produced a record 13.1 billion bushel corn harvest—and some 2.3 billion bushels (about 13 percent) were used in ethanol production. In other words, there is still room to significantly grow the ethanol market without limiting the availability of corn. Steadily increasing average corn yields and the improved ability of other nations to grow corn also make it clear that ethanol production can continue to grow without affecting the food supply.

--------------------------------

Please state your source.
Thanks

{thumbup}



There are currently 34 stations? Is there an updated list somewhere?
I just checked and it still only shows 7 available public stations...

http://www.e85refueling.com/location...e=CACalifornia

link to 35 stations in CA according to the e85 refueling website.

Google is my friend {thumbup}

Lets ask our selves this, if it did go away what would people do that have all these flex fuel cars and trucks, return them ? not likely !

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 :lol:

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.

:mitsu:

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.

:mitsu:

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. {thumbup}

By god I think you're right..In fact it's our best resource...LOL

Honestly though......E-85 doesn't have to be made with just corn. I don't need to explain this either. There is plently to support this...people just need to read and educate themselves. As far as energy to produce. It is intersting how no one brings up the fact about how much a oil tanker burns to get the oil here from the middle east. Also how much blood it costs us to defend our "national" interests
over there.

Right on Dave for getting a still and makin some home grown energy. We all know Henry Ford was on the right track when he ran his first cars on ethanol. History was changed when the government got their fat ass in the way and came up with prohibition. Hope history doesn't re-write itself and spoil a ethanol comeback.

BTW ....The government using the money to subsidise E-85 production is allot better of a cause then shoring up crooked financial institutions

Sorry to disagree with a fellow ntec brother. But the part about running out of oil is bs and as far as fossil fuels I wish people would stop using this false term. Oil is produced from inside our earths core and is constantly being replenished as found in dry wells left alone will start to produce again years later. I won't even try to debate denver on much else because he is much smarter than I :D As far as E85 going not anytime soon!

Hahaha ok... maybe I'm victim to media BS about the oil issues... running out etc... I donno, I dont have any other gauge, than the idiot light in my car hahaha..... According to my only resource George, he is seeing a lot of wells dry up and stop pumping..... but he is also always drilling in "virgin" territory too... so go figure..

I do know one thing, weather we are running out or not....as far as e-85 goes, I would much rather run a fuel that is "home grown" than rely on having to ship in oil from all over the world, and I know we will figure out a way to make the production process better than it is now. :usflag:

agreed

whtrice, I agree with everything you said. Yes ethanol can be made from a lot of things but the yield from using a lot of other things is much lower, some higher but can't be grown in many climates. Anyway, you are right on the money.

Plus now there are many other biomass sources available to produce E85
other than corn. Such as plant algae and cellulose, so the need for the actual
corn crop might diminish soon. I just wish there were more E85 stations in
the tri state areas.

As I understand it, the current 'restriction' for ethanol is in refining capacity. Very few ethanol 'corn' refineries actually exist out there (USA). And all of the other sources - trash, cellulose, algae, etc. - are still in development stage.

There are no large companies dumping huge amounts of money into ethanol refinery construction, nor into ethanol R&D from other sources.

The large US energy companies are not focused on diversification as they should be. Crude oil companies sing "drill, baby, drill", T. Boone Pickens sings "wind, baby, wind", coal companies sing "burn, baby, burn", and environmentalists sing "no more Nukes, baby, no more Nukes".

There are a few exceptions, of which we should be exceedingly grateful. Exxon invests in Algae.

However, when you consider Exxon's $600M investment in algae production, it palls in comparison to their total 2009 capital budget of $29B. That makes ethanol only 2% of Exxon's budget. Better than nothing, I admit, but certainly not a serious step in the direction of energy diversification. Exxon 2009 capital budget.

Good article on nuclear power.

http://www.american.com/graphics/200...No%20Nukes.jpg

:mitsu:

brazil is producing tons of 100% ethanol too and all their cars, well most are flex fuel. Prices are about half the price we pay for pump gas. but they are smashing tons of sugar cane and refining it for many years when nobody believed in alternative fuels.

foreign fuel companies in mexico are growing e from algea. They produce double the amount of e from an acre of algea then a an acre of corn.

Here is their website and all of you guys should check this site out because it's very useful info.
http://www.algenolbiofuels.com/advan...efficient.html

^^^^^^Sorry Thug, but according to the web site they aren't producing anything at present. They plan to have production in Mexico by the end of 2010, maybe, and they recently entered into a deal with DOW.

Algenol Biofuels & DOW.

I have not been able to find any documentation of full-scale current US production of ethanol from anything other than corn. There are a few R&D algae bioreactors, but nothing in full-scale production. If anyone has other info, please post.

:mitsu:

I hope it doesn't go aWay

Please provide a link to proof of this.

They're not, and I don't think the OP will be posting a rebuttal any time soon. ;)

In fact, the new fuel efficiency regulations from the White House all but guarantee that most domestic automakers will have a large fleet of E85-capable vehicles in their portfolios, because while an automaker has to average out at 34.1 mpg for their entire fleet, that's 34.1 miles per gallon of petroleum, not fuel in general. And if they can claim that the vehicle can run E85, they can use the lower petroleum percentage in their fleet mpg calculations.

Nice little loophole, but it's a hell of an incentive to make your entire fleet of vehicles E85-capable, if you can. ;)

^^^^^and that's exactly why Detroit is focused entirely on trucks and SUVs for their flex fuel fleet. Not much incentive to add flex fuel capability to a gas sipping econo car.

:mitsu:

There are a bunch of non trucks and SUVs as well, all avail in a FFV model:

Ford Crown Victoria (I see CHP filling up with the E85 pump all the time at our local E85 station)
Ford Fusion
Ford Taurus
Lincoln town Car
Mercury Grand Marquis
Chevy HHR
Chevy Impala
Chevy Monte carlo
Pontiac G6
Buick Lucerne
Chrysler Sebring
Dodge Avenger
Dodge Stratus
Mercedes C230
Mercedes C240
Mercedes C300
Mercedes C320

- Bryan

Correct, but no economy cars. {thumbdwn}

And the biggest blunder of all is that Detroit is taking NO advantage of the performance increase available with FLEXfuel.

Imagine a FLEXfuel ZR1, or CTC-V, or SC Mustang Cobra, or Turbo Solstice/Sky/Cobalt SS, or SHO/Flex, that really took full advantage of E85.

:mitsu:

Pontiac G6 and HHR aren't economy cars?

Not according to Wikipedia :D

Economy Cars.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008...eno-nevada.php

Heres a possible new direction for ethonal production.Pretty cool, I found this looking for ethonal in the reno area{pcfreak}

And another Bluefire Ethanol wins California air permits for landfill to energy plant.

:mitsu:

I think this is the site you are looking for EVO Electric.

Thanks for stopping bye.

:mitsu:

I think he was joking.

While flipping through channels I happened upon a lecture about switchgrass as a viable alternative to corn as a energy source, from what the lecturer was saying, if they incorporated legumes into the field the yield was much higher.

The result was that land that was previously unused now served a purpose, no release of carbon through the cultivation of dirt, reduced pestisides, and negilgible use of fuel in order to maintain the crops. The resulting energy-to-carbon emmsion yield is much higher than what corn requires.

It looks promising, but the corn producers have a large stake in the push for this fuel, so it'll be interesting to see if it gets any widescale acceptance.

I wish I could find the video, but here's a link that describes similar:

http://ww2.attra.ncat.org/index.php/switchgrass.html

/yes I'm a dork for watching a college lecture on TV voluntarily.