Should I or shouldn't I? — #18

Post #18 by Mike Richardson

Source Forum	68kMLA
Category	Hardware
Post Date	Mon, 16 Jun 2008 - 21:50
Original URL	https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/should-i-or-shouldnt-i.13590/

Post

Mike R.,
Unfortunately, unless your car is a duel fuel model, E85 doesn't do you any good. A gasoline only car can run on E15 blend without modifications, but you don't see that sold anywhere. The problem with ethanol is that corn is not an efficient source of it. Sugarcane is the best source and Brazil has plenty of excess capacity, but the government currently levies a high tax on Brazilian ethanol to keep it off the market here and instead shovels tons of our money into developing corn based ethanol which is nowhere near as clean or efficient to produce and have the people convinced that this is a better thing than eliminating the tariff on imported ethanol and meanwhile the price of food and energy continues to soar when the prices of both would fall if they allowed imports from Brazil.

Well, a lot of the GM cars/trucks now have the flex fuel engines. Unfortunately my Cobalt does not, but I already get good gas mileage. I wish the situation were better with the Ethanol, but I still think that if you switched all the E10 being sold with E15, it would dent our oil imports a little bit possibly causing a reduction in price. A lot of cars only specify up to 10% Ethanol but I think 15% would probably work fine.