My E85 Experience

My '04 Explorer is a flexible fuel vehicle, meaning it can run on E85. I've been waiting for years for a gas station to stock E85 so I can try it. Well, I finally found a station near where I work (Schaumburg, Il) that has E85, so I tried a couple of tank fulls.

Pro's: Car ran absolutely great! Its 105 octane. The idle was so smooth you couldnt tell the engine was running. It also seemed to have a bit more pep, but that may have been my imagination. Upon first starting up in the morning, the car exhaust smells like alchohol

Con's It's still horribly inconvienent to use. The gas station is still out of the way for me to fill up and they did everything they could to discourage people from buying it. Only a single pump, with a teeny weeny little sign on it about 3 inches square proclaiming its E85. I had to go in and ask where the pump was. It was also pre-pay instead of accepting a charge card.

More Con's Regular gas was going for $3.19 at the time, E85 was $2.99, so I saved

20 cents a gallon, 6%. But my gas mileage went from about 18 mpg to 13 mpg on the first E85 fill up and 15 mpg on the second E85 fill up. So I saved 6% on fuel costs but had a 17 - 28% decrease in fuel efficiency. BTW, everything I read said to expect a 5 to 15% decrease in mpg so I obviously greatly exceeded that. Not exactly cost efficient. Mileage went back up to 18 mpg on the next regular gas fillup.

I did two tank fulls then went back to regular gas. I couldn't afford E85.

Illinois does have an E85 rebate program,

formatting link
which will sendyou a check for up to $450 if you use E85 for more than half yourfuel, but it seems to me that proving you used it for half your fuelwould be a bit problematic. So this would help with the cost but witha corresponding big increase in paperwork hassle. Summary Car ran great Costs too much Transition between fuels was invisible Not ready for primetime until the price comes down.

dickm

.
Reply to
dicko
Loading thread data ...

Why would "proving you used it for half your fuel would be problematic"? If you keep receipts reflecting date, gallons/liters, and cost per gallon/liter there should be no problem proving this, provided you actually use the alternative more than fifty percent of the time.

Good luck and thank you for posting your experience with E85,

Steven

dicko wrote:

Reply to
Steven Hilgendorf

Its just that they have no idea how many times you filled up with regular gas. You would have to send in receipts for both E85 and regular fill ups, and then you could just withhold enough of the regular receipts to make it look like the E85 was half your purchases.

I guess it just seems like a process thats ripe for fraud.

But in any case, I wont be availing myself of the rebate since I only had 2 tank fulls :-)

dickm

Reply to
dicko

E85 is a crock anyway. Besides the significantly decreased mileage, it isn't any more environmentally friendly than plain old petrol, and may actually be worse. Most of E85 comes from corn which requires pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers made from petroleum to make it grow. Then fuel is burned planting, harvesting, hauling, and potentially processing all that corn into ethanol. The US government also subsidizes every bushel corn grown in this country to the tune of around $1.25 a bushel. Studies show that it actually takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get when you burn it. If you want an authoritative analysis, the most recent issue of consumer reports has a cover story about E85.

formatting link

Reply to
Captain Coleman

If you 'withhold' receipts then wouldn't the date range be skewed :o) Sorry, I'm an Accountant and it's just my auditing skills messing around here :o) You are right though, depending how strict they are.

Thanks again for the information,

Steven

dicko wrote:

Reply to
Steven Hilgendorf

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.