Pruis and E85

Absolutely not. I *believe* that the manual for my 2002 says up to E15 is OK. Check your manual for confirmation.

No, not okay. It has been tried and a few dedicated enthusiasts insist the car eventually gets used to it, but using E85 sets the "check engine" light. AFAIK there is no actual harm done.

Mike

Besides, if everyone used E85 we'd starve to death.

Huh?

Ethanol is made from foodstuffs, typically corn. There was a recent article on-line about the amount of increase in corn prices that can be attributed to the increased demand of the newly built ethanol plants, but the link is long gone now. Guess news gets stale fast!

When we burn ethanol we are burning food.

Mike

Quoting from page 203 of the US 2004 Prius Owner's Manual, Section 3 "Information Before Driving Your Toyota," Fuel section:

"Toyota allows the use of oxygenate blended gasoline where the oxygenate content is up to 10% ethanol or 15% MTBE."

So, you're fine with E10, but nothing higher. The Prius is NOT a Flex-Fuel vehicle.

A short term study of E85 on a Classic Prius found reduced fuel economy, some higher emissions, and a check engine light, but no long term study has been done. (Ethanol is known to break down some components of the fuel system and engine if a car isn't properly designed to run with high concentrations of E85.)

Michael Pardee wrote in alt.autos.toyota.prius:

On the other hand, maybe the high cost of corn will make high fructose corn syrup so expensive that soda makers will start putting REAL SUGAR back into soft drinks....

Mike, Americans burn 500 million gallons of gas each day. Replacing 85% of that with Ethanol, whether made from corn or switchgrass, would take more arable acres than we have. In other words, we would have to quit growing all manner of food products, quit grazing cattle, quit feeding chickens, etc. E10 works fairly well. It eliminates the need for MTBE, absorbs condensation, uses otherwise excess farmland, reduces the price of vodka and gin..., but E85 is a food-for-gas program. It disturbs me that GM talks up their E85 vehicles and politicians in the farm belt use it as a vehicle to gain the farm vote. The math is simple and most meaningful if you do it yourself. Go to the USDA site and look up ethanol production per acre of switchgrass. Look up the number of arable acres in the U.S. Ethanol has less energy than gasoline so it actually takes 500 million gallons of ethanol to replace 85% of 500 million gallons of gas.

Corn syrup? Sugar? If we all switched to E85 there wouldn't be any of either. No chicken, pork or beef either. It would definitely solve the obesity problem.

The United States has 428,604,320 arable acres (about 19% of total land). Presently, corn can yield 1500 gallons of ethanol per acre. I repeat, presently. There are other crops that can muliply that yield substantially, as well as the potential to use more of the corn plant (presently some of the byproduct of ethanol production returns to cattle feed). This is

6,429,065,400 gallons of ethanol a year with exisiting practice and technology and ONLY FROM CORN--no higher yield or multiple planting crop. Assuming your 500 million gallon a day number is correct, you are right that at this time, using only corn, we can't make anywhere near enough ethanol to replace gas totally. I don't think anyone is really trying to replace all 500 million gallons, however. Only a small fraction of it to reduce greenhouse gas and imports.

Normally I don't top post but I didn't want to snip my post (under yours) and didn't want to post out of sequence. My apologies to the rest of you.

Prilosec, when I "did the math" I used the USDA figure for ethanol production from switch grass which, I understand, has a better ethanol yield than corn. I live in Minnesota, the nation's leader in E85 distribution. Three of the four stations in the small town (population 350) near me sell E85. Our governor speaks of E85 as the solution to our dependence on foreign oil. General Motors current advertising campaign, at least where I live, speaks to the large percentage of their vehicles that burn E85.

People like you and me, who have done the math, know that E85 isn't the answer. In fact, I believe the E85 hype is counterproductive and should be replaced with hyping conservation. We know the law of supply and demand applies because prices do drop with demand during the winter. We know supply cannot be increased. In that equation, the only variable we can manipulate is demand. Doing the math (again) my Prius will consume some $14,000 less gas over 100,00 miles than will my Explorer. If everyone who owns an SUV made the switch the price of gasoline would drop dramatically, as would pollution, and this would buy us some time to perfect an alternative to fossil fuels.

I don't mean to get political here, and this is an issue that transcends political boundaries, but we have to remember that it is the U.S. consumer, more than any other group on our planet, that drives the price of motor fuel upward. One of these days that fact is going to dawn on the rest of the planet and they will like us even less than they do now.

Bill

It's true that E85 is foolish. (as is hydrogen) Setting aside all production problems, it requires new cars, seperate tanks, etc. Such allocation of resources would be foolish when better alternatives already exist. It makes much more sense to simply move existing systems to E10 and transition new vehical purchases to high effeciency diesel and/or plug-able hybrids where possible.

It also makes sense to transition existing diesel to biodiesel blends over time in the same manner. There blends up to B80 are quite realistic for new vehicals (low sulfer diesel) and B20 is pretty transparent for existing ones. Classics can actually run SVO (straight vegtable oil) but it's unrealistic to expect the average consumer to collect old McDonald's fry grease and filter it in their garage, etc.

Now, some people think the big car companies are holding out on them. I wonder where they would get such a crazy idea? :)

"129 car models for sale elsewhere at 35mpg or better for combined city/highway purposes"

"86 or more car models that get a combined rating of 40mpg or better ... but are not sold in the U.S"

"Most of these fuel-efficient vehicles are either made by U.S. manufacturers or foreign car makers with extensive U.S. sales operations."

X

I agree with you on the pollution aspect but lower prices are not in our best interest. Planes and jets still use fuel and, as a matter of fact, are our direct competitor when it comes to deciding what to distill from crude. Therefore it will be the military and it's needs that will bring us around to alternatives, not the consumer and his road vehicles. As one guide told us at a military base, we are self sufficient to the point we can make anything we want and repair anything we need to repair without the help of the outside. I have a feeling he wasn't kidding. But lets not let the cat out of the bag just yet. Let's make it a game. A game where everyone thinks they contributed and had a good time doing so.

mark_

I used the price argument because price is foremost on the public's mind these days. Were it up to me, I'd add a buck a gallon tax to gas to promote conservation. I'd use the revenue to fund the development of alternatives. In a perfect world, the reduction in demand would reduce the price to offset the tax increase.

If the Prius were flex-fuel capable, we could all have more options for the fuel we consume. Weather the ethanol were generated from sawgrass or corn.

I would like to see future models configured for flex-fuel. I would also like to see our country work toward low sulfur bio diesel options as well. With the success that I have seen with my '05 Prius, Any of these options would be an improvement to E10 that we have now.

-JJD

While it might be practical for everyone to burn E10, widespread use of E85 merely substitutes a food crisis for an energy crisis. Read some back posts to find the math.

Well said!

I'm in Europe (UK as it happens), and over here that fact dawned on us some time ago. Hence the number of diesel cars over here, you get far more miles to your (Imperial) gallon (or use fewer litres per 100km) and, once you get used to the torque curve, better driving characteristics than with gasoline.

There's a big debate here too about the real fuel consumption of the Prius, and a lot of disappointment that it's no better than a comparable turbo-diesel car (without a battery to lug around, not to mention conversion losses to and from electricity). Nice try, Toyota, but it's not the answer. Better IC engines are (if people won't reduce their driven mileages).

SteveP

In California, you would have a hard sell of any turbo-engine diesel as CARB's (California Air Resources Board) pollution standards pretty much rule against them in terms of pollution. Diesel generally costs more in California than more refined gasoline as they want the air cleaner (less sulfur compounds) than diesel provides.

Placing a same "miles-per-gallon" diesel verses a same "miles-per-gallon" Prius in California wouldn't fly with CARB - ruling out vehicle cost.

SG

That's interesting, thanks. In Europe there are relatively new "Euro IV" (i.e. Roman 4) standards for diesel emissions (my new Skoda meets them) and version V (5) is on the way. Very low (essentially zero) sulphur fuel is readily available (in fact I think it's all you can buy on most forecourts) and we have particulate traps for soot. What do California's trucks & buses run on?

SteveP