I tried it a second time because my truck was brand new with under 1000 miles the first time.

The plus side is that it was 10% cheaper than regular unleaded, but the down side was I lost 25% of my already bad mileage.

Not sure if it's my poorly engineered Dodge, or if all E85 flexfuel vehicles get the lower fuel mileage that I am getting while running E85?

Yes, lower mileage is one of the drawbacks. I believe E85 has a lower BTU count than gasoline so it takes more E85 to make the same power? Something like that.

But - the farmers thank you.

That's the thing they don't tell ya. Just that it's better to get us off foreign oil, and help the environment. National Geographic did a very interesting article about bio fuels. It's the cover story in the October '07 issue.

I don't think the Mexicans are too happy about us using up all their corn tho . What are they going to make tortillas with?

It could be worse - at least we are not boiling the agave cacti for our vehicle fuels.

From the farmers standpoint it is no good because it drives up the price of feed and land rent.well livestock farmers anyway,but cash croppers still have to deal with higher land rents.

Flour!

There's a heated debate over here about how "environmentally friendly" the etanol is. Apart from the prices on crops rising, it takes quite a lot of fossil fuel to distill the etanol. Especially the sort made from french wine (the EU has a huge surplus of wine, primarily from France which is now turned into fuel...)

On the bright side, car makers starting to build engines that takes advantage of the E85. Saab has new model out which develops 50hp extra when run on E85. Dunno how it works though...

Rubber band??

Too late, have you seen the price of Tequila lately

I'm growing a blue agave of my own...had it 13 years now.

Doesn't make the best of houseplants, though if I put it in front of the door it would be more effective than a watchdog.

Just checked, the Saab is turbocharged and takes advantage of the higher octane (100-105) with more boost.

Dave is right, Tequila has gotten more expensive.

Corn derived alcohol is complete waste of time. It ultimately takes more energy to produce A gallon than you can get out of it. Plus with the farm subsidies, it a huge boondoggle.

A MUCH better alternative would be to derive from switch grass or hemp. Faster growing and does not need the fertilizers and such that corn does. Plant once and continually harvest.

Of course the best option of all is lots of nuclear plants and purely electric vehicles. But were not ready for that yet on a huge scale.

Well you are almost right,(lots of nuclear plants and purely electric vehicles)
But we should use the nuclear power to make electricity for all industry and home heating. That would let us use all oil for cars and gas engins.

From what I read, Butanol might be a much better alternative. Unfortuately the website I had saved is either down or gone.

Jim, why?

Getting away from fossil fuels for engines would be a great thing. Leave the oil for lubricants, plastics and fertilizer.

Electric cars are VERY quick. Lots of torque.

Why, Because their are millions of cars on the roads now. I am thinking of the short term. Not practical to think we could get all cars electric within 20 years.

To make all cars electric and cost efficient you would still need to build many nuclear power plants and if you had them you might as well power industry and homes to.

I do like the idea of electric cars but don't know if they would be any more earth friendly with out new battery technology and cheap electric power.

with electric cars you`ll ned to get something for sound!
kinda like the cardboard smatter to your bicycle wheel ....LOL

you need to be able to go VROOM VROOM !

maybe someone will invent something new for it , like the stick on sunroof stuff...

Jim, that's why I said we are not ready yet. Of course it will take decades for the changeover. It will take a dozen years for the new nuke plants to start to get online anyway. By than I am willing to bet battery technology (or capacitors) will be WAY ahead of where they are today.

The nice thing about nuke/ electricity is as demand increases, the infrastructure can be slowly upgraded. If we adapt a hydrogen economy, MASSIVE infrastructure needs to be built upfront. Pretty much the same for ethanol. With electricity, you only need to add lines and plants as demands increase.

Bjorn is right though, we will be buying engine sounds from itunes to play through the radio.

At least your cactus survives. I've had no luck keeping them alive.

So in the future we should all be getting together at Vicki's to do shots?

Cautus and Purple Violets.
Niether one have a very long life span at our house
Everything else lives for years.

E85
We are all paying for it at the dinner table.
2% milk is $4 here

Agave's not really a cactus. Just a really dangerous sword-leaved plant.

Ah, so it has TWO ways to hurt you!

Three. Spines on the leaf tips that penetrate the skin easily, and shark-tooth hooks on the leaves that tear skin.

Makes you wonder about the 1st guy who looked at it and said, "Let's boil it and drink it. Yeh, that's the ticket"

Your right Vikki, this is what I found. Kind of interesting. 'Agaves are closely related to the lily and amaryllis families, and are not related to cacti.'

They do distill into a drink that will make ya forget what ya did the night before.

Here's the end result, yes I did save 10% by purchasing the E85 garbage, but lost 30% mileage. E85 maybe better for the environment, but at this point I am allot more concerned about the environment in my wallet.

That's just it Brad, it is NOT better for the environment. We are being sold a bunch of crap.

The more you buy it, the more likely they will increase production. DON'T BUY ANY.

Here is a new article just published yesterday on another problem with ethanol production:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5497484.html

Yup, put in my Grand Cherokee too. The best I could do on the eway was almost 16mpg and 11 city. I've done 21mpg on the eway on 87 octane. Could have told you not to use that crap Brad

There was a thing on Discovery the other day about it. Between making it and using it, it's not really better. Maybe just the use in cars part is better, but you have to factor in making it too, so considering it uses more energy to make than you get it sucks. Now if it was a buck a gallon I'd used the hell out of it to make up for the mileage I get. Down side would be filling up every 2-3 days

And yet another nail in the coffin that is E85.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/globalwarming/2008-02-08-ethanol-study_N.htm

Excuse me but that article is totally useless in this 'neck of the woods'. There's a much bigger and better reason why the farmers are growing more and more corn around here; Kernal Burners. The newest heating 'adventure' to hit the frugal consumers is the corn burning wood stove. It has put such a demand on corn that the ethanol question is overshadowed. The kernal burners actually work! Where as, the ethanol was a lost cause from the start...around here anyway. And if global warming(if real) keeps creeping, then we can all join Willy and his vegetable oil cars. The biggest downside of the veggy fuel is it gells up in the cold. Long live global warming! It will save us all.

Just so they don't get popcorn by mistake and blow the doors off the stove.

Now if they could combine the veggy oil diesels and the kernel burners, we could have engines that are totally organic and shoot butter-flavoured popcorn out the exhaust!

None of the studies present the whole picture, that of the entire process from planting, fertilizing, watering, harvesting, drying, transporting, and processing this so-called "green fuel".

Far more energy is consumed in this part of the cycle than will ever be recovered from the grain.

Solved world hunger to boot!

Just think of the people following those cars as they drove through the neighborhood, gathering up the "emissions"!

All these energy alternatives appear good on first glance but a little bit of digging seems to show major flaws in the glossy veneer. I still haven't seen a study that compares the amount of energy used to recycle an old car into a new one vs the amount of energy difference between the new car and a "freshened" old one used for daily driving. I do know that $30,000 in fuel will take me a long, long way!

Just for fun: FGF that gets 15 mpg vs new car that gets 42 mpg. Drive both for 200,000 miles with gas costing $3.50 per gallon.

FGF fuel cost: $46,667
New car fuel cost: $16,667
Difference in fuel cost:$30,000
Smile factor in driving a FGF for 200,000 miles - well, you know!

So by refurbishing an old muscle car for $15,000 you can be more energy efficient (if fuel cost is an indicator of energy cost) than a new car for 100,000 miles. I'm hoping that soon someone will make a decent study and prove that keeping old cars is actually better for the environment than constantly remaking them. There could/should be a subsidy program for people with vintage cars, incentives to repair rather than replace, refurbish rather than recycle, and an end to the program to subsidize hybrid vehicles that wastes our tax money!

Why do politicians hate fun cars? Did the hippies finally take over?

based on that and that I drive 4k a year in mine...= $933 /year worth of smiles, BUT, I also only use plus , so at $3.00+_ its only $800 worth of smiles....per year....or +_ $65/mo