Anecdotal Evidence: E-85 Just Isn’t Worth It
Recently my dad bought a brand new GMC Yukon XL. As he was showing it off to me I noticed with interest that it is a flex fuel vehicle. Given that I'm pretty interested in E-85 as an alternative to gasoline we decided to run a little experiment. This last week he's been on a road trip, so I told him to burn through one tank of regular gasoline (87 octane) and one tank of E-85 so we could compare the efficiency and practical cost of each.
This was a long trip consisting about of about 95% highway travel. He burned through both tanks of gas in one day driving the same sort of terrain (flat and straight ND highways) with the same weather conditions (clear, next to no wind). The Yukon has a fancy miles per gallon calculator built right into the vehicle so we used that for our measurements.
The Yukon has a 31 gallon tank. Driving until the gas gauge was pointing directly at "E" the miles per gallon calculator indicated that he had gotten 19.1 miles to the gallon using 87 octane which he purchased for $3.09/gallon. That works out to about 6.18 miles for every one dollar of purchased gasoline.
Next he filled up with E-85, which cost him $2.45/gallon. He again drove until the gas gauge was pointing directly at "E" and according to the gas gauge calculator (which he'd reset upon re-filling the tank) he had gotten 13.1 miles to the gallon. That works out to about 5.34 miles for every one dollar of purchased E-85 fuel.
Now I'll grant that this wasn't exactly a scientific experiment, but I think the results are clear enough to indicate that while E-85 may be priced significantly lower than regular gasoline it just doesn't have the same value.
In addition to that, my dad said that he'd noticed a significant loss of power while using the E-85 fuel especially when passing and driving up hills.
Personally, I'm not even going to waste my time with E-85. Even with gas prices sky-high it doesn't have the same value and, given the reduction in combustion power it causes, it's clearly the inferior product. Plus, even if the government subsidizes E-85 even further than it already does it is still costing me more, just indirectly. After all, the tax dollars being used to subsidize the production of ethanol and then buy down its price at the pumps belongs to me and my fellow citizens. Whether we pay for ethanol at the pump or with our taxes it is still coming out of our pockets.
This was a long trip consisting about of about 95% highway travel. He burned through both tanks of gas in one day driving the same sort of terrain (flat and straight ND highways) with the same weather conditions (clear, next to no wind). The Yukon has a fancy miles per gallon calculator built right into the vehicle so we used that for our measurements.
The Yukon has a 31 gallon tank. Driving until the gas gauge was pointing directly at "E" the miles per gallon calculator indicated that he had gotten 19.1 miles to the gallon using 87 octane which he purchased for $3.09/gallon. That works out to about 6.18 miles for every one dollar of purchased gasoline.
Next he filled up with E-85, which cost him $2.45/gallon. He again drove until the gas gauge was pointing directly at "E" and according to the gas gauge calculator (which he'd reset upon re-filling the tank) he had gotten 13.1 miles to the gallon. That works out to about 5.34 miles for every one dollar of purchased E-85 fuel.
Now I'll grant that this wasn't exactly a scientific experiment, but I think the results are clear enough to indicate that while E-85 may be priced significantly lower than regular gasoline it just doesn't have the same value.
In addition to that, my dad said that he'd noticed a significant loss of power while using the E-85 fuel especially when passing and driving up hills.
Personally, I'm not even going to waste my time with E-85. Even with gas prices sky-high it doesn't have the same value and, given the reduction in combustion power it causes, it's clearly the inferior product. Plus, even if the government subsidizes E-85 even further than it already does it is still costing me more, just indirectly. After all, the tax dollars being used to subsidize the production of ethanol and then buy down its price at the pumps belongs to me and my fellow citizens. Whether we pay for ethanol at the pump or with our taxes it is still coming out of our pockets.
