Going Green
Summer before last I acquired a Y2K Ford Ranger to replace my late lamented Toyota pickup, which my insurance company had declined to fix after a deer strike. I was a little bummed that I couldn't find a decent Toyota with the insurance settlement, but truthfully the Ranger has been just as reliable, fits me better, and is more capable for towing and hauling. It also has some amenities that the Toyota lacked, like antilock brakes, an extended cab, cruise control, a CD stereo, and comfortable seats. It suits my needs pretty well. It has a 3.0 liter V-6 with a 5-speed, and gets low-20s for fuel mileage. It doesn't particularly like regular unleaded fuel, though; it tends to knock a little under load at low RPM, but with gas so expensive these days it's difficult to fork out for midgrade.
Something else I noticed when I got it, but didn't give much thought to, was that it's a "flex-fuel" vehicle, which means it burns any blend of gasoline diluted by up to 85 percent ethanol, effectively making it an alcohol burner. The fuel tank, fuel lines, and other engine components are engineered to deal with the corrosive effects of alcohol fuel, and the engine management computer senses the degree of extra oxygenation inherent in ethanol fuel and adjusts the air/fuel mixture accordingly.
The big three US automakers have been building these for about five years more as a way to meet their corporate average fuel economy requirements (they receive credits for these that subsidize their less-efficient but more profitable vehicles) than out of a reponse to the alleged greening of the auto market. E85, the standard 85/15 blend of ethanol and gasoline for which flex-fuel vehicles are engineered, isn't easy to find outside the midwest, or for that matter much of anywhere. It's easier to find racing fuel. I think I'd seen exactly one E85 pump in the past several years, at a convenience store in Hilliard, Ohio, near where I used to live. The price was the same as unleaded. Since E85 isn't as efficient as gasoline--it burns at about a 10-to-1 versus a 14-to-1 air/fuel ratio--it didn't make sense to me to use it.
That's changed recently as gasoline prices soared. E85 prices did for a while too, but since a) ethanol isn't taxed like gasoline and it enjoys a federal subsidy, b) more ethanol plants are coming on line now, and c) supply and demand finally seem to be ruling E85 prices, it's settled to about 40-50 cents a gallon cheaper than gasoline, for the most part. I thought I'd do a little experiment to see how well it would work for me, so I scouted out the area E85 stations. Turns out there aren't any. The closest are in Toledo and Dearborn, either about 40 miles away. So I postponed the experiment to some future time when I'd be heading past either of these locations.
That turned out to be last weekend. I went to Columbus on Saturday to fetch some Christmas and winter stuff from my storage unit and scouted out the E85 station in Toledo on the way down. It's about five miles out of my way. First nice surprise: the price was $1.79 a gallon, versus $2.19 for unleaded. Sold!It sure was nice to fill the tank for $30 rather than $50.
Second nice surprise, apparent once I got back on the road: no difference in perceived performance despite the lower energy value. I suppose that's modern engine management at work. And the pinging has gone away completely. I understand that it's almost impossible to ping on E85 since it's the equivalent of 105 octane. This is All Good.
Not so good: at 75mph, fuel economy declined from 20mpg to about 16. As predicted, about a 20 percent decrease in efficiency. This was offset by the corresponding 20 percent price differential, which is effectively the break-even point.
I loaded the truck in Columbus and headed for Hilliard to tank up for the return trip. Unfortunately, E85 was only a couple cents cheaper than unleaded there. I tanked anyway--of course, I saw much cheaper unleaded fuel on the way back--and headed back north. I set the cruise to about 65 this time; keeping the speed down returned 17.5 mpg on straight E85, even offset by the significant load that included a motorcycle engine and frame and a set of mounted snow tires. I tanked in Toledo again and I'm still using that tank in mixed driving in Ann Arbor this week. We'll see how that turns out.
Impressions so far:
I like the idea of using E85. It appeals to the somewhat latent green gene in me. Even though the cost efficiency is technically a wash, I should probably compare the cost to midgrade or supergrade gasoline because I do get the benefits of the extra octane. Ethanol burns cooler too, and leaves no deposits in the engine. As long as the anticorrosion engineering holds up, I should see no additional maintenance costs. I do wonder about engine oil formulation to deal with some of the unique acids (formic acid, particularly) that are byproducts of ethanol combustion. Chrysler recommends special acid-neutralizing oil formulations for their flex fuel vehicles, though GM and Ford don't.
I'd be more inclined to use E85 regularly if there was a local outlet. Ann Arbor's city fleet (and U-M's too) have a number of flex-fuel vehicles, though the fuel dumps for their motor pools aren't publicly accessible. There are numerous grants available for stations to convert a tank to E85 use; apparently it isn't cheap to do so, like $20,000 per tank, and the grant supposedly covers all of it. As green as this town is supposed to be, you'd think somebody would be willing to provide at least one public pump. There are literally thousands of flex-fuel vehicles in the area are capable of using E85, and their owners probably aren't even aware of it. I wonder how one would go about raising public awareness of the benefits.
Besides, there are a few social benefits to E85 as well, as this cartoon somewhat crudely expresses.
