What are Flex Fuel Vehicles (FFV) ? These vehicles run on E85, which is short for 85% ethanol 15% gasoline and can also run on regular gasoline, there are already a few million of them in America. They are essentially the same as the gasoline cars we drive today, they just offer the option to use a different fuel mixture.

Why the fuss ? Well, the ethanol can be created locally from products like sugar cane, wheat, corn and wood, not middle eastern oil. Brazilians already faced the problem of middle eastern oil dependency over 10 years ago and decided to use their own oversupply of sugar cane to make the ethanol. They now use these flex fuel vehicles (FFV) as commonly as we use our gasoline cars and are essentially independent of world oil price gauging and in the process strengthened their own farming industry by using their own sugar cane and the E85 even produces less green house gases.

North Americans have an oversupply of wheat and wood to make their own ethanol and this too would benefit local farmers and reduce dependency on foreign oil. Local ethanol producing companies are now seeing increased investing as demand exceeds supply. These companies and flex fuel cars also have bi partisan support politically, so you can expect even more support for the ethanol producing companies and FFV advocacy (only oil and gas funded politicians oppose such development)

GM has acknowledged this as a viable North American solution for our gas woes (and their sagging sales-see below) and is developing the upgrades necessary to convert their larger cars to FFV. Apparently it cost them about $250 to upgrade the larger pricier cars to FFV, which makes more sense with higher profit margin luxury cars where $250 is less of an issue to deter buyers.

Toyota is hot on their heels to catch up with this technology but faces an uphill battle as its price conscious smaller cars with lower profit margins cannot absorb the extra $250 as easily. (Personally I can't wait to buy a flex fuel Prius)

Who would of imagined GM as a leader in producing a greener car for north Americans! Their motivation is driven by poor sales of larger fuel in-efficient cars due to high gas prices of course. I guess this is one benefit of high gas prices.

While this is a promising solution to our gas woes more research is needed as some oil and gas lackeys argue it’s too expensive to produce the ethanol, which seems odd, seeing as cash starved Brazil can make it work after politicians committed to it. There will no doubt be increased efficiencies in ethanol production and lower cost of production with private and public sector support of these companies. With no disrespect to Brazil, if they can do, so should we.

Paul Fezziwig writes for and administers Green Cars Now http://www.greencarsnow.com, a website devoted to promoting fuel efficient vehicles and hybrid cars.

 

E85 can help us reduce dependency on foreign oil. But, the current crop of flex fuel vehicles fall short in one critical measure - fuel economy. The current flex fuel engines are designed primarily as gas engines, ethanol is an afterthought. Compression ratios are too low to return decent economy when an owner actually can buy E85 to fill up. I wonder how happy these new flex fuel vehicle owners are going to be when they find out how poor their mpg is with E85?

 

Corn-based ethanol has a very low energy yield. It takes a lot of corn to make ethanol. Making corn requires gas, which requires oil, and you see where this is going. It's also highly subsidized by the government. It's something, but it's not the solution. There is no silver bullet to cure our oil dependency.

One of the reasons Brazil has been so successful is sugar cane has a much higher energy yield. When we figure out how to grow sugar cane in Kansas and Iowa, it'll be a different story.

 

For every 4 gallons of ethanol you burn in an FFV, somewhere else 3 gallons equivalent of fossil fuel are burned to make it.

 

Check out Iogen and their new cellulose Ethanol enzyme process

Iogen Corporation of Ottawa has developed enzymes to break down waste straw and wood chips into ethanol on a commercial scale.

 

I have an '02 Flex Fuel S-10 with no where in Florida to buy the fuel to even try it out.

Supposedly, there are only 3 stations in Fl that have it and only one sells it to the public which is in Tallahassee about 300 miles from here.

Lotta good an E-85 vehicle is with no fuel for it.

 

Not entirely true. The reason you are seeing such a rapid increase in models of cars and trucks with FlexFuel capability is the advancement in calibration technology. Early FlexFuel vehicles required special pumps, filters, sensors, injectors, and other hardware to equip the vehicle to run varying blends of ethanol content. Within the past couple of years, vehicles have been equipped with software that allows the vehicle's computer to calculate the ethanol / petrol mix and adjust the fuel system and engine calibration to run optimally on that mix. For the most part, the E85 based fuel economy is a function of the burn efficiency of ethanol v the burn efficiency of gasoline or E10.

Peace,

Martin

 

The advantage of fossil fuels is that nobody eats them. The disadvantage of using wheat or corn (even the hated corn syrup/high fructose corn syrup) is that you are using a crop more properly useful as food and instead putting into a contrived use, recognizing, of course (sneer) that we use the surplus. But given a demand for the crop as a fuel, and the resulting increase in price - well, forget about corn on the cob, folks. It's being used to power your F150.

The other issue is that, as a fuel, its not as good as gas-from-oil, resulting in poorer milage, and of course, an increasing demand.

Finally, Iowa and other corn/wheat producing states love the idea.

centrider

 

With Soy or that grain that Brazil is using Ethonol becomes more beneficial.

 

Brazil, as I recall, uses sugar. Truthfully I don't know what part of the plant is being turned into ethanol, but when one thinks of sugar, one doesn't think of it as bread (wheat) or corn (on-the-cob, or even as an animal feed).

Changing "waste" plant production into ethanol sounds like a better idea than using wheat (I hadn't heard that one until I read a reply here) or corn.

One of the questions is, what does one use as a fuel to make the change from that product to ethanol.

centrider