info on E 85 tune

[Sburn]

OK, I see we're having the E85/Alt fuels conversation here, so I won't start another thread in the conversation pit section.

E85 has to be one of the biggest frauds ever perpetuated on the taxpaying public. Left to a purely free market to decide, E85 would not exist. It's only because of tax breaks to the corn growers, tax breaks on the retail level, lobbyists, and government mandates that we've gone this far on the E85 scheme.

Just in terms of physics, E85 has ~20% less energy per unit volume. So, with an unmodified Flex Fuel engine, the mileage goes down by the same amount. One could recoup that 20% by upping the compression ratio to take advantage of the much higher octane rating of E85, but then the engine is dedicated to using only E85 or E100, so it becomes useless for gasoline. With only a tiny, tiny number of E85 stations, and 50 years worth of gasoline vehicles, it would be unwise and a very bad business plan to start down the path of going to anything like alcohol-only vehicles.

Also the net energy per acre of land used (how much corm makes how much E85) doesn't look favorable. Very, very large areas will need to be planted to support fuel corn growing. Take the number of gallons of alcohol yield per bushel, the number of bushels per acre, and the number of acres needed to grow that many bushels and you will likely find that that the US doesn't have enough land to switch to fuel corn production without displacing people and animal food production. Add in the fertilizer and irrigation costs required, plus the energy needed to transport that fertilizer, water, and get the harvest to the distillery. Corn has an unfavorable energy density (KW/Joules, or whatever per bushel) compared to an identical volume or mass of crude oil, so much more energy is spent just moving it around in its raw state.

The Middle East, Russia, etc are far from perfect places to deal with for oil. But aside from the political issues, oil generally flows rain or shine. Ask a farmer about droughts, bugs, fungus, storms, floods, etc.. that all lower crop yields. I don't have any data, but I suspect that, given the usual supply/demand constraints, E85 prices would also tend to bounce around and be subject to the same commodity speculation that already happens now with farm products.

If you want a good data point from the real world, ask somebody who uses fuel as part of their business. Trucking firms. Taxi fleets. Delivery routes. All of those folks make their monthly nut by managing fuel cost and efficiencies. And unlike the government, they tend to do what makes sense from a business standpoint. If there were any value whatsoever in E85, trucking firms, taxi fleets, delivery drivers and such would be clamoring for E85. But, I don't know anybody in those fields who can afford a 20% hit in fuel efficiency costs.

You won't see anything but diesel used in long haul trucking. CNG/LPG are perfect for in-town routes with lighter and smaller loads. But a CNG tank big enough to go cross country takes up too much space that would be used for paying freight. Ditto for any electric schemes. Batteries weigh a lot, so that takes away from the amount of revenue freight weight that can be hauled.

We got Flex Fuel only vehicles because our government thought it was a good idea. They mandated it to Detroit, because Detroit had this bad habit of only building vehicles that people actually want to buy. State and local governments bought FFV vehicles because they had no choice and because they don't actually have to do things like show a profit every month.

You really don't want to get me started on other goofy schemes like hydrogen...