the drop in mpg is coming!!

too bad you can't use it year round

 

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Part of that drop may be indeed because of more ethanol but most of it comes from just colder temperatures.

How much ethanol does NY gas usually have during summer?

 

huh?

I'm confused. Isn't a drop in mpg a bad thing?

I can tell mine has dropped, could tell within a few minutes on the new tank. Can't get to my 51....

 

Unfortunately, ethanol is not really a good solution for foreign oil dependency in the US...

 

>> I'm confused. Isn't a drop in mpg a bad thing?

not if the drop includes even lower emissions and less dependence on foreign oil

 

I think he or she was talking about more ethanol in the gasoline being a good thing, not the mpg drop, wasn't it?

 

Here in Oregon 10% Ethanol is mandated all year long.
So you get less MPG than regular gas yet this is saving the enviorment. ( know I am missing something here).

Let's not forget how much diesel fuel it takes to make on gallon of Ethanol. As I said in the past, common sense does not apply.

alfon

 

I'm quoting the USDA here:

"Corn ethanol is energy efficient... For every BTU dedicated to producing ethanol there is a 34% energy gain... Only about 17% of the energy used to produce ethanol comes from liquid fuels, such as gasoline and diesel fuel. For every 1 BTU of liquid fuel used to produce ethanol, there is a 6.34 BTU gain."

 

From whatever source, the CO2 production is still there.

I want a BIG battery (to go at least 40 "real" miles)
that I can charge from my solar-generated electricity.

 

The drop in MPG's using gas mixed with ethanol is to be expected, and is (primarily) because the energy content in 1 gallon of ethanol is approximately 10-15% lower than that of regular gas. Supposedly, by EPA regs, they are only suppose to mix 10% ethanol into the gas.

I'm not sure which is cheaper - continue to use the regular gas, or move up to midgrade, which has higher octane? That may offset the lower MPG's, but will cost more per gallon.

 

From corn ... but one also needs the water and fertilizer to grow it.

 

I still think that the future of cars is really electricity... with highly efficient, yet smaller batteries that can be charged quickly when plugged in... Of course this is not 100% sentimentally friendly, but there are several ways to diversify energy production and produce clean electricity...

 

I believe there is ZERO gain on MPG moving to a higher octane grade in the new Prius... this was discussed before somewhere else in this chat....

 

...and corn is a pretty rich food to be transformed in fuel...

 

Ethanol is a high octane additive. You can try moving up to a higher octane, and there's a good chance they got it there by adding more ethanol.

There may be a net energy gain, but there's a loss in carbon sequestration from using the land to grow crops instead of letting nature be; you are likely to end up with a net loss for carbon emission.

 

This is true of every vehicle. Octane is defined by the fuel's resistance to ignition under pressure. This has no effect on the energy released by combustion of the fuel, and will only affect fuel consumption when the fuel octane is lower than an engine's design requires. If an engine requires a fuel octane of 85 or lower, such as in the Prius, then 85 octane fuel will work every bit as well as 140 octane fuel.

 

My logic muscle hurts. How can it be creating LESS dependency if it is giving me less efficiency thereby causing me to buy MORE gas to go the same distance?

 

Good point.