E15 Ordered

I guess the question is…will E10 still be available? Why make a fuel dilution many cars (and bikes) can’t use?

EDIT: I did read both fuels will be available- never understood the value of this- it’s a net negative energy source (takes more energy to produce it than what its benefit is).
 
I think what you will see is what I encountered at Pilot - E10 pumps become E15 if they don't have a pump 'open'.
The only E10 will be high test or premium.
The stations that have or are willing to install 'open' pumps will still have E10 - seems to be Love's and Buc-ees' strategy.
Time will certainly tell.
 
If E15 is my only choice for regular, I'll pay more and start using the non ethanol at my local station.
 
Hmmm, is it possible that the folks at CARB may actually be on our side this time? Here's what I found on the CA front, which is probably not relevant for the other 49 states, but the Californians here may be interested.
 

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I know why they made the change. It was to alleviate some of the pain at the fuel costs temporarily.

But I also look at it as a toe in the door for those who want to make it year long...for whatever reasons.

So a question that popped in my mind. My wife has a Prius. She gets 55-65 mpg and it takes her at least a month to get low enough to stop for gas. What kind of unintended consequences will happen to people who don't refuel often like her?

Chris
 
^^ Good point- if the car can run on E15, you may be forced to empty the tank more often to avoid fuel separation (but with just another 5% ETOH, I can’t imagine it being that bad, even though the engines in many cases should not be run on more than E10)- I have an MR2 Spyder that I fill every 2 months or so (mainly because I don’t drive as often, maybe 40 miles every other week)- I’ve had the gas in the tank for a long time previously and never had an issue (when I get to ~ 1/4 tank, I refill it so I’m diluting the old fuel with new). As written above, the other alternative is ethanol free fuel (which by me is pretty easily obtainable as boats run on it and there’s lots of boats here).
 
Happily, we have non-eth gas 1.5 miles from home. It ain’t cheap, but I run it most of the time in the Harley. Non-eth is a little farther from home base for the ST, but not terrible. Cars get whatever. Sometimes I treat my Tacoma to the good stuff.
 
The bigger concern (for me) is; although I have two vehicles that are capable of E15, I do not use it. On a road trip I did try the E15 and found I had approximately 10% less efficiency (which, at the time, negated any cost savings). Conversely, I had approximately a 10% gain in mileage with "pure" gas, which almost (but not quite) paid for the increase in price.

In my experience, although your fuel bill will be a little cheaper at the pump, you will be returning more frequently as your overall mileage will decrease.

Disclaimer; this may not be the case for newer vehicles that have more focus on E15 from start of design. I have a 2016 Ford Transit and a 2016 Highlander that I tried this on and they can use E15 but I think they are not optimized for it.

Ryan
 
Daboo said:
So a question that popped in my mind. My wife has a Prius. She gets 55-65 mpg and it takes her at least a month to get low enough to stop for gas. What kind of unintended consequences will happen to people who don't refuel often like her?
Click to expand...
I don't know about the fuel separation issue, so I cannot comment on it. I've read stories taking both sides of the issue - gasahol will separate and it does not. Maybe a chemical engineer will settle this once and for all for us.

Alcohol has fewer btus per pound than straight gasoline. I've not run the numbers, but have read that E10 will yield about 10% fewer mpg than pure gas. E15 will probably give us a couple or few fewer mpg than E10. Beyond that, I would not expect your wife to notice a difference. Except at the price per gallon.

Once upon a time, we had discussions NOT to use E15 in cars designed for E10. I just had to look up what our '15 Highlander will tolerate. I have 3 manuals that came with the car, the fat one (7/8" thick) made me look in 3 different places to find that E15 is the highest concentration of alcohol that I should use, and to specifically not use 'flex fuel' since the concentration might vary.
 
Ryan_B said:
The bigger concern (for me) is; although I have two vehicles that are capable of E15, I do not use it. On a road trip I did try the E15 and found I had approximately 10% less efficiency (which, at the time, negated any cost savings). Conversely, I had approximately a 10% gain in mileage with "pure" gas, which almost (but not quite) paid for the increase in price.

In my experience, although your fuel bill will be a little cheaper at the pump, you will be returning more frequently as your overall mileage will decrease.

Disclaimer; this may not be the case for newer vehicles that have more focus on E15 from start of design. I have a 2016 Ford Transit and a 2016 Highlander that I tried this on and they can use E15 but I think they are not optimized for it.

Ryan
Click to expand...
I have found this to be true with the ST, 87-93 octane about 40 mpg, ethanol free about 10% better gas milage, makes me shake my head that I use "more" gas, when I thought it was designed to use less. I have not tried 15%, hopefully I won't be in a situation that requires it.
 
I saw an article they want to release the E15 in the very near future (like an article yesterday as the fuel prices keep rising)- they wanted to suspend the gas tax (and we know that won’t last very long)- be careful when fueling - get in the habit iof looking at the pump sticker but I would assume (maybe wrongly) they would have to clearly label the pump as E15
 
It's creeping in, yet I'm not aware of any mandate here. Filled up (my truck) at an independent station here that consistently is 7 cents/litre lower than other stations...... the pump label did say "Up to 15% ethanol".... so I take that as the reason it's cheaper. And yet, I've always not believed in the big subsidies given to grow corn..... I won't use that in my bike,, but we are stuck with E10.
 
If your vehicle sits for a while you might want to use a stabilizer to slow down separation.

You can thank corporate ag., farmers, distillers and politicians for the continued push to use an ethanol mix in fuel. A look at the total cost of resources used to grow crops for ethanol vs. food, land, fertilizer, seed, equipment running on fossile fuels to harvest and process crops, transportation, storage, running distilleries, mixing with fuel etc................ is that overall resources used are greater than fuel cost would be, as is the carbon footprint,, and there is no supply shortage of fuel in the US or Canada at this time or for the foreseeable future.

Another key input is water to grow crops, a commodity in very short supply in many areas of the US, much less so in Canada.

Whole thing is a sham.
 
In France, the government has given financial aid to farmers to cultivate the crops used to increase the ethanol content in gasoline from 5% to 10%.
It's absurd to grow crops for fuel!
Furthermore, vehicle fuel consumption increases with more ethanol; where's the environmental benefit in all of this?
 
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