Running on E85?

FeTTstang · Apr 12, 2007

Adam95GT said:
Fine use e85 and use up arable land in the USA for fuel not food.... E85 is not a solution as a fuel source... we lack the land to use both for food and fuel....

Ever been to South Dakota?

FeTTstang · Apr 12, 2007

sn-95matt5-0 said:
i cant wait till E85 comes out around here

how much per gallon is it selling for where your at

Gas is about $2.77(87 octane) and $2.97 for (92 octane) and E85 is somewhere around $2.20 or so.

GTA_V6_Mustang · Apr 12, 2007

sheesh adam, what do you have against ethanol?

trav_19 · Apr 12, 2007

lol the closest pump to me is about 90 miles from the house..lol dont seem logical and before it jumped today to 2.96 for regular the price difference was like 10 to 15 cents soooo if you loose mpg with e85 your loosing in my eyes... im not all for it but what ever if they stop making gas then i will switch till then im running what i got...it works fine so theres no reason to switch....

i want the engines that run on water that would be great glad the government took care of that from ever seeing daylight

trav_19 · Apr 12, 2007

and for everyone who talks about keeping it in america where do you stop?? not just with gas right.... im not going to inconvience myself to help the u.s.

we had a guy that was waiting at our door in the morning (the parts store) a year or so ago and when we opened the door he came in and told us he had ran out of gas and wanted a gas can...so i showed him where they were located...he picked it up and said ...its not marked made in the usa...is it?? and i was like i guess not and he got mad and said that the gas station only had gas cans made outside the us also and he wasnt going to buy it and walked out...... i laughed for probley an hour at his stupidity...instead of getting the can at the gas station or the parts store he would rather walk around without gas all grumpy...

Adam95GT · Apr 12, 2007

Well besides its ****ty small carbon chains nothing i guess...ONLY its not a solution to the worlds petro problem... To just have enough fuel to convert to E85 all of US's farm land will have to be devoted to making corn... Which would leave no land for food... And even if it is cheaper it takes about 20% more to reach the same energy potential of our normal gas... Even with a higher octane rateing of like 105- 110... I mean yes we can use it... but its not the answer... I mean the EPA’s numbers suggest that fuel economy worsens by 28 percent on E85 compared with regular gas. And the prices will not stay low forever.... Competition of use between ethanol production and animal food will drive prices higher. We also have to take into consideration all of the land that is curently intensly being farmed leading to increased erosion along with the population expansion... So whats an extra 3% hp anyway....

but i mean to every story there is two different sides....

"The U.S. is consuming ~141.7 billion gallons of gasoline in 2006. 216.2 billion gallons of ethanol would be required to replace that much energy. However, the amount of fossil energy required to produce the ethanol must be subtracted from the gross value to calculate the net energy production. If the USDA’s 6% value were used as a basis, the gross amount of corn ethanol required would be 3590 billion gallons. Current production is about 7 billion gallons per year.

There is not enough arable land in the United States to provide even 1% of our transportation energy, assuming that we would be willing to forgo food production. An ethanol fuel economy is a mirage, a creature of Federal subsidies and careless thinking."

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/12/05/olmstead/
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/....html?id=df4d03aa-6754-4529-80a9-73aa9e98c087

Between my 2 chem labs today and this im done with science for tonight...

trav_19 · Apr 12, 2007

nice info adam i know what your saying with a corn farm you need to switch your crops back and forth each year so you dont destroy the soil and steal all of the nutriance it has to offer...that wouldn't happen for a crop raised for gas purposes so the land would turn to crap and they would just move and destroy more land....

its a vicious circle... and 28% loss of mpg thats big for the current 15 cents you save and i dont see it staying lower where ever the demand is higher the price will also be higher... its crap every summer prices go up around holidays they always jump its all a huge rip off everything in this country seems to be anymore im so fed up with the way everything is going anymore....its depressing

Therian · Apr 12, 2007

That still doesn't address the fact that the US can import its corn (or ethanol) from stable countries (instead of the middle east). Ethanol doesn't have to be made of corn either. Brazil runs their economy off of ethanol, and while smaller than the US by far, it shows that it can be done.

And I don't think anyone is saying you either have to 100% ethanol cars, or 100% gasoline cars. I'd like to see 50/50 mixes

Adam95GT · Apr 13, 2007

Brazil uses better ethanol made from sugarcane or something i think... i think 50/50 mixes is too much... will cause economic problems... because i dont think that 50% of gas stations will carry e85 anytime soon

FeTTstang · Apr 13, 2007

Those are all good points. In my case I would have it tuned to both gas and ethanol, with a flip switch. So either way it would be cool.

Therian · Apr 13, 2007

Adam95GT said:
Brazil uses better ethanol made from sugarcane or something i think... i think 50/50 mixes is too much... will cause economic problems... because i dont think that 50% of gas stations will carry e85 anytime soon

I meant E50 as opposed to E85 (just for clarification). Brazil does make their ethanol out of sugarcane. There has also been a lot of talk around ethanol made from algae. It would allow far more energy to be created from less land

hurt · Apr 13, 2007

I've been doing research over the last couple of months on converting one of my cars to electric only. It will cost me about $8k to convert it and I'm not doing it to save money on gas. I'm doing it because it's time to make a change. When the range of the car will be around 50 miles I can no longer justify using gas back and forth to work and to run errands around town.

I’ll still have a gas powered car for long trips and I’ll keep my 66 mustang on gas (for a while anyway).

And to keep it on topic - if I were not planning on the electric conversion I would probably consider the e85. I agree that we don't have to go all out e85 for every car but any reduction on foriegn oil is good for our country, on many different levels.

trav_19 · Apr 13, 2007

hurt said:
I've been doing research over the last couple of months on converting one of my cars to electric only. It will cost me about $8k to convert it and I'm not doing it to save money on gas. I'm doing it because it's time to make a change. When the range of the car will be around 50 miles I can no longer justify using gas back and forth to work and to run errands around town.

I’ll still have a gas powered car for long trips and I’ll keep my 66 mustang on gas (for a while anyway).

And to keep it on topic - if I were not planning on the electric conversion I would probably consider the e85. I agree that we don't have to go all out e85 for every car but any reduction on foriegn oil is good for our country, on many different levels.

that just seems ignorant to spend 8k on that... with a charge that only lasts 50 miles thats terrible you would be better off getting a mo-ped or something... 50 miles isint anything and what if you get caught at a lot of lights... i could take 8k for both my stangs and use that for gas probley for the next 15 years at least ...i dont drive them that much...but for what you get out of it i dont see it being worth anything

blksn955.o · Apr 13, 2007

Adam those studies dont go into much detail about subsides(sp?) do they. I grew up around farmers and live in the midwest and have been all over the west, have you ever been in the breadbasket of the world? I mean its easy for me to say the big super populated cities on the East and West coasts are something when they could be 100% diff. in real life.

There are a $ H ! T ton of crops just left to rot a year that prob. goes un-accounted for. We also ship another $ H ! T ton of crops over seas, Even running a crop rotation and factoring in the waste (non-edable at least) I really dont see too much reason to say we dont have the room...for the world maybe not but I dont think the US has TOO much a problem with too little land. It was already stated that the part we eat is not the part that is used for fuel production, so there seems to be no real compitition if anything its less waste.

Also I dont really fallow that math...we need 216 billion gallons of E to equal our needs of fuel and the USDA (why is it not the energy dept) says it will take 6% E to just refine the E?, even if the 6% is fossil and it takes 10% of E to produce E (as its less efficient) that does not equal 3290 billion gallons?

Also I dont think its just corn, as IIRC its a grain alch. that would also be spread out over wheats and such, I wonder if Soy would even work. Even if at this time its not grains how long until it can be?

I dont think its the second comming but I do feel it can make one hellova dent in the overseas dependance of crude. It is renewable 10,000,000x's moreso than fossil fuels. I think the whole thing will come down to a mix of alt. fuel sources, like how we pick a SUV, van, station wagon, or sedan only in hydrogen, gas/elec., E85, Biodiesel, ect for were each shines.

FWIW- there are 2 E85 stations not too far from me and I think I am going to convert my car to run it in the summer when its really E85 but switch back and forth when needed/avail/whatever.

hurt · Apr 13, 2007

trav_19 said:
that just seems ignorant to spend 8k on that... with a charge that only lasts 50 miles thats terrible you would be better off getting a mo-ped or something... 50 miles isint anything and what if you get caught at a lot of lights... i could take 8k for both my stangs and use that for gas probley for the next 15 years at least ...i dont drive them that much...but for what you get out of it i dont see it being worth anything

Ignorant? Ignorant is still paying countries to kill us. Who has the most oil?

And as I said I'm not doing it to save money - I'm doing it on principle.

Oh, and at the lights the car isn't using electrity.

trav_19 · Apr 13, 2007

i dont get into politics lol it always turns into arguments the whole principle thing leads me back to my story about the guy with the gas can on page one ...i guess if you have 8k you want to waste thats you

hurt · Apr 13, 2007

Here's an example of a high performance electric car. It's completely new, not a conversion. It gets 250 miles between charges, acceleration is 0 to 60 in about 4 seconds and top speed over 130 mph.

$8k will get me around 50 miles from my conversion and that's all I need from it for now...

I think it's time more of us start thinking about what's best for everyone and not just ourselves.

Tesla Motors

Therian · Apr 13, 2007

trav_19 said:
i dont get into politics lol it always turns into arguments the whole principle thing leads me back to my story about the guy with the gas can on page one ...i guess if you have 8k you want to waste thats you

Trav, don't hate on him because he's doing something that you wouldn't do. To each his own, right?

I commend my Canadian friend (even if he lives in Manitoba ) on doing this. It's not hurting anyone, and it's setting a good example. Plus, electric engines have came a long way. Do you have any more details on the project?

Therian · Apr 13, 2007

hurt said:
Here's an example of a high performance electric car. It's completely new, not a conversion. It gets 250 miles between charges, acceleration is 0 to 60 in about 4 seconds and top speed over 130 mph.

$8k will get me around 50 miles from my conversion and that's all I need from it for now...

I think it's time more of us start thinking about what's best for everyone and not just ourselves.

Tesla Motors

the Tesla roadster is a beast...I hope to own one at some point. Or an Ariel...also very nice

hurt · Apr 13, 2007

Therian said:
Trav, don't hate on him because he's doing something that you wouldn't do. To each his own, right?

I commend my Canadian friend (even if he lives in Manitoba ) on doing this. It's not hurting anyone, and it's setting a good example. Plus, electric engines have came a long way. Do you have any more details on the project?

Nothing against Canada - but I'm in the US military stationed in Canada, because of that I can say I'm pretty f%#@ng tired of our troops dying over oil. I enlisted to defend our constitution, not an oil derrick. So I will do what I can to limit the amount of oil I use, if that means spending a bit more money to do it than I'm proud to pay it. If you want to support the troops - use less oil.

for good measure!

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