If they keep adding more ethanol to gasoline, will our cars eventually get less mpg?

Question

I heard somewhere that pure ethanol is weak compared to gasoline. With gas prices going up the way they are, will there be more ethanol watering down our gasoline?

Answer 1

Yeah, it will do that.

As an anti-knock agent it's a lot less worse than some of the other things they could put in petrol (but they shouldn't need 10% for that purpose) although it isn't an oil replacement (since it turns out that biofuels release more CO2 than just getting oil out of the ground).

Ethanol is about subsidies given to farmers (or supposedly given to farmers anyway) and big businesses that convert the corn to ethanol (who also happen to be bribing a lot of politicians).

Answer 2

Yes, it is a less efficient fuel than gas.

Answer 3

first of all STOP FILLING YER CARS UP with gas i mean its a waste of time money and a whole bit more of pollution and if you keep cars for ever then you know what were acctually  going to be doing LIVING LIKE PEOPLE LIKE WHATS IN the movie wall-e and i dont wana be fat as h**l

well ethanol is very poor man its been around for a while but its environmentally friendly but in one way it still creates the nasty exhaust that comes out of that pipe how bout you make a car that runs off of something that we can create more of and duplicate the cells to make more so we don't have to dig for ever for it and doesn't give off any source of gas well electric cars are good but not good enough solar power same but there's something else that can generate power and last for ever without no need to replace it  

dere

Answer 4

Yes. Ethanol is 10% less economical than gas. So the more they add the worse it will get.

Answer 5

Ethanol will cause problems if it's over 10 percent of the gasoline content.  Though Ethanol has been in our gas for a very long time.  It does lower the miles per gallon for our vehicles.  Some newer vehicles though run fine off of ethanol.

Answer 6

Sure- in the midwest there are stations that sell flexfuel such as E50 (50/50 gasoline and ETOH (Ethanol). Many modern domestic cars are flexfuel certified.

   Mileage suffers, though. One of my employees from Wisconsin says that his Ford 500 loses 15-20% mileage on E50.

Answer 7

Yes.  By volume, ethanol has 30% less energy than gasoline, meaning a drop in mpg of 3% for each 10% of ethanol in the fuel mix.

Answer 8

ethanol doesn't have the compression that gas can provide.  ie its not s good.

Answer 9

ethonal is going to go out of style once more people realize that its a joke of a gas solution.

Answer 10

Yes, it will. Ethanol has roughly 70% of the energy per gallon as gasoline does. I have a 'flex fuel' vehicle that burns E85 or gasoline. I get 16mpg in the city with gasoline, but only 10.5mpg with E85. So even tho E85 costs 3.49/gallon vs 4.25/gallon for gas, the cost per mile for E85 is still greater. I'd have to get E85 for around 2.75/gallon to break even. I'm sure if my car was made to burn ONLY E85 the mileage could be increased, since E85 is much higher octane than gas, around 105 vs 87 for the lowest grade of gasoline. But you'd have to pump up the compression ration into the low teens, around 14:1 to get the benefit of the higher octane fuel, and then you couldn't burn regular gas. Ethanol was an idea with good intentions, but very poor results.

Answer 11

It is not a matter of will, the 10% ethanol found in most places is already lowering your mpg.

Answer 12

no lol