E85 Takes Another Knock– So To Speak
Consumeraffairs.com reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has rejected a request from Ralph Nader's Public Citizen advocacy group to revoke some of Ford's Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) credits. Public Citizen claimed that 2003 – '05 Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable vehicles "do not perform up to standards when fueled with E85." Public Citizen argued that an unknown number of these 228k Flex Fuel Fords wouldn't start when filled with corn juice. What's more, some of the E85-fed Taurus engines would stall, creating a safety hazard. NHTSA demurred, saying that E85-related engine stalling was "rare." And anyway, simple repairs fixed the problem. While the issue clearly relates to Ford's engineering prowess, the idea that a tankful of E85 can make a car fail to start or stall probably isn't an idea that the Renewable Fuels Association would like to see widely disseminated. You're welcome.
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E85 isn't perfect, but it's made in the USA from USA grown corn. In a post Peak Oil world crude oil and gasoline will be hard to come by. Google Peak Oil and ethanol and educate yourselves before condemning E85 too harshly. Peak Oil is the most important issue facing the auto industry.
Lets see, you barely get more energy out than you put into its production, it increases the nitrogen and phosphates in our water ways (that's water pollution), uses huge amounts of water for irrigation and production that would otherwise be available for drinking, reduces the amount of acreage used to produce food for our country and others, and takes a very heavy toll on the nutrients in the soil. Now why would we consider corn ethanol a good environmentally friendly source of energy? That's right it's because we have a large farm lobby in the midwest that pays millions (billions?) of dollars to the federal government. I'd rather just continue to hand money over to the farmers in the form of subsidies and price supports. At least that won't consume our natural resources like ethanol production does. As far as reduction of emissions goes, about the only way to do that by using ehtanol instead of standard gasoline would be to design engines to take advantage of the high octane number afforded by ethanol. High compression small displacement engines to wring as much fuel efficiency as possible out of a lower energy fuel. Running ethanol or ethanol blends in a flex fuel vehicle designed to burn petrol is just a bad all around idea. Greater environmental impact from its production and reduced fuel efficiency in it's use.
97escort : E85 isn’t perfect, but it’s made in the USA from USA grown corn. In a post Peak Oil world crude oil and gasoline will be hard to come by. Google Peak Oil and ethanol and educate yourselves before condemning E85 too harshly. Peak Oil is the most important issue facing the auto industry. Yeah, and you put in 10 units of oil energy to get out about 11 units of E85 energy, give or take a bit. Not exactly going to save us from dwindling oil supplies. Meanwhile, price of food goes up.
GS650G: Are they dumbing down the science to make it understandable when they remove all science from the propaganda, I mean presentation? Just how do plants know what CO2 was produced by the burning of ethanol? The "science" lesson states that a balance is set up between the production of CO2 through the burning of ethanol and the growth of plants, while implying that same balance is not achievable through the burning of hydrocarbons. Geeze, they never taught me that in any of my chemistry, environmental studies, or engineering courses in college. Maybe this miracle of plant evolution is a recently discovered phenomenon.