Quote:
Originally Posted by jagarra
What I have noticed on my newer vehicles is a significant drop in mileage this winter. They purport that the winter mixture is for pollution. What I don't understand is if you get 25% less mileage, you use more fuel to cover the same distance, what is gained??
|
The few studies I have seen that showed fuel economy on the same vehicle, E-10 and pure gas, the difference has been pretty close to the amount of alcohol involved. At 10%, the fuel economy dropped by 10%. Net result is you pay more for less fuel.
The alcohol isn't a benefit, it should never have become a standard. While it sounded good in theory, it fails in practice. The crop production to produce the ethanol removes crops from the food/feed chain causing those crops to cost more overall. Part of the increase to fuel prices was the inclusion of ethanol. It wasn't a concern when only a few places were using a blend (had a farmers co-op that used alcohol/gas mixture back in the early 80s).
I went to look and see what the difference in "power" was and found a chart that doesn't include gasoline as a fuel, but claims to compare all the alternate fuels to gasoline... in the chart it is indicated that we import nearly 1/2 of the oil used... must be an old chart. As of 2013 we import nearly 33%, not half, of petroleum used.
The comparison baseline, according to footnotes, is based on E0, E10, and one other fuel... no wonder the chart indicates that E10 is equivalent to the baseline... it isn't measured against straight gas.
According to the chart on Wikipedia, 1 gallon of E10 is equivalent to 1.02 gallons of gas. That may be the effective numbers, but in MPG what I have observed is a lot larger difference, closer to 1 gallon of E10 being equivalent to 1.10 gallons of straight gas.
My old '63 Chrysler -hated- the blend. Lost so much power. I hate the price of straight gasoline though, as a local station here does sell it but its almost a dollar a gallon more (mostly because he doesn't like selling gas, his "in the black" is largely due to auto repair, so gas is a sideline that cuts into the auto repair time). But even though he is always higher priced, to get non-alcohol fuel isn't cheaper than the blend is difficult due to scarcity.
According to the same chart on Wikipedia, 1 gallon of E100 (ethanol) is equal to 1.50 gallons of gasoline, and 1 gallon of M100 (methanol) is equal to 2 gallons of gasoline. So not running straight anything if we can help it I hope!
Diesel is the only thing that is "higher" in power, and LPG/LNG is around 1 gallon equivalent to 1.5/1.3 gallons of gas (only a savings if LPG/LNG is cheaper).
Just a bunch of fuel trivia this morning...
I'm not sure how much of the data really applies in the real world, as opposed to the laboratory.
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent