I've seen this request pop up a few times. There's also a good number of stations with that and bio diesel. That's 5 fuel types. Cramped entry screen, but could be useful!

While we're on the subject, ethanol is the worst. Bad for engines, bad for rubber parts, takes more fuel energy to create it than it gives back. Worst idea anyone's ever had, IMO.

You guys have the same or nearly the same info I'm working off of. Although I do not necessarily believe that all forms of energy are being taken into account for ethanol production from corn. Just like the environmental/energy impact of growing corn in one place and growing (fertilizer), harvesting, and trucking that corn 1000s of miles to CAFOs to give to cattle isn't typically accounted for by the "beef" industry. Anyway, this is way OT, so we could continue in the off topic forum...

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:While we're on the subject, ethanol is the worst. Bad for engines, bad for rubber parts, takes more fuel energy to create it than it gives back. Worst idea anyone's ever had, IMO.

You have a bit of misinformation here. Ethanol is not bad for engines allthough it can be bad for rubber and plastic parts that are not designed for it. You also do get more energy back than it takes to create it however the ratio is not high enough to make it cost effective.

The good side is that it is renewable and it is less polluting (reduction in smog not greenhouse gasses).

A gallon of E85 has about 72% of the energy of a gallon of straight gasoline. So from a cost perspective, E85 needs to be 28% cheaper per gallon to be worth it. So at today's average of $3.85 per gallon for regular unleaded, E85 would need to be at $2.77 per gallon. But its average is around $3.52.

If you figure prices based on the energy you are buying, you would have to buy $4.50 worth of E85 to get the same energy in $3.85 worth of regular unleaded.

The Daily Fuel Gauge Report from AAA has some of this converted price data as well (using different/better figures than my theoreticals above).

BTW, if we only consider cost, Diesel beat regular unleaded in terms of dollars per unit of energy even with the higher cost per gallon.

Edit to reply to latest post -- Ethanol _CAN_ be bad for engines in that it attracts water. And water in an engine is a bad thing indeed.

And for net environmental impact, numbers I have seen say it takes 1 unit of fossil fuel to create 1.3 units of Ethanol fuel. So we are right at or even just below the break even point of energy per gallon.

We insert the plants we turn into Ethanol into the carbon cycle to remove some of the greenhouse gases we burn, yes, BUT burning Ethanol produced Ozone that we don't get when we burn gas.

To me it just seems like a lot of effort for a little gain. Especially since we are diverting corn which could be used for food into our gas tanks and then people complain about the cost of food.

If we used sugarcane like Brazil does, then it is a different story since they get back like 8 times as much energy instead of 1.3 times.