WildBills Toyota

iTrader: (1)

so now that all gas stations have 10% ethonal Im deff getting worse gas miliage. So am I losing 10% or what.....But i read if you get a new ethonal equiped vehicle you wont lose that 10% cause its made for it

BP

Possibly if the car were engineered specifically to run on ethanol it might be able to squeeze out a little more economy than a 100% gasoline engine. It'd lose whatever possible advantage though when running on conventional gasoline and it'd have considerably less performance.

lo_jack

iTrader: (27)

I am not sure every refiner in every area is compelled to run 10%, I believe some are different, down to 2.7% depending on if they are in a non attainment zone and so forth. I am not 100% certain, but I spoke to the president of a refining operation not long ago an I know he was blending at 2.7 in some products.

I was not aware that any manufacturer was taking ethanol blending into account yet for compression ratio, milage, etc but would be VERY interested to see that if you can find it. The only cars that are designed for it as far as I know are E85 cars, but that is a completely different ballgame.

The amount you lose is variable depending on the blend. Ethanol has upwards of 25-30% less energy than gas, so you would have to take that number and work it in on the percentage of the blend you were using to find how much to anticipate losing, all other things held equal. I have not researched extensively, but I believe different forms of ethanol may have less or more energy content in that general range. I have not looked into that yet.