This was buried on page 3 of my local paper. E85...An alternative fuel nobody knows about ?
Ford, GM promoting 'flex-fuel' vehicles
By Karen Lundegaard, The Wall Street Journal via AP
Ford and GM combined plan to produce 650,000 vehicles this year that can use E85, which currently costs about $2 a gallon. Vehicles that run on ethanol - which is distilled from corn and grain - are less fuel efficient than gasoline, in the order of 25 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The average cost to operate a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, for example, using E85 is $1,578 compared with $1,344 on gasoline alone, according to the Energy Department's fueleconomy.gov. The gasoline version emits an estimated 7.6 tons of greenhouse gas per year compared with 5.6 tons for E85.
Only about 600 gasoline stations out of some 170,000 in the U.S. carry E85. Most are concentrated in the Midwest - with roughly 200 in Minnesota alone. Still, the total number more than doubled in 2005 and could increase fourfold this year, says Phillip Lampert, executive director of the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, a group that promotes ethanol use. "This has been an uphill battle," he says, but in the past several months, "people have begun to take notice."
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