ok im asking this for one of my moms friends who just bought her son a 4.7 ram with the Flex fuel 4.7 v8. i know E85 is 15 percent ethanol, 85 percent gasoline (87 octane i think?), but if i am not mistaken i read an article a few months back, saying that E85 actually got worse gas mileage and robbed performance. so in my thinking, even though E85 is "better" for the environment, if you get less gas mileage, you have to fill up more often, which means you are actually using more gas. for example: say i can go 100 miles on a tank of fuel (i know its much more than that but if i get into bigger numbers i cant do the math correctly lol) but with flex fuel i could only go like 85 or so. so that means that i would be filling up the Flex Fuel vehicle more often, and since E85 is mostly gasoline, wouldnt it be using more gas to get to the same place than a regular gasoline engine? and wouldnt this fact also make it worse for the environment? i also think i heard something about E85 not being as good for the engine. i think it was something about allowing carbon deposits to build up quicker?

answers would be appreciated. thanks in advance guys!

 

You have it a little backwards, E85 is approximately 85% Ethanol and 15% Gas. It actuallys has a higher octane about 105 than gas. It burns almost completely. The drop in performanceis just a myth, not fact. Actually in several vehicles they have done some testing, unfortunately not on a Dodge, it was noted a slight increase in RWHP. Here is a link to a sight that well help get rid of all the myths. It does get worse gas mileage, but at least in my area if you take the price per gallon, I still save money with E85

http://www.e85fuel.com/

 

E85 is actually like 105 octane and you have be cautious about where you buy it...some states dont mandate that E85 contain 85% ethanol...Missouri mandates it, here in illinois it's actually like 70% ethanol which is the requirement.....we actually did some testing on a 98 ford ranger 3.0L and ran it on regualr E10, E20, E40, E60 and E85....it actually had more hp and torgue running on approx E30 then it did on anything else...when it ran on E85 it didnt perform quite as well as the E10 but the numbers went terrible either...i have a whole bunch on info about this if you want to leanr about it, one of my classes i just finished was strictly about alternative fuels

 

i think that were just not used to it yet so we dont really accept it yet...........

 

In Texas when you can find it our mix is close to the 85%, however I do know it changes slightly during the year due to the seasons. I have to drive 19 miles to get the nearest station that has the fuel, luckily it is near my work.

 

"that E85 actually got worse gas mileage and robbed performance." thats complete crap. i did a report on ethanol for my auto class last year, and i know for a fact its better than gas or atleast will be the new replacement.i was also told by a performance shop that ethanol is better performance wise because you can run a higher ignition curve orw/e (the opposite of retarding it). plus it burns clean.

 

mdram, where you go to school at?

 

I like the idea of using E85 but the problem up here where I'm at is that everyone sells the 10% stuff; just haven't found a station close by that I can get the E85 at. Would love to try it out for a while if not use it permanently.

 

Consumer's Reports did some testing on a Chevy Tahoe and found this:
----
This chart shows how our 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe performed while running on E85
and gasoline in three fuel-economy tests and overall, in four acceleration
tests, and in three emissions tests for gasoline vehicles.

E85 GASOLINE*
Fuel economy, mpg
City 7 9
Highway 15 21
150-mile trip 13 18
Overall 10 14

Acceleration
0-30 mph, sec. 3.4 3.5
0-60 mph, sec. 8.9 9.1
45-65 mph, sec. 5.7 5.8
Quarter-mile, sec./mph 16.8/84.6 16.9/84.5
Emissions, parts per million
Nitrogen oxide 1 9
Hydrocarbons 1 1
Carbon monoxide 0 0
*Blended with 10 percent ethanol.

CONSUMER REPORTS TESTS SHOW THAT E85 ETHANOL OFFERS CLEANER EMISSIONS-BUT
POORER FUEL ECONOMY

E85 fuel is unlikely to fill more than a small percentage of U.S. energy needs
October 2006 issue cover

October 2006 Issue

YONKERS, NY - Tests and an investigation by Consumer Reports conclude that E85
ethanol will cost consumers more money than gasoline and that there are
concerns about whether the government's support of flexible fuel vehicles is
really helping the U.S. achieve energy independence.

Findings from CR's special report include:

* E85, which is 85 percent ethanol, emits less smog-producing pollutants
than gasoline, but provides fewer miles per gallon, costs more, and is hard to
find outside the Midwest.
* Government support for flexible-fuel vehicles, which can run on either
E85 or gasoline, is indirectly causing more gasoline consumption rather than
less.
* Blended with gasoline, ethanol has the potential to fill a significant
minority of future U.S. transportation fuel needs.

To see how E85 ethanol stacks up against gasoline, Consumer Reports put one of
its test vehicles, a 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe Flexible-Fuel Vehicle (FFV) through
an array of fuel economy, acceleration, and emissions tests.

Overall fuel economy on the Tahoe dropped from an already low 14 mpg overall
to 10. In highway driving, gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city
driving, it dropped from 9 mpg to 7. You could expect a similar decrease in
gas mileage in any current flex fuel vehicle because ethanol has a lower
energy content than gasoline-75,670 British thermal units (BTUs) per gallon
instead of 115,400 for gasoline, according to the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration. As a result, you have to burn more fuel to generate the
same amount of energy.

With the retail pump price of E85 averaging $2.91 per gallon in August,
according to the Oil Price Information Service, a 27 percent fuel-economy
penalty means drivers would have paid an average of $3.99 for the energy
equivalent of a gallon of gasoline.

When Consumer Reports calculated the Tahoe's driving range, it found that it
decreased to about 300 miles on a full tank of E85 compared with about 440 on
gasoline. So, motorists using E85 would have to fill up more often.

Most drivers in the country have no access to E85, even if they want it,
because it is primarily sold in the upper Midwest; most of the ethanol in the
U.S. is made from corn, and that's where the cornfields and ethanol production
facilities are located. There are only about 800 gas stations-out of 176,000
nationwide-that sell E85 to the public.

When Consumer Reports took its Tahoe to a state-certified emissions-test
facility in Connecticut and had a standard emissions test performed, it found
a significant decrease in smog-forming oxides of nitrogen when using E85.

Despite the scarcity of E85, the Big Three domestic auto manufacturers have
built more than 5 million FFVs since the late '90s, and that number will
increase by about 1 million this year.

A strong motivation for that is that the government credits FFVs that burn E85
with about two-thirds more fuel economy than they actually get using gasoline,
even though the vast majority may never run on E85. This allows automakers to
build more large, gas-guzzling vehicles than they otherwise could under
Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. As a result, these credits have
increased annual U.S. gasoline consumption by about 1 percent, or 1.2 billion
gallons, according to a 2005 study by the Union for Concerned Scientists.

From an alternative-energy perspective, it doesn't matter whether ethanol is
blended as E85 or in lower mixes such as E10 (a 10/90 ethanol/gasoline
mixture) that all cars can burn; a given amount of ethanol still goes just as
far in reducing demand for gasoline. Experts agree that the maximum amount of
ethanol you can get from corn in the U.S. is about 15 billion gallons. But
scientists are working on producing ethanol from other plant material, called
cellulose, which could increase this capacity by as much as 45 billion
gallons. (For comparison's sake, the U.S. burned 140 billion gallons of
gasoline in 2005.)

The important backdrop to the ethanol debate, of course, is that petroleum is
a finite resource that's rapidly being depleted. Government scientists are
planning for a day when world oil production peaks and begins to slow. They
say the country must begin planning for alternatives 20 years before that
peak. Today ethanol is receiving their attention because it requires fewer
technological breakthroughs and less infrastructure development than batteries
or fuel cells, and by including cellulose, its capacity can exceed that of
biodiesel.
=====
HankL's note:
I am totally convinced ethanol is a 'precious resource' that the USA can use to improve both MPG and power. See this post:

https://dodgeforum.com/m_746747/tm.htm

for the way it should be done.
The present practice of making ethanol and either blending 10% of it into gasoline or making E85 is a tremendously wasteful 'boondoggle' created by Archers-Daniel-Midland company, Cargill company, Senator Bob Dole and Sen Chuck Grassley.

 

I can very; honestly tell you after a drive across the country in my 5.7Qcab using only mid-grade, I used several tanks of E10 in the mid-west (since that is what almost all of their mid-grade is)and saw a marked decrease in MPG. On average, I lost 4mpg. Power issue, I really don't know because I was on the midwest level ground on interstate with the cruise set. Obviously it takes much more E10 mix to make an equivalent number of HP compared to dinogas. I am sure E85 opens up a lot of engine performancepossibilities due the the high octane but to build an engine to go back and forth, seems to me that performance would suffer on ethanol a bit.