Myth: 15% Ethanol Fuel Will Destroy My Engine

[Bill USA]

8. No effort at all. In the 1998 Ethanol Vehicle Challenge, 13 college engineering student teams

... competed in optimizing a Chevrolet Malibu for running on E85. The three best teams got 13% to 15% BETTER combined fuel economy (city and highway) than the stock Malibu achieved on straight gasoline. Every one of the teams achieved BETTER mpg on E85 than on gasoline in the city cycle test.

The sponsors of the Ethanol Vehicle Challenge were the U.S. Department of Energy, General Motors and Natural Resources Canada. so the U.S. Government and General Motors know this is possible (and how it is possible). (actually, I'm sure General Motors knew how to optimize for ethanol before these college engineering students did it).

NOTE: this improvement in fuel economy was done WITHOUT ENGINE DOWNSIZING. When you are using supercharging (or turbo-charging) - as these teams did - you can produce so much more power with ethanol (higher octane than gasoline allows much higher combustion chamber pressures allowing you to achieve greater thermal efficiency which enables greater fuel economy) that you can use a smaller engine leading to gains in fuel economy from lighter weight and less friction.


1998 Ethanol Vehicle Challenge

http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/C/19.pdf