I am driving a flex fuel vehicle and have switched to E85 to see if it is everything it is said to be. I have been driving on E85 in my Tahoe for about ten months and have made several observations. First, my mileage did drop from a running average of about 14 MPG to 11.5 MPG or a loss of 18%. The only retailer in my area is selling E85 at 30 cents below regular gasoline. When regular is priced at $3.00 its is easy to see that the 10% savings I’m getting in price is not covering the 18% loss in efficency. I know this isn’t the case all over the country but it is the case here in West Michigan. Secondly, I did find that shortly after I switched to E85 Ethonal, my exhaust pipe was a lot cleaner to the point that I got almost no residue in my tailpipe. This could be an indication, though not very scientific, that E85 does burn cleaner in my vehicle than gasoline.

Overall I have decided to continue to use E85 in my vehicle even though I am subsidizing somebody in the supply chain of E85. The farmers are benefiting and my money is not all going overseas to people who don’t like us, which is not benefiting our economy. I think that the Ethanol supply chain is missing a great opportunity to get more people to use E85 buy not keeping the price more stable while gasoline fluctuates by 25 to 40 cent per gallon. Secondly E85 should be priced at least 20% to 25% below the price of regular gasoline. It is hard to convince someone to start losing money to switch to using E85 in their vehicle.

I would like to hear what others feel about using E85 in their flex fuel vehicles.