Gripen tries out E85 in real-world conditions
Some of you may remember that TS contributor, 1985Gripen, was recently involved in a car accident. Thankfully he was OK with just some whiplash to contend with, but the accident left his work-supplied vehicle a write-off.
His replacement vehicle is a Chevy Impala LS, and it’s E85 capable. As an E85 supplier has recently opened in LA, Gripen - ever the environmentalist - couldn’t resist giving the biojuice a try.
The results were very interesting, and given that BioPower could well be better tuned by the time it hits US shores next year, it’ll be interesting to see what others get on the BioPower system when it arrives.
Here’s his writeup on the experience:
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According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (http://www.fueleconomy.gov) this car supposedly gets 16 mpg on E85 combined and 22 mpg on gasoline combined (28% better). However the test the EPA runs is really flawed when compared to the “real world”. They don’t take hills into consideration, for example.
I ran my car in every imaginable situation, from hills to high-speed highway driving, to stop-and-go freeway traffic, to idling for an hour in traffic at the border. Sometimes I had the air conditioner on. This was probably a perfect example of “mixed” driving.
When I first filled the tank with E85 there was still 3.246 gallons of E10 gasohol in the tank. The tank’s capacity is 17 gallons. I tried to get as close to empty as I could, but it’s hard to judge how to have enough gas in the car so you’re not stranded on the side of the road but still get as empty as you can.
Considering it’s winter here I’m guessing the E85 was closer to E70, meaning my tank of E85 was really about 20% E10 and 80% E70. I’m no mathematician, so what’s that come out to? Like E75?
Anyway, on that mix and some SERIOUSLY “mixed” driving I got 19.7 mpg.
I came pretty close to running out of gasohol the next time I filled- up, with only 0.587 gallons left in the tank. But I was able to calculate the fuel economy running on gasohol (E10): 20.2 mpg.
So surprisingly running on E75 (or whatever) didn’t have nearly the 30% mileage “hit” than is predicted. In fact, I only got around 3% worse fuel economy running on E85 than on regular unleaded.
Perhaps some of this is due to the fact that California’s regular unleaded gasoline already contains up to 10% ethanol by volume, I had about 20% E10 in the tank when I filled-up with E85 (or E70), the E85 probably contained double the gasoline percentage due to the “winter blend” (30% instead of 15%), and slightly differing driving conditions (I didn’t drive the exact same course).
I still would have expected my fuel economy on E85 to be at least 20% worse than gasohol under these conditions. Saab’s BioPower fuel economy difference between E85 and unleaded gasoline is supposed to be even less due to the optimization of the ECU.
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Over at Instapundit.com they have a podcast interview with a fellow who wrote a book called Energy Victory. He is proposing that the US government require all cars sold in the USA run on E85. The author touts the energy independence and anti-terror aspects of using ethanol and methanol, but I suppose if you are more into carbon footprint reductions that would be OK as well.
Sam: I think that the energy bill which recently was passed in the U.S. Legislature will strongly encourage more manufacturers to spend the extra $30 or whatever it is per-car to enable the vehicles to run on E85. Already more and more cars are flex-fuel capable, but in many parts of the country (like where I live) the fuel just isn’t available for the most part.
It’s the “chicken and egg” syndrome and now that manufacturers are making the cars to run on it oil companies and station owners need to start installing an E85 pump at more of their stations. What’s their incentive to, though?
side question: how do you know the remaining volume of fuel out to 3 decimal places? i haven’t been in a brand new car in a while…are new trip computers that sophisticated?
My family and I were in Hawaii for 8 days, until Dec 29. We also rented a FlexFuel Impala, but unfortunately there was no E85 to be found to test it with.
Sam - it would be nice if E85 could put a dent in oil imports, but I don’t see that happening in the next 5 years with the existing infrastructure. E85 might be able to substitute for 5-10% of the current demand.
Diesel passenger cars would realize a real reduction in fuel demand assuming no change in driving habits with better MPG - there are already pumps with diesel across the country - and biodiesel can be produced at least as efficiently as ethanol. I fear the ethanol bias in the new legislation is there thanks to the lobbying efforts of companies like ADM, Cargill and Monsanto - they want to sell their GM corn to power GM cars
E85/BioPower is a part of the solution, but I think diesel is a faster way to energy independence.
jeff k: I didn’t trust the “average fuel economy” computer in the car as they’re typically not that accurate. I know the remaining fuel to the third decimal place because I filled the tank up. It’s a 17 gallon tank and it took 16.413 gallons (as read on the fuel pump display) to fill the tank. Subtract 16.413 from 17 and you get 0.587.
Incidentally, while I calculated an average of 20.16 miles-per-gallon by dividing the miles traveled by the amount of fuel pumped the car’s computer showed an average of 21.2 mpg. Good thing I didn’t trust the computer…
Greg Abbott: you would think with all the sugarcane grown on the Hawai’ian islands it’d be cheaper to make their own ethanol than to import gasoline from “the mainland”. I’ve always thought the Islands would be a great place for electric cars. It’s not like range is a huge limitation there.
Gripen: interesting you should say you don’t trust trip computers in cars.
In my 9-5 i think the L/100km (or mpg) is fairly accurate. I have noticed that DTE is sometimes greater than it should be. This seems to be a problem when I am alternating between driving styles: highway driving and then urban. I thought DTE would just be a function of the current L/100km and the fuel in the tank.
cdp88: The only experience I have with trip computers in cars is the one in my wife’s ‘01 9-3 and the average fuel economy is always off by a few miles and even the outside temperature is off by a few degrees Fahrenheit. It turns-out the ‘08 Impala was off by a bit too (it was off by about a mile-per-gallon). Close, but I’m a perfectionist.
When I was running the Impala on E85 I wanted to try and get the tank as close to empty as I could before filling the tank again for testing purposes. When there were about 50 miles left before it was empty it all of a sudden dropped to 49, 48, 47 in quick succession (about a mile per second) and then switched to display “fuel level low” so I couldn’t tell how much further I could drive. Further, fearing that perhaps the sensors weren’t calibrated for E85 I was afraid I might run out of fuel before the gauge estimated so I fueled up, only to learn I had a good 20% of the tank still containing fuel. D’oh! I could’ve gone a good 60+ more miles! I don’t know if the average fuel economy/DTE computer works the same on ethanol as it does on gasoline.
My computer seems to think that I have the 70 litres tank. The instructions to my cars tell me I have the 70 litres tank, but I have on several occasions filled the tank with more than 70 litres. The record is 74.6 litres, and on that occasion the DTE told me that I could drive 8 km more.
So the computer looks very accurate, but the instrument warns me when I’m having 200 km left.
I figure my computer is correct but my “tank-o-meter” thinks I have the same tank volume as the aero 9-5 Saab. The Aero and the 220 model should have a different tank volume but I think it’s only the aero got the small tank…Could this be the case?
Grip: The sugar cane industry in Hawaii collapsed about 10 years ago. Low-priced foreign competition was too hard to beat.
You would think that ethanol fuels would be a great way to revive the industry — I can see a campaign in Hawaii for “home-grown” fuels as quite effective, since every drop of gasoline has to be imported to the islands.