Why? They are not readily available. There's any number of guys on this site interested in biodiesel, propane, ethanol, E85, but most people can't fill up at the corner station.

In a perfect world your local "gas" station would have gas, diesel, propane, biodiesel, E85 and ethanol pumps. Maybe even others. You could run your truck on whatever you wanted, or with 2-3 trucks run whichever fuel is cheapest per mile this week. Say you have a F150 with a 351, a diesel F250/F350, and a flex fuel Ranger. You could handle just about any situation.

Opec's cutting production back and crude prices go through the roof. You jump in your 12:1 compression 351 and run straight ethanol.
There's a drought, ethanol prices go through the roof. You run gas in your ranger or diesel in your F250.
There's a drought and Opec's acting up, so run biodiesel in the F250.
There is almost no situation where you would be forced to pay $3 per gallon. Less people would be using gas and as demand goes down so do prices. More renewable resources would be used helping the environment. In fact, if you are really environmentally active, you could use whatever you thought the cleanest fuel was regarless of the price.

Most of us have more than one car. Most of us like building and modifying our vehicles. This really is not a impossible situation. The only reason we can't do this is the lack of availability of alternative fuels at "gas" stations. As we've seen with E10 when congress acts they try to throw a blanket solution at everyone and screw up supply for months causing high prices. How do we get them to realize that consumers and the market will fix all these problems if they'd stop throwing blankets over us and give us half a chance?

 

Sounds good to me! You forgot the "or go out back and fire up the ethanol still."

 

Most people are too lazy or pressed for time to build and run their own stills. That's why I think having a pump at the gas station is important. Plus straight ethanol has what... a 110 octane rating? Think how many muscle cars could run original compression ratios with that. After a few rubber lines, o-rings, and jets were replaced ofcourse.

 

I see. I thought you meant people would be making their own biodiesel. About the same complexity.

I've been arguing for E85 for old high-compression muscle cars for quite a while now. E100... forget about cold starting, but for summer cruising, it would be great!

 

Alcohol cars don't start well cold? I'd think the compression heat would overcome the dense mixture... as long as your starter can handle it. Haven't tried it though... wonder if my holley DP is alcohol tolerant?

There will always be a few people willing to make any given fuel, but only a very few will benefit until there's commercial production. Once you have commercial production everyone benefits, gas user because of the decrease in demand and associated price drop, environmentalists because cleaner fuel is being burned, and alternate fuel users because they can actually use alternate and possibly cheaper fuels.

 

Her, availability is a still a huge problem, but I think it is just begining to change. A couple of years ago, I asked filling a station manager friend of mine if he would consider selling E85. He said he would love to, but the contract he has with the brand his station sells says he couldn't sell ethanol85. Now he has a new contract, but this one says, okay sell E85 if you want to, but you must price it at least 50 cents per gallon more than unleaded regular. And the 50 cent per gallon tax credit for the ethanol, you can just send that to us. And the 250K tax credit for digging a hole and installing a new tank underground, yeah, send us that too. What, you don't want to send us the tax credits money in addition to the obscene profits we already get ? No problem, our tankers won't come and refill your store- you will be out of business as soon as your tanks run dry. We don't care, if you don't want to play our game, someone else will. The best word I can think of for it is 'hegemony', or maybe extortion or raketeering. It is very difficult to be an independant station in the current market. There are just a few solo players trying to tough it out. Those brave souls, along with Walmart and Meijer's, are starting to make a differance. One of the big oil company chains had two stations selling E85 for more than regular. Now that some of the Meijer's grocerys are selling ethanol85, and selling it cheaper than gasoline, the price for E85 came down below gasoline at the big company chain outlets. The Walmarts and Meijer's are family owned and have no onerous contracts to deal with. But they are large enough that the oil companies can't scare them with threats of no refills, there is just to much gasoline those stores sell. I think E85 usage is growing, and that growth will accelerate. Joe lunchpail is starting to catch on to the idea that there are alternatives to gasoline. Here in Michigan two new ethanol distilleries opened this month. 4 more are under construction. Other places are getting in on the act as well. We have a real chance to break 'big oil's' monopoly on the transportation fuel market. Be ready for and expect to here all sorts of lies and whining from the oil industry as this shift occurs. Like the 'news' from consumer reports lately. Alternative fuel is already having an effect on gasoline prices. Here in Michigan, they have gone from 3.29 to 2.31 in just a feww weeks. Why ? I don't think cooling off between hizb'allah (Iran ) and Isreal or the opening of #2 Jack in the gulf of Mexico, or the end of summer had anything to do with it. The oil industry is starting to run scared. Oil frequently is pumped out of the ground at about 2$ per barrel. Then the subsidiary company sells the just-out-of-the-ground oil to the big name holding company at the 65-70$ price per barrel we all see every night on the news. Supply is manipulated to keep the price as high as the industry thinks we can bear. Now that alternatives are becoming available, and Ford and GM are threatening produstion cuts on trucks and SUVs, the industry is fearing that it just might have choked it's golden goose to death. If people aren't buying big trucks anymore, the oil industry profits evapourate. Look at all the trouble GM and Ford are in right now..... how much worse is it because of supply manipulation by the greedy oil industry ? Okay, I've ranted enough for toady, I feel better now. DinosaurFan, on the Boss' computer at work on lunch