Don't we have a significant amount of oil and gas-powered power plants? Assuming the answer is yes, then let's build ethanol power plants instead. You avoid the massive instucture for distrubuting E85 to the pump and make percentage of gasoline that can be refined from our imports greater for our cars. We might even be able to simplify it even more by skiping the conversion of celluoid ethanol and just have bio-mass power plants.
With ethanol products singled to generate electricity, Detroit can focus on more fuel-efficient vehicles. If Detroit wants to tap into bio-mass and ethanol-powered power plants - build plugin hybrids.
Simpler and less waste from the infrastructure.