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Originally Posted by nash
E85 can help us reduce dependency on foreign oil. But, the current crop of flex fuel vehicles fall short in one critical measure - fuel economy. The current flex fuel engines are designed primarily as gas engines, ethanol is an afterthought. Compression ratios are too low to return decent economy when an owner actually can buy E85 to fill up. I wonder how happy these new flex fuel vehicle owners are going to be when they find out how poor their mpg is with E85?
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Not entirely true. The reason you are seeing such a rapid increase in models of cars and trucks with FlexFuel capability is the advancement in calibration technology. Early FlexFuel vehicles required special pumps, filters, sensors, injectors, and other hardware to equip the vehicle to run varying blends of ethanol content. Within the past couple of years, vehicles have been equipped with software that allows the vehicle's computer to calculate the ethanol / petrol mix and
adjust the fuel system and engine calibration to run optimally on that mix. For the most part, the E85 based fuel economy is a function of the burn efficiency of ethanol v the burn efficiency of gasoline or E10.
Peace,
Martin
I am NOT the official voice of GM with respect to Hybrid issues
I am NOT the official voice of GM with respect to Hybrid issues
I am NOT the official voice of GM with respect to Hybrid issues