Why aren't there small Flexible Fuel Vehicles in US? - GreenHybrid

sasparilla · #1 (**permalink**) 10-04-2005, 10:46 AM

This is just a general question, why is it that all the Flexible Fuel Vehicles (E85 capable) you can buy here in the US are huge and expensive? Does anyone know why the car makers only do this to their huge vehicles (in the US)?

I think the smallest you can go and buy is a Ford Taurus and that is only for a few more months (before it goes out of production). That's a $20k large sedan with a V-6. Most of them are huge SUV's or trucks like the Chevy Avalanche. Why aren't there some small cars? I know Ford makes a FFV Focus for overseas markets - wouldn't Ford get some benefit from selling those domestically like they would with the Monster vehicles?

BTW, I was told (by a Ford Dealer) that Ford is getting out of the Flexible Fuel Engine market, none of their new engines/cars (Ford 500 / Fusion - Taurus replacements) have it as an option - which seems very sad. Seems like they are about to get out of this market just as its taking off in some parts of the Country. Here in Illinois the number of E85 stations has doubled in the last year and the State is continuing to fund existing stations to cover part of the cost of putting E85 in.

lakedude · #2 (**permalink**) 10-04-2005, 02:46 PM

Good question. Brazil has tons of flex fuel vehicles why can't we have em?

xloptuny · #3 (**permalink**) 10-06-2005, 03:42 PM

Because we dont have the climate for sugarcane

Dan · #4 (**permalink**) 10-08-2005, 02:03 PM

I just don't think the automakers see it as very desierable in the US. We (GreenHybrid.com) want it, but I don't think if you asked 100 people across the nation if they wanted car makers to continue making E85 cars, you'd get 50 yes'es. Most would probably say "What's E85"?.

There is also the black-helecopter theory. Goes like this. You have the Oil Barrons wanting to stop E85 capable vehicles, and you have the heartland farmers, or farming corporations wanting to promote E85. Which lobby is going to be able to pump the most money into senator X's re-election campain. My money is on big oil. So until the farmcorps can match the lobbing power of big oil, I think flexible fuel will stay on the shelf.

AZCivic · #5 (**permalink**) 10-08-2005, 04:16 PM

CAFE.

If you have a vehicle that falls short of the CAFE requirements, or if you have a vehicle that meets the requirements but the rest of your fleet falls short, you get special extra credit from the government to raise your CAFE score when you offer a vehicle with the flex-fuel option. No car maker would ever offer flex-fuel if it weren't for the fact they need to do so in order to keep their CAFE fleet score up.

Schwa · #6 (**permalink**) 10-09-2005, 07:11 PM

It annoys me to no end that flex-fuel vehicles count towards CAFE scores. Probably less than 1% of them are actually being used with E85, and then they are probably government fleet trucks. It would be like selling a diesel that's "capable" of B100 use (as almost all are) and getting a CAFE credit. This was just snuck into the CAFE standards to allow the Fat 3 to keep on chugging out the guzzlers without even trying to get their average FE up.