Well yeah, their entire lives have been spent sucking oil dick...

I'm not gay, but gas is gas...

If your wind power charged a battery and you hooked up to it nightly with your electric car, it could. Certainly if the municipal grid uses wind power.

Most vehicles made past about 2004 are all ethanol safe up to maybe E20. You ideally shouldn't, but e15 won't ruin them.

Anything older though... God have mercy on your soul.

20th percentile, surely

Why? It raises the octane, so you can run more boost easily. It just requires more fuel delivery because it has lower energy density. Are you near injector or fuel pump flow limits?

"dumb libruls what u think gatoraids is? it be same thing huh huh"

Nah, straight to the piss drinking stage, they wouldn't drink ocean water, fish fucked there.

And yeah, half of them were already all about the aged urine rubs, cause not-a-doctor told them so.

How about all those people who paid extra for the cars that burn E85... To get less mpg

Financial literacy is very not common in government... Even less so with the population

Which still comes from oil and is even more expensive than petrol right now since the demand on it is even less elastic.

It’s demand on petroleum in general.

Oh lord. Are 2000s cars classic cars now? Someone take me out back and shoot me.

... My only vehicle is from 2012, and there is less than a zero percent chance I can get anything else. I'm so fucked, aren't I?

Or you can just put an ethanol rated carb kit and fuel line in it and not have to worry about it.

How old counts as "classic?" I've been using plain ol' "up to 10%" in my '90...

I drive a car thati bought used over a decade ago. It's cost effective, paid for and not a gas guzzler. Fuck me though cause I own an old car. One with rubber gas lines.

I’m actually driving my 1971 MGB around these days because I get 55MPG since it has 75ish horsepower and weighs about 2000lbs total lol

In Norway, 98 is still ethanol free for older cars and engines only used seasonally like lawn mowers and snow plowers.

95 is of course (up to) 10% and that’s completely fine for anything even remotely modern and in use every now and then.

Like you said: hoses don’t like the ethanol, and it’s hydroscopic which is what can cause issues if left in for 6 months every year.

Yeah I only run 98 (Australia, no ethanol) in my MK6 golf. I'd love to be able to run E85 or E10 but that requires new hoses and an ECU tune. I'd do the hardware myself and have a shop handle the ECU, however time is such a valuable thing these days.

98 around here is approx 2.15 / L or 5.80~ per galon. E85 is similar in price to 98, while E10 is around 1.70.

I think you're confusing e85 with 85 octane gas

E85 is 85% ethanol, 15% gas (and e15 is the other way around)

Octane rating is a measure of how much you can compress a fuel before it ignites by itself. Higher octane gas is more resistant to that. (And e85 actually has a pretty high octane rating, usually somewhere north of 100. Regular gas often contains up to 10% ethanol, in part because it boosts the octane rating)

To expand on that a bit, if you compress gas enough, at a certain point it just catches fire on its own. This is actually a big part of how diesel engines work. Diesel is actually pretty hard to ignite, in some cases you can even put out small fires by pouring diesel on it (don't try this at home) so they rely on getting high enough compression in order to work.

Gasoline is a lot more flammable though, you don't really need to compress it at all for it to burn. Sure, ideally you probably want a certain compression ratio because something something stoichiometry but gas is more forgiving in that regard. As long as your air-fuel mixture is about right, it's gonna burn when your spark plug goes off.

In fact, gas is maybe a little too forgiving, if your octane rating is too low and your engine compression is too high (mostly a problem with higher-performance engines) that gas can just kind of go off too early before the spark plug goes off, which causes "engine knock" which will cause damage.

But the other way around, high octane in a lower compression engine, basically does nothing spectacular. It still goes boom when the spark plug goes off and not until then.

Just to clarify, the three numbers at the pump (87, 91, 93 I think?) are the octane rating which the other comments explained. The ethanol content is the sticker that says "may contain up to 10% ethanol". This post is about increasing that percentage of ethanol in regular gas, which as other comments explained mostly just makes the gas less efficient.

E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% gas, basically the reverse of regular gas.

I don't think there is a regular 85 octane lowest in Nebraska is 87 octane. E85 is the ethanol version but your vehicle has to be able to use it.

Some 87 here can have small amounts of ethanol if it says so at the pump and that can be used in normal vehicles. Older cars pre2000 don't run well with it and some with carburators can get vapor lock

I'm a car girl, its mkind of my thing. Octane ratings aretgere to protect your engine, its a rating of how readily the gasoline ignites in the engine. The larger the number the harder to self ignite. Most cars use 85, the only time the higher octane 93 is needed is for cars with turbo or supercharging, or cars with higher compression ratios.

Just put whatever its rated for in it, going with a higher octane than what your car is rated for doesn't hurt a thing, but it also won't make your engine run better or anything.

As far as ethanol goes, modern cars ate fine with 10-20% ethanol in their gas. It will get worse mileage the higher the percentage of ethanol as it is not as energy dense as gasoline. The E85 stuff has a higher percentage of ethanol (85%) than is allowed in conventional gas and was introduced to try and lower gas prices (it's actually completely ineffective and ethanol for fuel is more energy intensive than just giving us straight gasoline but they have to prop up the corn industry somehow). Regular cars can't use E85 unless they are rated for it as the engine has to add more fuel to keep a close to stoichiometric ratio of fuel to air.

TLDR: Use whatever octane your car asks for, if you put a higher octane in it doesn't hurt, but it also doesn't add any benefit.

When it comes to ethanol regular cars can tolerate up to roughly 20% with only a reduction in fuel mileage as a result. E85 is only for cars rated to use it as they need a sensor to detect ethanol percentage and adjust fuel to air ratios accordingly.

Here's my laymen's understanding:

Higher octane fuel (85 vs 87 vs 89 etc) prevents premature detonation in the engine. Detonation needs to happen at a very specific timing in each cylinder (IFF the sparkplug is sparking), but if the fuel is too "eager" to explode it could detonate early just from the heat of the engine, which eventually breaks shit. Octane makes your fuel just a little less explosive, so higher octane rating can compensate for engines more prone to premature detonation (basically most engines that run hotter, high revving, with turbos, some modded engines etc).

Running too high octane doesn't hurt or help you if you weren't detonating prematurely before. You'd just be throwing your money away running higher than recommended by the manufacturer (ok it can help clean the engine of carbon deposits similar to how a can of seafoam would, but really you'd be better off using the seafoam, and like seafoam it'd be overkill to do it all the time).

Now using too low an octane rating, it depends. In older cars, you'll just get premature detonation and it'll blow shit up, just don't do it. Most modern cars though are smart enough to adjust their timing to compensate for low octane fuel and avoid damage (check your manual to make sure though). However, you'll be getting worse performance, worse efficiency, worse emissions, basically your car will drive worse and you won't actually be saving money with your reduced milage. Unless it's an emergency and you have no choice, get the recommended.

Okay so to quickly summarise: the octane number defines just how explosive the fuel is under compression. 100 means it's the equivalent of a 100% iso-octane mixture.

The more explosive the fuel is, the sooner it detonates as the cylinder compresses it. If it detonates too soon, at too low a compression, that's when your engine starts to knock. By adding ethanol you're increasing the pressure needed for detonation, ensuring that the ignition system ignites the fuel at the appropriate time, thus improve the engine's longevity.

Just use the octane number as required by your car.

The issue with ethanol isn't directly related to octane. It's that it can damage rubber parts in the fuel line. Particularly in cars and motorcycles that are several decades or more old. And more than ~15% ethanol would not be advisable for most modern cars as it has different properties than gasoline and your car likely would not run well on it unless you have a bifuel system.

Just add 20 cents more!

What’s your plan to appease your corporate masters?