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by mgkimsal
1229 days ago
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Opening a can of worms, perhaps, but... wouldn't converting ICE cars to be able to run on flex fuel be a better intermediate stage? From what I've seen/read, many cars can be converted for under $1000. With more FF cars on the road, more stations would have incentive to carry the fuel, and... fewer emissions, etc. Full on move to EV has always seemed like the big moonshot, and is being pushed back on heavily, but we have other levers to pull to help slow emissions while a more gradual shift to EV happens. I say this as someone who bought a car a few years back that supports flex fuel, and have been more keen to use it when I can over the last couple years. MPG goes down around... 10-15%, but the cost is usually.... 10-15% less, so that seems to balance out some, but flex fuels reduce emissions (no?) which would seem to be the more pressing concern. |
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I live in California, have a Subaru BRZ, and for a while I had a Flex Fuel "kit" installed onto my fuel line/ECU, along with a specialized tune.
At least for that platform the cost depends on how you want to run E85. For me it was roughly $2000 or a bit more for: the tune itself (on a dyno, there are some canned tunes that are cheaper but not necessarily as reliable), the flex fuel kit, and the license for the tuning platform.
In the end, the mileage was worse. I think on pump 91 I can average 26mpg with a good mix of highway/city driving, less if purely city.
With E85 I was lucky to get 16-18mpg. And I've heard it's worse for cars with more power (BRZ's are relatively underpowered, about 185hp at the wheels).
Price-wise, E85 was cheaper, sometimes a difference of $1 to $1.50 less than pump 91 (required octane for my car).
I guess it depends on what the goal is, because for some cars it'll mean filling up a lot more often; I'd be curious if the delta in emissions between pump 87/91 and E85 is substantial enough for the additional fill-ups to be worthwhile.