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The Feds Say Cutting Fuel With Ethanol Will Bring Down Gas Prices. We're Not Buying It
(www.thedrive.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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If you drive an old car that’s not designed for ethanol it’s gonna fuck up all the seals in the motor.
Even if you drive a new car everything ive heard from actual mechanics is that it causes much more buildup and bullshit in the engine and you end up spending far more in maintenance due to using E85 then you save paying less per gallon for the fuel.
Personally in my step father's flex fuel truck the MPG dropped by like 20% on E85 thus evaporating even more of these "savings".
Ethanol is a trash substitute. We should be going full electric and putting all our money into that, but of course that dont prop up the corn and soybean farmers to keep them voting Republican.
For the record: ethanol burns with no carbon residue. All you want get is CO2 and water. Some countries run on E100 ethanol. Ethanol is used in drag and indycar racing, look it up.
Ethanol burns with 1/3 less energy vs gas, but much higher octane rating.
So while you will get 25% less fuel economy with E85, it costs less than half as much. But pickup drivers never math good.
It varies by area. My E85 is well above half e15. Like within a dollar so at recent best, 33% less.
And you still make less power per gallon, and so don’t really save anything. The only think it improves is pre-detonation, which only matters in super high compression or turbo cars (for whom gas money isn’t the problem anyway).