Is the Fit compatible with E85 ethanol fuel?

 

Required Fuel: Regular Unleaded - unless a car is specifically designed to use E85 you don't want to use it! Much damage to rubber bits and not good performance is possible.

 

Oh god absolutely not. This is why GM should be shot for their E85 campaign...lots of people think they should do it and don't understand the requirements of a flex fuel vehicle.

 

I very much doubt you would want to do it even if you could.

Consumer Reports in their latest issue reports on a series of tests they did on a Flexible Fuel Vehicle powered by E85. Because ethanol has a much lower energy content than gasoline, they found that switching from gasoline to E85 resulted in a 27% drop in gas mileage. If you could run a Fit on E85, and you were getting 30 mpg on gasoline, you would only get 21.9 mpg on E85. Your range would drop from 324 miles to 237 miles.

 

I was not thinking of it as the preferred fuel, simply an alternative if necessary. These are troubling times and it pays to know what your options should you need to exercise them...

 

I know, i'm not saying you're a moron or anything. It just bothers me that GM's advertising touts E85 as the solution for ending our dependence of foreign oil and a lot of people don't understand what E85 will do to a non flex fuel vehicle. Several people have bought E85 in good nature and are now in repair...it's unfortunate. But that's advertising.

I'd think that if in a desperate situation you could run one tankful of E85 but kiss the car goodbye after that...that's a lifethreatening situation though. Most gas nowadays comes with SOME ethanol mixed in but not more than 10% usually.

 

You could set up a fit to run E85 if you really wanted too, but you'd probably need bigger injectors, or at least ECU tweaking to make it run properly. Also, there's a lot of technology in the fit to help it burn gasoline very efficiently, which doesn't make this motor a good E85 candidate.

Somebody already pointed out that e85 isn't as efficient to burn as dino-gas. The advantage of E85 isn't economy, it's the fact that it's a renewable resource, mostly made from corn. We can grow corn right here in the US, and over time it could (in 5-10-15? years...) become cheaper to use than gasoline. There are a lot of hurdles that have to be overcome to get there, but imagine E85 at say 1.50 a gallon when "real" gas is $3.00. That helps take the sting out of the lower efficiency of E85. Also, we're much less dependant on political factors that cause the price of oil to be unstable.

 

there is a few debatable points here.
1. you can do anything if you really want, but most often the reason its not done is because it isnt cost effective.
2. bigger injectors, ecu tweaking? and a whole reconstruction of all the fuel systen to accomodate the corrosive effects of E85.
3. corn, is not the best candidate for E85, but of course the corn produciing states do not want you to know that.
4. "could become cheaper", is a unreliable statement. many things "could" be. but often arent and wont.
5. as mentioned E85 is about 65% of the power value of gasoline, so you need to have it priced about 65% of gas to be at least competitive.
6. if the oil cartel, felt threatened, it would simply turn up the knob and make it cheaper.
7. a renewable resource, is not something valuable. the fact that there are untold reserves of oil, not utilized is a competitive influence.
8. E85 is a carrot, held up by a few politicians, to make you think they are interested in your life, they are not.
9. E85 in not a oil product, so why would you think you could buy it at a gas station? of course, if you lived next to a E85 manufacturing plant, that would be sweet. but since most of the USA does not, what do we do?
10. its not a fact that corn is renewable. what happens when a corn crop has a bad year? or if we do use corn produced E85, do we still subsidize the corn producing to keep it cost effective, or do we let economics take place and charge what it really costs to grow a barrel of corn?

dont believe me, go to google, do your homework, read about E85 for yourself.

 

Ok, I'll bite. I respect the fact that you know what you're saying, but as you said the points are debatable.


Corn has a life cycle >1 year. It is a renewable resource. Bad year for corn? Come on, dude. This is a BIG country. You can grow corn almost anywhere. (including on sites that are unfit to live, as long as you don't eat it.) E85 (ethanol+gasoline) can come from other sources, but right now in the US, corn is the "best" (easiest/cheapest to grow) source. If we lived in another climate, other sources might be a better option. Oh yeah, and corn doesn't come in barrels, it comes in bushels.
The corrosive nature of E85 has been exaggerated greatly, and there are additives in commercial-grade E85 that mitigate these factors further. I'll bet you dollars or doughnuts that if you had proper flow/metering, the fit's fuel system would run E85 fine for a long, long time. However, I agree (as I think I stated) that E85 and the Fit aren't a good match in the "big picture".
Oil could become cheaper, however the point is to reduce our dependance on these foreign entities that control it. Using E85 will never eliminate our need for oil anyways.
E85/cornohol/gasohol/ethanol/etc... have been studied by engineers a lot longer than politicians have known or cared about it.

Disagree? OK, no problem. E85 isn't the solution for everything, but it would be a shame to dismiss it as an option without doing you own (not google's) research. Some folks even make a living at it...

With all that being said, E85 / ethanol won't be a real option for a few years. That leaves plenty of time for us to argue.

 

not only that, in CA there are 4 ethanol refuel stations. Only one is accessible to the public.

ethanol is only good in brazil, where their climate is optimal for the crop (sugar cane) to make ethanol. ethanol as a fuel source for america is a joke.


Honda is to make US diesel. Thse guys will be great. why? b/c biodeisel is a good cuz its as clean as ethanol, but MUCH higher mileage than gasoline.

 

you cant grow corn anywhere, as here is Ca, there is not enough water to grow other crops of more importance that do not have government subsidies that corn has.
the corrosive nature of E85 is not exagerated, studies show that even if E85 used the available corn, that would drive up prices of other items that use corn, such as cattle and other livestock products that use corn, so besides corroding the fuel system, it will corrode the corn supply system.
I work as a robot doing some developement, but I doubt I could source the funds to make a living researching the effects of E85 on fuel systems.
if you think I know what I am talking about, at least I have you fooled.

 

How about marijuana? we could burn that in our engines! its the best resource cuz.....
1) it can be grown anywhere, even here in sunny cali!
2) it'll make ur engine do things you never thought possible
3) there is competition in prices between which dealer... i mean..... gas station you get it from

hahahaha j/p its the only thing that popped up in my mind. FYI i have never done the stuff. Ok back to the topic:

I read the C/D (car and driver) ad about GM and their E85 and to be honest it didn't really win me over that e85 is going to relate anything close to gas. I know it's supposed to be cheaper n all that mumbo jumbo but corn? no thnx that is meant to go in my stomach and not my gas tank.

 

It's not my job to convince anyone that E85 is worth investigating, but I'm really surprised at the resistance to alternative ideas that are being shown. I don't think anyone (even the politicians) have said that it would solve all our problems. It's just a shame that people are all too happy reading the negative hype to even consider it. Biodiesels are also full of drawbacks, but I hope to see wider use of them over time. (I'd rather have an ethanol fit than a diesel fit, unless the diesel was part of a hybrid powertrain. I'd run biodiesel if I had a bus, though.)

BTW, there are dozens of powertrain engineers developing E85/biodiesel/fuel cells for automotive use right now here in Detroit (not just the home of the big 3, but there's also tech and development centers for tier one supplers like Bosch and others.) It's funny that the money hungry big 3 are more likely to stretch for an energy solution while the earth loving folks out west are saying it can't be done as they continue to swill gasoline. Oh well, y'all are going to break off and fall in the ocean anyhow.
Oh yeah, we're also growing corn (as well as soy and canola) on industrial waste sites. If it can grown here, the not-so-polluted inland empire of California (even been to 29 palms?) won't be any harder. There are also ways of growing and harvesting crops with minimal water waste.

Check it out.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0820192106.htm

 

Ethanol is a politically attractive concept to promote as an answer to the energy crisis because at first glance it seems to provide a promising market for a commodity (corn) whose production is heavily subsidized by our gov’t, and which is almost invariably produced in abundance which creates a glut in the market, which lowers the price so farmers have to grow more and more and more . . . An in-depth and lively discussion of this can be found in the recently published best-seller “Omnivore’s Dilemma" by Michael Pollan.

Corn production requires lots of irrigation water and farmers often overuse ag chemicals which end up polluting our waterways, along with plenty of topsoil that should have stayed on the farm. Last I heard ethanol manufacturing plants use 3 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of ethanol so the entire prospect of ethanol is hard on our dwindling soil and water resources. Folks in other parts of the country may not realize that the western part of the US is going to really suffer from water shortages in the years ahead.

Ethanol does, as CR notes, have a much lower energy content than gasoline so for vehicles like the Fit the small gas tank becomes more of a handicap. Issues of corrosion etc. are also of concern for vehicles not designed to burn alternative fuels. For owners of gasoline-efficient non-flex-fuel cars, ethanol makes no sense at all.

In the “big picture,” ethanol may become one of many strategies used to offset the energy crisis we can no longer deny has arrived. However, from what I understand through researching the issue and speaking with some of the “experts” at various water conferences I have attended, for ethanol to hold any real promise as an alternative fuel it will need to be made not from corn or sugar cane (carbohydrate--sugar) but from crops such as switchgrass (cellulose).

Wikipedia acknowledges this:
Cellulosic ethanol is a blend of normal ethanol that can be produced from a great diversity of biomass including waste from urban, agricultural, and forestry sources. Unlike normal ethanol, which is made from sugars and starches, cellulosic ethanol is produced from cellulose. There are at least two methods of production of cellulosic ethanol—enzymatic hydrolysis and synthesis gas fermentation. Neither process generates toxic emissions when it produces ethanol. The technology is very new and exists in pilot configurations where testing is ongoing.
According to US Department of Energy studies conducted by the Argonne Laboratories of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, sugar-fermented ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 18% to 29% over gasoline.


WHOA! Does everybody see that sugar-fermented ethanol only reduces GHG emissions by 19-29% over gasoline? But if ethanol has 27% less energy content than gasoline (as CR attests), we’ll have to burn more ethanol to go as many miles. Looks to me like the greenhouse gas argument for sugar based ethanol is a wash.

So the only thing that really makes sense is cellulosic ethanol.

Problem is, production of switchgrass as cellulosic feedstock, or the utilization of cellulose wastestreams from other sources (paper and lumber mills, for instance) represents a new industry that is not influenced by agri-business interests such as Monsanto and Dow Chemical, who sell pesticides and fertilizers and genetically modified crop varieties to farmers who grow CORN. Switchgrass needs little or no water and no chemicals; nor does it need plowing or even planting once it is established so it does not support a lot of side industries such as farm machinery. Recovering the wastestream of a paper mill or lumber mill is called recycling, and we used to do a lot more of it back in the '80s and '90s than we're doing now. This bottom-feeder industry does not have many friends in high places.

The real question is if the policy makers in our gov’t have the will to support cellulose based ethanol production even though none of their friends in the chemical industry will benefit from this new industry with potentially fabulous profits.

Again, from Wikipedia:
President Bush, in his State of the Union address delivered January 31, 2006, proposed to expand the use of cellulosic ethanol.

We shall see.

 

E85, is not the answer, to our dependency on foreign oil. dreaming we could grow corn anywhere, (like 29 palms), and use it for E85 production, is just that, dreaming. I am not against developing biofuels, but along with so many other forms of fuel like hydrogen, its not somethig we can use at the moment to resolve our dependency on foreign oil. US production of oil is below what it could be, why not simply increase that? (but not here in so cal! just in your backyard ok)

I sometimes think, the situation of the US development of the many various forms of energy for consumption, reminds me of the many various directions germany was faced with at the end of WWII. not knowing which item to develop, time ran out before one could be developed to profit from. lets hope USA, and the world, does not repeat that.

 

Everyone wants to find a silver bullet that'll fix all our problems instantly and painlessly.

There isn't one.

We need to look as much at the demand side of the equation as the supply side, to achieve balance.

Replacing a gas guzzler with a more efficient vehicle like the Fit is a step in the right direction. So is reducing dependency on our automobiles altogether by sharing rides, walking, bicycling and taking public transportation whenever possible.

As gas prices reach new high plateaus, such options will become more attractive and our habits may shift. That's what "the market" is supposed to do. But sometimes it takes a long time, and in this case we may not have that much time to burn, as joeFit points out.

What really needs to happen is that our communities need to revert back to a different model, whereby we can walk to the many places we need to go, rather than living in the suburbs and driving long distances to go anywhere. But it is hard to back out of where we are today.

Elsewhere on this forum I have recommended an excellent film for folks wondering how we got into this pickle, where we are so dependent on our cars. Check out "The End of Suburbia." It is entertaining and sobering all at once.

 

As has been mentioned, the Fit isn't a flex-fuel vehicle. So no, you can't switch between E10 and E85 in your Fit.

Of course you could retool your Fit for E85, or E100 for that matter. Ethanol has a much higher effective octane rating that gas, hence you can run higher compression ratios and increase performance over a typical flex fuel motor = You can compensate for the lower energy content by tuning for ethanol. The lower mpg numbers for ethanol are reflective of running ethanol in a flex fuel vehicle with a fixed compression ratio. There have been some promising experiments with variable compression motors and that sort of technology would make ethanol performance a non-issue.

As for sustainability and such, all I can tell you is that the conversion from nearly 100% fossil fuel to some lesser number will not be hassle free or immediate. The question isn't over junk like "you can grow corn anywhere"... That is arguing over minutae. It is about whether you are better off as a species when you use a renewable resource or a non-renewable resource. And if you are worried about greenhouse gas emissions while you are at it, then you should be looking at not just getting off of fossil fuel but ditching internal combustion entirely.

My hope is that among the people who are putting their money down on cars like the Fit or the Versa etc..., or into Hybrids like the Civic Hybrid or the Prius etc... You will have some that are looking even further ahead at deeper solutions.

My job involves being very involved with the issues of greenhouse gas emissions and transportation policy, and I can say with high confidence that the solution to any of these problems is both technological and cultural. The culture has to be willing to change, and the technology has to be available to give people the chance to effect that change. New progress of technology like PZEV, ZEV, FCV, PlugIn, Hybrid, etc... follow a predictable pattern: theory, one off, expensive to the public, affordable to the public, competitively priced, and finally commonplace. We are lucky to have a few early adopters that are helping some good technology move ahead through that process. For instance: Hybrids are in the process of bridging the last two steps. The current numbers indicate that just under 2% of light vehicle sales were hybrids in August 2006. That is amazing for a technology that wasn't available at retail just a few years ago.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006...es_of_hyb.html


Have the foresight to look at solutions as part of a continuum, and not simply as a real-time pocketbook issue. The automobile was more expensive and more hassle than the horse at one point and most people thought that it would never catch on. Who would by gasoline or diesel when your horse worked just fine? Don't be the guy who is thinking that your "horse" is gonna be the best choice in 10 or 20 years.

 

straight from honda:

Fuels that exceed the EPA's approved oxygenate percentages for conventional and reformulated gasolines must be clearly labeled on the pump. One example of such a fuel is "E85," which contains 85% ethanol. Do not use such fuels in your vehicle. These fuels will cause performance problems, and may damage your vehicle's engine, fuel system, and emission control system. This damage would not be covered under warranty.

 

back to back with a high compression motor, 100% ethonal makes less hp than gasoline, or E10. thats in real world testing.

 

I'm sure that it does. My point is that flex fuel motors with a fixed compression ratio are limited by the need to run gasoline, or E10. The compression ratios need to be in the 9:1 or 10:1 range to run 87 octane unleaded. If you were only running E85 or E100 you could run higher compression ratios (in the 13:1 range) and get more usable power, thereby needing less fuel.