Yeah and the race car people don't care about a lot of things people who use and build ordinary cars do. In a normal car it's not going to perform as well.
Which goes back to we're not going to be making a performance argument. People don't drive race cars.
Regarding your comments about the flex fuel cars, yeah they will do well on the fuel. I think it's Brazil that runs mostly that type of fuel.
Personally, given that we don't use corn which is terrible on the planet and inefficient, using that kind of fuel is a really good idea and has a number of advantages so don't get me wrong.
At this point in time, a lot of drivers and vehicles will be negatively impacted.
> At this point in time, a lot of drivers and vehicles will be negatively impacted.
The impact is inevitable. But now is the time to plan for it.
USA has huge strategic reserves, but they only will last for a few months at the most, and we probably want to keep some reserves open in case things get worse.
The immediate concern is securing a fuel from a "friendly" nation right now. With ~7% of USA's oil coming from Russia and that 7% about to disappear from our markets, we need to come up with an alternative and quickly.
Ethanol is one of the most reasonable, short-term alternatives I can think of. Corn is controversial, but USDA research and Department Of Energy / Argonne National Labs research is clearly in favor of corn-ethanol (with switchgrass / advanced biofuels even better). (A lot of the controversies around corn ethanol are from smaller researchers, no big research group I can see frankly)
> Or... maybe people just use less. 7 percent? Easy.
E10 (current standard) == 90-units of gasoline / petroleum.
E15 == 85-units, or a 5.6% reduction. That's most of that 7% reduction already handled.
E20 == 80-units, or a 12% reduction in gasoline from E10. Done and done.
I'm not trying to oversell anything. It just seems like one of the easiest sources of alternative fuel we got. You're right in that more advanced ethanol exists beyond corn, but those advanced refineries only exist in small numbers.
Realistically speaking, if we are to ramp-up ethanol production in this country, its gonna be corn. The advanced-biofuels are _almost_ ready, but still something that's a year or two away from mass production. (They're done the "research" phase and we're even making millions-of-gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year... but its not the billions we need quite yet)
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I'm not trying to "oversell corn", I'm just acknowledging that we can't really rely upon adv. biofuel (ex: Switchgrass ethanol) quite yet. I'm optimistic on that front. But if we're talking about solutions that may exist by the time these Russian sanctions hit our economy (ie: once our domestic strategic oil reserves run out), its looking like Corn is the short-term answer.
Which goes back to we're not going to be making a performance argument. People don't drive race cars.
Regarding your comments about the flex fuel cars, yeah they will do well on the fuel. I think it's Brazil that runs mostly that type of fuel.
Personally, given that we don't use corn which is terrible on the planet and inefficient, using that kind of fuel is a really good idea and has a number of advantages so don't get me wrong.
At this point in time, a lot of drivers and vehicles will be negatively impacted.