The Detroit 3 (Chrysler, Ford, and GM) have produced over 6 million Flex Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) for distrobution in the United States. These vehicles are all capable of running E85 Ethanol. Furthermore they have made a commitment to have over 50% of their vehicles capable of running E85, or biodiesel by 2012. We're attempting to determine if that is volume (doubtfull) or models capable of supporting an FFV or Biodiesel engine (more likely).

One of the common problems that owners of E85 capable vehicles face is a lack of places to fuel up on anything more than E10. Were the 6 million FFV capable cars and trucks currently on the road to fuel up on E85, they would use just under 4 billion gallons of ethanol a year. Current production of ethanol in 2006 was 4.86 billion gallons based on information from http://ethanolproducer.com.

So the obvious question is where is all of that ethanol going? Most of it is going to create the E10 (E6 in California) that regular cars burn. Some feel that this is a poor use of the ethanol produced and that if it were used for E85 only there would be enough to properly fuel the FFVs out there.The downside to that is that the gas-only vehicles onthe road would no longer have the benefit of the E10 that helps them burn cleaner and gain octane.

To fuel the FFVs and to provide for the planned increases, ethanol production will have to increase drastically. Already there is talk of corn shortages for food with the conversion to ethanol, and concern that FFVs will consume more corn than is available.

This is fueling a raging debate. The US currently exports 40-50 million tons of corn each year, which can feed 130 million people. It its uncertain how much of this corn is for human consumption and how much is feed for animals. Some people predict that this will cause the other nations that currently export oil, weapons, or drugs to have a need to grown food and invest in agriculture instead.

One thing is for certain for E85 to be a viable solution, there needs to be a different way to procure it other than corn which crows a lot of plant and consumes a lot of resoruces for not a lot of fuel producing seed. There is a lot of investigation into other sources, such as soybean, or potatoes.

Soybean is a uniquely favorable source as it grows extremely well in the US and has high yields. It can be used for biodiesel or ethanol. Current stuides do show that more potential energy is available from biodiesel than ethanol and many predict that ethanol will be short lived and not a long term source of fuel.

We're working on getting past the quoted statistics and to the real data on this to help shed light on the battle between alternative fuels.