How To Destroy Your Car’s Engine
This post is for you if your car’s gas cap is black. DO NOT put the ethanol and gasoline mixture into your car unless you are trying to destroy your engine from the inside out. Cars with the yellow gas cap can safely use this alternative fuel, also known as E85. Everyone else beware!
Before any of you yellow cappers get feeling too smug, don’t let the cheaper price for this alcohol based fuel fool you. It actually costs you more because Ethanol has less energy per gallon than regular gasoline. In fact, you may have already noticed that your MPG has significantly dropped.
Let’s say you can get 20 miles out of one gallon of regular gas. That’s 130.96 MegaJoules of energy your car used to haul your butt down the road. Because E85 only has 96.86 MegaJoules per gallon, you will only go 14.79 miles with that one gallon.
In terms of cost, the most expensive station in my area gouges $4.109 for a gallon of regular. In our 20 mpg example, that’s 20.5 cents per mile. We have another station that sells E85 at $3.769 per gallon. That looks cheap but using our example, that means you pay 25.5 cents per mile! If ethanol is to be cost effective, it would have to be cheaper than $3.04 for that gallon.
