As gasoline becomes more and more unavailable society pushes to a new fuel. Scientists are working around the clock in order to produce this new fuel. The fuel that happens to be the next best thing is ethanol. Ethanol is made from corn (renewable resource) and then it is mixed with gasoline. The resulting mixture is called E85 for 85% Ethanol. This ethanol will help demand for gasoline go down and help bring in more money to local farms and our government. This ethanol happens to cost 10 to 30 cents less than gasoline. This sounds like a good thing. The down side is that the E85 mixture produces 72% the amount of energy that regular gasoline produces. This translates into a lower mpg for your vehicle if you use E85. If you have a 23 mpg of gasoline then using E85 you only will have 16mpg. The other draw backs are you must have a "flex fuel" vehicle in order to burn E85. The general public however is not aware that they are able to burn this new fuel even if they have a "flex fuel" vehicle. Out of the people that are aware they could burn the E85 only 10% actually do use E85.
I believe that this new fuel will be the answer. Even though it is more expensive to burn then gasoline, in the future it will be cheaper. As gasoline becomes more and more scarce the price will rise and this price will drive consumers for the cheaper E85. It is not the best thing but it is the better thing. Gasoline needs to be in the past and we must move to a new source of energy.
--Lee Single
