Is E-85-nergy Policy Headed Down the Wrong Path?

Washington DC March 30, 2007; The AIADA newsletter reported that a series of high-profile meetings between President Bush and the heads of the Detroit automakers on their role in the nation's energy debate have resulted in many photo ops, said a recent report in BusinessWeek.

But what if any changes will be made to the domestic manufacturers' lineups that will provide substantive answers to the nation's energy dependence?

According to the BusinessWeek report, entitled, "The Dirty Secret About Clean Cars," the policies for flexible-fuel vehicles - at the epicenter of the discussions - will have little significance due in part to the shortage of ethanol pumps across the U.S.

"Detroit's automakers have been pumping out hundreds of thousands of the vehicles, even though most consumers have no access to alternative fuels because they're available at only a fraction of U.S. gas stations," the report said.

While fuel economy is based on the assumption that flex-fuel owners are using 50 percent ethanol and 50 percent gasoline to fuel their cars, just one percent of the nation's flexible-fuel vehicles actually use what's known as E85 - 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline - while the other 99 percent of flex-fuel cars are using gasoline as their only fuel source.

What's more, according to the report, the more flex-fuel cars and trucks that are produced, the more gasoline is consumed - dramatically increasing greenhouse gas emissions and deepening the country's dependence on petroleum.