what does Flex Fuel mean???

Was following some kind of SUV this evening and it had an emblem on the back that said "flexfuel"........

It means the vehicle can run gas or e-85 fuel.

flexible as to the type of fuel it can use

That means the tree huggers can use more fuel and think they are helping. The car can burn Gasoline, or it can make less mileage and use E-85.

It means they spent about $1,200 so they can burn fuel that cost 40% less but only has 60% of the energy and put out more "greenhouse gases".

Nothing to do with propane then??? Was just wondering because it was an American vehicle and we don't get taxfree propane and was just thinking what good it was doi9ng them.

Has more to do with the makeup of the owners wallets than the car their driving.
FLEXible wallets can carry more cash to pay for highly subsidized, low mpg, erzatz fuel.

It means it can burn straight gasoline, or E10- same as other engines, or it can burn E85, 85 % ethanol, 15% gasoline. We"ve had a Dodge Flex Fuel van since 2004. If E85 is 40 cents under gas, we come out ahead. Sometimes E85 is 70 cents under. Pretty hard to argue about multi-year experience.

The E85 was really pushed through by Harkin, other midwest
legislators and the farm lobby. It is heavily subsidized and seems
much cheaper if you do not object to higher paying taxes. It has
no purpose other than to provide a market for corn.

The purpose behind addding ethanol to fuel to make e-10,e-15 and e-85 gas is to cut down the millions of gallons of foreign oil we import into this country every day at prices we have no control over. It seems to be cheaper than pure gasoline or diesel fuel at the pump also. Grain farmers obviously benefit from this. I believe the ethanol subsidy is scheduled to expire the end of this year.

It has a different computer programming, a few different components in the fuel line system.

It can burn any mix of gasoline & ethanol from all gasoline to only 15% gasoline - the flex part.

Several stations in my state have started selling E-30, which is one of the more efficient blends - the octane, flash point, and other charachteristics of E-30 ends up being in the sweet spot of what many bigger engines USA Flex vehicles run at. While E-30 has less BTU per gallon, it burns more efficiently. With the lower cost many who actually are doing it have found it's a winner.

E-85 is so popular & effiecent & clean in Brazil, that they are importing ethanol from corn farmers of the USA. They can't produce enough from their cane.

Ethanol blends were originally promoted as being better for the environment. While burning these blends still produces polution, it is a different kind, less harmful to our lungs.

As well as the octane boost from ethanol, allowing poorer grades of gasoline to be blended so as to make the whole fuel produvtion process more effient.

The blender's credit was scheduled to end at the end of the year, but congrss axed it early, as one of the only cuts made by congress to balance the budget. Don't think the drop in the bucket of 1/3 of a year's worth of blenders credit will make a dent, but hey, as always we'll take it out on farmers again, while they tax credits for big oil were extended for at least another year.

So, we get better air, cheaper fuel, better efficency if you use the right blend in the right vehicles, and even some exports to help our national balance of trade.

And yet, a lot of folks here on a somewhat rural forum think they know it all and dump on ethanol with a lot of propaganda that came straight from Big Oil.

Kinda funny, kinda sad.

--->Paul

I ended up buying a flex fuel Van in '99. I was not trying to buy it, it was just the car the dealer wanted to sell me. I cannot get flex fuel in my area, so I have never really tried to burn any.

Last spring I ended up at a gas station in South Carolina with a E-85 pump and a very empty tank. It was 30 cents cheaper so I decided to give it a try.

My van has averaged about 19 mpg its entire life (I am at 235K miles). But it was getting about 17 mpg at the time.

After we had gone down the road a bit I checked to see my gas milage on E-85. According to my trip computer I was averaging less than 10 mpg! Oops. When the tank was empty, I switched back to regular gas. My trip computer showed 25 mpg for the next 3 tanks. I don't believe any of these readings. But I do believe the 19 mpg that my car stabilized at. Apparently the E-85 cleaned up my engine pretty well.

I wish I had actual readings to know what I was really getting on E-85. Economically I don't think it made sense. But for a "tune up in a tank" it worked great. 6 months later I am still getting the 19 mpg.

Cliff(VA)

It'll run on alcohol, but you don't have the compression ratio to run on it efficiently, because you have to have a lame c/r to run on dirty 'ol pump gasoline, and no one has come up with a reliable variable c/r device yet.

They have a sensor connected to the fuel line that can chiefer the amount of moon shine in the fuel... form their its all rocket science... A Flex fuel sensor will set ya back $800/900 bills

E 85 will clean out your wallet .Look at the btu figures on gasoline and alcohol.Pumps around here say Enriched with ethanol.Big lie.

FLEX, is short ---- for Flexable, Common sense would tell you, can use any kind of that fuel, but you have to have ( Common Sense )

it's not that Common for sure......

It's a word like hybrid, that greenie weenies throw around, so they can feel superior. Never mind that these vehicles are less fuel efficient when operating on E-85, the thing to remember is that taxpayers subsidize the fuel, or the vehicle, which would be unsaleable without said subsidy!

Variable compression ratio? Couple wierd tilt the head a bit designs- used as anti knock device. Most effective in effect variable compression ratio I"ve read about used a CVT driven supercharger on a Ford I6 engine- Ford of Brazil I sort of remember was the designer/tester. Engine had about 7.5 basic compression ratio and blower pressure could be set from 3 to 10 lbs at 1200 rpm on to 5000 rpm. Blower was a rotary vane design with minimal drag- and pressure- at idle but acted as positive displacement blower above 1000 rpm when vane tips sealed better- sort of like old Shorrok(sic?) that used to be used on English sports cars and VW Beetles. Old Buick/Olds small turbo units used to have waste gates and alcohal/water injections- this was in 1970s- and a manual waste gate override was used when running no alky and low octane gas. 2 speed superchargers were used in WW2 on some of the engines before turbos became reliable- early Mustangs with Allison engines were not as good above about 16,000 feet while the Merlin engined versions would go to high boost about 14,000 feet and maintained power at 22,000 -28,000 where the needed to go to get the high altitude German bombers and the BF109s that flew high to avoid the medium flak and the utility fighters like the P40,P39 and early P51s. Superchargers are running on the V6 GMs and a couple Ford models and I believe a couple of them are flex fuels also. Supercharger rig noted in couple articles to use a waste gate, high pressure bypass to provide some air for exhaust/cat emissions and use less bypass when running higher ethanol mixs- makes sense - ethanol would provide the extra oxygen for emissions and less bypass would mean high intake pressure-in effect higher compression ratio. Beef up engine for higher compression, use direct fuel injection and run on E85 mostly like some of the Brazilian vehicles. Little alternative for beefed up engine- may as well use it as a diesel rig. RN

(quoted from post at 21:28:06 09/10/11) It means they spent about $1,200 so they can burn fuel that cost 40% less but only has 60% of the energy and put out more "greenhouse gases".

Click to expand...

lso flex fuel is a gift in CAFE for makers to produce large gas guzzlers, & for all taxpayer to pay 51 cents/gallon for any ethanol used by anyone .

Government support for ethanol
Last reviewed: January 2011

For decades, the federal government has promoted ethanol as a renewable, homegrown alternative to gasoline in three distinct ways. Proponents see this support as necessary to get the alternative fuel into widespread availability and usage.

The first effort to support ethanol usage is a 51-cent-per-gallon tax credit to "blenders," the companies who blend ethanol into gasoline. This tax credit is intended to raise the price of ethanol for ethanol producers and corn farmers to encourage production, and to lower the price of ethanol products for consumers. It is strongly supported by farm lobbyists.

Despite the tax credit, however, E85 costs about 70 cents a gallon more than gasoline on an energy equivalent basis on average, according to the Department of Energy.

Second, the government provides significant fuel economy credits to automakers who build flex-fuel vehicles that can run on E85.

The fuel economy credit was passed as part of the Alternative Motor Fuels Act of 1988 and counts toward a manufacturer's Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, which is set by NHTSA. Under the regulations, the average fuel economy for an automaker's entire fleet of vehicles must meet a minimum miles-per-gallon figure: 30.2 for cars and 24.1 for light trucks in 2011. So the more large vehicles a manufacturer builds with gas mileage below that minimum, the more they have to be offset either by smaller vehicles that get better fuel economy or by fuel-economy credits, such as the one for FFVs. This is quite literally a loophole big enough to drive a truck through for automakers that produce many gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs. The FFV credit was intended to provide an incentive to get E85 vehicles on the road. In determining the credit, the government assumes that an FFV will run on E85 half the time and on gasoline the other half. For CAFE purposes, the E85 half is calculated as using only the 15 percent of the fuel that is gasoline. So the government rates FFVs at about 1.67 times the fuel economy that they actually get on gasoline. So our 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe, which had a CAFE rating of 16 mpg on its window sticker, was credited under CAFE rules with a rating of 27 mpg, because it can run on E85. This applies to the Tahoe we bought in New England even though we couldn't find any E85 to use in it near us. The maximum that an automaker's fleet average can be raised because of FFV credits is 1.2 mpg, and the credit is scheduled to be phased out by 2018.

Of the 13 billion gallons of ethanol expected to be produced in 2010 and 2011, less than 2 percent, or 260 million gallons, will be blended into E85. Because our tests show that E85 provides 27 percent lower fuel economy, those 260 million gallons are able to replace only a little more than 214 million gallons of gasoline—a tiny fraction of the 170 billion gallons consumed on American roads every year.

While the credits have put millions of FFVs on the road since the late 1990s, most have been large SUVs, pickups, and sedans that get relatively poor gas mileage and don't do well in Consumer Reports testing.

In the end, these FFV credits have indirectly allowed more large, gas-guzzling vehicles to be sold. As a result, these credits have increased annual U.S. gasoline consumption by about 1 percent, or 1.2 billion gallons, according to a 2005 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit organization that focuses on safety and the environment.

The third government initiative to promote ethanol is a mandate Congress passed as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requiring refiners to blend up to 36 billion gallons of ethanol into gasoline by 2022.

This mandate, however, is bumping up against physical and economic limits.

Increasing ethanol penetration much beyond current production will require either expanded sales and distribution of E85, or greater concentrations of ethanol in base gasoline. Automakers say this would essentially require all cars to be flex-fuel vehicles.

From an alternative-energy perspective, it doesn't matter in what proportions ethanol is blended. Whether mixed in E85 or E10, a given amount of ethanol still goes just as far in reducing demand for gasoline.

Ethanol advocates' latest gambit is to increase the percentage of ethanol blended into gas for regular cars from 10 percent to 15 percent. In March 2009, an industry trade group, Growth Energy, petitioned the EPA to allow E15 to be used in regular cars. And Underwriters Laboratories certified regular gas pumps to dispense ethanol blends up to 15 percent.

Furthermore, energy experts at Argonne National Laboratory say that corn production can't be expanded enough to produce more than about 15 billion gallons of ethanol. In 2009, 21 percent of the corn crop was used to produce ethanol, according to the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA). So to meet the 36-billion-gallon mandate will require new sources of ethanol. The government also says corn is not a good long-term fuel source because it diverts corn from the food supply.