New Personal best, 53.76 MPG :)
 

I decided to fill-up on ethanol free gas for the first time and I just filled up again with E0. I set a new personal best of 53.76 MPG. My previous personal record was 51.6 MPG and that was in the summer with regular Chevron E10 and a max speed of 50 MPH. I'm going to keep filling up for a couple tanks to verify the results of switching to E0 but so far it looks like I've gained 10 MPG by using E0.

I'd like to thank http://pure-gas.org for helping me find 2 E0 gas stations in my area.

Adam

That's awesome! It makes me wist the State of Florida did not outlaw E0 as of 2010.

Yet another reason I'll never live in Florida again. The only purpose I see for having ethanol as a fuel is as E85 for sports cars like my Supra. We don't worry about the gas gauge in sports cars (fuel economy is calculated in Smiles Per Gallon).

Sweet personal best honestabe.

I calculated your percent of difference (comparing your typical E10 fill-ups to E0) to be about 23.4%. Had to find something to occupy my time today - I'm home sick.

I realize that your experience is nowhere near strict ABA testing (temperature, tailwinds, good traffic flow etc. could have helped to boost mpg for that tank).

However, the large percent difference is hard to ignore. I can't help but wonder if some vehicles see greater losses from E10 than the 2-4% suggested by the EPA. 23.4% - even with so many other variables, it seems like a lot.

Somewhat related calculations (feel free to skip)

Of course, when your already up as high as ~50mpg, 23.4% doesn't mean as much in terms of fuel consumption as it does at, for example, 20mpg.

Over 1000 miles, an increase from 43.58 to 53.76mpg saves 3.83 gal. of fuel
Over the same distance, an increase from 20 to 24.68mpg (same percent increase) saves 9.48 gal.

The above is reminiscent of what I learned from The MPG Illusion from Duke about MPG versus GPM as a measurement of FE.

But it makes me think: E10 seems to hurt drivers of larger vehicles more in terms of physical fuel consumption and of course cash.

While I may only save 3.83 gallons over 1000 miles, I save 31.4 gallons over 1000 miles compared to a 20 MPG car. To date I've saved $1900.14 and 660.94 gallons compared to a 20 MPG car. This is in only the first 23117 miles that I've logged so far. I paid $1300 for my Geo and it took only the first 6 months of ownership for it to have paid for itself (not including the savings on my insurance).

Yeah, I see what you're saying.

I just find it interesting that even when the same percent of difference is applied, a less efficient vehicle takes a lesser mpg hit, but a greater 'gallons per mile' hit. With the math on paper (screen) however, it's not nearly as surprising.

Hope I didn't hijack your thread though. I know this is supposed to be a success story thread and I'm here typing about ethanol.



Cool that you managed to find some E0. Stations seem to be hard to come by, and I hear they're thinking about E15 soon.

You're perfectly welcome to keep saying what you posted Kodak. I welcome that kind of conversation in this thread. In fact, I've been tracking my stats on paper since I bought my car (well, the first fill-up for accurate numbers) and recently created an Excel spreadsheet that automatically does the calculations for various aspects. I built it so that it can be modified to compare any 2 vehicles and show you the differences. I can e-mail it to anyone who wants a copy. It's in MS Office 2007.

Thank you for posting the link to pure-gas.org. I found a station (Santa Fe, NM) that is not exactly local to me, but it's reasonably accessible when I'm down that way. For a long time, I was so proud that all the stations in my area (Los Alamos, NM) have "real gas", then one by one they all went to E10...actually, they say "up to 10% Ethanol", but I'm assuming that means it's almost always E10.

Your MPG improvement is startling.

You're welcome. 10 MPG is a lot by any standards. I will see how consistent that is though over the next couple tanks.