It'll be interesting to see whether the EPA comes to a definite conclusion about the environmental advantage/impact of corn-based ethanol. Not many land-use scenarios show it saving more CO2 emissions than the production causes, but the agricultural lobby has strong opinions the other way.
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/renewablefuels/420f09024.htm

 

The drop in gas prices apparently caused E-85 to increase in cost. One station by me is almost 30 cents more that 87 unleaded.

It had been about 30-40 cents less, previously.

 

So..we got 20-30% less MPG...$.30 more per gallon and the lobbyists making money( easy money) for the farmers...hmmmmm and it might not be so good after all

 

And you pay American farmers instead of OPEC.....

 

Except the power to make this wonderful E85 is from foreign oil since we won't build nuclear plants and won't let the oil companies drill domestically.

 

That same oil would be used to fuel non e85 capable cars anyway. At lesat this way money goes back into farmers pockets. Plus once the culuose plants get up and running, things should look better. Higher octane, keeps engines cleaner on the inside, etc. If an E85 motor is tuned to only run on E85, your mileage won't vary much if any, or better, from running gas. Motors can't be tuned to run at the 100-105 octain E85 has, cause then it won't run good on regular ole 87.

The other, different subject all together.

And to the OP aobut the cost. It's estimated it cost about $150 to make a flex fuel vehicle over gas only.

 

I'm pretty sure it costs more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of gas so we're using a lot of foreign oil to make a fuel that is less efficient than gas.

 

On that note, you are correct. But you have to start someplace. Once celuose ethanol gets going. That cost will come down. Good thing the automakers didn't just stick with the original Model T design and call it quits.

 

Putting food in our gas tanks is a really bad idea.

 

It's not going to go down when it uses x amount of energy per gallon to produce. Things like transport and raw materials costs might go down but the energy costs to produce will not go down, they will only go up as the rest of the cost of energy goes up.

Our method of ethanol production will never be effective using corn as the raw material.

To make ethanol viable we need to improve the process which means taking a hard look at matching Brazil's method of production. Using a better raw material and using mini-refineries that burn the waste material from a previous batch as the fuel for the current batch.