Interesting Find at Gas Station....Non-Ethanol Gas

[mgale1911]

Why is my 1.4 sonic average 31.5

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Probably how you drive it. First week I bought mine I drove very unreasonably slow just to see its best mpg and got what the computer said was 47 really more like 44-45. Note that I'm driving normally and having fun here and there it says 36 mpg I calculated it out to be 33 mpg average.

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[mitdr774]

It's Cenex. The only station in town with branded fuel. Says right on the pump "contains no ethanol" station owner asked for it for his Mercedes and Lexus and BMW lol.

wouldn't mind a few places doing that in my area.

 

[Natesriv]

1st fill up, averaged about 35.3 mpg...I ususally get 31.8-32.6 mpg..
However, this tank had a few more highway miles..

I'll keep filling with this and see how it averages out.. so far nothing special...

Of course, having a lead foot doesn't help... I can't help that though! People drive too slow and this car just scoots!!!

 

[Stew]

Why is my 1.4 sonic average 31.5

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Not sure if you have an automatic or stick, but the combined mpg rating for the 1.4 auto is actually 31 mpg, stick combined mpg rating is 33. So it sounds like you are right where you should be.

Of course if you tend to drive more highway miles then I would expect it to be a little closer to the highway rating. Heavy use of things like AC will lower mileage some, etc.

 

[Natesriv]

2nd fill up

35.1 mpg

I was averaging 31-32 so I'm seeing about 3 mpg better...however, I take a highway route home 1 day a week (Golf league)...so I wonder if on the highway I'm getting closer to 40mpg and that's messing up my average. My old average was established before golf league and didn't have that highway route on it....

Still 35.1 mpg is pretty good!

 

[Natesriv]

6.1 gallons, 37.7mpg (two 25mile highway stints)...

I'm starting to like this non-ethanol gas!!!!

 

[Swordsmith]

This is interesting, even if it isn't really unexpected. Ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline, so it should take fewer gallons to go a given distance with ethanol free gas, in theory.

But the difference is fairly small, considering we are talking just 10%... worse, 10% nominally, because really 10% varies anywhere from 10% down to 0%.

Several questions:

1) how sure are you that you are really seeing a difference in the car, as opposed to driving slightly more conservatively. I know it sounds crazy or even insulting to suggest this, but studies have shown there is a high tendency to unconciously drive just a little more conservatively when testing a mod... and one of the biggest factors in mpg is in how we drive. You already admitted to having a lead foot, what if you are driving with a silver foot instead?

2) how much are you paying per gallon for the ethanol free vs the regular? In other words, are you getting more miles per gallon but paying so much more for the fuel that you end up getting fewer miles per dollar?

3) does this affect your available power? In other words, do you get a max of 138 hp with regular E10, and only a max of 130 hp with this new E0?

 

[Scot]

Where I'm at, the E0 fuel is 90 octane and costs more than E10 93 octane.

I could see if someone were comparing this E0 to 87 octane E10, there would be a noticeable difference in fuel economy. I get where you're headed Swordsmith: 10% of E10 fuel has roughly 60% of the energy of 100% gasoline - so the difference in fuel economy should not be much higher - certainly not easily measurable.

 

[Swordsmith]

Where I'm at, the E0 fuel is 90 octane and costs more than E10 93 octane.

I could see if someone were comparing this E0 to 87 octane E10, there would be a noticeable difference in fuel economy. I get where you're headed Swordsmith: 10% of E10 fuel has roughly 60% of the energy of 100% gasoline - so the difference in fuel economy should not be much higher - certainly not easily measurable.

Should be... roughly 6% better at best. But as I mentioned, E10 really has somewhere between 0% and 10% ethanol, just as E85 has between 85% and 70% ethanol. When ethanol is cheaper than gasoline, they blend it up to the strength on the label. When ethanol is more expensive, they don't put as much in. SO say the average is 5% ethanol, that would mean you'd see a 3% difference, on average, using the same octane E0 vs E10. If you're getting 50mpg (just as a nice round number) then we're talking an average of 1.5mpg difference.

If that's right, and you're paying $4 per gallon for E10, you only save money if the price of E0 is less than $4.06 per gallon.

But driving the car is much more informative than these back of the envelope calculations; what is the real, as opposed to theoretical, difference? Down side of that is, it's really hard to control for driver bias.. and I can get 22mpg on one tank and 33 mpg on another tank, same road, same day, same passengers, just driving like I normally do for one tank and carefully (not crazy hypermile BS, just somewhat gently) for the next.

 

[Natesriv]

I suspect the change to E091 and the golf league being moved to a highway drive home contribute to the higher MPG's in some respect. But rest assured, I'm not driving more conservatively!

Now as for cost compared to keeping on regular ethanol gas which is about $.40-$.50 a gallon cheaper...there's no way my 4-5 mpg bump is worth that.

But it's the cost of adding 8 gallons at the absolute normally which means $4 more than a comparable ethanol tank.. I don't mind that cost. I notice the difference in MPG's and I feel it more in the mid range...but that may be all imaginary...

long story short, I can afford it, I'm still keeping records of my MPG's and I want to continue to see if it's a long term thing..

 

[amfornal]

Our newly rebuilt Quick-Trip now sells non ethanol premium. I filled up with that today. I'll do the next two filllups with that as well (that should flush out the old ethanol regular I put in)..

Interesting to see the effects as ethanol lowers MPG's by...15% or so I read...(that might be high)

I get 31-33 mpg now...so maybe in the 35's?

It's more expensive, so probably no benefit, I'm just curious

Where in KC did you find this. (EO91) I live in Lenexa and have not sceen this yet.

 

[Natesriv]

Quik Trip at Vivion and Brighton...north of the river

 

[Natesriv]

Update

Well, I've been using this non-ethanol gas for a couple of months now and at first I was getting better MPG's... but by this graph technically I'm not anymore. But there's a couple of factors;

1: The golf league is over, so that stint of highway driving I did on Wednesday is gone
2: I wonder if the "learn down" has happened on my CAI and I'm now closer to stock performance & MPG's...??

There's not enough data points on this to really trend it, so I'll continue on this gas for some more time. But I have a feeling I'll be seeing about 1-2 MPG better, but for $.50/gallon more that isn't worth the cost.

 

[Swordsmith]

I was thinking about this the other day, trying to see why it might matter.

Point one, I get about 66% the mpg on E85 as I do on regular E10 93.
Point two, E85 averages around 70% ethanol, E10 around 6% (according to my onboard sensor)
So 93 should be 94% gas *Y% as efficient as gas, plus 6% ethanol * X% as efficient as gas.=100%
E85 should be 30% gas * Y% plus 70% ethanol * X% = 66%

Pure gas should then be Y% as efficient as the baseline E10

I haven't done the math, just trying to think what the math would look like.

(edit to add)
One solution set:
X 44 mpg
Y 22 mpg

94% 41.36
6% 1.32
42.68 mpg

30% 13.2
70% 15.4
28.6 mpg

67%

This would suggest pure gas would be 4mpg more efficient than E10, and is more or less in line with my results as I remember them off the top of my head.

I think I actually get higher mpg than I estimated here on E85, and lower on 93 E10, which would mean the figures would come closer together and the E0 would matter even less, but we are at least within the ballpark of what you're seeing at 2mpg improvement.

Then the real key is to look at miles per dollar rather than miles per gallon, and I think as you suggested that 50 cents extra cost per gallon doesn't pay for itself, while I have already discovered that 50 cents cheaper per gallon for E85 also doesn't pay off; 93 E10 is still the cheapest option per mile.

 

[Natesriv]

I was about to ask you if your sensor is f'ed up, but.

ASTM 5798 specifies the allowable fuel ethanol content in E85 as ranging from 51% to 83%

that's absurd! you'll never have consistent power/range capability or ability to calculate a range with accuracy if it varies that much!

 

[Swordsmith]

E10 consistently runs between 4% and 8% ethanol
E85 consistently runs between 65% and 75% ethanol
Mixes tend to run in the expected range for the mix. I think the sensor is reasonably accurate.

 

[Natesriv]

Latest update

303.4 miles 8.017 gallons = 37.8 mpg... that's the best I've seen in real world driving.

That included a couple of highway jaunts of 20 miles or so...not a huge amount

I'll take those MPG's all the time please!

 

[mja]

so many variables here. we couldn't know the vapor pressure of this no ethanol gas compared to the gas in the 10% EtOH mix without testing it. And like a few have pointed out, how much ethanol is in the gas.

And the ecm, the dozens of tables and thousands of calculations its using to regulate AFR to stoich. I'd imagine this is why you're not seeing a difference in fuel economy. way too many variables.

Try it on a carbed motor and you may see a big difference. lawnmower mpg