A sip of alcohol causes only small stumble in car's mpg - Allentown Morning Call(Gas Mileage)

A gas pump displays a label indicating that the gasoline can contain up to 10 percent ethanol, an alcohol fuel often made from corn. Spurred by tax credits for manufacturers, some new models already are designed to run on 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas, or E85. Department of Energy figures, gas cranks out 120,215 British thermal units per gallon, while ethanol delivers a paltry 80,430 BTUs, or one-third less energy. Lehigh University professor Terry Hart, though not an ethanol specialist — a former astronaut who flew on the space shuttle Challenger in 1984, he knows more about jet-propulsion fuels — confirmed that our calculation method seems sound, and ‘’should get you in the ballpark. Ed Rendell has made a statewide ethanol requirement — 10 percent within 10 years — part of his energy plan. A bridge to the hydrogen future, if that’s the way we go, will be built by a mix of hybrid cars, ”clean” diesel engines, ethanol, biodiesel, and most of all, by smaller, more fuel-efficient and space-efficient cars running on good old gasoline. read more

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