On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 02:35:21 -0700, Frank Gilliland
wrote in
:

snip
You win a point for getting it almost right. Yes, it would seem that
they planned to use alcohol, but Ford soon realized that the less
expensive gasoline would become the dominant fuel.


Really? I seem to recall reading that he pushed for ethanol fuel well
into the 1940's. And didn't both the Germans and Japanese use alcohol
as their staple fuel during WWII?


I checked my facts on this; turns out that Germany got their oil/gas
from Romania. And with the US oil shortage during the war, ethanol was
manufactured -by the oil companies- for both the military and domestic
markets. In fact, during that time they actually -promoted- ethanol as
being a fuel that was superior to gasoline. Cars were made well into
the 40's that could run on ethanol.


snip
And your quote makes no mention of the quantities of emissions which,
from an ethanol engine, are -much- lower than from an equivalent
gasoline engine.


Correction: That should read: "....your quote makes no mention that
the quantities of emissions from an ethanol engine are -much- lower
than from an equivalent gasoline engine".


snip
Some popular cars are currently manufactured as "dual-fuel" vehicles;


More specifically they are called "Flexible-Fuel Vehicles", or FFV's,
and have been manufactured in several of the Chevy/GMC lines since at
least 2000.


snip
Alcohol also deteriorates rubber parts.


I just discovered an additional reason for the myth: some people tried
using -denatured- ethanol as fuel and ran into some problems. The
additives that are usually used to denature alcohol are compounds such
as acetone, MEK, toluene, and other solvents that do major damage to
rubber and plastics (and the human body). After this was discovered to
be the problem the government allowed ethanol to be denatured using
gasoline. More recently, regulations on the production of ethanol as a
fuel have been lifted, and you can now homebrew your own ethanol fuel
without a license.






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