- Posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
E85 Days of Summer Tour Kicks Off
By Donna McLallen
GM Assistant Regional Manager, PR/Communications
In a city built on the petroleum industry, promoting an alternative fuel source is lightly regarded to say the least, but that challenge didn’t stop our GM team from educating Houstonians on the benefits of E85 ethanol one consumer at a time.
This week, GM and Chevy kicked off its E85 Days of Summer campaign in Houston, a seven-city tour to promote the use of E85 ethanol and help dispel misconceptions surrounding the fuel. A media forum and Chevy-dealer meeting on July 24 was followed by two more days of promotional activities, including an 85-cents-per-gallon E85 ethanol fuel giveaway at a local Kroger station and consumer events during two Houston Astros games.
Our efforts were eye-opening, and also showed how much work still needs to be done to bring E85 into the public consciousness.
Some observations from the first week of activities:
It was great to confirm that the FlexFuel option weighed heavily on several buyers’ decisions when it came time to purchase their vehicle, regardless of pump proximity. Several FlexFuel vehicle owners at the Kroger fuel pump promotion said they drive FlexFuel SUVs because of the available cargo space and/or the ability to transport large families. By driving a vehicle that uses renewable fuel, they felt they were doing their part to help the environment and the nation. They fuel up with E85 whenever possible and see only positives in the renewable fuel. The message was clear from our small sample of Houston consumers – make E85 more available and convenient.
However, even in these days of high fuel costs, our drastically-slashed pump prices and our message – that ethanol is a clean, domestic, renewable and cost-effective alternative to gasoline – was a hard sale. We generated a modest amount of media interest from several radio stations and print publications such as the Houston Chronicle and Houston Business Journal, but it will take much work for E85 ethanol advocates to combat some of the widespread perceptions and misconceptions about the fuel.
Luckily for GM, we have partners that share our mission when it comes to E85 and are helping us along the way. In Texas, those partners are organizations, such as Clean Fuels USA, the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council and Texas Corn Producers, as well as retailers, such as Kroger.
The video is a pretty good snapshot of what all E85 ethanol advocates face every day throughout the country as we move forward to San Antonio and Austin next week…
7 Comments
GM SUCKS
What a waste. It takes an acre of corn to make one gallon of this crap. The mileage drops faster than a cheap pair of socks, along with horsepower loss. In the long run it costs you MORE to use this cheap crap. A few more years and everyone will realize this and its going to wind up disappearing. This is just a new way to market yourselves. Its not a benefit to the public at all. If you want to be successful, follow TOYOTA. They will be taking over soon anyways. All GM is good at making is cheap pieces of crap that hold NO resale value and is NOT reliable. American made cars live in the shop. No wonder you’re losing market share. Give the public what we want, not what you want to force upon us.
John Coonen
What a rude comment from the previous poster…I think folks need to realize that solutions come in the form of collective energies. The reality is E85 may NOT have the same mileage as conventional fuel, but it IS CERTAINLY incrementally better than using OPEC oil.
1. It is helping the US economy, not putting $$$ into OPEC nations’ grubby hands.
2. It is helping US FARMERS, not terrorist HARMERS, who seem to revel in the fact that folks like the previous poster would rather we fund Venezuela, Iran, the Sunnis and Shiites who kill our troops, rather than seeing our US dollars support farm families.
3. It is cleaner-burning than MR. SUCKS fossil fuel.
4. It is RENEWABLE, unlike MR. SUCKS fossil fuel.
5. E85 It is THE FUEL which will change peoples’ thinking from using fossil fuels TO using renewable energy. THIS is a major step FORWARD for folks who believe Biofuel is here to stay.
Does that make E85 a “stop-gap” solution? Perhaps. I think of it more as the TRANSITIONAL 10-year solution as we convert from MR. SUCKS fossil fuel to MR. GREEN’s biofuel of the future, which will likely be a COLLECTION of solutions, rather than just ONE standard.
Collective Energies:
- Conventional fossil fuel
- E85
- Biodiesel
- Hydrogen
- Electricity
Thank you, GM, for taking the courageous step necessary to CONVERT MR. SUCKS thinking from being a FOSSIL to being more environmentally conscious and INDEPENDENT of the OPEC cartel.
Gary Dikkers
Donna McLallen said:
Ms McLallen,
Respectfully, you are the one who has the misconceptions about E85. There are actually valid reasons why E85 is such a difficult sell. I could write a long essay telling you why E85 is a dead end, but I will make just two points:
Corn ethanol is not a renewable fuel
Despite the mantra ethanolistas repeat over and over saying corn ethanol is renewable, it is neither renewable nor sustainable.
It’s true that farmers grow a new crop of corn each year, but that is not the same as being “renewable.” The truth is that at every step of the process, growing corn and reforming it into ethanol consumes irreplaceable, unrenewable fossil fuels in the form of natural gas to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, diesel fuel for cultivation and transportation, and more natural gas or coal for milling and distilling the corn into ethanol.
It goes beyond logic and commonsense that anyone can think corn ethanol “renewable” when its production is completely dependent upon the consumption of unrenewable resources — from fossil fuels, to water, to fertile Corn Belt topsoil.
GM’s flex-fuel vehicles actually burn more total energy when using E85
It’s a lengthy explanation that I won’t repeat here, but one of your E85 SUVs actually consumes more total energy when burning E85 than when burning straight gasoline.
It’s because of a combination of two things:
(1) The thermodynamics of making corn ethanol, and…
(2) The reduced efficiency of a low-compression engine burning E85 when it was designed to burn relatively low-octane gasoline.
If you are really interested in knowing why that is, please send me an e-mail and I will happily respond with the complete explanation.
Please note that I didn’t even explain the CAFE loophole that GM is able to take advantage of each time it sells a flex-fuel E85. (Be truthful, that loophole is the real reason you are pushing flexfuel, isn’t it?)
Regards,
Gary Dikkers
Richard Mullins
I bought a flex fuel vehicle 3 months ago. I haven’t had the issues everyone says they have had with the E-85 fuel. I changed my exhaust and added a cold air intake box. I have run on only E-85 since i got 1500 miles on the vehicle. I lost one mile to the gallon on the highway and it doesn’t leave black residue on my chrome exhuast pipe tips like regular unleaded does. The only thing I don’t like about E-85 is I have to drive 56 miles to get it. As for Toyotas’ I build them in Georgetown and own one. I wish it would run on E-85 like my F-150. My plant is slowly filling up with EX GM and Ford Supervisors and Managers. my guess we will be following the big 3 soon.
Alan Arnett
Ms. McLallen,
I would like to make 2 more points to those of Mr. Dikkers:
1. By making Ethanol from Corn depletes the food stock, not only from food available for feeding the poor, but grain for feeding livestock, and will, therefore, increase the cost of beef, chicken, pork, and all of their by-products, like milk, eggs, butter, etc. For that reason, it is not a viable solution.
2. Using corn-based ethanol is only 13% more efficient in giving off green house gases than fossel fuels are. Since E85 is 15% less powerful than gasoline, and 15% less fuel efficient, that means we have a -2% net effect when using E85.
All in all, E85 may get us away from using foreign based oils, but at what price?
Thank you,
Alan Arnett
Dave Gosney
I sit back and just love to read these “informed” comments that are so negative. Yes, I’m sure that none of you have any vested intrest in the Petroleum companies, correct? Oh and I am so sure that you were going to go out and buy dried, hard and non-pallatable corn and use it for your staple diet? Its all just so old. No, just keep spreading your stupid un-informed rhetoric and try to beat down anything that is domestically produced and shortens our country’s trade deficet whatsover. Please, please continue to improve Exxon/Mobile, Shell and Conoco’s bottom line. Please get your only source of information by watching CNN. Never try to duplicate a process to see if it works. Never immerse yourself with learning how an engine works or who buys commodities for what purpose. You who fit into this catagory are also the same who literally repeat whatever is spoken in front of you, do exactely what you are told and never make a true contribution to society. You also find misery in most everything and you also need a bailout from your own financial decisions.
E Davis
I own a 2007 Avalanche Flex
Fuel,finally a station close to my area started selling E85 for $3.40 gal my first tank my gas mileage dropped 5 mpg I was getting approx
15mpg with regular fuel
E85 was less that 10mpg
I don’t see an advantage
E85 cost almost the same,you lose 5 mpg.
I am not a Flex Fuel
supporter……
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