Today I filled up with bio-ethanol for the first time. Germany’s first bio-ethanol petrol station is located in Bad Homburg and to operate the pump I have a coded key, which allows me to go there at any time of the day, regardless of the opening hours.

For my first visit, however, I decided to go there whilst it was open, just to make sure that there were no problems.

Actually there was a problem - a car had parked on the space in front of the bio-ethanol pump, and I had to wait about 15 minutes until it was moved.

After that I parked there myself, turned the key and filled up the car. As simple as that! Now I have a full tank and can work out for myself how much the car is using. The on-board computer says that I used 13.3litres/100km since I started driving the car, but I don’t know how many litres were in the tank when I got it so I can’t check that figure.

The first bio-ethanol petrol station in Germany,
located in Bad Homburg

With the temperature dipping to -2°C this week, I had an unexpected chance to find out how bio-ethanol reacts to the colder weather.

This is not as cold is it can get in winter here - I’ve experienced -18°C before now! But with the cold wind blowing it certainly felt different to the temperatures that we had been having the previous week.

When bio-ethanol gets cold it apparently gets sluggish. This is why there is a socket on the front of the car, so that I can attach it to the mains and warm the tank up slightly before driving off. Well, that’s the theory at least. As I don’t have an electrical socket anywhere near where I had parked the car, that wasn’t really a solution.

The alternative is to put some normal petrol into the tank during the winter. Again, the drop in temperature came so unexpected, that I hadn’t done this and had only E85 in the tank.

So I drove off anyway - and I can’t say that I noticed any difference. Perhaps the cold temperature hadn’t affected the bio-ethanol as much as I had expected? Perhaps it just wasn’t cold enough yet!

I shall be keeping a watchful eye on the thermometer and may well start mixing in some normal fuel next month.

Today the Monday Podcast talks about a new type of fuel - bio-ethanol. Graham has been driving a bio-ethanol car for the last week and comments on how the car is running and how new fuels help the environment.

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Driving with Bio-ethanol

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