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

e85.biz
Ford Bioethanol

Today I had the chance to try out the cruise control on the bio-ethanol Ford Focus. This maybe has less to do with the fuel in the tank, but it is still something that I have always been very wary of.

In fact, I associate it with the signs on the Brussels ring road where it is not allowed!

Anyway, all went fine – although I’m still worried that I have less control over the car whilst using it, even if that’s not really the case.

My route this morning took me over the motorway and the Bad Homburg ring road, and my fuel consumption stayed pretty much the same.

This evening I was in Bad Homburg and parked at the Kurhaus. I was curious as to whether I would smell the ethanol when I stopped the car in the underground car park, but I didn’t notice anything.

I’ve like to try out the petrol station, but there are still around 400km left to do first!

Well, sort of day two really as I didn’t go anywhere yesterday.

This morning I went to Frankfurt on the motorway and was able to test the accelaration properly – I am more than impressed and I think it was even smoother and faster than my last car (maybe because the engine is a bit more powerful anyway).

This afternoon I had to go to Friedrichsdorf which took me through the middle of Bad Homburg. Again, apart from being a bit more powerful there I don’t think I could have told that bio-ethanol was in the tank if I didn’t actually know.

I managed to stall a couple of times on the car park, however. As it was 15°C I don’t think this can be down to the cold we had the rest of the week. Maybe it was me being too careful?

I have done just over 100km and that has used about 1/4 of the tank apparently, the board computer tells me that I have 500km left (the tank is currently filled just with E85 bio-ethanol and not yet mixed with normal petrol). This works out at 12l/100km, which is 23.5 mpg (UK) or 19.6 mpg (US). [Here is a useful conversion calculator]