As yet I haven’t had to fill up the bio-ethanol car – it came with a full tank! But I have been looking at where to go when I do need to.
My dealer in Bad Homburg will probably be my usual port of call – the petrol pump is key-operated so I can go there anytime and get sent a monthly bill which should be very convenient.
But looking further afield, the site e85.biz has a downloadable directory of bio-ethanol petrol stations.
The list currently has 91 entries for Germany – I’ve already downloaded it to my Palm to be able to take it with me – the first thing I noticed was that there are lots of independent petrol stations or smaller chaines – the larger ones are conspicuous by their absence.
If a large car manufacturer like Ford can make the cars to run on bio-ethanol, surely the major petroleum chains can put it on their forecourts?
And unless I’m very much mistaken, none of the ones on the list are located on a motorway that I use regularly.
So what do I plan to do? Well, fill up before I go for one thing, and maybe put enough normal petrol into get home again. If I’m staying somewhere then I will find out where the nearest bio-ethanol petrol station is and go there if it’s not too much of a detour, but at the moment I don’t think I’d leave the motorway to find one situated in an area that I’m not familiar with.
