Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Lesko Brandon took bold decisive action to help me with rising gas prices. There’s just one catch: he wants to void my vehicle warranty.
I drive a 2017 Hyundai Sonata. The owner’s manual says I can use gasoline with a maximum of 10% ethanol. In Minnesota, that’s ordinary 87 octane gas but under the new plan I’m supposed to burn 88 octane (aka E15 because it contains 15% ethanol and therefore is slightly cheaper). Except I called the dealership and they said flat out, no, that’s not approved and using it will void my warranty. Save a nickel? Void my warranty? Hmmm.
I guess he really does want me to buy an electric car. Not certain how I’m going to charge it, though. Maybe I’ll end up getting those 10,000 steps a day after all.
Joe Doakes
It’s almost as if there is a plan of foot to destroy literally everything about America, starting with the constitutional system at the top, working its way down to every single thing you and I own.
NAH, that’s just crazy talk. Right?
For a while, back in the aughts, the major US auto manufacturers created vehicles with the Flexfuel technology. This continued up through say, 2015, at the very latest. These were able to run on E85. My 2011 Avalanche has this (although I’ve never run anything in it other than “normal” E10).
My two other vehicles are not so endowed. That Flexfuel thing was almost solely American, so my 2011 Toyota is not prepared. Nor, surprisingly to me, is the 2018 Equinox.
My plan is to fill the other two when they need it and then top of the tank every now and again with non-oxy gas to keep the blend down around 10%.
So, here’s my question. If the corn harvest is expected to be low this year, why is the government mandating higher levels of ethanol? Which uses corn?
Odd that CNN article linked by JD didn’t mention those warranty issues.
I was also amused by the statement that E15 is about 10 cents per gallon cheaper than E10. Some gas stations offer an even bigger discount than that. Gas prices are twice as high as what they were on Jan 6, 2020, and we should be grateful for a 10 cent discount?
I run 91 octane non-oxy fuel in my motorcycle.
I filled it up last Friday. Cost almost $35. For a motorcycle.
I’ve got nothing against E85 engines. My wife’s 2019 Dodge Caravan has a FlexFuel engine, approved for E85. It’s 25% cheaper per gallon which makes her happy, feels as if she’s getting a bargain. But E85 gets 25% lower gas mileage so she fills up more often. Works out to be about the same but for her, stopping to refuel more frequently is not as annoying as seeing $75 on the pump.
My complaint is creating a gas shortage, then pretending to solve it by creating a corn shortage and electricity shortage, while deceiving people into believing E15 is a harmless substitute for 87 octane gas. When the warranty problems surface in a year or so, what do you bet the response will be the same as vaccine side effects: “Hey, we just gave you the option, it’s not our fault that you chose poorly.”
JD, I only brought up the Flexfuel engines because they won’t care about the change to E15. But moreso because I was surprised to see that not all post-2010 ‘mercan vehicles have it.
Conspicuously absent from Mr Doakes’ post is any discussion of either the tax incentives or crop subsidy programs for biofuels.
Do these programs provide incentives to produce more ‘feed crops’ rather than grain suitable for human consumption? What is the net environmental impact of the petroleum products used for pest control, fertilizer, and cultivation for biofuels, as opposed to channeling oil directly into transportation?
In the US, many have argued persuasively that tax incentives and federal crop subsidies chiefly benefit a very small number of agricultural interests in thinly-populated rural states (e.g., Iowa). These states often have outsized influence on presidential elections, due either to early primary elections or their influence in the Electoral College.
More comprehensive and better reporting, please.
Cars will be only for elite red card-carrying apparatchiks, the rest of yous will be living in metroplexes a la Blade Runner, not having to go more than 10,000 steps to anywhere you will be allowed to go. Move along, sheople…
jdm wrote:
If the corn harvest is expected to be low this year, why is the government mandating higher levels of ethanol? Which uses corn?
The American government was not designed to produce optimal solutions to society’s problems. The American government was designed to “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”
Lenin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany were governments designed to produce optimal solutions to society’s problems.
MP +1
Conspicuously absent from Emery’s post is any mention of how the American hunger for biofuels has destroyed mixed crop, subsistence farming in Central America and replaced it with palm oil plantations owned by a few wealthy families.
More comprehensive and better reporting, please.
I remember in 2019 when Trump lifted the 8 year old summertime ban on sales of E15. At that time, environmentalists and oil companies were aligned in being opposed to that action. Environmentalists objected saying burning higher ethanol in the summer creates smog and increases pollution. Oil companies, of course, were opposed for obvious reasons. Others cited potential food shortages if farmers are growing corn for fuel instead of food.
In 2021, a federal court of appeals stopped the 2019 law that allowed year around sale of E15. Now, only a year later, it seems we’re back to year around E15 sales. The same arguments against it in 2019 could still be made now. Though, I have seen Senator Grassley praising Biden for “coming to his senses on this issue.” Sometimes it really is the more things change, the more the stay the same.
^ I came across this info this morning when I was looking into this E15 nonsense. I was going to write about it but I was unable to do it concisely and succinctly. Certainly not as well as this. I’m glad I didn’t try. Well done.
Adding a can of Sea Foam to a tank of 15% white lightening will save on engine wear. It will also add another $12 to an $80- $120 fill up.
Add the S&P to the list of indices in bear market country I posted yesterday:
“The S&P 500 is now in a bear market, here’s what this means for the economy”
https://www.mlive.com/news/2022/06/the-sp-500-is-now-in-a-bear-market-heres-what-this-means-for-the-economy.html
The Fed reserve has warned to expect “significant rate increases”.
Pedo Joe’s handlers are facilitating depths of malaise Jimmy Carter could only dream of. But hey; no mean tweets!
Meanwhile, silver is currently at $21.24 USD / oz. I paid $17.82 when I made a very significant purchase summer ’20. When it gets to $26 (and it will) I’ll sell. Feeling pretty damn good, right now.
I can back the assessment of E85. I filled up my 2019 truck with it *once*. Yes, a cheaper tank of gas, but just at the breakeven point. Considering the number of subsidies required to make it to that breakeven point it was a net economic loss for the US.
In fact, I usually find that by the time I balance MPG and fuel type, the difference in total cost between pure gas, E10, E15, and E85 is so small as to be unnoticeable, at least around here. But the difference in range between all the types is huge, as is the cost per fill. And I never put anything other than pure gas into my small engines in any event.
And Em, even if the corn is just “feed corn” that still matters as to food production since that feed corn could be feeding livestock, and there’s this little problem with the law of supply and demand meaning that diverting the corn to our gas tanks raises the price of food. And yes, the last bag of cracked corn I got for the chickens was ridiculous.
” And I never put anything other than pure gas into my small engines in any event.”
AS well you should not, Nerd; alcohol is death for small engines. Couple years ago, I got a 25KW generator for free. I asked the fellow if he’d run corn liquor gas in it, and when he said “yes”, I told him a new carb would probably fix it. He didn’t want to mess with it, and just gave it to me.
Didn’t even need to buy a new carb. A $15 rebuild kit fixed it.
Lately, the lefty media has been dropping stories about water supplies into their daily propaganda spewing. What these morons pushing ethanol don’t ever acknowledge or, more likely ignore, is that counting water for irrigation of ethanol producing crops, the average water used to produce a gallon of gas, is around 15.6. Conversely, a gallon of gas takes about 3 gallons of water to produce.
sorry on my last. Should have read “15.6 to produce a gallon of ethanol”.
Never underestimate the power of the lobby and the need to placate low IQ iowans to vote for ethanol grifters so they can get the momentum rolling in the first primary state. It’s all about acquiring that “I won in Iowa” sticker and not what’s good for the environment, economy or country. But you already knew that.
Swift — Buying anytime for the long term wins 100% of the time. Remember, the stock market comes back 100% of the time.
^^ More blather.
Emery on June 14, 2022 at 4:17 pm said:
Swift — Buying anytime for the long term wins 100% of the time. Remember, the stock market comes back 100% of the time.
A trivial truth, identical to “buy low, sell high!” You don’t realize a loss or gain until you trade your investment for dollars. The trick is to have hedged well enough that you don’t have to sell your high risk/high reward investments when the market goes south.
Financial investors have a lot in common with casino gamblers. They all think that they are smarter than the market, they all talk about their gains, but never about their losses. They have a “system” for picking winners and losers.
IMHO, the best system is to keep enough $ in blue chips so that you never have to sell your high risk/high reward securities in a down market. Don’t think that you are smarter than than the financial wiz people who have spent every minute of their lives trying to time the market. Just avoid selling at a market low point.
The current common common wisdom is that you need to have enough in blue chips to withstand a four year market down turn. Don’t know if it is true or not. Wouldn’t bet my retirement on it.
What’s worth noting here is that Biden is saying that air quality is not a big concern, because the reason E15 goes off the market in the summer is because it evaporates a lot more than when it’s cooler. So Biden more or less wants to kill kids and people with lung issues. To make things worse, runoff from over-fertilized corn fields is destroying lakes and rivers, and the water needed to run the corn likker plants causes the water tables to drop. When a plant went in in Janesville MN, the company had to drill wells for a bunch of people because of this.
Also worth noting is that two of the world’s largest producers of grain are at war with each other, so what better move to make than to reduce U.S. grain production as well? So he doesn’t just want to destroy affordable energy, but also wants to kill people by starvation.
You go, Brandon.