Ethanol - What is the story?
 

Watching "west wing", and they are saying it is stupid. But I spend time in Brazil, and they are selling it for 1/2 the price of gasoline there. People are buying cars that run on it. Brazil is an oil neutral country so they do not need to do this unless it makes sense. They do not have money to throw at ethonal subsidies. Their sugar is sold world wide so it is not looking for a market for it. Sugar has gone up 100% since the oil crunch because they are converting so much to ethanol now.

So why is not good for the US too? What is the story on this stuff?

Perhaps ethanol wouldn't make money for the "right people", while oil does.

Almost all the new cars sold in Brazil run with gas and/or ethanol.

I think here they use all the sugar cane to make cachaça... so the ethanol costs much more than in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other cities :(

I talk way too much even on a message board. Damn :(

:Graucho

They use it as an additive here in Canada. Made from corn up here.

To use the stuff that is mostly ethanol (around 85%), the car has to be designed to run on it, as it won't work in regular engines. I'm assuming that would be a huge cost for the entire auto industry, from everyone to the gas stations to the auto makers themselves.

Brazil is far from being a rich country and we have thousands of cars running on ethanol here :winkwink:

Oh, in Brazil they also add ethanol to the gas. So when you buy gas, actually you're buying 75% gas and 25% ethanol... or something like that.

It is an additive to help the car burn cleaner exhaust.Every little bit helps

some gas stations have like 10% of it here. i think its supposed to not be nearly as good as gas and ive heard its bad for your car.

in .au theres a push on ethanol blended fuels. the two available are both higher octane than regular unleaded, less polution, and cost less. apparently it has no effect on modern cars and offeres the same / greater performance depending on what octane fuel you were previously using. It can't be too bad, indy cars etc use almost 30% ethanol blend (from memory) and they aint havin any performance problems.

they wont do it, in the US because that would create a new group of mega millionaires.