There are more than 5 million flex-fuel vehicles on the market, but the challenge is that drivers can't always find the pumps when they want to use the E85 fuel. AutoWeek magazine tackled that challenge a three years ago, taking a road trip with a flex fuel vehicle to check out mileage and to see how many pumps there were. The key challenge was finding an E85 pump.
Last week, the magazine took that road trip again and found better news. First the number of E85 pumps has nearly tripped from 700 to almost 2,100 with the Midwest the area with the most. The test vehicle, a 2010 Ford Expedition EL, has a 5.4-liter V8 which gets 14.7 mpg with gasoline. On the road trip, the writers found that E85 cut mileage to about 12.3 mpg, which was a 16.3% reduction versus unleaded - with no performance reduction. But E85 cost savings of more than 16.7% meant that drivers would be ahead using the renewable fuel.
Their conclusion: "E85 is starting to make sense - and cents - for drivers who want to burn it."
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