California's Hershey Highway
In our research, we learned the Ford Motor Company has sold E85-capable FFVs in California, since 1995. Chrysler and General Motors started selling E85 FFVs in 1998 and 1999, respectively.
On the State of California's website, they disclosed there are already more than 250,000 E85-adept FFVs in the state. In the United States, there are more than 5 million vehicles capable of running on E85.
For a state that likes to portray itself as playing "a leadership role in the areas of clean, alternate fuel systems, environmentally friendlier vehicles, and transportation funding," it looks like California's alternative fuel programs are more about dog-and-pony shows than cutting dependence on foreign oil or lowering GHG. Instead of allocating funds for ethanol development (which can be used to generate hydrogen), California will spend 6.5 million dollars during 2006 promoting the "Hydrogen Highway." Perhaps a better name would be the "Hershey Highway" because it looks like California's taxpayers are really going to take it in the shorts.
It's The Golden Cheese
Since time constraints wouldn't allow us to drive to one of Minnesota's 200-plus filling stations selling E85, we drove to California's one and only E85 filling station instead.
The 4001 El Cajon Blvd. address turned out to be a Ford dealership with the largest selection of alternate fuels available in the world today. The folks at Pearson Ford are hosts to the San Diego Environmental Foundation, an "EcoCenter for Alternate Fuel Education." They're nice people and we're sure we'll visit Pearson Ford and the Regional Transportation Center in the future to test additional alt fuels.
Before departing, they told us the E85 at the RTC contained ethanol made in Corona, California, by the Golden Cheese Company. The Golden Cheese Company of California creates enough cheese whey to produce 5 million gallons of ethanol per year.
How many miles per gallon did we get on E85 made from cheese ethanol? For the 100-mile return trip to Orange County, we ran with the flow of freeway traffic as high as 85 mph, with bursts to the GMC's governed speed limit of 100 mph. Back in Orange County, we drove 82.3 miles in stop-and-go traffic and then refueled with 11.5 gallons of unleaded gas. Our test loop averaged almost 16 mpg, while driving like idiots the entire time.
E85 is here and now-not to mention, it's lowering greenhouse gases. This stuff could render the Middle East irrelevant. Imagine if they could go back to being goat herders and camel riders just like they should be. They wouldn't have any money to buy rocket launchers or nerve gas, and they could go right back to the Iron Age, which is where they really want to be. Shouldn't that be a national priority?