Freedom of choice: E20 ethanol blends take the value crown from gasoline, E10

June 20, 2013 |

Gasoline and ethanol-blend prices in the real world

A valuable site for data on real-world prices for a variety of blends of gasoline and ethanol is e85prices.com — they’ve been around for quite some time, and they have a network of collaborators around the country who crowd-source real-time price data — filing real-world, on-street prices for E10, E15, E20, E25, E30, E40. E50 and E85 ethanol blends.

When you look at their data over the past year — you see the the prices between the fuels generally stay in synchronization with each other – but you might be surprised to learn that not every blend is sold at a perfect discount to gasoline based on energy content, or real-world mileage.

E85-prices-national

E85 prices from E85prices.com.

For example, E30 ethanol blends are selling, on an average, for $0.05 more per gallon than E20 blends, despite a drop in energy content. E40 blends go for even more than E30 blends — adding another 6 cents per gallon because of market forces, not the forces of science.

At the same time, E50 ethanol is sold at an average of 36 cents less per gallon than E40 blends — a 10 percent discount compared to E40 ethanol despite a 3 percent change in energy density. Nationally, E85 is sold at an 18.6 percent discount to standard E10 brands (used as 87 octane unleaded fuel almost universally in the US).

In today’s Digest, we go in-depth with the data — looking at real-world engine performance, the impact of regional pricing — and putting it all together into a look at real fuel economy – and the surprising winners – via the page links below.

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