The document announcing new fuel-economy standards for US cars and light trucks contains a quiet observation that shrieks about problems of renewable-fuel mandates.
It comes from the Environmental Protection Agency, which with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has raised the corporate average fuel economy target for model-year 2025 to 54.5 mpg.
The program extended by the new regulation links vehicle fuel mileage with emissions of carbon dioxide. Automakers can lower their fuel-mileage limits by producing vehicles that emit no or low levels of the greenhouse gas.
The new regulation offers incentives for the manufacture of vehicles powered by electricity, fuel cells, and compressed natural gas.
EPA is still developing a way to establish CO2 levels for two of three vehicle types offering operators a fuel choice: plug-in hybrid electric and dual-fuel CNG.
EPA must make assumptions about how much time these vehicles run on gasoline and how much on the alternative fuel. In determining what it calls the utility factor, it will assume the cheaper, nongasoline fuel dominates "since that was a main reason for purchasing the vehicle."
For flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs), which can burn gasoline containing as much as 85% ethanol, or E85, EPA won't set a utility factor.
FFVs and conventional vehicles cost about the same, EPA explains. And here's the quiet, shrieking observation: "Historically, consumers have only fueled these vehicles with E85 a very small percentage of the time."
Indeed, E85 sales far undershoot expectations that helped compel Congress in 2007 to set ethanol sales mandates fast proving to be unachievable. FFV owners don't have to use E85, which can be hard to find and requires frequent fill-ups.
The Energy Information Administration says US refiner-blenders recently produced 3,000 b/d of gasoline in the E85 range for the 8.7 million FFVs on US highways. For every FFV, that's an average 5 gal/year.
Automakers and consumers happily avail themselves of incentives to make and buy FFVs. And FFV drivers happily avoid the fuel the incentives exist to boost.