Ethanol-powered Nissan GTR Dominates Pocono Rivals (i.e gas powered rivals)

[Bill USA]

Ethanol-powered Nissan GTR Dominates Pocono Rivals

Last weekend, some of the fastest and most powerful tuner cars in North America gathered at the Pocono raceway for a one-of-a-kind, 1600′ side-by-side racing event. There were a number of thousand-plus horsepower cars in attendance running on highly toxic and leaded racing fuels, but the car that won? That car was running E85.

Delivering more than 1000 horsepower to the wheels, the Switzer Performance-built USE Pro Nissan GTR that won the Pocono Slipstream event last weekend went a long way towards convincing its competition that E85 is a viable fuel for high-performance cars. “The car did its job,” says Tym Switzer, the head of Switzer Performance and former sponsor of Gas 2. It was smooth and consistent at the start of each run, it tracks straight, and he keeps accelerating strongly throughout each pull. Everything performed perfectly, and I’m glad he got to have the experience of winning an event like this.”

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“We run all our competition cars on E85,” explained Tym, when I called him to ask about the car earlier today. This comes, of course, after years of his Oberlin, Ohio-based shop turning out dozens of E85-powered cars that not only make more power than their gasoline-powered, factory-spec counterparts, but do so without a fuel economy penalty, as well. “It just works.”

You can find out more about ethanol manufacturing absolutely not negatively impacting food costs the way the oil lobbyists want you to believe that they do by clicking a bunch of these links, and find out more about the Switzer Performance USE GTR at the company’s website. While you’re there, definitely feel free to tell them they should sponsor us again.

Switzer Doubles Horsepower, Keeps MPG The Same In Flex Fuel Nissan

... the car shown here — which started life as a 2012 Nissan R35 GTR — is the first 1300 (one-thousand and three hundred) horsepower “Ultimate Street Edition” flex fuel GTR. The car blasts from 0-160 in less than 9 seconds (0-60 happens so fast it hardly matters) on its way to a top speed of more than 225 MPH (360 km/h), all while getting about 20 MPG on renewable, clean-burning ethanol (the factory GTR makes “just” 545 HP and carries a 19 MPG EPA rating).

The articles above are cited to show that if you design an engine to take advantage of ethanol's higher octane you can get comparable (or better) miles per gallon with ethanol than you can with gasoline.

Of course, you don't have to build a wild racing car to get the benefits of Ethanol's higher octane (vs gasoline). Three MIT scientists designed a much more tame engine which uses turbo-charging to boost combustion chamber pressures - to take advantage of ethanol's higher octane rating - intended for normal driving uses by the average driver. This engine gets ~30% better fuel efficiency than a comparably powered ICE using gasoline. This engine does this while using only 5% ethanol - directly injected into the combustion chamber - and 95% gasoline. On average conventional hybrids get about 2% to 30% better fuel efficiency than the conventional ICE powered car. The cost to build this engine is about 1/4th the cost of a conventional hybrid ICE/electric motor combination. The cost issue is important since to adopt a given technology you have to consider how affordable it is for the average consumer.

[Old Codger]

1. I have been looking at flex fuel

I had a ford ranger that was flex but it got lousy mileage on gasoline and no E-85 available around here.. there are kits you can install in a regular car/truck that allows E-85 and probably worth while if there is a regular supply ..other wise no sense in it.

[Bill USA]

2. Fuel Freedom Foundation found you can improve mpg by 17% by optimizing ignition timing for ethanol's

higher octane rating.


They had the Engine Control Modules "reflashed" to optimize ignition timing to take full advantage of ethanol's - and methanol's - higher octane rating. They tested several cars on both ethanol and methanol (for methanol testing, o-rings in the fuel pump were changed to a set designed to handle methanol).

On ethanol with the timing optimized they got, on average, 17.2% better fuel efficiency. The Chevrolet Impala 3.9 L V6 on E85 increased the mpg by 25.7%; the Cobalt increased mpg 37.1%.

Cars tested on methanol achieved a 20% gain in mpg with optimized ignition timing.

IS THE GASOLINE GALLON EQUIVALENT AN ACCURATE MEASURE OF MILEAGE FOR ETHANOL AND METHANOL FUEL BLENDS?


NOte they did not use turbo-charging or super-charging to boost combustion chamber pressures (Ethanol and Methanol can both deliver more power with higher combustion chamber pressures).