You did better than I did. We lost 10% fuel efficiency when we tried it. To make it even worse when we tried it we went west (uphill towards Colorado) on regular gasoline and east (downhill towards the Missouri river) on ethanol.

When it got "cheaper" than regular my wife ran six tanks of it to see if the mileage would improve with no change. I put cheaper in quotes because the makers get a 51 cent per gallon subsidy.

Not to nitpick your figures but you forgot to factor in the fuel needed to haul the ethanol to the gas station - in a separate tanker than the gas. I do not remember the details on this but if it is mixed at the plant it degrades.

David, David, David,

There you go with that west coast thinking. If we start using hemp oil for fuel then the next thing you know someone will want to start using the fibers for rope and clothes and bags and all sorts of other things. Then we would have farmers wanting to grow it to make money (those nasty capitalists) and then we would have a bunch of crazy teenagers sneaking into the fields to steal a bag or two only to find it is less than effective for their needs. The economy would take off, we would be energy independent, farmers would be able to pay their loans down and life would be good. Wake up David we can't have anything like that happening -
at least not until we get a democrat into the white house. (devil)

We have had a guy here in the Kansas City Metro area pushing to reinstall light rail here for several years. The powers that were fighting a battle against him centered around his personality not the merits of the plan. In the last go round I guess they figured they had everyone convinced he was a kook so they just did not talk about the issue. Well, guess what, it passed. Now those same people are running around saying that it will never work and it will cost too much and and and ...
I don't suppose the fact that we have a Ford plant and a Chevy plant in the area has anything to do with it do you?

Brian,

There's good news for true conspiracists.

Even with irrefutable evidence before their eyes, people have become so complacent that as long as the beer's cold, there's gas in the car and Wheel of Fortune comes on at 7:30 pm, all is well with the world. :-)

Sad, but true. :S

You are a real history nut , I mean buff..

"Mr. Diesel demonstrated his engine at the Exhibition Fair in Paris, France in 1898. This engine stood as an example of Diesel's vision because it was fueled by peanut oil - the "original" biodiesel. He thought that the utilization of a biomass fuel was the real future of his engine."

My 25w laser runs on Diet Coke and 120v current.!

You have to remember that the VW Rabbit running around town powered by BurgerKing and MickeyD's cooking oil only became pressworthy around 30 years ago. and now with diesel fuel priced higher than gasoline...... well ,

" I'll take a Big Mac and top'er off......."

A friend of mine from England told me a story from his town a couple of years ago. A large market had cases of vegetable oil on sale at a low price. But they were amazed at the demand for it. They were selling hundreds of cases per day.

Turns out that a 50/50 mix of regular diesel fuel and vegetable oil works quite well in the diesel cars over there. And without the road tax and various other taxes the vegetable oil was far cheaper than diesel fuel. One byproduct was that the cars smelled like french fries.

Diesel cars are far more popular in Europe, and the diesel engines of the past couple of years and fuel seem to be more advanced than what is sold over here. Much cleaner and more efficient.