Ethanol E10 review - Fairfax media

[WHLS1]

The Age drive section today had an article looking at the real economy of using E10.

Typically a little short on full detail and unfortunately appears to only look at standard E10 and not the E10 from United which is rated at 95.

They note that reduced travel distance from each litre of E10 can result in an increased real cost. Premium unleaded gave give you better distance from your litre however it will still cost more.

An abridged version of the article is available online: http://www.drive.com.au/Editorial/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=59627

[SS Enforcer]

You will find our E10 is rated at 95 ron, the stuff I deliver is 94 - 95 anyway.


Cheers

The quote from the United guy is rubbish as thee isn't any difference between their E10 and the other companies. It's all 10% ethanol and std ulp. In fact United's vary more than the rest due to them getting their fuel off whichever company is the cheapest that month.

cheers

[EHH179]

Filling up at BP the other night, I was sure I read that their regular unleaded (which is now standard with E10) was only 92 ron. Had to use it in the crewie a tank ago, and it was pretty ordinary on the km's I got out of it.

[V-Car]

Maybe BP and some others E10 is only 91 or 92 RON, and i notice that BP are selling it at the same price as regular unleaded, which IMO is a blatant ripoff.

http://envirofuel.com.au/ethanol/

E10 95 RON usually sells for about 3c/lt less than ULP, so i cant see how they justify the same pricing.
They slipped that in very quietly!
BP must be refining cheaper to produce 88 or 89 RON to which they add 10% ethanol to make their E10 brew which by all rights it should be a few cents/lt less than the others are charging for their 95 Ron E10.

Example:
UPL 91RON = 93c/lt
E10 95RON = 90c/lt
BP E10 91RON = 93c/lt (should be 87c/lt imo)

BP and others doing this = :flipoff:

Ill be very careful in future where i buy E10 to check its RON and price.
Seems as though United and Freedom are the only genuine 95 E10 going by the link above.

[Alister]

BP actually offer an E10 rewards card. They are free and you can pick one up from your local BP. They normally have em on the counter. By using it, you'll get 3c/L off their E10. Still shit though at 91RON. SO even with the E10 rewards card, you aren't saving anything. It's at the price it should be at.

Shell E10 is now 94RON too btw.

[Deanss-v]

All ethanol fuels should be cheaper as the government gives a rebate.
If E10 isn't cheaper than regular its a ripoff.

[vessloveit]

There is probably no gain in using E10 over normal unleaded or other 95 Ron fuel as the extra usage of the E10 out weighs the reduced cost. However I have tried the E10 95 RON in my VE SS and over about three tanks of it compared to the BP Ultimate 98RON that I normally use I did not see any difference to the performance, usage with the E10 increased by about 1l/100km but at about 20c/l cheaper it seems like I will cotinue to use the E10 and have it retuned on the E10 and see how it goes.

[payaya]

Shit so your telling me every time I fill my tank with E10 I'm not gaining financially? Shit that $2.00 could have gotten me places. Two tanks will mean an extra pot at the pub!!

[SS Enforcer]

Maybe BP and some others E10 is only 91 or 92 RON, and i notice that BP are selling it at the same price as regular unleaded, which IMO is a blatant ripoff.


BP must be refining cheaper to produce 88 or 89 RON to which they add 10% ethanol to make their E10 brew which by all rights it should be a few cents/lt less than the others are charging for their 95 Ron E10.



Nope it's all the same mate and there isn't any difference between the different companies fuels. The 10% is just a suggested level of E10 btw the accepted range in the industry is between 8% -12% ethanol content for it to be within the Oil Company E10 spec. There is a shortage of Ethanol atm and the E10 spec can actually be down to E5 , see they only advertise ethanol content up to 10% for E10 fuel.

There is absolutely no difference between the different Oil Companies regular and E10 fuels. They share it amongst themselves depending on which city they are . Any suggestion that one company has better fuels than the other is complete rubbish and nothing more than rumour and internet hype .

cheers

[LooneyR8]

I recently went to Horsham in the R8 for work. Left Endeavour Hills and filled the tank with United E10. It worked out that the car got 9.4l/100km.

For a genIII to get this kind of economy and at the price you pay, I was very happy with the results.:)

[swingtan]

I did some testing of E10 fuel a couple of weeks ago. To discover the "best" possible results from the E10 fuel, I ran 2 tanks worth fuel with the first tank being used to match the tune as much as possible to the new fuel. Both tanks were Shel E10 with is rated at 94 RON according to their doco.

Initial observations were that the AFR's were pretty far off. This means that is you are running a tune that makes minimal or no use of LTFT's or STFT's, you shouldn't run E10 without and adjustment to the tune. The VE table and the MAF will be too far out. Dynamics will need a visit as well to get the most out of the fuel. On the spark timing front, there is some good news here. While I'll admit I had a little too much timing, the E10 was returning good results with the same spark table as I had for 98 RON fuel. If I was to keep running E10, I'd probably drop the timing 3' to 5' but it was pretty good to run as it did.

If your car is stock or running a full CL tune, then you may be able take advantage of the price of E10, just remember that if you are going to try it, do a PCM/ECM reset when you fill with E10 and take it easy for for the first 50KM or so. Don;t then go blindly into "full race mode" though, progressively ramp the car up and make sure it's running OK. This will zero out the existing LTFT and allow the system to learn the trims from scratch. You may also need to run a couple of tanks worth of fuel to see the full benefit.

Another thing I noticed about E10 was that it seemed to be a more "stable" fuel with changes in IAT. AFR's didn't seem to drift as much and the engine also seemed a bit smoother on cold starts. It felt very responsive mid throttle and for the price, I'd be very tempted to keep using it. With the 4c/L discount, I've seen E10 at 96c/L, 15c to 20c cheaper than 98. With the tune optimised for E10, I've seen only a small change in overall economy as well.

Simon

[V-Car]

Nope it's all the same mate and there isn't any difference between the different companies fuels.

Going by the link i posted, the fuel companies say their E10 is mostly 91RON, including Caltex, my local Caltex says theirs is 95.
Who's telling the truth then, the Envirofuel mob website or the servos?

[WHLS1]

Did my own search of fuel retailer web sites looking for octane ratings.


United say their E10 is 95.


Shell say their E10 is 94 minimum and recommend that if your vehicle requires 95 or better that you use V Power. Appears they do not recommend their E10 for vehicles designed for 95 fuel.


BP call their E10 91+. I assume if it was more like 95 they would say. An indication that what they sell is pretty variable?


Caltex do not appear to want to reveal the octane rating. I was not going to search the Caltex site for hours however their E10 material does not mention anywhere octane rating. Octane rating is clearly displayed for non ethanol fuels!


Typical petrol companies - keep the public guessing.

[SS Enforcer]

Going by the link i posted, the fuel companies say their E10 is mostly 91RON, including Caltex, my local Caltex says theirs is 95.
Who's telling the truth then, the Envirofuel mob website or the servos?

It's like this E10 is std ulp fuel blended with 10% ethanol . I drive fuel tankers and load the stuff I know what is being loaded, the ethanol is blended with ULP as it's being loaded at a requested rate of 10%. Shell and Caltex have the same system for blending E10. Mobil and BP use Shell's E10 in Sydney and reciprocal agreements are in places in other cities. United buys std ULP from either Shell, Caltex or Mobil then adds 10% of ( Manildras) ethanol to it.

Like I said before it's all the same it comes from the same place pumped down the same pipelines. The reason they say it's 91 ron is they want you to buy their Pulp 95 instead for a higher price probably.

I was talking to someone at work the other day about threads on this site and others and chuckling about how people swear that one brand is better than the other when it's the same stuff. Some other things were explained to me and now I don't care which brand of 98 ron fuel I run in my car.

Good post from Swingtan as usual I did the same with my car and ran a couple of tanks of E10 through mine to see what would happen and found virtually no difference in drivability over the 98. It did rattle at Wot a couple of times but I expected that and apart from that it was fine.

PS I only did it to flush out my fuel system ..... nothing cleans like ethanol. :jester:


cheers

[WHLS1]

It's like this E10 is std ulp fuel blended with 10% ethanol . I drive fuel tankers and load the stuff I know what is being loaded, the ethanol is blended with ULP as it's being loaded at a requested rate of 10%. Shell and Caltex have the same system for blending E10. Mobil and BP use Shell's E10 in Sydney and reciprocal agreements are in places in other cities. United buys std ULP from either Shell, Caltex or Mobil then adds 10% of ( Manildras) ethanol to it.

I have long appreciated the reciprocal arrangement amongst fuel companies. In the absence of each having refineries everywhere nothing else makes sense. I have no brand allegiance and buy on price but try to avoid Shell on the basis that in the pre Coles/Woolworths docket days Shell always seemed to be the last to drop prices and the first to increase.

Interesting that all E10 blends are undertaken at depot save for United who do their own. Assume United also do their own blendning on Boost 98?


The reason they say it's 91 ron is they want you to buy their Pulp 95 instead for a higher price probably.

Well they are fuel companies so gouging customers by pushing them to a presumably higher profit margin product like 95 makes sense.

[SS Enforcer]

Interesting that all E10 blends are undertaken at depot save for United who do their own. Assume United also do their own blendning on Boost 98?



Well they don't exactly blend their own ..................... the driver just loads ethanol on top off the fuel he picks up from the Major Oil Company terminal after he leaves there, then drops it in the ground and it's blended.

Isn't that right Eric. :)

cheers

[WHLS1]

Well they don't exactly blend their own ..................... the driver just loads ethanol on top off the fuel he picks up from the Major Oil Company terminal after he leaves there, then drops it in the ground and it's blended.

Thanks, that is what I thought happened. Maybe I was a little generous using the term "blend" :)