E85Forum.com

moonshiner · Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 1 Location: Waukee, Iowa

Hey All,

Been lurking here for quite some time, finally bought a flex fuel Taurus so I could join the E-85 crowd. I know that people often say there is a decrease in fuel economy when running a vehicle on E-85 so I was just wondering in there were any flex fuel taurus owners out there that would be willing to devulge how much of a decrease they see. I had an '01 Taurus before and our long term running average on E10 was 23. I've run two tanks of E-85 trough the taurus and have gotten right at 20 (this tank was about 1/4 E10) and then the second tank got a little over 17 on what I'd call "pure" E85. Is this about what you can expect to get in mainly city driving?

Thanks.

specialgreen

If you bought an '06 Taurus, the Department of Energy ( http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byfuel/FFV2006.shtmlhau ) estimates that you'd get 19/27 mpg on gasoline and 15/20 mpg on E-85. That's a 26% reduction in mpg on the highway and a 21% reduction in the city.

Your 23mpg is right in-between 19 and 27, so you might expect 17 or 18mpg using E-85. Things are rarely that simple, but it sounds like in your case, you're right about there.

A while ago, I averaged all the numbers for the 2004 model-year FFVs, and found an average decrease in MPG of 25%. I had heard that 2006 would bring some changes in FFVs that would help close the gap, but I haven't seen them yet.