In what is probably an early contender for this year's "Wishful Thinking" awards, Ford's VP of safety and environment engineering stated this week that oil companies should offer E85 at more of their fuel stations. Noted was the fact that there are over 170,000 retail automotive fuel outlets in the U.S., yet less than 600 operational E85 pumps among them (most of those are operated by small retailers and not larger franchises).
Presumably, so-called "big oil companies" got big not by offering competition to their own products, and as such it may not be safe to assume that salvation to our petroleum addition is going to come from those who have sold us several trillion dollars of the stuff.
A representative from the American Petroleum Institute stated that the average cost of installing an E85 pump and the required storage tank is about $200,000. The representative then asked: "Where the hell in our name do you see the word 'ethanol'?" Okay... so maybe not really, but we bet he wishes he could.
[Source: Automotive News]
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