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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

By law, gasoline gets cut with ethanol, degrading engine performance. If I buy gas from you guys will it be legal to put 100% gasoline into my engine? If so that's a "killer app," (so to speak) for people who care about their engines, even if it is more expensive in early development stages.

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Why do you say ethanol degrades performance? Ethanol is an anti-knocking agent when added to gasoline, so it actually enables higher performance.

Your engine has to be designed for it. It's a niche market I know, but some engines aren't. (Not every gasoline engine is in a car after all.)

It degrades energy density of the fuel (by volume).

In other words, today's gasoline in US takes you 4% less distance than gasoline from 70s.

It also creates problems with internal corrosion (which is why it is not used in aircraft fuels), though modern auto engines are designed to deal with that (and are more expensive because of that, too).

Sure, the energy density is a bit lower, but that's not really what people mean when they talk about "performance". "High-performance cars" don't usually refer to cars that can go a long distance on a tank.

It's likely we will be exempt from ethanol blending requirements, as this would increase the carbon intensity of our fuel.

Only seven states have laws mandating gasahol. Gas stations in all other states are just using it for profit.

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