On 4/30/2014 5:50 PM, jim wrote:
....

By 2012 ethanol sales had grown to 10% of market.
The EPA regulations do not allow it to grow any larger.
....

Now you're really making stuff up...

E15 is approved for light-duty vehicles from model year 2001 and up and
all Flex-fuel vehicles. That group constitutes roughly 75% of the
vehicles currently on the road and over 85% of the unleaded gasoline
sold in the US.

Hence, the theoretical upper limit is something over 0.85*15 -- ~13%
discounting FFVs. What fraction they are I didn't try to ascertain but
it's going up every model year and what fraction of the public that has
them uses E85 in them is also unknown.

I've got a couple that came that way 'cuz that's the way they were, not
that I had any desire for them, particularly and they've never visited
an E85 pump. I suppose on a trip sometime I ought to just try and see
how one of them does just for comparison.

But, the EPA is certainly _not_ mandated that E10 is the upper cap on
total ethanol usage altho the sizable fleet of vehicles on the road that
aren't FFV limits the potential market at the present.

Again, whether there will be a real uptick in consumer preference for
higher blends is still to be determined but it surely hasn't made itself
felt as yet. And, it can't be as there's simply not sufficient
production capacity at the moment to go too far beyond the present levels.

But clearly, it's been national energy policy in response to
environmental concern and higher oil prices that has driven the market,
not consumer-driven demand. It's been "the only game in town".

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