I'm just miffed that there's 15% gasoline in my E-85. I'd prefer 100% ETOH, but that doesn't work real well in cold winter weather.
I haven't noticed that big a drop in my mileage, but I drive a flex-fuel truck designed to run on the stuff, regardless.
Bump up the compression to take advantage of the higher ETOH octane, and things change dramatically. I'm looking into converting my high-compression Shovelhead over to the 105 octane fuel, too.
Add to that that most of the ethanol is made from corn and that that has caused food prices to go up and it all boils down to a huge ripoff of the driving public.
Over-used urban myth. Food prices are going up because grocery trucks run on diesel, which is heading towards $5.00/gallon. Duh. How much field corn are you eating, btw? Hint - the field corn my family sells to the local distillery comes back to us after they remove the starch. We keep the silage and distiller's dry grains, and our black angus beef herd aren't starving, last I heard. It's a protein shortage that's causing hunger problems worldwide, not a starch shortage. As we switch over ethanol production to other feedstocks like switchgrass and kudzu, I want to see how much weeping and gnashing of teeth the uninformed make. Save the kudzu for gawd's sake, some people are starving! The food vs. fuel argument is contrived, and people are buying it as gospel truth, because they're gullible and don't want to learn what's really happening out there. See link below for data points.
Ripoff? Yeah, sure. I paid $2.99/gallon to fill up on E-85 last night. Gasoline was $3.99/gallon. That's an honest $1.00/gallon difference, so even if I got a worst-case 15% difference in mileage, I still make out very much ahead on miles/dollar. Ethanol is the devil's creation.
http://www.e85fuel.com/news/2008/050908/ncga_foodandfuel_paper.pdf