Successful Demonstration of In-Use Vehicles Operating on High Ethanol Content Fuels

The viability of high ethanol content fueled vehicles operating in fleet service was studied. 36 1992 Chevrolet Luminas were operated in routine service by the Wisconsin State Fleet. Twelve were ethanol variable fueled vehicles (VFVs) and twenty-four were regular production unleaded gasoline vehicles. The demonstration program has completed its third year with few fuel-related incidents. The program was designed to determine fleet service performance of VFVs compared with unleaded vehicles with regard to cold weather operation, user satisfaction, economics and emissions. The VFVs performed as well as, or better than the production unleaded version in all categories except economics. Exceptional performance of the VFVs can be attributed to tight control of the fuel from production to end-use consumption as well as precision engineering of the low production VFV.