• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

E15

With all due respect, development of oil sands is a different discussion. However, as with the production of anything here in the West, nowhere compares with our environmental controls, (maybe Europe?) fines, penalties, etc. Whether E15 or E10, or production of gas, energy producers are under intense scrutiny. Most troubling is aquifer depletion, and mandated compliance for two wheeled vehicles that even in year round climes, are infrequently seen tooling down the road. It is quite likely the introduction of water cooling to the GS has less to do with cutting edge cool needed technological development, improving the breed, than it does to complying with the ever increasing across the board sweeping vehicle emissions law. Cross thread to the water cooled GS, where it was mentioned 7000 BMW engineers, including their automotive division, in the development of motorcycles. And after E15 there's the benefits of E20.
 
Yes, would agree that regular old 91 octane gas with no ethanol works just fine even in an old airhead, easily exceeding 40 mpg over thirty years from production. Using an ethanol product in motorcycles may be environmentally unnecessary . Think of how the BMW breed could have been developed in other ways, differently for its present day owners and purchasers, if the negligible environmental exhaust emissions would have been exempted? who knows, may have offered better seating, or name other items needing refinement.
 
Probably about a buck a gallon. Just sayin, two cents.

A barrel of crude costs $90 ~ $100. That's 42 gal of crude. You get about 20 gal of gasoline out of that. Plus some kerosene/jet fuel (4 gal), diesel/heating oil (10 gal), etc. And waste. The material cost of gasoline is in the $2 ~ $2.50 gal range. That's before refinery operation costs, refinery profits, fuel delivery costs, gas station fixed costs, gas station profits, and taxes.

Tell me again how gas could be around a buck a gallon? :ear
 
With all due respect, development of oil sands is a different discussion. However, as with the production of anything here in the West, nowhere compares with our environmental controls, (maybe Europe?) fines, penalties, etc. Whether E15 or E10, or production of gas, energy producers are under intense scrutiny. Most troubling is aquifer depletion, and mandated compliance for two wheeled vehicles that even in year round climes, are infrequently seen tooling down the road. It is quite likely the introduction of water cooling to the GS has less to do with cutting edge cool needed technological development, improving the breed, than it does to complying with the ever increasing across the board sweeping vehicle emissions law. Cross thread to the water cooled GS, where it was mentioned 7000 BMW engineers, including their automotive division, in the development of motorcycles. And after E15 there's the benefits of E20.

I guess I don't share your opinion that the upper mid-West is under greater scrutiny than anywhere else in the country. Most of the population centers in the east are surrounded by high value agricultural regions and bisected by rivers. We are also downwind of the upper mid-west. In addition, we have a much higher concentration of humans and, possibly, animals.

Accordingly, I look at environmental laws as a means of improving / protecting our environment with better technology. Sadly, others take a static perspective on technology and consider environmental laws as a threat to their current practices and lifestyles.
 
Just picked a buck as to where it was back say in the mid nineties. Buck eighty would also work. What's crude really worth? At the wellhead? The price of any commodity, oil included, and ethanol enriched gas, should controlled by market demand. However, when the barrel of crude yields too little profit, usually OPEC steps up, lowers production, and the prices come roaring back. Or in the instance of 1974, they simply conspired to raise the price.

Exempting two wheelers, kiddies dirt bikes, watercraft, snowmobiles, etc. from ethanol use just makes common sense. There is simply not enough of this type of use to warrent legal control. An impartial objective study would reveal much as to how much fuel is actually used in these vehicles annually as compared to the big burners, cars, trains, planes, trucks and busses.

Some want to burn ethanol, others question it's use, even its possible benefit to payback ratio.
What can be said except that it's still debatable. In Minnesota legislators wisely allowed pumps, at the stations' expense, to sell non ethanol gas, which I use, for engines requiring no ethanol, and the pumps are so labeled for special use only. Not much of this gas is sold, or burned, not a problem. I usually pay in excess of four bucks a gallon for the straight gas.
 
Just picked a buck as to where it was back say in the mid nineties. Buck eighty would also work. What's crude really worth? At the wellhead? The price of any commodity, oil included, and ethanol enriched gas, should controlled by market demand. However, when the barrel of crude yields too little profit, usually OPEC steps up, lowers production, and the prices come roaring back. Or in the instance of 1974, they simply conspired to raise the price.

Exempting two wheelers, kiddies dirt bikes, watercraft, snowmobiles, etc. from ethanol use just makes common sense. There is simply not enough of this type of use to warrent legal control. An impartial objective study would reveal much as to how much fuel is actually used in these vehicles annually as compared to the big burners, cars, trains, planes, trucks and busses.

Some want to burn ethanol, others question it's use, even it's possible benefit to payback ratio.
What can be said except that it's still debatable. In Minnesota legislators wisely allowed pumps, at the stations' expense, to sell non ethanol gas, which I use, for engines requiring no ethanol, and the pumps are so labeled for special use only. Not much of this gas is sold, or burned, not a problem.

Relative to small vehicles,

BMW and Honda (even more so Honda) have the technical talent to handle any design challenge. If I recall correctly, GM relies, or has relied, on Mercruiser for the build and development of Corvette engines. I doubt that Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki will be too disadvantaged.

Relative to the days when gas was cheap in the 1990's..............it was the exchange rate. At that time, the dollar was 30~40% higher in value relative to the European currencies.
 
The price of any commodity, oil included, and ethanol enriched gas, should controlled by market demand.
Econ 101 teaches you about supply and demand. It only works in a FREE market. We don't have no stinkin' free market (said in my best imitation of a Mexican bandit I can muster.) Look at US history in the late 1800's and early 1900's. They figured out what a monopoly was and determined it was wrong. Looks like we need to learn that all over again.
 
Exempting two wheelers, kiddies dirt bikes, watercraft, snowmobiles, etc. from ethanol use just makes common sense. There is simply not enough of this type of use to warrent legal control. An impartial objective study would reveal much as to how much fuel is actually used in these vehicles annually as compared to the big burners, cars, trains, planes, trucks and busses.

In Minnesota legislators wisely allowed pumps, at the stations' expense, to sell non ethanol gas, which I use, for engines requiring no ethanol, and the pumps are so labeled for special use only. Not much of this gas is sold, or burned, not a problem. I usually pay in excess of four bucks a gallon for the straight gas.

Don't recall trains, planes and diesels using ethanol in any form. Don't get started on the railroads exemption from virtually any laws. Seem to recall an incident recently where the railroads threw a fit because of an increase in diesel costs from $.50 per gallon before to $.75 after (or some such ludicrously low figure).

As for Minnesota, When I lived there (until 2011) I couldn't find ethanol free gas anywhere at any price so had to suffer the e10 swill. Is this a recent change of policy from mandated e10?
 
In Minnesota when the ethanol law was enacted, in the nineties, I remember calling my legislator because they were considering allowing non-ethanol for special purposes. And it worked out. A few blocks away a locally owned independent station has a pump. I think there is a website just for finding non-ethanol gas, nationally. Forgot the title, but it is something like "buyrealgas". If you gotta use ethanol, ya gotta use it. But there goes the mileage.

as for the trains, trucks and planes, they too have specially formulated fuels additives and such today, far as I know. Truckers maybe can add some info.
 
Puregas.org is one site. I've not used e-crap for over a year. Mileage is up but no savings due to cost being higher. Worth it to me.
 
Exempting two wheelers, kiddies dirt bikes, watercraft, snowmobiles, etc. from ethanol use just makes common sense. There is simply not enough of this type of use to warrent legal control. An impartial objective study would reveal much as to how much fuel is actually used in these vehicles annually as compared to the big burners, cars, trains, planes, trucks and busses.

You are right but the small amount creates a supply problem. How many places would stock the fuel? The small amount sold would not justify a dedicated tank and then there is the difficulty of selling enough for the fuel to stay fresh.
 
There's a interesting article on the businessweek website about Eastern Canada not authorizing pipelines to carry the oil east. Instead, the eastern provinces import Algerian oil refined in TX.
ND wells take a typical 2,000 truck loads of whatever per well and the number of wells is projected at near 50k. There are two companies planning a pipeline to send WV & KY NG to the gulf for sales. In ND much of the NG is currently burned off.
 
Well, it would cost about five bucks to fill up the bike with gas, swing yer leg over the saddle, and things would be no worse off for the effort. Now if that proved unachievable, then at the least exempt all motorcycles/scooters and any other vastly more environmentally friendly, high mileage, low impact vehicles from burning E15 or E10 as the costs involved both in vehicle development and technical complexity isn't worth the negligible environmental payback. Just trying to think critically, outside the box. Two cents on the use of E anything.
So that would mean I have to sell my BMW's & ride the 100cc Honda to Oregon?:laugh
 
ND wells take a typical 2,000 truck loads of whatever per well and the number of wells is projected at near 50k. There are two companies planning a pipeline to send WV & KY NG to the gulf for sales. In ND much of the NG is currently burned off.

In PA we'll have to wait until the future to see if there's been any damage. The drilling is in the poor and sparsely populated areas of the state, but activity has dropped with the decline in NG prices and discovery of heavier NG further west. The heavier NG is apparently more valuable for the petro-chemical industry. Relative to transmission pipelines.......that appears to be the part of the NG industry that's run by adults. Sadly, I haven't seen a lot of activity in laying new lines or doing anything with the gas locally. If electric power was of some value, building new NG powered generation stations would be a good idea........but the electric rates are too low to justify the expense.
 
Anyone who is buying gas that is labeled ethanol free should take a minute to check their station's underground storage tank permit. These permits are required to be posted though you might have to ask for it. They show the capacity of each tank and the product in it. It's an easy way to be sure you're getting what you pay for.
 
At the station the pump is a special pump labeled non oxygenate with one nozzle. It's a recently built facility so with current tank law they were recently new. There is also a sticker warning of the law so some hapless individual will not inadvertantly fillup their Volvo, and get sent to jail. I think they could sell a lot of non oxygenate if bikes were simply exempted, because of their minute overall contribution to polluting the environment when viewed on the total hydrocarbon consumption pie chart. some manufacturers may still want to develope engines with water cooling, if they so please. But others would be freed up to pursue other developments such as ergonomics, handling, appearance etc. And the environment would take little notice. IMO. Only suggesting that the theory of "one shoe fits all" has holes in it. It is possible that the animals farting in the woods cause more harm then non oxygenate using, very occasionally seen GS, could ever cause.
 
Anyone who is buying gas that is labeled ethanol free should take a minute to check their station's underground storage tank permit. These permits are required to be posted though you might have to ask for it. They show the capacity of each tank and the product in it. It's an easy way to be sure you're getting what you pay for.
Another thing you may want to look at is the octane. All the pure gas stuff is 87 octane around here. Your bike might not like that.
 
Back
Top