ST. LOUIS -- Ethanol producer VeraSun Energy Corp., in partnership with Ford Motor Co., officially opened Thursday what it is calling a new Midwest Ethanol Corridor. The corridor will increase the availability of VE85, VeraSun's branded E85, with the addition of 14 new retail locations along I-55 in Illinois.
The announcement is being promoted via full-page ads (not available at presstime) in major newspapers nationwide.
The corridor should enable owners of flexible-fuel vehicles (FFVs) to travel the interstates between Chicago [image-nocss] and Kansas City, Mo.a 1,700-mile roundtripexclusively on renewable, corn-based E85, Ford and VeraSun said.
In November 2005, VeraSun announced a partnership with Ford to increase VE85 fueling locations and raise awareness about the benefits of E85 use. VeraSun's branded E85 fuel, VE85, is now available at more than 70 retail locations across the Midwest, including nearly 40 in Illinois.
The opening of this corridor is the culmination of work between VeraSun and Ford, both of which committed to work in partnership to expand the availability of E85. While it is important to expand the availability of E85, it is equally important to raise consumer awareness regarding FFV ownership and E85 use. We believe this corridor serves as one example of how both objectives can be achieved when the automotive and ethanol industries work together, said Don Endres, chairman and CEO, VeraSun.
Today's launch represents an important step toward wider accessibility of E85 for America's drivers, said Bill Ford, Chairman and CEO, Ford. Ethanol is an energy source straight from America's farmlands. Ford, together with VeraSun, believes the corridor can help jump-start the growth of E85 as we work to address the nation's energy issues.
Ford currently offers four FFV models designed to run on E85 or gasolinethe 2006 Ford F-150, Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Carand will produce up to 250,000 FFVs this year.
Brookings, S.D.-based VeraSun is the second-largest U.S. ethanol producer, it said. The company has two operating production facilities located in Aurora, S.D., and Fort Dodge, Iowa, is constructing a third facility in Charles City, Iowa, and has two additional facilities under development in Welcome, Minn., and northwestern Iowa. Upon completion of the new facilities, VeraSun will have an annual production capacity of approximately 560 million gallons of ethanol per year.
Meanwhile, U.S. automakers said Wednesday they will double production of FFVs by 2010, adding vehicles capable of running on ethanol blends and other biofuels and reducing dependence upon foreign oil.
Writing lawmakers about their plans, the leaders of General Motors Corp., Ford and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group urged oil companies and Congress to promote the production of ethanol and biofuel and increase the number of stations offering the fuels. Our hope is that with this commitment, fuel providers will have even more incentive to produce ethanol and other biofuels and install pumps to distribute them, the automakers said, according to the Associated Press.
The Big Three automakers have produced five million FFVs, which can run on gasoline and fuel blends of up to 85% ethanol. They are expected to produce an additional one million of the vehicles this year. Their commitment would lead to two million annually by 2010. The automakers said the production numbers were estimates but the companies were committed to reaching the two million mark by 2010.
The executives said if all the current FFVs were running on E85, they would displace more than 3.5 billion gallons of gasoline a year, or a full year of gas consumption in a state such as Missouri or Tennessee.
But many obstacles remain. Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, said E85 blends are not practical in most parts of the country because the fuel is more expensive than gasoline and contains about two-thirds of the energy value. The idea that industry should just rush ahead, make investments on E85 just on the chancenot very likelythat it will gain widespread acceptance just doesn't make any sense, he said.
Environmentalists contend that few FFVs ever use ethanol blends and note that automakers receive a credit of 1.2 miles per gallon on federal fuel-economy requirements by producing the vehicles. The reality is that they're getting PR benefits by claiming to be green when they're actually taking advantage of a loophole that increases our oil consumption and pollution, said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club s global warming program.
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