[LAsBestcom]

For an hour and a half, each truck did laps going 35 miles-per-hour. The first truck to run out of gas was the one filled with E85.16 laps later, the truck filled with regular gasoline came to a stop.

There are many different ways you could calculate the math. According to AAA gas gauge, the average price for a gallon of gas is $2.85. Compare that to what we paid for E85 – $2.21.

Our truck running on gasoline got 28 miles-per-gallon. The truck with E85 ended up with a little over 25 miles-per-gallon.

So, if you fill up your car with E85 and travel 180 miles going 35 miles-per-hour, you'll save just over two dollars compared to filling up with regular gasoline.

Even though E85 is less cash at the pumps, there are less pumps where you can buy the gas and not every vehicle is designed for E85 fuel. But, more vehicles are being made to accept the flex-fuel.

Some say that will help everyone in the long run. Piehl points out, "You're able to support the farm industry with the corn industry. So, I think it will catch on, but I think there needs to be some more stations out there. There needs to be more availability."

There are gas stations scattered around Illinois and Iowa selling E85, but the only ones close to our area are located in Princeton, Morrison, and West Burlington.

Another thing to point out – E85 gets worse mileage on the interstate, usually only 17 to 18 miles-per-gallon.

E85 burns much cooler than gasoline, and carries a significantly higher octane level. As far as being green, E85 is a cleaner fuel than gasoline, and is much, much better than race gasoline. Methanol would also be an option, although it is more highly corrosive than ethanol, especially on aluminum -- of which there is plenty on these machines. Regarding sustainability, estimates vary widely. Some claim that ethanol is not sustainable, however, many of their projections come from the use of corn as the feedstock. Corn is not even close to being the best available biomass for ethanol production. Current statistics show that sugar beets, some grasses and possibly algae hold out great promise for ethanol production. Ethanol also carries government subsidies and can utilize the current gasoline infrastructure already in place across the U.S.

Current problems with ethanol include it's lower energy density than gasoline. This means that it takes more ethanol to produce the same amount of power as with gasoline. However, because the fuel burns cooler, compression can be raised, or the engine can be turbocharged, as in the E85 Viper, bringing power levels up. Some estimate that with proper tuning, ethanol could equal gasoline's power production. Results from VW and SVS Power back up this theory.