High gas prices lead the hosts through practical fuel choices and ownership strategy. They break down ethanol blends—why E85 needs more fuel, how flex-fuel sensors help, and why non-flex cars shouldn’t use E85. Then they tackle premium fuel myths: octane prevents knock in engines designed for it, while the wrong grade can waste money and even complicate warranty claims. Finally, they zoom out to buying decisions, arguing hybrids and carefully chosen used EVs (under warranty) can reduce risk as prices and incentives shift.
0:00
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00:58
Term
ethanol
Ethanol is a fuel alcohol that’s usually made from corn or sugarcane. It can be mixed into gasoline and can help with emissions, but it doesn’t pack as much energy as regular gasoline, so you may need more fuel to travel the same distance.
01:04
Term
E15
E15 is a type of gas that’s mixed with ethanol—15% ethanol and 85% regular gasoline. Some cars can use it and some can’t, so it depends on what your vehicle is designed for.
01:32
Term
tailpipe emissions
Tailpipe emissions are the gases and pollutants that come out of a car’s exhaust. The idea here is that ethanol blends can reduce some of those emissions compared with regular gasoline.
01:46
Term
energy dense
“Energy dense” just means how much “go” you get from a certain amount of fuel. Ethanol has less energy per gallon than regular gas, so you usually have to buy more to go the same miles.
02:00
Part
fuel pump
The fuel pump moves fuel from the tank to the engine. If ethanol requires more fuel to go the same distance, the pump may need to be sized to deliver that extra volume.
02:00
Part
fuel injectors
Fuel injectors are the parts that deliver fuel into the engine. If you’re using ethanol blends, the engine may need to inject more fuel to get the same driving range.
02:00
Term
ECU
The ECU is the car’s engine computer. It has to be programmed to account for ethanol blends so the engine gets the right amount of fuel.
02:25
Term
carburetor
A carburetor is a device that mixes fuel and air for the engine. If ethanol-blended fuel has water in it, it can gum up the carburetor and make starting harder.
02:37
Term
drivability problem
A drivability problem means the car runs poorly, like it’s hard to start or feels rough. Here, the issue is water getting into the fuel, which can mess up how the engine burns it.
02:58
Term
fuel additives
Fuel additives are chemicals you add to gas to help it stay stable. The idea here is to reduce the chance of water causing problems when the car sits for a while.
03:06
Term
corrosion
Corrosion is rust or metal damage. If water gets into ethanol-blended fuel, it can speed up corrosion in parts of the fuel system.
03:10
Term
E10
E10 is a common gasoline blend that contains 10% ethanol and 90% petroleum gasoline. It’s lower ethanol content than E15 or E85, so it generally has less ethanol-related moisture sensitivity than higher blends.
03:43
Term
flex fuel vehicle
A flex-fuel vehicle can use different ethanol blends, like E85. It has a sensor that tells the car how much ethanol is in the fuel so the computer can adjust to run correctly.
04:14
Term
E85
E85 is a type of gas that has a lot more alcohol (ethanol) mixed in than normal gasoline. Some cars are built to handle it, but regular cars aren’t, so the engine may run poorly or even get damaged if you use it.
04:20
Term
engine's computer
Your car has a computer that controls things like how much fuel gets injected. If you use a fuel the computer isn’t set up for, it can’t adjust correctly and the car may run rough or poorly.
Hey, welcome back. I'm Keith Barry. I'm Alex and Isaac. And I'm Jake Fisher. And this
week we're going to talk about what everyone's been talking about, automatively and, you
know, just sort of in their own lives, gas prices. So it's the end of May when we're
filming this. And right now the Strait of Hormuz has been open, it's been closed, it's
been closed, prices have gone crazy. We don't know what's happened in the, you know, days
since we filmed this, but the word unprecedented gets used, like on the news, like every 10
minutes, to describe something entirely different. So, you know, we headed to YouTube, we put
a post, we asked folks out there, what do you want to know about gas? It's expensive,
people want to save money, and we got a ton of questions for us. So we're just going to
dive into them. First up, we got a ton of questions about ethanol. And ethanol is something
up, you know, we're located in Connecticut, in the Northeast, we don't see, you know, gas pumps
that have, you know, the E15 or the various, you know, some of the blends that are out there.
But it's a real important question. So we're just going to throw it to our expert, Mike
Croson.
Ethanol fuel is something you may have seen at your local filling station or heard about in the
news recently. And here's what you should know. Ethanol is an alcohol based fuel. It comes
from sugarcane or corn. And that's where the the positives of it, right? It is largely
renewable. But it is a double edged sword. So let's talk about the differences here. It's a
high octane fuel. It helps lower tailpipe emissions. And it is largely renewable, we can
grow more corn and make more fuel. All that sounds great, right? It does. But there are some
downsides. So when we talk about those, the first thing is that ethanol fuel is not as
energy dense as regular petroleum gasoline, meaning you need more of it. It's going to take
about 30% more ethanol fuel to get you down the road as compared to regular petroleum fuel. So
your car needs to be set up in order to use it. You need a larger fuel pump, larger fuel
injectors and the programming within your cars ECU to be able to do all the calculations to
let your car run on this higher ethanol content fuel. Now, there are some other downsides, and
this isn't just exclusive to cars, you may have encountered this on small power equipment,
things like lawnmowers. You're going to start the lawnmower up the first cut in the spring,
and it doesn't want to start or making starts, but it wants terrible. You ended up having to
drain out the fuel, clean out the fuel lines and possibly even open up the carburetor and
clean it out too. That's because ethanol absorbs water. There's water in the air in this room,
there's water in the air outside, there's water in the air in your gas tank, that water
settles in the fuel at the bottom of the tank, and you go to start up your vehicle, it sucks
all that water up, it can cause a drivability problem or maybe even actual damage. So if
you don't use your car a lot, you want to try to use the least content of ethanol in your fuel
as you can. Or if you do run E85, if you have a flex fuel vehicle, you want to make sure that
you're really using some fuel additives if the car is going to sit around, or ideally just don't
let the car sit around, right? Just use it, burn through that fuel, keep the fuel fresh and you
shouldn't have any kind of water intrusion or corrosion problems. Now, when we talk about
ethanol fuel, it's typically represented by E meaning ethanol and then a numerical number. So
E10, E15, E85. What that number is, that's the percentage of ethanol within the gallon of fuel.
So E10 is 10% ethanol, 90% petroleum gasoline, E85 is 85% ethanol, and only 15% petroleum
gasoline. So that's what it means when you actually see it at the pump. And E15 is actually out there
right now. It's typically noted as idiot octane, which you may see some areas though in the Midwest
where they grow a lot of corn, it is quite prevalent. And that's where they sell these cars
that are called flex fuel cars. But the nice thing about those flex fuel cars are that you can
actually run 85 ethanol fuel, one day, and then maybe you're on a chip, you're away from your area,
you're up here in Connecticut, where it's tough to get, you can put regular 87 octane in the car
because there's a little sensor in line in the fuel system that can detect the percentage of
ethanol in the fuel. Therefore, it lets the engine's computer make all the right calculations and
control the engine in the way that needs to be controlled when you're running fuel that has
different ethanol contents. If your car is a regular non flex fuel car, you definitely do not
want to put E85 in it. Let's keep all the corrosion stuff to the side. Just simply your car isn't
set up to run it, meaning the engine's computer doesn't know that it may have E85 in it, your
fuel injectors are big enough, the air fuel mixture is going to be off, you have all kinds of drivability
problems at best. If you keep running that fuel, you could have actual malfunctions and breakdowns
damage that could happen. You want to be very careful of that.
So, I think I definitely learned something from that, that's for sure.
Yeah, always do, talking to Mike.
Yeah, exactly. So, this is corn.
Yeah, this is corn. This is right. This is adding corn to your fuel with the idea of making it less
expensive is ultimately the goal of adding ethanol to fuel.
But the price on the pump doesn't necessarily correspond to great value, not necessarily.
Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of things with ethanol fuel. The energy density of fuel is not
as high. There was a period of time where E85 was kind of all the rage and we were seeing a lot
of vehicles with flex fuel capabilities, but the fuel economy isn't as great usually when
you're running E85 versus fuel with a lower ethanol content. So, that's one problem.
And as Mike told you about, there's corrosive aspects of this fuel versus regular gasoline
and all these different things. So, you don't want to put it into your
snowblower or your small engine or anything, it's going to sit for a long time.
Yeah, definitely, definitely not. So, another way that you could save money,
people are asking us questions, a lot of questions about premium fuel. And there's a lot of, I think,
misinformation and people misunderstand a lot of things about this. So, you pull up to the gas
tank at the pump and you see, you know, regular mid-grade in premium and then your car, you open
the flap and it might say, you know, some of the cars we have out here will say 91 recommended or
it'll say premium recommended or in some cases, premium required. So, can you sort of...
Well, I'll add one other thing to the commercials for premium like 93 octane, 94 octane, your car
deserves better and they almost make it sound like, you know, you're putting in rocket fuel
into your car and somehow it's going to perform better and your car is going to last longer.
And it's... The name alone, premium, right? Yeah, premium, right? Like, I want to get the
premium car wash, you know, I want to get the premium... If you bought a premium car...
I got a premium car, I need premium fuel. Exactly. I want to have a premium lunch,
why not give my car the same? But octane doesn't make gas better.
It is so strange that it even is called premium because it is... I mean, higher octane fuel
is called premium for some reason, but it's just higher octane fuel.
And actually, it kind of makes it work. In worst case of an explode.
Let's talk about knock, let's talk about all this fun stuff, but that's literally...
The higher the octane, the less basically flammable it is.
So the lower octane actually ignites easier. So you'd think like, I want gasoline that kind of
like burns, right? You get the stuff that doesn't burn and that's the higher octane stuff.
So it's just some engines are designed to work with that higher octane fuel. And if you have
that higher octane fuel, because it's not explosive, you could tune the engine slightly
differently. Maybe a more controlled burn or whatnot. And some engines can benefit from that.
You can get a higher compression ratio and you could get more horsepower potentially
out of a certain engine if you tune it for that higher octane fuel. It's not a premium
burn. It's a higher octane burn. But the truth is, is that if you have a vehicle that is designed
for regular fuel, you're really not doing anything. You're just wasting your money. It'll
probably drive fine on the higher octane fuel, but it's not going to be any better. Your engine's
not going to last any longer. You're just going to be out of money quicker. I think people get
confused sometimes because there is this thing called top tier fuel. And we talk about this a
lot. And this is a detergent that goes in the gasoline and can keep carbon deposits from getting
built up in your engine. Top tier fuel can help any engine. Right. And top tier, I mean,
generally it's like the name brand, like places are going to be your Costco, which is another good
way to save money on gas. Well, absolutely. Yeah. And the worst thing you would want to do
is to get premium fuel, high octane fuel from a non top tier brand that you're actually
throwing money away. Not only are you throwing money away, but also you're not doing the best
thing for your engine there because it's not a top tier fuel. So your best bet is to have a top
tier fuel. So get, you know, I mean, essentially a brand that you recognize because otherwise
you get to some of the other gas stations and basically they're bringing in gas from all different
types of suppliers. They're not necessarily maybe one day that it will have a top tier fuel, but
they're finding whatever's cheapest. Get something that you really know where it's coming from
and get the right fuel for your car, which also could be confusing because yes, if your car requires
premium fuel, do what's required. Got it. If it recommends it, it doesn't mean you
have to use the premium fuel. It doesn't mean you have to use it. So Alex, what kind of,
I mean, I know in our fleet of cars out here, most of the ones take regular, some say premiums
recommended. Occasionally we get in or in, it tends to be a real fun car that requires premium.
So what, how is, do manufacturers decide essentially? Yeah. Well, I mean, Jake was
talking about the design of the engine, right? If they're optimizing for performance in certain
ways, fuel economy potentially, right? It's really the operation point, if you will, that that engine
is designed to run at. And there are certain situations where you may want that higher octane
fuel, right? If you're chowing a load up a hill or a mountain in Colorado, right? So these really
high demanding situations can help prevent something called knock, which we can get into,
or if it's unusually hot out, right? And you're going to be putting a lot of demand
from both a heat perspective and a load perspective on that engine. Maybe it makes sense, but
most of the time on a vehicle where it's recommended, you can get away with regular fuel
just in day to day driving. So if it's not recommended and you're going to tow,
just put in regular, because the engine's designed to do that. If it's hot, just put in what the
manufacturer recommends because that's what it's designed to. But if it says recommended, maybe
you put it in, if you're going up a mountain pass, if you're taking a car on a track day.
That's right. If it says it's required, that means that that engine's been benchmarked.
You got it. And maybe even a warranty claim might even get denied if you haven't put it in.
I mean, this can make a big difference in the cost of fueling that car over time. So knowing this
up front before you, I mean, the worst thing would be to buy a new car and all that. And
then you find out later that it requires premium fuel, right? So definitely do your research first
and understand what the vehicles require. It isn't that many cars that require these days.
Required is really, it tends to be kind of performance cars. It's, you know, your Corvette,
your, you know, a few other, you know, vehicles out there. Yeah. The ones that are on the front page
of car and driver that advertises spec and they're able to get two more horsepower than the competitor
because they, you know, they designed that engine to work with 93. Yeah. But generally,
I mean, you're paying about 25% more for that premium fuel if you don't need to use it. So I
have a Civic Si at home and it is a car that recommends premium fuel, does not require it.
What do you put in? And what I put in is top tier regular. And I've been running on regular,
and it's funny because I look on the forums or on Reddit and everyone's like, well, of course,
I want to keep this car for a long time. Of course, I'm going to put premium, right? Well,
I've been running regular on it. I've never experienced any pinging or knocking or any
kind of funny sounds. The car in rives fine. And knock is, just to get back to that knock is an
issue where it used to happen on older engines a lot more. Knock is an issue where the flame
detonates sort of incorrectly. Or too early. Yeah. And you might hear something that's where the
name knock is coming from. But yeah, that nation. Yeah. If you're younger than 75,
you probably haven't heard knock on an engine. No, you probably have. They all have the ability to
correct for what you put in, right? Because we're talking, fill it up sometimes with this and then
other times with regular. And ultimately, unless you drop every, you know, or take every drop,
have fuel out of your tank, you're going to have some mixture going on in there, right? So the
vehicle can compensate and adjust for it. They have smart electronics that can go adjust for it.
Jake, if you were going to drive that car in the track and it was 100 degrees outside,
maybe you'd fill it up with the premium pump. Maybe. Maybe. I'm not sure how many people,
you know, are doing that and driving on the track. Oh, come on. At 100 degrees.
With the air conditioning on towing. So, okay, so we're just going to say it once.
Check your owner's manual. If it says required premium fuel, put in premium fuel. If it says
recommended premium fuel, most of the time, you're fine with regular unless it's one of these
conditions that, you know, like Alex was talking about. And again, your owner's manual may even
describe those things like towing, driving real hard, that sort of thing. Your highway cruise,
not a problem. Money in your pocket. And there's other ways of saving
money at the gas pump. Oh, and let me just, but if it doesn't say, if it says regular fuel,
if it doesn't say anything about premium fuel, you are completely wasting money if you're putting
anything other than 87 in that, in that, that's right. Now, I do like the ways that you actually
can save. And we looked into this, you know, Costco, we mentioned, you know, I don't drive
50 miles to get to one of these places, but there are other loyalty programs that exist,
you know, the Cumberland Farms, the Cumbies up the street from us, as if you sign up for the app
and they put the thing and some credit cards will give a percentage back up to an amount.
So just kind of keep that in mind. You know, it's, it's not going to make gas a ton cheaper,
but if it's something you have to purchase anyways, and it's more expensive than ever,
keep these things in mind. Also say shop around too. So again, don't drive 50 miles out of your
way to save a few cents. But especially when gas prices are volatile. So what you got to consider
is like each one of these, these gas stations are buying gasoline at different times. And when
it's volatile because the prices are going up and down and whatnot, when they purchased it could
make a difference. So you may find that even with a very close section, you know, within a few miles,
you might see 20 cents here are their swings just because when they actually purchased that fuel.
So, I mean, I was just doing, I took a, took a trip this weekend and like, you know, I looked
up and like almost even the same brands, you know, I mean, it's like the mobile at Sonoka,
like they're swinging like 20 or 30 cents from station to station that are just along my route.
So it's just worthwhile and it's easier than ever to kind of check those prices. I mean,
you could look at, you know, Google maps and you could see a gas buddy, all those sites, like you
don't need those anymore because it's right there on, on the map applications. Yeah. Although do
check because I have, I also took a trip recently and some of those were a couple, by the time I
got there, it had gone up 15 cents. Well, this is it. It's very volatile. Yeah. When it's volatile,
it changes all the time. They're, they're out there changing the signs as you're pumping it up.
Yeah. Right. So another question we've been getting is from people who, and I've been getting this
one, not just from YouTube, but sometimes journalists will call us up and they'll ask us,
hey, I'm doing an article on gas prices. Should, what does consumer reports think that you should
buy a car with better fuel economy or buy an electric car? And we're in this interesting period
because all the subsidies for electric cars went away, both at the, at the consumer level and
also at the, at the level for manufacturers. Kind of, there was this sea change where the
United States kind of decided we're going in a different direction than the rest of the world
when it comes to EVs. And then all of a sudden, gas prices go crazy and interest in EVs goes up.
So, so the incentives, the government incentives went away, but the actual incentives just
exploded. Market forces. That's crazy. Exactly. But it is interesting though, because we,
you know, you think about it and say, hey, I want to, I want to save a few bucks every week,
so I'm going to go out and spend $45,000 on a new car. It doesn't. That math doesn't,
I don't think so. I remember so, you know, we see these shocks sometimes. You know, I remember after
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