Because of this, the race is on to find a renewable source of fuel. One option is E85 flexible fuel.

What Is E85?

E85 is an alternative fuel made from 85 percent ethanol, an alcohol made from corn. It contains just 15 percent gasoline, and thus burns cleaner than gasoline and is more renewable than traditional fuels. E85 is used to fuel flex fuel vehicles, which are vehicles with engines designed to run on this inventive fuel source.

Flex fuel vehicles can also run on conventional gasoline and look just like their non-flex-fuel counterparts. Typically a flexible fuel car will not cost more than the identical car without the E85 option. You will know that you have a flex-fuel vehicle if it has a yellow gas cap.

History of Ethanol Use

Ethanol has been around for some time and used extensively since 2003 as the oxygenating factor for gasoline, and ethanol blends are not new at all. In fact, blends using the alcohol have been in the industry for nearly 200 years.

Henry Ford himself built his for automobile to run on pure ethanol in 1896. But it hasn't been until recent years that a high percentage of ethanol has been used to power vehicles due to the lack of infrastructure and vehicles that supported this fuel source.

In the late 1990's the first Flex-Fuel vehicles (FFVs) hit the market. Since that time, the number of Flex-Fuel vehicles and gas stations offering E85 fuel has increased substantially in many areas of the United States.

More and more FFV vehicles have hit the market offering the option to run on E85. By 2012 most major automakers have vowed to manufacturer 50 percent of their vehicles to be FFV's.

Today, research is also being pored into the viability of E15 fuel. This fuel, made of 15 percent ethanol, is slightly cleaner than the E10 blend currently used across the nation, but one that all vehicles can use, rather than just flexible fuel vehicles for the E85.

Pros and Cons

There are many benefits to flexible fuel vehicles. They not only run cleaner and produce less pollution, but they also cost less to fill up.

They also put the power of fuel creation in the hands of the United States, breaking our dependence slightly on OPEC and providing some competition that could, in theory, drive down the over-inflated price of petroleum-based fuels.

Even with the numerous 10 to 15 percent ethanol blends on the market today, we still depend on OPEC for 94 percent of our fuels, and this could be greatly reduced if more people switched to E85.

There is another benefit to E85 that is not directly targeted to motorists. As more and more fueling stations are built that offer this fuel source, jobs are created. Farmers are also encouraged to grow additional crops with a ready market for them. These green jobs are a benefit for the entire country.

So, if the fuel is less expensive and more environmentally friendly, why aren't more and more people turning to flexible fuel vehicles, or FFVs, instead of traditional cars? After all, we all want to pay less at the pump and have a car that pollutes less, right?

The main con for FFV is that fuel economy suffers when you power a flexible vehicle with E85. In fact, fuel economy drops by about 20 percent when a vehicle is powered by a high ethanol blend. This means that the driver will be stopping to fill up more frequently, and the lower cost of the fuel may be offset by the higher frequency of needing to purchase fuel.

It can also be challenging to find a place to fill up using E85 in some areas of the United States. Pumps are readily available in the Midwest, where the raw materials to create ethanol are grown, but they are not quite as easy to find in more urban areas away from the farms.

Currently only about 2 percent of the country's service stations sell it. Finally, some claim that it is not as environmentally friendly as it may seem. It takes a lot of fuel to grow, transport, and process corn into ethanol.

The Future

Many states are failing in encouraging the infrastructure necessary to support E85 sales and the use of flex-fuel cars, and unless they step up, another alternative energy source, like hybrid vehicles, may be the answer to the pending fuel crisis.

Currently, only about 3 percent of the country's vehicles run on flex fuel, and only about 2 percent of the country's service stations sell it. In the meantime, lower percentages of ethanol, like E15, will be used to power traditional gas-powered cars.

This problem is not because the government has not tried to encourage greater use of flexible fuel vehicles. Recently, Democratic senator Tom Harkin introduced a bill that would require American automakers to have 90 percent of their vehicles able to run on ethanol by 2016. This has been vehemently opposed by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

They claim that consumers would suffer because they would not be able to find enough fueling stations to benefit from these environmentally friendly cars, yet they would be forced to pay higher prices as the automakers face increased costs to make these changes.

Facing higher prices, consumers will slow down on their purchase of new vehicles, and this will halt research funds being used to look for better alternative fuel sources.

So, is there any future for cars that can run on this E85 blend? Only time will tell. Those who own or purchase these vehicles will likely continue to find fueling options available to them, but many experts doubt that flex fuel cars will be the wave of the future.