Can Ford’s U-Turn on EVs Open the Road for Ethanol?

Doug Durante, Executive Director, Clean Fuels Development Coalition

$19 billion down the drain. Ford finally read the writing on the wall and said they are totally reversing course when it comes to EVs. But wait, it gets worse – when you add previous losses that were written off, some estimates put the total closer to $35 billion. By any standards, that’s a lot of money, and what a shame as it was all so unnecessary.

And it’s not just Ford. Every automaker on the planet that embraced EVs, whether in whole or part, is recanting. While it is technically incorrect to say the Biden administration mandated EVs, the emission and efficiency standards were so stringent that it appeared to be the only solution. But as they say, appearances can be deceiving and this was a classic example. There were other ways to achieve what they wanted without the kind of wholesale change in the way the American public drives. It was a bad decision by the Biden administration and a bad decision by the auto industry to not push back more.

At CFDC, we published an issue brief several years ago, not to be a hit piece but rather to provide a reality check that looked at costs, safety, recharging and countless other issues that had yet to be resolved before going all in on such a drastic change. And we were right. The pendulum has swung from the overreach of the Biden administration to flat out opposition by the current administration, resulting in a limbo where cost, recharging and other challenges remaining unresolved, with little prospect for improvement. That pendulum can swing back again, and automakers know that producing efficient and clean vehicles is in their business and political interest.

So where do they turn? As ethanol advocates, it was particularly frustrating for us to see proposals to reduce emissions and oil use that cost billions upon billions of dollars in corporate investment and government subsidies when we had a nearly no-cost alternative in the form of higher ethanol blends that can provide health and emission benefits cheaper, faster and in many cases, far better than an EV scenario.

A recent guest editorial in a Kansas City paper by a former General Motors executive and engineer Don Siefkes suggested that an alternative to EVs would be to ban gasoline-powered vehicles and turn to 100 percent ethanol. As well-intentioned as this proposal is, it is a bridge too far and not a feasible approach for reducing gasoline use or creating more demand for agricultural products.

Our corn growers and farmers would love nothing more than to see ethanol at the levels that such a program would require, but it is inconceivable that we would be able to produce 100 billion gallons or more of ethanol from corn. Cellulosic ethanol simply does not exist at any measurable level despite decades of research, subsidies and investment. With the full backing of this administration, the politics of oil will always ensure a role for petroleum. The idea that legislation could ever pass banning the internal combustion engine or gasoline simply ignores history.

Assuming that we will still have at least some mileage and emission standards, the answer is to go to higher blends, ensuring a role for both oil and ethanol.

Given that the loss leader in the Ford fiasco was the effort to electrify the Ford F-150, let’s start with trucks, since American farmers and the ag community are the core buyers. Not only is the F-150 the highest selling vehicle in the U.S., but it is also the highest selling used vehicle.  How interesting that the top selling used car sold in the top five corn-producing states of Iowa, Illinois (outside of Chicago), Nebraska, Minnesota and Indiana is the F-150. It’s not a stretch to tie the success of the   F-150 to agriculture. It is also No. 1 in Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, the Dakotas, the Carolinas … I think you get the picture. Popular used vehicles support continuation of new vehicles, so Ford gets rolling free advertising all over American highways. GM trucks are not far behind in these statistics and also need to remain competitive. Keep in mind the big three of Ford, GM and Ram/Stellantis absolutely crush foreign truck sales proving that mid-America buys American.

The flaw in the suggestion of the former GM engineer that we could go to 100 percent ethanol leads us into the same trap as EVs, or any single-fuel alternative. A vehicle tuned to 100 percent ethanol would not run well with conventional gasoline so now you are back to the whole refueling challenge and consumer angst over finding a dedicated ethanol pump. But Ford, GM and Ram could give some love to the ag community that buys their trucks by simply increasing the compression ratio to take advantage of a high-octane E30 blend resulting in increased mileage with a lower cost fuel.  

Hybrids open up the possibility of even higher blends while flex-fuel vehicles capable of running on any combination of gasoline and ethanol up to 85 percent can be part of the mix as well. Unlike the mass transformation that the EV or 100 percent ethanol scenarios present, there is no drastic change in our current system.

The key to unlocking this vault of benefits is to reinstate the dual-fuel vehicle credits and prorate them to reward any blend of ethanol. The mileage/emission credits automakers earned resulted in 20 million FFVs being produced, once the credits were eliminated so were the FFVs. If E85 resulted in an oil equivalent mpg of 100 or more, an E30 blend or an E40 in a hybrid should get a proportional credit. This is worth billions to the auto industry and allows them to offer consumers the vehicles they want.

In future columns we will explain how the credits worked and how simple it would be to reinstate them. It would allow President Trump to directly help farmers by increasing demand for their crops and tying it directly to the trucks they drive. All consumers everywhere would benefit from lower fuel costs and cleaner air.