The Family Express chain in Northern Indiana reports tripled sales of E85 since they began selling the product for $2.99 per gallon nearly a month ago. Customers are touting the alternative fuel blend as being less expensive than regular unleaded gasoline and that is why they claim to use it.
The National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition (NEVC) recommends to retailers to price the product at least 20 percent below unleaded to make up for the fuel economy loss that is evident. “It has less energy in it,” than petroleum, Executive Director of the NEVC Phil Lampert said. “But if it’s priced at 20 percent lower, most motorists will gain some value.”
Family Express President and CEO Gus Olympidis said he dropped the price of E85 to $2.99 a gallon at his northern Indiana stations not only because ethanol “is cheaper right now than gasoline,” but because U.S. grown corn goes into the blend. “We make it here,” Olympidis said.
Competing fuel retailers have also dropped the cost of their E85 to stay competitive and have noted that sales have also increased considerably.
The first practice session for the Iowa Corn Indy 250 is just about to conclude and Team Ethanol’s #17 car is doing very well.
I finally got to meet the Team Ethanol driver, Ryan Hunter-Reay. Ryan was on hand at the Kum & Go pump promotion and posed here with the Highway Patrolmen who helped us with security and traffic and other drivers. He’s the tall guy on the left.
There were several IndyCar drivers on hand at the Kum & Go ethanol pump promotion in Ankeny, IA. One of them was Ed Carpenter, 
The Senior Vice President of Marketing for 
“All three of us have a roll to play in this industry,” Nuernberg says. “We are looking at all the initiatives under way by the different organizations, how we can work together, and make sure we’re not duplicating effort.”
EPIC’s main focus is to drive demand with consumers, while RFA’s role is to protect and promote policy in Washington DC, and ACE is the grassroots organization dedicated to expansion of ethanol production.
A group of students in West Virginia are learning how to brew up biodiesel, while helping run the buses to get them to those classes.
“It opens the door to a whole new world,” Lincoln County FFA president Katelyn Brogan, 17, said. “You learn so much more from it: How to recycle properly, how to renew your fuels, how to save money and time.”
The National Biodiesel Board has two new members on its Governing Board.
Hopkins, CEO of US Biofuels, has 35 years of combined experience in the biodiesel and chemical engineering fields, and is involved in several chemical production associations. US Biofuels, a multi-feedstock biodiesel producer, is based in Rome, Ga.
Johnson, president & CEO of GEN-X, has had extensive experience in the food processing industry in capacities ranging from operations to quality assurance. GEN-X is a multi-feedstock producer based in Burbank, Wash.