So, It's Mostly About The Plastic Ball

John flags Badtux's article regarding why too much ethanol is a problem in American gasoline:

...So, here’s something that started happening around 2008 or so, as the percentage of ethanol started creeping upwards and in some cases passing the E10 boundary: Those check valves started swelling up. And once swelled up, they blocked the inlet to the fuel tank.

...There’s 20 years of cars out on the road with that check valve that swells up if exposed to too much ethanol.

Twenty years. And if it happens to a car, the only way to fix it is to replace the gas tank.

And there aren’t enough gas tanks in parts depots to do that.

And there isn’t enough gas tank manufacturing capability to do that.

And even if there was, there aren’t enough mechanics in America to change the gas tank in basically *every car sold in America over the past twenty years*.

Twenty years. That’s a lot of frickin’ cars that would be disabled by one stupid little plastic ball if we went past E10 nation-wide. And even E10 is somewhat iffy with these check valves.

Amazing, how one stupid $1.50 rubberized-plastic ball can derail an entire policy initiative. But that’s reality. Going past E10 would basically bring America to a halt.