My on-board computer has finally calculated that I can drive 474km on a full tank of bio-ethanol. This is only 77% of the distance, that I used to manage of a full tank of petrol.

I knew in advance that this was going to be the case, but now I have figures to back it up.

In other words, I need 30% more litres of bio-ethanol than petrol to travel the same distance.

Since bio-ethanol costs 0.899EUR per litre, a 30% increase means an effective price of 1.16EUR per litre, which compared to around 1.42EUR for super (95 octane) at the moment, is still a good bargain.

It’s just a shame, that I have to fill up so often!

Yesterday I had to go to Mainz so I was able to see how the bio-ethanol car performed long-distance on the motorway – to be precise along the A66, which has speed limits on most of it of 120 or 100 km/h.

Anyway, there’s nothing much to report about the car’s performance, except the fuel consumption which, according to the on-board computer, hovered between 8 an 9 litres per 100km.

At the moment I am waiting to see how far I get on one tank of bio-ethanol.  Taking the km driven so far and adding on the expected km that the computer says I have remaining, it’s going to be about 500km in total, which is certainly less than I managed in a similar car using normal petrol.  I’ll know more in a few days…

With the temperature dipping to -2°C this week, I had an unexpected chance to find out how bio-ethanol reacts to the colder weather.

This is not as cold is it can get in winter here – I’ve experienced -18°C before now! But with the cold wind blowing it certainly felt different to the temperatures that we had been having the previous week.

When bio-ethanol gets cold it apparently gets sluggish. This is why there is a socket on the front of the car, so that I can attach it to the mains and warm the tank up slightly before driving off. Well, that’s the theory at least. As I don’t have an electrical socket anywhere near where I had parked the car, that wasn’t really a solution.

The alternative is to put some normal petrol into the tank during the winter. Again, the drop in temperature came so unexpected, that I hadn’t done this and had only E85 in the tank.

So I drove off anyway – and I can’t say that I noticed any difference. Perhaps the cold temperature hadn’t affected the bio-ethanol as much as I had expected? Perhaps it just wasn’t cold enough yet!

I shall be keeping a watchful eye on the thermometer and may well start mixing in some normal fuel next month.

Today I had the chance to try out the cruise control on the bio-ethanol Ford Focus. This maybe has less to do with the fuel in the tank, but it is still something that I have always been very wary of.

In fact, I associate it with the signs on the Brussels ring road where it is not allowed!

Anyway, all went fine – although I’m still worried that I have less control over the car whilst using it, even if that’s not really the case.

My route this morning took me over the motorway and the Bad Homburg ring road, and my fuel consumption stayed pretty much the same.

This evening I was in Bad Homburg and parked at the Kurhaus. I was curious as to whether I would smell the ethanol when I stopped the car in the underground car park, but I didn’t notice anything.

I’ve like to try out the petrol station, but there are still around 400km left to do first!