Turning off the air-conditioning

January 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The first success story of the year!

Last year I noticed that the air-conditioning was turning itself on every time I started the engine. I thought this must increase the amount of fuel that I use unnecessarily.

Well, after I went to the bio-ethanol petrol station today I asked the person who sold me the car – and they had the answer!

The air-conditioning only turns itself on if the air-ducts are set to blow only on the windscreen. This is apparently to help clear the windscreen quicken in winter.

So now I’ve change the setting and I hope to notice a difference in the bio-ethanol usage.

Filed Under: Bio-Ethanol, Temp Tagged With: ,

Filling up with bio-ethanol for the first time

November 2, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Today I filled up with bio-ethanol for the first time. Germany’s first bio-ethanol petrol station is located in Bad Homburg and to operate the pump I have a coded key, which allows me to go there at any time of the day, regardless of the opening hours.

For my first visit, however, I decided to go there whilst it was open, just to make sure that there were no problems.

Actually there was a problem – a car had parked on the space in front of the bio-ethanol pump, and I had to wait about 15 minutes until it was moved.

After that I parked there myself, turned the key and filled up the car. As simple as that! Now I have a full tank and can work out for myself how much the car is using. The on-board computer says that I used 13.3litres/100km since I started driving the car, but I don’t know how many litres were in the tank when I got it so I can’t check that figure.

bioethanol_tankstelle.jpg
The first bio-ethanol petrol station in Germany,
located in Bad Homburg

Filed Under: Bio-Ethanol, Cars Tagged With: , ,

When bio-ethanol gets cold

October 24, 2007 By Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Bio-Ethanol, Cars Tagged With: ,

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