Statement About Vehicle Warranties and Ethanol Fuel Use
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An Important Reference for Consumers
 Marc Rauch |
Author of "THE ETHANOL PAPERS" and "YES, TIN LIZZIE WAS AN ALCOHOLIC"
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher
THE AUTO CHANNEL
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All spark-ignited internal combustion engines (gasoline-powered engines) can safely, cleanly, and efficiently use ethanol-gasoline blended fuels. This is true, regardless of age or manufacturer. It's also true that not all levels of ethanol-gasoline blends can be used in all gasoline-powered engines. However, this limitation is not because ethanol fuel has any inherent boundaries; it is because engine designers and manufacturers have historically optimized engines to run on gasoline that does not contain any ethanol. Yet, even with this challenge, ethanol-gasoline blends from E5 to E50 can be used to power virtually any gasoline engine without any performance problems. There are two primary reasons why every automobile driver should want to use ethanol-gasoline fuels. The first is that ethanol-gasoline blends are less expensive than ethanol-free gasoline. Sometimes the savings are quite significant. For example, in California, the cost of a gallon of E85 can be $3 or more less than E10. If you can find E0 in California, the savings are dramatically greater.
The second reason to use ethanol-gasoline blends is that they are environmentally much cleaner and safer. Combined, these two reasons are insurmountable...or at least they should be. To counter the challenge from ethanol, the oil industry created a long list of lies to denigrate ethanol. These lies go back a hundred years, when the American Petroleum Institute was founded by executives of Standard Oil. The lies have continued to this day, spread by auto mechanics, automobile manufacturers, companies that produce engine additive products, and neighborhood know-it-alls. The bottom-line warning attached to the anti-ethanol lies is that the use of the blends will void the automobile manufacturers' warranties. This is a powerful impediment to using ethanol-gasoline blends, particularly if you've recently spent tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands on a new vehicle. After all, right there in the owner's manual of every new automobile is the warning against using certain fuels.
It is for this reason that I am sharing with you my, and The Auto Channel's, position on automobile warranties and their threat of warranty disqualification.
Warranty terms and expiration dates are set to limit the manufacturer's exposure to claims. It's basically an insurance policy, and just like any auto, home, life, and travel insurance, there are deductibles and conditions that allow a manufacturer or seller to avoid some or all financial responsibility. Although a manufacturer could offer a 100% lifetime guarantee, a warranty attempts to put a cap on the claims. While a warranty provides a purchaser with some expectation of length of service, it is primarily set to benefit the manufacturer. The extent of the terms and expiration is a matter of what they can get away with. Warranty expiration dates are not hard and fast declarations, or guarantees, of product life expectancy. Automobile manufacturers generally design and expect their vehicles to last for 10 to 15 years. Automobile warranties typically fall far short of manufacturer design expectations.
Warranty obligation caps sometimes follow the laws of a country or specified jurisdiction. In America, it is more a matter of custom than any mandated law, and it has become customary for new automobiles to offer a warranty for 3 years or 36,000 miles. The standard warranty for new appliances expires 1 year from the date of purchase or delivery. Furniture warranties can typically range from 5 years to 15 years. Kia and Hyundai offer a 10-year warranty on their vehicles, which is more than 3 times longer than conventional auto warranties. They do this of their own volition for marketing reasons. It doesn't mean that these vehicles are 3 times better than all others, it's just a way to encourage sales.
U.S. courts may use manufacturer warranty terms and expirations as their guideline for rulings, but they don't have to. Other circumstances may exist that will affect a court's ruling, either way. Virtually all automobile owners' manuals state that their vehicles must not use gasoline with an octane rating under 87. However, in Colorado and other high-elevation states, the base gasoline sold is 85-octane. Many, if not most, people in those states use 85-octane gasoline in their vehicles. A dealership in these states will rarely void a warranty simply because the owners have used 85-octane gasoline.
If the purchaser of any product wants to be cautious, then I think they should try not to void the manufacturer's warranty. They could and should ignore temptations that could affect the warranty.
However, on the other side of the coin, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act prohibits manufacturers from voiding a warranty simply because the vehicle owner used higher ethanol-gasoline blends such as E15, E20, E25, E30, E40, E50, or E85. The manufacturer must demonstrate that the specific fuel caused the damage in question.
Given the money-saving financial inducements of using higher ethanol-gasoline blends, it is becoming increasingly more difficult for consumers to avoid the temptations of using them. In light of the abundance of myths and lies about ethanol, largely created by the automobile industry, it is easy for a dealership or manufacturer to claim that the use of any ethanol-gasoline blend caused some specific damage to a spark-ignited internal combustion engine.
But the facts are that ethanol does not damage these engines. Ethanol cleans and protects engines. Ethanol is compatible with more types of rubber, plastic, and metal than gasoline and the aromatics (benzene, toluene, and Xylene) contained in all gasoline. This means that ethanol is less corrosive. Before any engine component could be damaged by the presence of ethanol in the gasoline, any damage would have already been initiated by the more corrosive characteristics of gasoline and the aromatics. And, there is no evidence that once such degradation has commenced, ethanol could have exacerbated the damage created by gasoline and aromatics.
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I am ready, willing, and able to testify in support of ethanol fuels, and I can vanquish any opponent. I will make myself available to appear as an expert witness on behalf of any consumer who is engaging in a warranty struggle that is based on the use of an ethanol fuel. Unfortunately, I can't be everywhere at the same time. Fortunately, many other people support the use of ethanol fuels and know as much or more than I do about ethanol fuels. Some of these individuals are listed in the acknowledgments section of my book THE ETHANOL PAPERS. If I'm not available, I will help to contact them as needed.
An important point that the majority of people, including engine mechanics, are unaware of, or have totally ignored, is that there is a very long history of ethanol and ethanol-gasoline blends being successfully used around the world in spark-ignited internal combustion engines. In some of these cases, such as the use of ethanol-gasoline blends in Great Britain, the most enthusiastic producers and distributors of the blends were Standard Oil and Cities Service, two of the largest petroleum oil companies in the world. For more than 50 years, they acknowledged and promoted ethanol-gasoline blends as being cleaner, more efficient, more powerful, and less expensive than leaded gasoline and ethanol-free gasoline.
During the past two decades, my business partner (Bob Gordon) and I have written and published a vast number of reports that detail the value and legitimacy of ethanol fuels as a full or partial replacement of gasoline and its deadly results. Among these reports are:
• Life As We Might Have Known It: What If Ethanol Was Our Primary Engine Fuel
• The Rise & Fall of General Motors and the Subjugation of the Industrialized World
• The Oil Industry Has Been Poisoning Us For Decades, and They've Always Known It
• UK's Department for Transport Uses Boogeyman Allusions to Sidetrack E10 Adoption