RFA talks with thousands of fuel retailers at petroleum marketer meetings, conferences, webinars, and one-on-one meetings. Over the course of these meetings it quickly becomes clear that every decision made by fuel retailers is based on return on investment (ROI) and the outcome of every decision is compounded exponentially for the 60% that are single station owners. Today, nearly all of these stations offer premium fuel, but should they? Until this year, the business case for E15 hinged on what vehicles the EPA had approved: 2001 & newer light duty cars, trucks and SUVs. These vehicles tally over 203 million, or 83% of the U.S. fleet. That is more than enough to justify the infrastructure to support them. But that has not happened and we must ask why not. The reason most often given is that while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved the use of E15 in these vehicles, the auto manufacturers have not. So what do the facts say? RFA recently found that 70% of MY15 vehicles are explicitly warranted for E15 — a trend that has been moving upward since MY12. So, just how many vehicles are now explicitly warranted for E15? More than 41 million! Add to that the 18 million FFVs that are also approved for E15, and there are 59 million E15 warranted cars on the road today. For comparison, there are just 15 million cars requiring premium gas today. But, no high performance automobile owner has trouble finding premium fuel! Here is the breakdown:
- ~244,000,000 light duty vehicles on the road today
- ~15,000,000 require premium fuel
- ~203,000,000 are 2001 & newer and approved by EPA to use E15
- ~41,000,000 are explicitly warranted for E15
- ~18,000,000 are FFVs (also warranted for E15)
- ~41,000,000 vehicles are 2000 & older