Found it. Since the gas goes through the same hose as the other blends, if you’re buying gas you need to get at least 4 gallons so the previous gas flushes out what was left in the hose from the previous sale, and fills enough of the container that the blend is primarily what you selected.
If you buy E15 and fill your tanks, then the next guy buys E10 and only gets 1 gallon, they might end up with a higher ethanol mix than intended, and if they use that on a small motor, like a chainsaw, it could ruin the seals.
I’m in Europe and I have never in my life seen a gas station that dispenses every fuel through just one hose.
Every fuel has its own hose and “pistol”. Each “pump” has two or three or four hoses.
In America, if a corner exists a company will cut it.
It feels like blending hoses would be a more complicated setup?
I’m not from the US so my biggest surprise here is that you don’t get separate hoses for each grade.
Imagine getting Diesel in Germany. “Sorry, that was actually 15 liters of regular gas. ¯_(ツ)_/¯”
Edit: Ok, it’s not as bad as I imagined, since this picture seems to be about E15/E10, not diesel/regular.
diesel absolutely DOES get a separate hose, every time
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archaic and inflexible.
No, it’s working precisely as intended. There are so many layers of byzantine laws and ordinances in the US on multiple levels – federal, state, county, municipal – that anyone who really wants to is guaranteed to be able to find something to harass and/or arrest you for, no matter what. Probable cause can be rendered meaningless by making a humongous array of trivial things technically illegal.
Does your window tint meet the specific requirements for this county? Is your stereo 0.01dB louder than our municipal maximum? Are your license plate and registration sticker acceptably clean? Do your tires have the correct tread depth? Do you have a radar detector installed? Do you have an air freshener hanging from your rearview? Are you carrying your written prescription around with your pills? Is your pocketknife blade too long? Do your cigarettes have the wrong state’s tax stamp on them? Did you remember to sign the back of your registration card? Whoopsie doodle, this state passed a law mandating minimum headlight height from the road, too bad your car left the factory out of compliance. Could you step out of the vehicle for me, sir?
Etc., etc., etc.
While I see your point, given the devastating effects leaded gasoline has had on entire generations, perhaps fuel is a good thing to regulate.
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I got curious so I duckduckgo’d that shit.
Thank you for sharing the link. Here’s the relevant bit from the article:
Most gas stations don’t want to install new tanks just for E15. Instead, they’re installing blender pumps, which mix the ethanol and gasoline together in the right proportion depending on which one you want. But there’s a problem: if you pump E15 into your car, about a third of a gallon remains in the fueling hose when you’re done. If someone comes along, switches to E10, and buys a single gallon for their lawnmower, they’ll get a third of a gallon of E15 and two-thirds of a gallon of E10. That comes to about 11.7% ethanol, and that might be enough to set your lawnmower on fire.
So the EPA produced a new rule: if you sell E15, you have to require your customers to buy at least four gallons of gas regardless of what blend they’re buying. That’s a big enough purchase that the residual fuel in the hose is too small to matter
and that might be enough to set your lawnmower on fire.
Ethanol burns hotter?
No. It does degrade some fuel system components on fuel systems not made for it.
It also gums the fuck out of fuel injectors, and you’ll notice a drop in gas mileage Dependant on the blend. Its pretty awful shit. I don’t know why the hell it exists.
Fucking 15% ethanol now? So they basically just raised the price of gasoline 5%, and reduced the fuel efficiency of everyone’s vehicle, without so much as a peep. Where is this?
E15 is a different blend of fuel, it’s not at all gas pumps and regular 87/89/91 octane level fuel is still available (because not all cars can use E15 like the sticker says). Sheetz stations sell it in my area around Raleigh, NC.
