The reason that ethanol made it’s way into gasoline at all was that the EPA considered an oxygenate to be a requirement in gasoline for reduction of CO emissions.
Now, you’re right that a closed-loop EFI engine does NOT need any oxygenate at all - regardless of whether we’re talking about MTBE or ethanol.
But when MTBE became a huge problem for groundwater sources, the EPA cast around and found only two other alternatives: methanol and ethanol.
The farm lobby jumped up with ethanol as a solution and here we are.
Do we need either methanol or ethanol? No, not as long as we’re talking closed-loop EFI.
BTW - as far as MPG issues go: Ferrari (you know, the Italian sports car maker?) has produced a version of their 430 Spider engine that gets better mileage and produces higher HP on E-85 than on straight gasoline. It is only a concept to prove it could be done, since they don’t envision selling many Ferrari’s into the midwest, where E-85 is widely available.
I’ll let people here ponder that for awhile as to how they did it. Other engineers (and I know who you are ;-) ), keep quiet for a bit.
If you want to pay 60 Grand for an engine, with a mechanic’s nightmare in sustained maintenance, be my guest.
They also run pure Methanol and ethanol in Formula one racers. But those engines are not designed to go 250 thousand miles. They also require constant tuning and ridiculous maintenance.
Your comparison was equally ridiculous.
Nobody is saying one can’t build an engine that is optimized to burn e85 efficiently. But it needs to be a heavier engine around the combustion chamber, the jets need to be bigger, etc.
But will the market bear it? Will there be a demand for it? When E85 gets more popular and more people use it the price will go up because of demand. It’s already subsidized at the farmer level and at the refinery level, paid for by everyone at the pump now.
Just look at who buys e85 vehicles now. It isn’t regular people. It’s government fleet vehicles mostly. And they require a lot of maintenance.