"Green" Convenience Stores, Chevy Dealer Aim To Boost E85 Availability
March 31, 2008

By Bill Visnic

A Delaware startup company is fronting an ambitious plan to construct 1,000 “Go Green Station” convenience store/fueling stations on the East Coast that will sell only ethanol-based E85 and other alternative fuels.

Alternative Fuel Distributors, created last year to “develop, construct, own and operate convenience stores dedicated to supplying alternative fuels to retail customers,” said it expects to have 100 of the company-owned and trademarked Go Green Station convenience stores open by first-quarter 2009 in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware.

There are some 170,000 stations dispensing gasoline in the U.S., but fewer than 2,000 offer E85, being promoted by several automakers as a method to reduce dependency on imported oil. The fuel contains 85 percent corn-based ethanol and just 15 percent petroleum-derived gasoline.

Proponents claim the scarcity of E85 pumps has seriously hampered the fuel’s uptake by the driving public, despite the fact there are millions of so-called “flex-fuel” vehicles on the road with engines capable of burning E85. Alternative Fuel Distributors said, for example, there are fewer than 20 stations between New York and Richmond, Virginia, that offer E85.

General Motors, one of the industry’s staunchest E85 proponents, welcomes any initiative to improve the fuel’s availability.

“There is a great need to dramatically increase availability of E85 to give flex-fuel owners a choice at the pump,” Mary Beth Stanek, GM director of Energy and Environment Policy and Commercialization, told AutoObserver.

“With more than 3 million flex-fuel vehicles on the road in the U.S., GM believes alternative fuels, specifically E85 ethanol, are the best near-term answer to reduce oil demand.”

Alternative Fuel Distributors said in a release it also intends to develop a wholesale distribution channel for several alternative fuels, including E85, various biodiesel products, liquefied hydrogen and “other possible mass consumption alternative fuels.”

The company said it will own and operate alternative-fuel terminals in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland to supply fuels to its Go Green Station convenience stores and wholesale customers from Washington to New York, adding it intends to file a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of stock.

And in another move to spur the availability of E85, GM and Classic Chevrolet/Hummer in Grapevine, Texas, announced the Classic dealership today opened the first biofuels pumps owned by a new-vehicle dealership.

The Classic dealership, which last year sold more Chevrolet trucks than any dealer in the nation, spent more than a half-million dollars to install pumps that retail E85, E10 and biodiesel at its new Classic Clean Fuels station adjacent to its Hummer showroom in suburban Dallas.

“We sell a lot of trucks capable of running on alternative fuels like E85,” said Charles Martin, general manager at Classic Chevrolet/Hummer, “and even though there has been some increased availability, we saw a need for more E85 pumps where drivers could fill up. This was the right thing for us to do for our customers.”

And Larry Burns, GM vice president of Research and Development and Strategic Planning, said, “There’s no telling where this might lead. We have to keep looking for ways to improve the overall ownership experience of our customers.”

Hummer also used the occasion to reveal the 2009 E85-capable H2 SUT, one of more than 15 flex-fuel models GM will offer for the 2009 model year. Hummer’s standard H2 also will be E85-capable for 2009.

“We’ll offer a biofuel powertrain in every model we build by the end of 2010,” Hummer General Manager Martin Walsh said.

GM intends to make half its entire model portfolio E85-capable by 2012.

Bill Visnic is a senior editor of Edmunds’ AutoObserver, specializing in product and technical areas. He was senior technical editor at Ward's Automotive Group.

Photos by manufacturer.
1 — Classic Chevrolet/Hummer dealership in Grapevine, Texas, has the first biofuels pumps owned by a new-vehicle dealership.
2 — E85-capable Hummer H2 SUT

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