Fill Up on Corn if You Can

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Standing next to his pickup truck at a service station here, Robert Beck squeezed a yellow nozzle and filled up with the corn-based fuel blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline that car companies, farmers and politicians alike love to promote as a way out of America's oil addiction.

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Robert Beck said E-85 was worth buying for his pickup only if it was at least 30 cents lower than gasoline.

Mr. Beck, an agronomist who travels throughout the Midwest, likes the idea of E-85, as the fuel blend is known, because it is made mostly from a domestic crop. But he still finds that buying the fuel is almost more trouble than it is worth.

"Everyone talks about it, but exactly where is it?" he said. "You have to have more fuel out there for consumers to buy.''

That could take a while.

To assess just how efforts to help E-85 catch on were going, a New York Times reporter, accompanied part of the time by a photographer, drove through the region where its popularity is greatest. They found that despite all the good will toward ethanol, success is far from assured.

The fuel does have plenty of powerful supporters. General Motors used the Super Bowl this year to kick off its "Live Green, Go Yellow" campaign to encourage Americans to buy vehicles that can run on either E-85 or conventional gasoline. Ford Motor and VeraSun Energy, the second-largest ethanol producer after Archer Daniels Midland, christened 300 miles of highway from Chicago to St. Louis the "Midwest Ethanol Corridor" in a marketing campaign that began in June.

But it also has plenty of drawbacks. Most oil companies want nothing to do with E-85, which they see as a money-losing alternative to their own petroleum-based products. Without help from the oil industry or a lot more flexible-fuel cars on the road, gasoline retailers are hesitant to install the expensive pumps, which can cost up to 0,000 with a new underground storage tank.

"There is no way E-85 can survive on its own without massive government subsidies at the state and federal levels,'' said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, an energy consultancy in New York.

Many drivers whose vehicles can run on ethanol will not buy E-85 unless it is markedly cheaper than regular gasoline, which has not always been the case. Part of the reason is basic economics: E-85 delivers only three-quarters as much energy per gallon as gasoline, meaning drivers will have to fill up their tanks more often if they choose to use the fuel.

More than 850 service stations now carry E-85, an increase from 350 since the beginning of 2005, but the fuel is still unavailable at most of the 169,000 stations in the United States. Sales are so slim that some retailers count their regular E-85 customers on one hand.

Customers like Mr. Beck, who want the fuel, struggle to find it: in Illinois, 135 stations carry it, but in neighboring Missouri only 54 stations have E-85 pumps. Kansas has 13.

None of this has discouraged E-85's supporters, who are relentlessly pushing to expand use of the fuel, which already benefits from a tax credit of 51 cents a gallon for producers of all forms of ethanol.

And in states like Illinois, the country's second-biggest corn producer, after Iowa, politicians are lining up state financing to subsidize the installation of pumps at service stations, while offering rebate incentives to customers who use the fuel.

"E-85 is really I-85 - it's about energy independence," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consultancy.

But that dream remains far out of reach. For one thing, E-85 barely exists outside the Corn Belt. You cannot fuel up on it in New York or New England. California has only one station.

And even in Chicago, at the entrance to the ethanol corridor, it was hard to find a flexible-fuel car for the road trip. When Janet Conlon, a travel agent from Garber Travel, contacted four major rental car agencies, none said they had such cars available.

"Nobody had a clue what I was talking about," Ms. Conlon said. The Times ended up renting a flexible-fuel Chevrolet Impala from a company affiliated with General Motors.

At the first stop, Becker's Hotrod BP in Dwight, Ill., 75 miles south of Chicago, E-85 was selling for .70 a gallon, 50 cents cheaper than the station's regular unleaded.

Four years ago, the Illinois Corn Growers Association approached Phillip E. Becker, the station's owner and a longtime gasoline retailer, with an offer to pay to install an E-85 pump, an investment of about 0,000. Because the alcohol in E-85 corrodes traditional gasoline storage tanks, a new underground one was necessary, along with special fuel lines and a special dispenser.

Mr. Becker, wanting to help local farmers, accepted the deal, agreeing to sell the E-85 at no profit for at least five years so he could offer it at a price lower than gasoline.

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