The owners manual states premium with a minimum octane rating of 91.

E85 had an octane rating between 94 and 113 pending on who your technical source is.

can and how well do our mini's run on E85?

 

I wouldn't recommend it. This is based on my experience with the current ethanol blends. With just the normal 10% blend I get a 10-20% reduction in gas mileage from pure gas, and a slight slugishness. The last trip I made I was able to get pure gas for the drive to my destination, and got 38.8mpg running on US 1 through GA. On the way back I could only get the blend, and got 29.3 mpg on the way home. Not to mention ethanol is corrosive.

 

I'm in GA and I travel I-16 frequently. Was there a particular station or brand of gas I can look for? In metro Atlanta it seems almost impossible to find non-ethanol blends.

 

DO NOT run E85 in a MINI regardless of what the octane rating is. I believe there is a TSB on this or maybe it is even in the owners manual that MINI doesn't recommend anything over 10% ethanol. Most of us stay away from even that much if we can.

Val

 

It is possible to engineer a car to run on 100% ethanol - check out Brazil. They are different in a lot of design areas and provisions must be made for starting on ethanol in cold temperatures. In the US and probably Europe, the cars are "optimized to run on pure gas and compromises made to accomodate up to 10% ethanol" [my terminology.]
In these engines one should EXPECT decreases in MPG that reflect two things: 1] The reduction of energy density of the fuel [ethanol does not have the energy per gallon that gasoline does] and 2] Decreases resulting from the less than optimum compression ratio and ECU mapping for the characteristics of the blend. I have found a substantial drop in mpg on E10 vs pure gas.MiniMacster [above] reports even greater numbers - he states [understates actually] a 10-20% reduction. The actual percentages are higher. I have found in ALL cases that the penalty in mpg for the ethanol blend was greater than the difference in price. That is restated, using pure gas is like found money and using ethanol blends is like throwing your money away.

 

Thanks all. I just wanted to double check some "real" world usage / facts vs rumor.
Hadn't planned to run it, just wanted to check. Since our old minivan was a flex fuel vehicle and actually did very well on E85.

 

i learned something new today thanks everyone!

to think i was going to run it in my car this summer, so glad i ran across this