STATIONS

This story is about Ethanol. But it reveals how complicated and expensive it is to build an alternative fuel infrastructure, whether the fuel is E-85 or hydrogen. This big move adds 50 sites for E-85, bringing the grand total to 800--out of 180,000. How many where you can get hydrogen? How many pipelines? Storage tanks? Pump nozzles?

Ford, fuel producer to offer ethanol sites
Station numbers will increase in Illinois, Missouri
By JIM SUHR
Associated Press

ALTON, ILL. - Motorists looking for gasoline blended with ethanol will have one-third more sites to get the fuel in Missouri and Illinois under a program launched by Ford Motor Co. and one of the nation's biggest ethanol producers.

Ford and VeraSun Energy Corp. said the program would add more than 50 sites offering gasoline and fuel blends of up to 85 percent ethanol — known as E85 — largely along Interstate 55 in Illinois and Interstate 70 in Missouri. Officials say it would create an "ethanol corridor" in the Midwest.

Ford called the venture necessary, noting that fewer than 750 of the more than 180,000 fuel stations across the country offer E85, which runs in specially made flexible fuel cars. Most of the E85 fueling stations are in the Midwest.

The corridor should enable owners of flexible fuel vehicles to travel Interstates 55 and 70 between Chicago and Kansas City, Mo. — a 1,700-mile round trip— exclusively on renewable, corn-based E85…