As CAFE standards continue to rise, auto makers are continually looking for new ways to increase fuel economy and reduce emissions in their vehicles. With a 2025 mandate of 54.5 mpg fleet average looming in the not-so-distant future, discussions are already underway regarding how to get there within the next nine years. Typically this is bad news for enthusiasts – it’s the reason we have start/stop technology, a wider proliferation of hybrids, and why many new performance cars are moving away from big naturally aspirated motors to smaller displacement mills supplemented by turbocharging.
However, the latest initiative being discussed might be music to some enthusiasts’ ears. At the 2015 SAE World Congress in Detroit last week, panelists representing Ford, General Motors, Chevron, and Renewable Fuels Association discussed the idea of raising the octane rating of regular gasoline from 87 to 95.
Discussions indicated that such a move could increase fuel economy by three to six percent while also reducing CO2 emissions by two percent. The boost in octane would allow engineers a little more breathing room to make modifications to engine compression ratios to take advantage of the higher quality gas, tweaks which industry officials agree would be fairly easy to implement and get out on the market.
The drawback is that the auto industry does not dictate the price of gas – fuel costs would almost certainly rise with the substantial bump in octane. Additionally, the vast majority of the cars on the road today are designed to run on 87 and would see little-to-no benefit from the octane bump, a sentiment shared by panelist Amir Maria, a research engineer for Chevron Energy Technology Co. “Raising octane would have little impact on the current fleet,” he said. “At 25 cents per gallon difference, the cost to the consumer to use premium adds $1,500 over 200,000 miles.”
Still, we wouldn’t mind being able to find 95 octane fuel at our local filling station, assuming we could still get 87 and 91 if we chose. Would you?