Gasoline isn't going to last forever. And so long as companys such as GM, Ford and their likes continue to shun effiency and build unessarly large vehicals and people who use these vehicals for personal transportation there could be another fuel crisis within our life time.
Are E85 or other variants going to replace fossl fuels right away? With current technology it is impossable to stop cold turky. However looking at the advancments made in technology over the last 50 years, we can weine ourselves off fossel fules, we have to. Even if we prepare ourselves for the peaking of oil production with a sensible, broad-based energy plan, we'll still be faced with the pain of prices marching relentlessly higher for years to come in order to match demand to steadily diminishing supplies. If we're not prepared, though, the bad news of peak oil becomes potentially catastrophic: An oil shock leading to global recession at best and a long string of resource wars at worst. Given the choice between these two bad alternatives, and the long lead time required to implement any kind of serious energy plan, we'd be well advised to get started now.
I belive that there won't be a seperate pump that sells E85 at every station in the future, instead, I feel gasoline will be diluted with ethonol with increasing percentages to make it last untill the next "eurika" comes along. Bio-fuels will become part of our lives. Like it or not, conversions or upgrades are the only option to keep our allready paid for cars and vintage steel on the road.
Finally, you wouldn't know it from the hulking SUVs and traffic-clogged freeways of the United States, but we're in the twilight of plentiful oil. There's no global shortage yet; far from it. The world can still produce so much crude that the current price of about $70 for a 42-gallon barrel would plummet if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) did not limit production. This abundance of oil means, for now, that oil is cheap. In the United States, where gasoline taxes average 43 cents a gallon (instead of dollars, as in Europe and Japan), a gallon of gasoline can be cheaper than a bottle of water—making it too cheap for most people to bother conserving. While oil demand is up everywhere, the U.S. remains the king of consumers, slurping up a quarter of the world's oil—about three gallons a person every day—even though it has just 5 percent of the population. However, If there is no plan to find an alternative, your grand-children or their children will be on horse back cursing us.
That's my say on this subject and I'll leave it alone.