What happened to gasoline in the mid 1970s?

Well, in my 35 years of experience I did not use BTU as a value for energy since the long accepted scale is called Joules (J). But just to give you an idea of the relative energy content between methanol, ethanol, and gasoline: (MJ=Mega Joules)
One liter of ethanol contains 21.1 MJ, a liter of methanol 15.8 MJ and a liter of gasoline approximately 32.6 MJ. In other words, for the same energy content as one liter or one gallon of gasoline, one needs 1.6 liters or gallons of ethanol and 2.1 liters or gallons of methanol.
So using methanol instead of ethanol may seem to be more inexpensive but you would actually spend more money on the methanol blended gas to cover the same distance as done with the ethanol blended gas.
Switching to methanol would require larger gas tanks or more frequent stops at the gas station due to the decreased engine performance when using ethanol.


I get it. In that case, I’m all for NO ALCOHOL in the gas and letting the refineries blend what the OE’s want to get the compression ratios up to a more efficient level.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that back in 1990ish I was working with a guy who put everything in calories. I could never follow his math so I switched to a guy that used GPM so I could convert it to PPH and do the math. Math ain’t my strong point.