Given all that, this is disappointing news.

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Ford plans on keeping its promise from 2006 that it will double its amount of flex-fuel vehicles (numbering, at the time, 185,000) by this year.

Most of us who write for Exhaust Notes have made no secret of the fact that E85 fuel -- a mixture of 85 percent corn-based ethanol and 15 percent gasoline -- is a joke, nothing more than a business concession to the Big Corn lobby (and no one is more adamant about this fact than Lawrence Ulrich, who's written about the subject extensively). E85 is a less efficient fuel than gasoline (meaning it generates less energy per gallon), and the claims that it's somehow a "greener" fuel are murky at best and, based on the energy requirements of the production methods, a sham at worst.

We don't want to speculate as to Ford's play with all of this, but it's a step in the wrong direction. At a time when the need for smart fuel solutions -- not to mention the potential profit from such solutions -- are sorely needed, a continued push for a proven loser is a waste of energy -- literally.