http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060629/ethanol_corridor.html?.v=1

Ford, VeraSun Launch 'Ethanol Corridor'

Thursday June 29, 2:19 pm ET
By Jim Suhr, AP Business Writer

Ford, VeraSun Partner in Launch of Midwest `ethanol Corridor' for Motorists

ALTON, Ill. (AP) -- Motorists seeking gasoline blended with ethanol will have one-third more sites to get the fuel in Missouri and Illinois under a program launched Thursday by Ford Motor Co. and the nation's second-largest ethanol producer.

Ford, the nation's second-biggest automaker, 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 roundtrip -- exclusively on renewable, corn-based E85, Ford and VeraSun said.

"That is success by any measure," Sue Cischke, Ford's vice president for environmental and safety engineering, said during a news conference at an Alton fueling station that Thursday began selling E85. "E85 today became a little easier to find."