Ethanol as an alternative to gasoline?

i was watching modern marvels the other day, they were talking about sugar. they started talking about how it is fermented into ethanol, and the sugar-derived ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. they showed the gas prices in brazil 2.40 or so for gasoline, but .99 for ethanol. brazil is one of the leading countries in using ethanol as an alternative. most of what they were saying on the show was about brazil. brazil has fields and fields of sugar cane grown, grown to be refined into ethanol. its alot cheaper than importing oil hence the drastically lower price.

i know that we have cars in the US that have flex fuel engines and can run off of "E85"- a ethanol and gasoline mixture. but the price of ethanol isnt that much cheper than the price of gasoline here, due to the fact that it is no where near as commonly used.

the ethanol powered engine doesnt necessarily put out tons less emissions- just different ones. i forget what its emmisions are though. the main benefit is that ethanol is far cleaner to refine than oil.

it was extremely interesting to watch. i dont see why it isnt in the works more here. weve got plenty of land on which to grow corn, which also could be fermented into ethanol. it would lower our dependancy on foriegn oil. the only bad thing about it is that ethanol doesnt get as good milage, roughly 30% less- the savings would outweigh that though. your milage may drop form 30 mpg to 20- but the fuel cost half as much.