Henry Ford and ethanol

Within US Patent 8,487,149, one finds the text:



Biofuels are renewable transportation fuels which have a long history ranging back to the beginning on the 20th century. As early as 1900, Rudolf Diesel demonstrated an engine running on peanut oil. Soon thereafter, Henry Ford demonstrated his Model T running on ethanol derived from corn. However, petroleum-derived fuels displaced biofuels in the 1930s and 1940s due to increased supply and efficiency at a lower cost.



The wikipedia entry titled Timeline of alcohol fuel has entries which include


In 1908, the Ford Model T is introduced. Early models had adjustable carburetors to run on ethanol with gasoline as an option.



and


In 1925, Henry Ford tells the New York Times that ethyl alcohol is "the fuel of the future" which “is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."


The wikipedia entry for the Model T notes:


The engine was capable of running on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol,[14][15] although the decreasing cost of gasoline and the later introduction of Prohibition made ethanol an impractical fuel for most users.


Charles E. Duryea obtained US Patent 540,648 for a gasoline-powered vehicle on June 11, 1895.