If you are driving a car specifically designed for flex fuel — an FFV — you can mix flex fuel and regular gasoline with no problem. But, the reverse isn’t true at all. You can’t mix a higher ethanol blend with regular gas for an everyday car, because they were just never designed for it. It can even damage your carin several ways.
So as an example, something like the Chevy Silverado, which Chevrolet still sells with a flex fuel V8 for the 2026 model year, will happily burn whatever blend you feed it without a fuss. You can tell whether your car is an FFV if it has a yellow gas cap, a classic giveaway, or perhaps a yellow ring around the spot where the nozzle goes. Or you can easily refer to the owner’s manual.
It also helps that E85 fuel itself can be quite variable, running anywhere from 51% to 85% ethanol depending on the season and where you live. Moreover, even if you are blending the two together, the tank does not need to be empty first. Your flex fuel car quietly works out the ratio on its own and adjusts itself to keep things running smoothly. You can even pour in ethanol-free (E0) fuel, and it will run just fine.
So what happens if you get it wrong?
It can certainly be tempting to top up your non-FFV with E85 since it’s cheaper. You might even think it’s safe if there’s already some regular gas sitting in there. The problem, though, is that a standard engine was never built to handle higher levels of ethanol.
Ethanol blends right in with gas because one end of the molecule is a short carbon chain that acts a lot like the hydrocarbons already in gas. But ethanol has different properties. For one, it loves water and pulls it straight out of the air, which leads to rust and corrosion inside a fuel system never meant for it. Keep up the ethanol abuse, and the seals and filters wear down with time, which, on top of the damage, can also void your warranty.
That said, the good news is that an accidental splash is usually not a disaster. So, if you somehow mixed the gas pumps up at the station and added a couple gallons, you should be fine. All you have to do is fill the rest with regular and pretend like it never happened. A check engine light might flick on, though it tends to clear itself after a few drive cycles. However, if you end up pouring half a tank or more, you will want to dilute it with as much regular gas as the tank will hold.
Things that look “too good to be true” invariable are just that.
This example got dangerously hot in a short period of time before dying.
There’s no legitimate charger that comes close to delivering on the 1,000W promise.
Being a tech reviewer for a living means that I get offered some very interesting things. Not interesting as in Bugatti supercars or jewel-encrusted Fabergé eggs, but interesting as in “this thing could easily be a fire hazard — want to take a look?”
Submissively, I often say yes. And I’m glad I did with the most recent pitch, because it was very interesting indeed.
Meet the “interesting” charger
This time around, the thing of interest was a charger that claimed to deliver an incredible 1,000W through its ten ports — four 140W USB-C ports, four 100W USB-C ports, and two 20W USB-A ports.
The person who bought this charger told me that they’d plugged it in, used it to charge their phone for “a few minutes,” got worried when it became “a little hot,” and unplugged it.
That’s a lot of promise… but (spoilers), they don’t deliver!
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
The unit was suspiciously light and plasticky, especially given its built-in power supply. Compare this to Ugreen’s Nexode 500W charger, which weighs a hair under 5 lb.
There was also a slight whiff of melty plastic, which made me think that this had been a bit more than a little hot.
Color me suspicious, but I had a gut feeling that the only way this charger would be able to push out 1,000W would be if it caught fire.
Turns out I wasn’t far wrong.
How long would it last? Answer: Minutes
Talk is cheap. It was time to test the charger.
So I plugged it in, turned it on, and started using it. Within a couple of minutes of starting to use it, I noticed a few things:
No matter what I tried, I couldn’t persuade the charger to deliver more than about 60W from any of the ports.
As for peak output, I managed to get close to 250W.
The power output was very uneven and noisy, fluctuating wildly. The more ports I used, the worse it got.
The unit got very hot to the touch very quickly, even under light loads.
But… before I could get the thermal camera out to check how hot it got, there was a pop and the unmistakable smell of “Magic Smoke.” The charger had been sent to Silicon Heaven within minutes.
Annnnd… POP! This is the moment the charger gave up the ghost.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
Diagnosis time
Time to take it apart and have a look inside. For an item that plugged into the mains power, this unit was shockingly easy to take apart.
A thin sheet of easily removable plastic is a that separates curious hands from live AC power.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
And even unplugged and broken, it was capable of delivering zaps! If the case came off while this was plugged into an outlet, it could very easily be deadly.
There’s charge still in some of the capacitors, and these could deliver quite a zap despite the unit being broken and unplugged!
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
After getting inside, the unit was filled with a grey goo that I’d seen in a previous disappointing charger I’d taken apart. This is a thermal paste that’s used to try to dissipate the heat generated by the components.
It’s not really going to work because it’s sealed in a plastic box with no effective heatsink. It’s a token gesture at best. At worst, it creates a mass that’ll slowly heat up and hold temperature because it’s got no way to get rid of it.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
Next to this goo was a bank of capacitors — the black cylinders in the photo — which were the cause of the failure. They’d clearly overheated, with three of them showing signs of bulging.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET
Well there’s the problem!
I also noticed that two of the components — bridge rectifiers that are used to turn AC mains into DC — have been fixed on an angle to make the touch a metal heatsink. It’s not really an effective way to cool down components.
Moral of the story here is that manufactures are using big number marketing — in this case 1,000W and masses of ports — to scalewash poor quality products.
This might be a half-decent product if it was built to deliver 100W, but there’s no end of competition at that end of the market. Silkscreen “1,000W” on the outside, sprinkle in a few reviews that feel scripted and fake, and all of a sudden it’s interesting and exciting… right up until it blows up.
I know of no 1,000W charger. In fact, the 500W Ugreen Nexode is the highest-power charger that I’ve tested that’s legit. And the price is also legit — $250.
But it’s built to deliver on what it promises and is packed with safety features, including “tip-over protection,” which cuts the output when the unit tips over and prevents it from falling on its side, where it can’t dissipate heat effectively. Now that’s an attention to safety that I like to see in a product that handles that much power.
But if you want 1,000W of output, you’ll have to buy two and duct tape them together.
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