I think you're missing the point -- the point is that gasoline companies KNEW ABOUT alternative lead-free substitutes for anti-knock (such as ethanol) and chose lead because they perceived it was less profitable. [1] Specifically because ethanol wasn't patentable and TEL was, and ultimately it WAS patented.
It is more than that - lead and ethanol have other properties that engines that use them need to handle. Lead also acted as a lubricant and parts designed for engines that assumed lead fuel were designed with softer valve seats - switch to unleaded with otherwise equal octane and your will destroy the engine. (though experience shows that unless you were driving your car on a race trace most cars worked fine for longer than the car lasted). Ethanol will destroy some forms of rubber and so you need to use different seals in some parts.
TEL was patentable, but those patents were long expired before there was a big push to eliminate leaded gas.
Also, TEL being patented by Dow (which isn’t an oil company) actually was a reason oil companies would want to use an alternative, if possible. Why would they want to pay Dow to use a patented product, all else being equal?
They picked lead because it was the cheapest additive, not because it was more profitable for the industry as a whole. Those two things aren’t the same. In the oil industry, the products are identical and companies compete only on price. If you use the $0.10 per gallon additive when everyone else is using the $0.05 per gallon additive, then your sales collapse because customers just cross the street to save $0.05 per gallon. But if every company switches to the $0.05 gallon additive, that doesn’t mean the companies pocket the extra $0.05 per gallon. Most of that goes to the consumer, because, again, consumers can just cross the street to get the better price.
It’s really a collective action problem. Nobody wants their gasoline to be more expensive than other companies’. So everyone has the incentive to use the cheapest ingredient. If you ban that ingredient, prices go up. But since everyone's prices will go up, you remove the competitive disadvantage.
I think you're missing the point. Without a market-coordinating motivation (i.e., legislation), any company that adopted a more expensive anti-knock would be competed out of the market.
Ethanol has a propensity to suck up ambient moisture and is more demanding of rubbers and happily attacks aluminum.
In an age of natural rubber components, poorly sealed fuel systems with steel tanks and aluminum carburetors pretty much anything other than ethanol is the "right choice".
And once they ruled out ethanol they settled on lead because it was cheap/profitable. Obviously they chose wrong, they should've picked something more expensive but less terrible.
These weren't cartoon villains with monocles twirling their mustaches. They were normal humans making pragmatic decisions based on the constraints they faced. Without knowing the details people cannot understand what future similar fact patterns may look like.
That said, it should be no surprise to anyone that nobody wants to talk about "well we don't know how bad the harm of leaded exhaust is, we know it's not good, but it's diffuse and undefined so we'll round it to zero/negligible" type decision making, for that sort of unknown rounds to zero logic underpins in whole or part all manner of modern policy discourse.
>Ethanol has a propensity to suck up ambient moisture and is more demanding of rubbers and happily attacks aluminum.
Actually, moisture problems are from using things like homemade alcohol or alcohol from unknown sources, where the likelihood of it already containing a sizable percentage of water has been a problem since the Model T days.
And if that water has a bit of an aggressive pH, it can have an effect on aluminum components.
This is just not a problem with gasoline-alcohol blends from reputable suppliers unless there is serious failure in the supply chain after that, where any fuel would have been contaminated by water regardless. The fuel-grade alcohol is tested before it is added, then the finished gasoline fully analyzed afterward.
Neither moisture nor corrosion is a problem with fuel ethanol or methanol, and when you see convincing information to the contrary (like from a pro mechanic) it often originates from misguided sources, "old wives' tales" for which actual evidence existed without being well-understood. But sometimes the most professional are the ones who don't take any chances, whether "common knowledge" is factual or not, if it doesn't hurt, no big deal.
Miscellaneous polymer compounds were the real question for cars that were not originally made for modern alcohol mixtures.
Ethanol just doesn't absorb moisture into your fuel tank by itself, even from a very humid environment.
Not any more than plain hydrocarbon fuel. In old ventilated fuel tanks, extreme temperature cycling under very humid conditions draws moist air into the tank when the fuel shrinks or is consumed. Kilos of cold fuel and cold metal can continue to condense moisture from the air, when the dew point is greater than the temperature of the tank. After a while you can get grams or ounces of water rolling around in the bottom of the tank. This could build up and stall out the vehicle or keep it from starting.
If it was only an ounce or two of water at the bottom of the tank full of all hydrocarbons, it would actually help to add a gallon of plain (good) alcohol to help dissolve the separated water into the gasoline so it can pass through harmlessly like it always has since gasoline has always had trace amounts of water anyway. Condensation is about as clean as rainwater so it's nothing the engine hasn't seen.
When most mechanics see something like this it has already gotten way out of hand, and there have been waves of anti-alcohol propaganda disseminated through time which reinforce the superstitious component.
Another problem from the '80's was when you do first start using alcohol-containing gasoline in an older car, it can break up varnish that has built up in the tank for years which never would come off until some alcohol came along. This could be a few grams, end up clogging the fuel filter, and the car stalls out no different than from water in the fuel line. Direct cause-and-effect relationship undeniably due to the use of alcohol, with many independent observations. Not a water problem, but who's keeping score.
Just not any more of a problem in the 21st century, similar conditions are so rarely encountered now.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-poison-...