Having spent a decent part of my early career on this exact question, the realities get complex. While one can argue that the solution itself is simple (and water injection does work, very well), right now it's just hard to coordinate.
Yes and no. That's why you have so much technological advancement during times of large wars. All of a sudden the obstacles disappear in a effort to accomplish the goal. Also once you get outside highly regulated industries, things can happen alot faster. The question being, to my point, do we need so much regulation?
The FAA has been going for the mandate of the drop-in replacement for 100LL, which I personally agree with. Of course, ~10 years later, we don't have a solution yet that actually works.
10 years and over $26 million later, and a solution that will proprietary and quite likely raise prices even higher.
It's important not to look at the solution and instead look at the problem trying to be solved. That is, EPA mandates to reduce lead in the environment. Today, now, we could remove the lead from 100LL and end up with 94UL. According to Swift, that would be a drop in replacement for 65% of the current AvGas piston fleet... another 10% or so with a paper STC only. That's 75% of the fleet.
Would that be good enough of a reduction for the EPA? Now by going with 94UL (or 91/96 UL) all of a sudden we start to get some convergence with the autofuel market being we can now share the same pipelines and tankers That lowers costs.... not raising costs like the FAA's boutique fuel solution does.
The other option would be the FAA doing a mandate like ADS-B, and say "Sorry guys, no more 100LL. Going to [insert unleaded fuel here]. You have [insert number of years] to convert your fleet." This would be feasible so long as you could keep the vapor pressure correct, as that causes issues in some experimentals running mogas and would definitely cause issues in some certified as well. Water injection would work, but the reason that $500 injection system costs $14k is certification.
Bingo. And let me remind you the FAA offered a $500 rebate for going to ADS-B (total cost $5.1 million). And being only 25% of the fleet is going to need water injection/other means, the FAA could offer a even higher level of rebate and still come out ahead... with a better solution. Further, the $14K is only "certification" in the context of recovering the investment as well as the lack of any competition. If all of a sudden a market is created, with competitors, you'll find the market steps quite nicely. Where did we start with the cost of ADS-B transponders? And where are we now? From my view with have sub $2000 solutions that meet the ADS-B mandate and the deadline is not even here.
Or alternately perhaps it could be done at the pump as someone else suggested, by adding octane enhancers... which all ethanol is anyways and it's added at the distributor. MBTE got a bad name from leaching out of ground tanks but perhaps with some of those R&D dollars from the FAA a means to add it at the pump could be devised?
That being said, I hear what you are saying and the bloated Washington bureaucracy will fight any free market solution but I strongly believe convergence, as much as possible, should be our buzzword. We are so close with 94UL.
