Hi guys, here in brazil FIAT are using FLEX FUEL tecnologi, we can use ethanol or gasoline (here in Brazil gasoline have 25% of ethanol in your composition).
Brazil was the first coutry use a alternative fuel made by vegetable source, cane sugar since 70's, now we can chose betwen ethanol or gasoline or use together in any mixture.

And the others contries, what are doing about this?

E 85 like USA, hidrogen???

Well here in the UK we are only just starting to play with Rape Seed oil in the form of Bio-Diesel which is mixed in with regular diesel and its good stuff .

There isn't much for a petrol car though the only thing you can do is get a AutoGas Conversion which makes it run on LPG (Liquified Petrolium Gas) which is better on the environment and is also taxed a lot less than regular petrol and diesel .

what is the effect on performance when using ethanol? is it better or worse than gasoline?

For CrisUK: Here in Brazil we have Bio-Diesel too, but here is forbidden for regular cars, just for: pick-up truck, vans, truck and bus to use.

For Jug: Using Ethanol the car have more hp and power in low RPM situations, for exemple a 1.8 engine using 100% gasoline have 110 hp and using 100% ethanol 115 hp in the same engine.
Ethanol here in Brazil is made by sugar cane, your process to do is 100% clear for the nature, using ethanol the car don´t polute the air.

Economi: I pay for 1 liter of ethanol less than US$ 0,70 or in Real R$: 1,15, is very cheap.

more power, less cost, better for the environment, it sounds perfect. why dont we all have cars that can use ethanol

i want flex fuel technology now!

There's a Lotus Exige testbed that has a Bio-Ethanol engine (it's just the mapping that's different to the normal one). Increased power and performance, but slightly worse economy. And the few petrol stations that sell it (mainly Morrisons - it's 85% ethanol, 15% petrol), price it only a few pence cheaper than petrol, since it still attracts so much tax from the government. So there's no financial incentive to run a car on it in the UK at present - and you get the hassle of not knowing where you can fill up... Perhaps this Fiat technology will enable the engine's fual system to determine the ratio and adjust the map in response. That way all new petrol Fiats could be able to run on 100% petrol to 100% ethanol, or anywhere inbetween.

Gav said:

price it only a few pence cheaper than petrol,

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the government justify high fuel tax by saying it is due to the damage caused to the environment, but ethanol based fuels are much better for the environment and they still cost as much.
if they really cared about the environment they would charge less tax for fuels that cause less pollution to encourage people to use them.

Jug: Here in Brazil, the begining of the government ethanol program called ProAlcool, they reduced the TAX (something around 10%) off 100% ethanol cars engine in the 70s (here in brasil we call alcool).
Nowadays the Flex Fuel cars pay the same tax of the petrol ones, but at the gas station we feel the diference, yesterday I filled my tank with ethanol and payed just 33 Reais per 30,5 liters of ethanol (1.10 reais or just US$0,50 per liter) and the gas station give-me a wash.

The dark side of this new technology is: the 100% petrol and 100% ethanol cars are going to death in next 2 or 3 years.

26p a litre something we can only dream of

i'd be happy with 75p a litre. it feels like a very long time since it was that cheap.

jug said:

i'd be happy with 75p a litre. it feels like a very long time since it was that cheap.

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By eck I were just a lad when petrol were that cheap. Mozart in the top ten, Black and white telly the entertainment of the future!

haha, it was only £2.50 per gallon in 89/90 (55p / litre). i dont expect it will be that cheap ever again.

75p seems a fair amount to me for 95ron unleaded. they should charge more for 97ron fuels because people who have cars that require 97ron obviously have spare cash

Jug: I now how the petrol is expensive, here we pay 2.30 reais per liter (or 1.05 dolars per liter or 3.75 per gallon) is very expensive here too, the ethanol is cheap less than 2 dolars per gallon and we have more power.
Here in Brazil is commun use another fuel called GNV or Natural Gas for Vehicle "NGV" is a different than LPG (Liquified Petrolium Gas), here in Brazil we just use LPG for cook, at the cars is forbidden too, like Diesel or Bio-Diesel for cars.
We pay 1.09 Reais per cubic meter. (less than US$:0,50)

in the uk we have LNG (liquified natural gas) i think its hydrogen? but it costs about the same a petrol due to tax, and there are only 12 places in the uk where you can get it.

Jog: I think the LNG and NGV are the same gas, this gas came from natural decomposition, the way we find at the nature we can use for differents thinks like: industry, cars and at home.
Different than UK, here in Brazil if we install NGV system, we pay less tax, due to the fact that this kind of fuel is better of the environment.
Brazil heve goods conditions to be one of the firsts counties to be incumbent of the Internacional Kioto pact (Japan) in 2005.

lets hope the lessons learnt in brazil can benefit us all. although i'm not hopeful, the fuel tax is a major source of income for the government, i doubt they will be willing to lose any of it without a fight. plus the oil industry is very profitable for many people, and many of those poeple have a lot of power and influence, so alternative fuels have little chance unless they can be just as profitable. to these poeple money and power will always be more important the environment.

Bio fuels are an excellent idea. They will help, but only a little. Sugar cane can be grown in Brazil because they have the climate, and lots of forest to cut down to grow the cane on

If we in Europe used all our agricultural land to grow crops for fuel we'd produce about one fifth of the amount of oil based product we use now. And there'd be nothing to eat. So bio fuel will help, but only a little.

It looks like world oil supplies have peaked anyway, so in the next year or three all fuel will become expensive, and there will be repercussions.

Ulpian said:

Bio fuels are an excellent idea. They will help, but only a little. Sugar cane can be grown in Brazil because they have the climate, and lots of forest to cut down to grow the cane on

If we in Europe used all our agricultural land to grow crops for fuel we'd produce about one fifth of the amount of oil based product we use now. And there'd be nothing to eat. So bio fuel will help, but only a little.

It looks like world oil supplies have peaked anyway, so in the next year or three all fuel will become expensive, and there will be repercussions.

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Apologies for dragging this out of the cupboard.

Spooky, I was watching an old telly prog the other night on this very subject.
Brazil were the first to use ethanol in the Fiat 147. Ethanol is far easier to produce than petrol/diesel. i think we are currently up to about 10% ethanol - E10. Seemingly, the Swedes have heavily invested in the tech since ethanol can be made from most any organic matter, even wood shavings, of which, Sweden has an abundance (by product of ikea?).
Whilst we don't have the room to grow all our own crops (some land simply isn't suitable), we certainly have plenty of room to grow trees. Local authorities could also do their bit by offering garden waste collections cheaper than they do now, they could even collect at the same time as they pick up our food waste.

Yes indeed..
If its a byproduct of an industrial process.. as in timber / lumber production then yes its perfect..

But the Scandinavians found it can have an effect on rubber seals etc in motors

Back when people got interested in
' cracking ' their own 'biodiesel'...
@15 years ago..
The world price of wheat crops shot up due to demand.. and that was only entusiasts playing..!!

The UK numbers for vegetable oils back in year 2000 were something like 2 million tons per year consumed as food with a proportion used for frying. If we suppose that 1/3 might be available as waste cooking oil that gives lets sat 700,000 tones if we collect it and refine it. To that we need to add 150,000 tones of methanol (maybe a bit less) which comes from natural gas. The left over glycerol (about 70,000 tons) could be burnt in power generation diesels.

To put all that in context, UK used 17 million tons of diesel alone. Petrol was probably about the same again (I can't remember).

That begs the question why bother with all the faff for biodiesel when cooking oil can be added to ordinary diesel at up to 20% without any problems for engines. The only reason we did not do that was Germany demanding that biodiesel must not contain any glycerol. It's not clear where that came from but probably a stick to beat the whole idea out of existence.

Biodiesel (methyl ester) by the way is an excellent fuel but the many costs do not outweigh the benefits. Not least the diversion of agricultural land away from food production and pushing up the costs of such as rape seed oil. It also led to oil palm plantation in places like Burma which replaced virgin rain forests.