Sun 25 Sep 2005
Scotland on Sunday
<font color="red"><b>Sweet taste of success for sugar-fuelled cars </b></font id="red">
ANDREW DOWNIE
IN RIO DE JANEIRO
<font color="brown">HYBRID cars powered by ethanol and petrol are now outselling traditional petrol-engined vehicles in Brazil.
The Flex cars, short for Flexible fuel, have proven such a success that six of the world's biggest car manufacturers, including the three major Detroit makers, all produce Flex versions of their bestsellers. This year they expect two in three new cars sold in Brazil to be Flex.
"Demand has been unbelievable," said Barry Engle, the new president of Ford Brazil. "I am hard pressed to think of any other technology that has been such a success so quickly."
The success is down to many factors, the principal one of which is price, experts said. Although the Flex engines use 25% more ethanol per mile than petrol, ethanol usually sells at between a third and half the price of petrol.
The ethanol is made from cane sugar and even motorists who were previously reluctant to take the plunge and buy a Flex say they have been won over by the savings.
"It's been a revelation because of the economy," said Madalena Lira, a university lecturer who drives a Flex version of the Fiat Palio. "I love this car in spite of it being a Flex, not because it is a Flex. The savings have been great. I'd certainly buy another one."
In addition to the savings, environmentally conscious drivers might appreciate having a car that runs on a cleaner fuel and some might even buy a Flex because they know it is good for the country's auto and sugar manufacturers. But today, two-and-a-half years into the experiment, another unforeseen advantage is emerging.
"There is something curious that we are just starting to see," said Alfred Szwarc, an ethanol consultant with Sao Paulo's sugar cane growers' association. "Petrol engined cars lose more of their value than Flex cars. People know oil is finite and that it is going to get more and more expensive. They think a car powered by petrol is going to be more difficult to sell. They see Flex cars as the car of the future."
The race is on to entice other nations to embrace the idea. Ford is looking to produce Flex models in Europe and other nations are starting to dilute petrol with the sugar derivative in what could be the first step to a broader Flex programme.</font id="brown">
news item re ethanol fuel in Brazil
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More snake oil bull**it, we are just using too much of all of it, the ethanol would be from a renewable source like sugar cane thus being neutral from a CO2 point of view but the brazilians have got all those folks they dont take into any of their equations (the unmentionables) and it also has to be given a nasty flavour to prevent consumers from becoming consumers!
Stewart
Stewart
Had wondered why the self-styled "health" stazi were suddenly so keen to force sugar out of our food and replace it with very nasty chemical concoctions....
Still trying to figure out their angle on salt -- as well as taste, like fat a natural and traditional preservative for thousands of years -- 'tis probably part of the overclasses' anti-national strategy so everything rots quicker (unless treated with dubious additives) and everyone is thereby controllable through their globally centralised and controlled food production and distribution.
<i>Don't expect the transnational establishment's <spit!> Greenie glove-puppets to twine overmuch about that, though.</i>
Still trying to figure out their angle on salt -- as well as taste, like fat a natural and traditional preservative for thousands of years -- 'tis probably part of the overclasses' anti-national strategy so everything rots quicker (unless treated with dubious additives) and everyone is thereby controllable through their globally centralised and controlled food production and distribution.
<i>Don't expect the transnational establishment's <spit!> Greenie glove-puppets to twine overmuch about that, though.</i>
That's the thing Howie. Brazil has been using sugar cane since the 70s, as Tom points out. They have had a noticeable drop off in usage since the late 80s however as oil prices came down. Now it's going sky high again, they understandably seem to be going for it again.
I like the idea but as pointed out, you'll need a HUGE amount of land to produce enough oil that way. Have they invented a way to irrigate the Sahara yet?!
I like the idea but as pointed out, you'll need a HUGE amount of land to produce enough oil that way. Have they invented a way to irrigate the Sahara yet?!
But we have the EU to PAY farmers to keep fields empty when they could be put to this kind of use.tomsheppard wrote:What boxxoxx! Most of Brazil's cars (Beetles) have been run on ethanol since the 1970s. The trouble is that to run a car on it you'd need such an acreage of land that it just wouldn't work here .... Like catalysts.
Except catalysts break down as they work spreading heavy metal Platinum along our roadways & countryside. It doesn't matter how many mpg you do or CO2 you emit on sugar derived, it's neutralised by the sugar cane having taken in all that CO2 in it's life when growing.tomsheppard wrote: and the CO2 emissions? 25%greater a mile. Yeah, right. That'll save the world then. Like catalysts.
The only question is the envirionmental impact of the refining process from sugar to ethanol.
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This is very true. The farmer down the road from me grew a massive (and I do mean massive... maybe 400 acres) field of linseed last year, and recieved a subsidy for doing so. Slight problem was that he didn't actually harvest it, and so it was left to rot. An utter waste, as if it had been harvested, it would have produced about 40'000 litres of fuel (each acre of land can yield 100 litres of fuel)alexp-j wrote: But we have the EU to PAY farmers to keep fields empty when they could be put to this kind of use.
Run this in a PSA 1.9TD, and you have 400'000 miles of motoring. All wasted.
If he's going to do the same thing next year, I might ask if I can borrow his combined harvester, and harvest the lot!
Assuming an annual mileage of 12k, which is about right for the UK populus, that field could have kept over 30 cars on the road for a year, which is probably about as many cars as there are in the village I live in.
Considering the amount of unused land there is, this HAS to be a viable alternative.
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