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Details of Flexible-Fuel Vehicle

A flexible-fuel vehicle (FFV) or dual-fuel vehicle (also sometimes called only flex-fuel) is an alternative fuel automobile with a multifuel engine that can typically use different sources of fuel which are either mixed in the same tank or with separate tanks and fuel systems for each fuel. A common example is a vehicle that can accept gasoline mixed with varying levels of bioethanol (gasohol). Some cars carry a natural gas tank making it possible switch back and forth from gasoline to natural gas.

History
The first flexible fuel vehicle was most likely a Ford model T from 1908. It was fitted with a carburetor with adjustable jetting, allowing use of gasoline or ethanol

Terminology
Bi-fuel vehicles have separate tanks for gasoline and the gaseous fuel.
Dual-fuel systems supply both fuels into the combustion chamber at the same time in various calibrated proportions.

Flexible-fuel vehicles in Brazil
Since the oil crisis in the 70's, Brazil has been selling ethanol as a fuel. Car manufacturers modified gasoline engines to support ethanol characteristics (Changes are on compression ratio, amount of fuel injected, replacement of materials that would get corroded by the contact with ethanol, use of colder spark plugs suitable for dissipating heat due to higher flame temperatures, and an auxiliary cold-start system that injects gasoline from a small tank in the engine compartment to help starting when cold) and have been selling ethanol powered cars since then. However, flexible fuel technology started being developed only on the end of the 90's. The flexible fuel car is built with an ethanol-ready engine and one fuel tank. The lambda probe, used to measure the quality of combustion in conventional engines, is also required to tell the ECU which blend of gasoline and alcohol is being burnt. So, the controller regulates the amount of fuel injected and spark time: fuel flow needs to be decreased and also self-combustion needs to be avoided when gasoline is used (because ethanol engines have compression ratio around 12:1, too high for gasoline). Those cars can run with arbitrary combinations of gasoline and alcohol (can use both fuels sold in Brazil -- ethanol or gasoline with a blend of 20-25% ethanol - pure or blended in any proportion).

In May 2003 Volkswagen built for the first time a production flexible fuel car, the Gol 1.6 Total Flex. Chevrolet followed two months later with the Corsa 1.8 Flexpower, using an engine developed by a joint-venture with Fiat called PowerTrain. By 2005, popular manufacturers that build flexible fuel vehicles are Chevrolet, Fiat, Ford, Peugeot, Renault ,Volkswagen, Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Citröen. Flexible fuel cars were 22% of the car sales in 2004, 73% in 2005, and 90% in 2007. As of March 2008, the fleet of "flex" cars and light commercial vehicles had reached 5 million new vehicles sold, which represents around 10% of Brazil's motor vehicle fleet and 15.6% of all light vehicles.The success of "flex" vehicles, as they are popularly known, together with the mandatory use of E25 blend of gasoline throughout the country, allowed Brazil in 2006 to achieve more than 40% of fuel consumption from sugar cane-based ethanol for the light vehicle fleet,and represents almost 20% of total fuel consumption in the road transport sector when trucks and other diesel-powered vehicles are considered.

There's another type of flexible fuel vehicle that is not uncommon in Brazil. Those are the cars able to switch from gasoline to natural gas. The term "flex-fuel", however is never used to describe those cars; instead, they are called bi-fueled vehicles or tri-fueled if they are built with an ethanol-gasoline flexible fuel engine (and tetra-fueled if they can run on pure gasoline). These vehicles are always adapted in specialized houses after they are bought. In many capitals, natural gas shares a small part of the fuel market with gasoline and ethanol. It has the advantages of having government incentives for cars with such systems, like annual tax reduction, and being the cheaper cost-per-mile in the country. The disadvantages are a slight reduction of engine power, the small number of gas stations that have this fuel available, having the lowest mileage and the space needed for the cylinder (normally one or two) installation, normally taking up a good amount of space in the trunk.
Trucks and pickups are mostly diesel powered and there's no project on conversion to some kind of flexible fuel system. Instead the tendency is to replace regular diesel with bio-diesel. The currently allowed mixture is 98% diesel and 2% bio-diesel. The mixture of 95% diesel and 5% bio-diesel will become a requirement only in 2013.

FIAT has introduced in 2006 the FIAT Siena Tetra fuel, which can run on 100% ethanol, E25 (Brazil's common gasoline mixture of 75% gasoline and 25% ethanol), pure gasoline (not available in Brazil) and natural gas.

California automobile distributor ZAP, has agreed to be the exclusive North American distributor and has pre-purchased 50,000 cars from Brazilian automotive maker OBVIO!. The first models scheduled to go into production are the flex-fueled 828 and 012 in 2007, soon to be followed by the 828E and 012E equipped with electric drive systems. Models are expected to be available in Canada and the United States in late 2008.

Flexible-fuel vehicles in Europe
For a long time Ford Taurus was the only flexible-fuel vehicle sold in Sweden. It was later replaced by Ford Focus. In 2005 Saab began selling its 9-5 2.0 Biopower (joined in 2006 by its 9-5 2.3 Biopower), and Volvo its S40 and V50 with flexible-fuel engines.In 2007, Saab also started selling a BioPower version of its popular Saab 9-3 line. The Saab-derived Cadillac BLS will also be available with E85 compatible engines in 2008.

There are also plans of selling E85 fuel, and then some flexible-fuel vehicles, in other European countries:
- In October 2005, the Ford Focus FFV became the first flexible-fuel vehicle to be commercially sold in Ireland. E-85 is available throughout a limited number of Maxol service stations in the Republic. Redesigned Ford C-MAX FFV may be sold there in 2007.

- Ford offers the Focus (all three models) since August 2005 in Germany. Ford is about to offer also the Mondeo and other models as FFV versions between 2007 and 2010. - Renault and PSA (Citroen & Peugeot) announced to start selling FFV cars from summer 2007.

The Koenigsegg CCXR is currently the fastest and most powerful flexible fuel vehicle with its twin-supercharged V8 producing 1018hp when running on biofuel (compared to 806hp on 91 octane (US) unleaded gasoline).
 

Type: Glossary & Dictionary