Flex fuel vehicles

Subject: Economy

Context:

The auto sector is testing many new technologies to reduce carbon emissions. Flex fuel is one technology that has gained currency

What are flex fuel vehicles?

Like traditional vehicles, flex fuel vehicles have an internal combustion engine, but instead of regular petrol, it can run on blended fuel—petrol with ethanol or methanol.
- The ethanol mix can vary between 20% and 85%.
- India has set a target of 20% blending rate for 2025.
An FFV is a modified version of vehicles that could run both on gasoline and doped petrol with different levels of ethanol blends.
The vehicle has additional sensors and different programming of the engine control module to assess the blend of the fuel and adjust accordingly.
Unlike electric hybrid vehicles, no bulky parts need to be added to the basic gasoline vehicle architecture.
Upgrading existing vehicles to run on high blends of ethanol fuel, however, is possible but expensive and not considered feasible.

Disadvantages/challenges of using FFVs:

Customer acceptance will be a major challenge since the cost of ownership and running cost are going to be very high compared with 100 per cent petrol vehicles.
Running cost (due to lower fuel efficiency) will be higher by more than 30 percent when run with 100 percent ethanol (E100).
Flex Fuel Engines cost more as ethanol has very different chemical properties than petrol.
- Ethanol has very low (40 per cent) Calorific value as compared to Gasoline, very High Latent heat of vaporization causing cooling of charge/combustion etc.
- Ethanol also acts as a solvent and could wipe out the protective oil film inside the engine thereby could cause wear and tear.

Flex Fuel Strong Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FFV-SHEV):

When flex fuel vehicles-FFV is integrated along with strong hybrid electric technology, it is referred to as FFV-SHEVs.
Strong hybrid is another term for full hybrid vehicles, which have the capability to run solely on either electric or petrol modes.
In contrast, mild hybrids cannot run purely on one of these modes and use the secondary mode merely as a supplement to the main mode of propulsion.