History of Ethanol Fuel in Brazil - The Flex-fuel Era

The Flex-fuel Era

Confidence in ethanol-powered vehicles was restored with the introduction in the Brazilian market of flexible-fuel vehicles starting in 2003. A key innovation in the Brazilian flex technology was avoiding the need for an additional dedicated sensor to monitor the ethanol-gasoline mix, which made the first American M85 flex fuel vehicles too expensive. This was accomplished through the lambda probe, used to measure the quality of combustion in conventional engines, is also required to tell the engine control unit (ECU) which blend of gasoline and alcohol is being burned. This task is accomplished automatically through software developed by Brazilian engineers, called "Software Fuel Sensor" (SFS), fed with data from the standard sensors already built-in the vehicle. The technology was developed by the Brazilian subsidiary of Bosch in 1994, but was further improved and commercially implemented in 2003 by the Italian subsidiary of Magneti Marelli. A similar fuel injection technology was developed by the Brazilian subsidiary of Delphi Automotive Systems, and it is called "Multifuel." This technology allows the controller to regulate the amount of fuel injected and spark time, as 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.

In March 2003, Volkswagen launched in the Brazilian market the Gol 1.6 Total Flex, the first commercial flexible fuel vehicle capable of running on any blend of gasoline and ethanol. Chevrolet followed two months later with the Corsa 1.8 Flexpower, using an engine developed by a joint-venture with Fiat called PowerTrain. That year production of full flex-fuel reached 39.853 automobiles and 9.411 light commercial vehicles. By 2008, popular manufacturers that build flexible fuel vehicles are Chevrolet, Fiat, Ford, Peugeot, Renault, Volkswagen, Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota and Citroën. Nissan launched its first flex fuel in the Brazilian market in 2009 and Kia Motors in 2010. Flexible-fuel vehicles were 22% of the car sales in 2004, 73% in 2005, 87.6% in July 2008, and reached a record 94% in August 2009. The production of flex-fuel cars and light commercial vehicles reached the milestone of 10 million vehicles in March 2010, and 15.3 million units by March 2012. As of December 2011, the fleet of flex automobiles and light commercial vehicles had reached 14.8 million vehicles, representing 21% of Brazil's motor vehicle fleet and 31.8% of all registered light vehicles.

This rapid adoption of the flex technology was facilitated by the fuel distribution infrastructure already in place, as around 27,000 filling stations countrywide were available by 1997 with at least one ethanol pump, a heritage of the Pró-Álcool program, and by October 2008 have reached 35,000 fueling stations.

The flexibility of Brazilian FFVs empowered the consumers to choose the fuel depending on current market prices. The rapid adoption and commercial success of "flex" vehicles, as they are popularly known, together with the mandatory blend of alcohol with gasoline as E25 fuel, have increased ethanol consumption up to the point that during the first two months of 2008 ethanol consumption increased by 56% when compared to the same period in 2007, and achieving a landmark in ethanol consumption in February 2008, when ethanol retail sales surpassed the 50% market share of the gasoline-powered fleet. This level of ethanol fuel consumption had not been reached since the end of the 80s, at the peak of the Pró-Álcool Program. According to two separate research studies conducted in 2009, at the national level 65% of the flex-fuel registered vehicles regularly use ethanol fuel, and all-year-long by 93% of flex car owners in São Paulo, the main ethanol producer state where local taxes are lower, and prices at the pump are more competitive than gasoline.

Between 1979 and 2011, Brazil substituted around 22 million pure gasoline-powered vehicles with 5.7 million neat ethanol vehicles, 14.8 million flex-fuel vehicles and almost 1.5 million flex motorcycles. The number of neat ethanol vehicles still in use by 2003 was estimated between 2 to 3 million vehicles, and 1.22 million as of December 2011. There were 80 flex car and light truck models available in the market manufactured by 12 major carmakers by December 2011, and four flex-fuel motorcycle models available.

The early technology in flex fuel engines had a fuel economy with hydrated ethanol (E100) that was 25 to 35% lower than gasoline, but flex engines are now being designed with higher compression ratios, taking advantage of the higher ethanol blends and maximizing the benefits of the higher oxygen content of ethanol, resulting in lower emissions and improving fuel efficiency, allowing flex engines in 2008 models to reduce the fuel economy gap to 20 to 25% that of gasoline.