South America is Ethanol Success Story Says Suzuki
Suzuki recently announced that they will launch vehicles in the US and Brazil that will run on 100% Ethanol (E100) by the year 2010. They join other automakers, such as GM, who are already selling flex-fuel vehicles in Brazil. Company officials point to the strong demand for 100% ethanol fueled vehicles due to the wide availability of cheap ethanol in Brazil.
In Brazil, 45% of all fuel used for automobiles is ethanol made from sugar cane. This represents a wide-range of mixes, all the way from a 20% ethanol/80% gas mix (E20) up to 100% ethanol (E100). Brazil has been leading the world in producing ethanol from sugar cane. While the US has focused heavily on corn-based ethanol production, Brazil has used sugar cane in producing their ethanol. Using sugar is about three to four times as efficient as corn.
Currently 20% of all vehicles in Brazil are flex-fuel, yet they are only using 1% of the arable land in Brazil to meet the current ethanol demand. Industry officials feel that they could easily increase production by two to three times the current production levels.
I heard on NPR yesterday that Brazil is already energy independent, they do not import any oil. This has mostly been done through ethanol.
Good for Suzuki, and good for Brazil. We need to find more alternatives, and suger cane is not a bad one. But, I think we need to get rid of the suger tariff if we want to go that direction.
It is just a good technology..
Hope it will come soon to my country
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