NEWS

Minister for Road Transport and Highways asked automobile manufacturers to manufacture flex-fuel vehicles complying with BS-6 norms within six months.

FLEXIBLE FUEL VEHICLES (FFVS)

What

• Modified version of vehicles
• Run both on gasoline and doped petrol with different levels of ethanol blends.
• Have compatible engines to run on more than 84 percent ethanol blended petrol.

Benefits

• Reduce use of polluting fossil fuels and cutting down harmful emissions.
• Present a different advantage as they will allow vehicles to use different blends of ethanol mixed petrol available in different parts of the country.
• Logical extension of the Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) programme launched by the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in January 2003.
• Since India has surplus produce of corn, sugar and wheat, the mandatory blending of ethanol programme will help farmers in realising higher incomes.

Disadvantages/challenges

• 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.
• Ethanol also acts as a solvent and could wipe out the protective oil film inside the engine thereby could cause wear and tear.