Honda’s heritage is rooted in research, technological developments, and a longstanding commitment to provide environmentally sustainable transport. That is why Honda have tried and tested all kinds of options solar vehicles, electric motors, fuel cell and hybrid technology. So it is not surprising that Honda is working on biofuel cars, too.
Honda firmly believes that the most effective way to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the context of the current UK market is essentially hybrid technology. That’s because from infrastructure and the product is already available now. Looking ahead, their long-term solution is the fuel cell vehicle FCX, which runs on compressed hydrogen and emits nothing but water.
So, you may wonder why Honda is developing a FFV? Well, in countries like Brazil, biofuels market is well established and fueling an extensive infrastructure already exists. Aware of the potential for environmental gains to be reaped development of biofuels, in September 2006, Honda announced that it had created a new flexible fuel vehicle system (FFV) Gasoline engines which can operate on 100% ethanol or a wide range of ethanol gasoline blends.
There are two versions of FFV currently on sale in Brazil, a Civic FFV and Fit FFV. Both can run up to 85% ethanol.
So far, changes in the proportion of ethanol to gasoline have affected low-temperature start-up performance, and variations due to the air / fuel and engine power. This has been a challenge to maintain stable performance, fuel economy and emissions.
Based on measurements of the concentrations of exhaust fumes, Honda FFV system adapts to different ethanol gasoline ratios in the ethanol blend gasoline. This gives the flexibility of the FFV to run on ethanol to gasoline ratios between 20% and 100%, while still pending the achievement of the fuel economy and dynamic performance on a footing equality with 100% gasoline-powered vehicles. To ensure reliability even starting to cold, a secondary fuel tank was added.
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