Alternative Fuel for Volvo Cars

The increasing harmful effects of greenhouse gasesresistance to the corrosive effect of the
from car emissions are being felt by almost everybiomass-derived fuel. Parts such as the Volvo valve
country in the world. Due to this, effort has been putcover gasket, fuel hoses and different seals have
to the development of cars that will use alternativebeen also modified for use with the ethanol based
fuels for it has been proven that such vehicles wouldfuel. The injection valves are likewise reinforced and
be actually able to help produce less or no harmfulincreased in size due to the fact that E85 has lower
emissions at all.energy content than gasoline. Hence a larger amount
The choice of alternative fuels is great but theof fuel needs to be burned to give the engine the
efficiency of these possible energy sources is still insame power produced by gasoline-only engines.
question. Problems still arise from the use ofThe use of ethanol as fuel is a good step towards
alternative fuels to which dedicated companies areharnessing alternative renewable sources of energy
investing time, effort, and money to find solutions to.but it has its drawbacks. Problems experienced by
One of the first mass produced cars to address theethanol powered vehicles includes, but is not limited
problem is the Toyota Prius which uses an electricto, the negative effect it has on electric fuel pumps
motor to drive the car though in a very limitedby increasing internal wear due to the fuel's corrosive
capacity only. Other companies are also developingnature. E85 is also not compatible with capacitance
cars which will not only provide good performancefuel level gauging indicators which may result on
but, at the same time, help in the campaign toerroneous fuel quantity indications. Another question
protect the environment.on the ethanol's use as fuel is the manner by which it
One such company is Volvo - the Ford Motoris produced. While cars which use this kind of fuel
Company subsidiary based in Sweden which is knowndecrease our dependency on fossil fuels, the process
for their safety-first attitude towards the productionto produce ethanol actually means having to use
of their cars. The company has developed a Flexi-Fuelfossil fuels.
system that allows the car's engine to work on aWhether the decrease in the emission of car is
combination of ethanol and gasoline. This technologygreater than the release of harmful greenhouse
is already being employed by some of their cargases from the process of producing ethanol remains
models available in selected European market. Theseto be seen. While ethanol is priced lower than
models are the newly unveiled Volvo C30, the S40gasoline, the ethanol's energy content is lower than
sedan and the V50 wagon. Their fuel of choice is thethat of petrol which means that the engine will need
E85 - the 85 denotes the percentage of bio-ethanollarger amount of fuel in every intake stroke. This
in the engine's fuel with the other 15 per cent beingfact poses a question whether using E85 will increase
gasoline. The combination reduces the cars' emissionthe cost incurred by the consumer on their fuel
of harmful greenhouse gases by as much as 80 perconsumption.
cent without endangering the cars' performance level.The use of ethanol on a mass produced car is just a
The engine of the cars which employs the FlexiFuelsmall step in harnessing alternative sources of energy.
technology has been modified slightly toThis technology alone cannot single-handedly resolve
accommodate the corrosive nature of ethanol. Thethe global community's dependence on the
different components which come in direct contactfast-depleting reserve of fossil fuels but it is a
with the fuel have been fortified to increase theirsignificant step forward.