Today, GM announced its first BioEthanol concept, the Saab BioPower 100. It’s a Saab 9-5 SportCombi wagon that features a 2.0-liter turbo engine that runs on E100 — 100% ethanol. Currently, many manufacturers produce flex-fuel vehicles that run on E85, a mixture of 85% ethanol and 15% regular gasoline. This concept gets rid of even that small percent of gas.
All that ethanol means the octane level is incredibly high. The small turbo engine produces a whopping 300 hp and 295 pounds-feet of torque and hustles to 62 mph in 6.6 seconds. The idea of running a car on ethanol has always appealed to us because of the possible performance aspect. Currently, the infrastructure isn’t in place to support a massive switch to ethanol-powered vehicles, and the cost per gallon of E85 is still quite high. Add that to the lower fuel economy the E100 would get, and we better see a lot more sorghum farms and ethanol refineries popping up to make it affordable. It seems car companies can build nice performance cars that run on alternative fuels; now alternative fuel production needs to catch up.
Source: GM
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