AD MAGAZINE 342

35 AutoData | March 2018 which represents the ethanol industry, is participating with Toyota in the flex hybrid project. Alfred Szwarc, his emissions and technology consultant, says that “ethanol has had room in the market for many years and seeks partnerships in electromobility.” He, who is an engineer, does not see great difficulties in the technical part. “It is necessary to adapt the combustion engine to ethanol, to redo its calibration and related aspects, but it is not a NASA project.” In his view hybrid flex technology re- presents “a perfect marriage, by adding the qualities of high energy efficiencywith the environmental”. The Unica consultant reveals that “Toyota warned us about the possibility of the nationalization of this technology, and the talks have been happening on for about two years. The hybrids should be part of the newmobility scenarios andwe see good opportunities for the coexisten- ce of hybrid version with flex engine. The next step would be plug-in flex hybrids, though probably in a smaller number of models.” In the end, Szwarc is betting on tech- nologies that use electric batteries or fuel cells with energy generated from etha- nol. “One of the great barriers to electric, besides costs, is the autonomy. And the Nissan prototype has already shown that this issue can be overcome” By the calculations of the engineer today 30% of the price composition of an electric car comes exclusively from the batteries. Other segments, besides the pas- senger car market, can also make use of ethanol, such as public transportation and agribusiness. “If the conditions are at- tractive there are advanced developing technologies and promising prototypes,” says the consultant of Unica. GOING BY BUS The engineer Márcio Massakiti is one of the people responsible for the Electric Vehicle Programof Itaipu Binacional, which works on the electric mobility projects. The company develops a hybrid bus project powered by ethanol. The first experiment came in 2010, demonstrating a prototype, in which the internal combustion engine supplies me- chanical energy to an electric generator. Currently, with a contribution of R$ 10 million from Finep, Itaipu finishes a work on improving the prototype of the bus, with the reviewof tests. A second phasewill be the opening of an announcement by Finep for public call of automakers interested in the production of the bus. According to Massakiti “the vehicle brings efficiency of 85% in energy con- sumption, while in the Otto cycle the per- formance is only 15 to 20%.” For Marcos Clemente, vice president of the AEA, Brazilian Association of Automo- tive Engineering, “it is not about discussing whether the future belongs to the internal combustion engine or the electrification. It is better to have both, and the partici- pation of each technologywill depend on the characteristics of each region. And in Brazil it is viable to use ethanol.” For him, there is still room to improve the efficiency of the explosion engines in the coming years: “Internal combustion engines with any fuel will still be important in 2030, 2040, but theywill be even more efficient than the current ones. This search will continue through more compact sys- tems, combustion generating even greater thermal load with turbo, direct injection, more sophisticated admission controls. And the idea is to make future engines optimized for high-octane fuels.” For Clemente, it makes more sense to encourage the use of biofuels in detriment of fossil fuels in Brazil. “The country has besides ethanol, for example, biogas, bio- diesel, bio-kerosene, biomass. It’s brilliant.” FOR THE END OF DIFFERENCE One discussion that has been around for some time , both in the technical area and in the negotiation tables, is the reduc- tion of the difference in consumption of flex-fuel engines when fueledwith gasoli- ne andwith ethanol. For the representative