Toyota pulled the wraps off the world’s first hybrid flexible-fuel vehicle (Hybrid FFV) in Brazil recently in the hopes of popularising Hybrid Electric Vehicles in the country.
The prototype, based on a Toyota Prius, is the combination of a flexible-fuel vehicle (FFV) that can be powered by both gasoline and alternative fuels such as ethanol and Toyota’s famous hybrid system which combines a combustion engine and an electrical powertrain.
The Hybrid FFV is a new powertrain system that has the potential to drastically reduce total CO2 emissions as it is built on Toyota’s hybrid system with high energy efficiency and low emission levels and it also leverages the CO2 reabsorption capacity of ethanol, a plant-derived 100% renewable fuel.
Toyota’s initial studies indicate that Hybrid FFV has a great advantage in environmental performance compared to a standard FFV, when considering C02 emissions from “well-to-wheel” as Mazda would call it. If it is fueled only by sugarcane-based ethanol (E100 fuel), the results are even better.
Ethanol is commonly made from biomass such as corn or sugarcane and the first production car to run entirely on ethanol was the Fiat 147. Aside from producing the most number of top football players, Brazil is also known to be among the world’s top producers of ethanol-blended fuel; a commodity that’s widely used in Brazil.
