Is there a future for flex-fuel?

1993 Chevrolet Lumina ethanol flex-fuel vehicle used by the federal government

Next week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit (January 11-25, 2009) will have more than the usual attention reserved for this event.  Auto enthusiasts and potential consumers will be joined by an international press corps that will scrutinize the Big Three’s previews for signs of any lessons learned from recent admonishments by lawmakers in Washington.  What will the 2009 NAIAS tea leaves say about flex-fuel vehicles?  This has been an area of the alternative fuel universe that has always intrigued me and seems to have gained substantial traction after the reversal of the California Air Resources Board’s ZEV mandate in 2003.  I’m not an advocate of ethanol for all the usual reasons, i.e. waste of precious land resources, using an agricultural resource primarily for fuel instead of food, the biological vulnerability of an ethanol-based fuel infrastructure, etc., and have lamented the passing of GM’s EV-1 and all the potential it promised.

There are positive signs, however, that America may be winding down its interest with flex technology as a viable alternative fuel system.  One item that caught my attention was an article in the Washington Post on November 23, 2008.  The WP’s article basically confirms what most of us who have been skeptical of flex-fuel have been saying and thinking regarding the lack of infrastructure to service these vehicles except in limited geographic areas of the U.S., e.g. the Midwest.  For the past 16 years, the federal government has invested billions of dollars in acquiring a fleet of flex-fuel vehicles (according to the article, there are approximately 112,000 alternative fuel vehicles in the federal government’s fleet, however, it’s not clear if this number includes other fuels such as propane and CNG).  Concurrent with this build-up has been relative stagnation in the expansion of ethanol facilities in regions outside of the Midwest.  Federal agencies now claim that the flex-fuel vehicles they were mandated to purchase are fueled with regular gasoline up to 92% of the time they are in service due to the lack of ethanol pumps in the part of the U.S. where the vehicle is stationed.  Compounding the lack of available ethanol facilities is the fact that the majority of flex vehicles built are larger than what would have been required for their utility, i.e. SUVs, large full-sized sedans, etc.  It is now quite possible that a government mandate that focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions through alternative fuel use has been having the opposite effect.

A more recent signal of a possible move away from flex-fuel by Detroit is GM’s announcement that its 2010 Cadillac SRX CUV will not incorporate flex technology as had been reported earlier.  Instead, the new Cadillac SRX will be getting smaller and offering as an engine option a  new direct injected V6.   Spokesmen for GM stated  that although the original specifications for the SRX called for flex-fuel, the vehicle will be manufactured to run on gasoline only (see AutoBlogGreen post). Could it be that the new political climate in Washington has already begun to take effect on the automakers?   In the recent past, Republican lawmakers from agricultural states exerted significant influence on energy policies, but now this happily seems to be diminishing.   This is encouraging for those of us who wish to see less emphasis on bioenergy as an alternative fuel and more emphasis on ZEVs and practical solutions such as efficient ICE systems and reducing unnecessary bulk and weight as strategies for dealing with  transportation, energy and the environment.