Biofuel Ferrari

Ferrari aims to cut its carbon emissions by 40% by the year 2012. The Italian company may do that with hybrid engines as in the Carbon Ferrari, which is still only a concept car. But Ferrari also produces racing cars for the Formula 1, GT and Le Mans series, all of which now require participating cars to have small amounts of biofuel mixed with their gasoline (5.75% in F1 and 10% in GT and Le Mans). The 2005 F430 Spider was designed on the Ferrari's racing cars...the 2008 model uses a mix of 85% Ethanol and 15% gasoline as fuel, and was appropriately unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show where the theme was small and green.



Notice the words "Bio Fuel" painted in green. Although I have to say that Lamborghini had prettier girls at Chicago.

In order for the Ferrari F430 Spider Biofuel to use E85 certain modifications had to be made to the fuel feed system and to the engine CPU. Developing the CPU, two fuels (Flex Fuel) can be used by the engine with the same compression ratio. All of the other technical characteristics have remained unchanged with respect to a standard production engine.

The development of an engine powered by the biofuel E85 comes as part of a research and development program announced during the Technological Innovation Conference held at Maranello last June as part of our 60th Anniversary Celebrations.

On that particular occasion, Ferrari also unveiled projects focused on improving the energy of the whole car which would in turn lower fuel consumption and emissions levels.

But in fact the CO2 emissions in the F430 Spider biofuel are only lowered by 5%! So how is this helping with cutting Ferrari's carbon emissions? Well like most biofuel
enthusiasts they claim that, since ethanol comes from corn plants, the CO2 absorbed by the plants as they grow is factored into the emissions cut....WOW! That's a really convoluted way of looking at things. Don't they realize that if the corn was not converted into ethanol and burnt as fuel it would be even better for the environment?

In fact biofuels like ethanol are not useful in cutting CO2 emissions; they are important as substitutes for gasoline, which helps us save on crude imports and gives us energy security. There is still another problem for the Ferrari F430 biofuel...ethanol is not widely available in the traditional Ferrari markets. Maybe this is why the F430 biofuel is still only a concept car, with no word on when it will enter production.