Ford Focus FlexiFuel

GREEN-MINDED drivers are always looking for ways to ­reduce their carbon footprint and one option on offer is the ­bioethanol-driven car – but not all carbon-conscious consumers agree they are a good idea.

Bioethanol is a commercially produced alcohol made from crops such as sugar cane, sugar beet, corn and wheat. In the US, where a lot of farming has been diverted from food to bioethanol crops, many are worried about escalating food prices as a result. The UK’s first bioethanol plant opened in Norfolk last year.

Bioethanol does produce CO2, but its champions claim this is negated by the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis from ­growing biomass crops.

The first bioethanol car available here was the Ford Focus in 2005, followed by the Ford C-MAX, but Ford spokesman Oliver Rowe says it sells only 150 of those two models in the UK each year (as opposed to 17,000 in the rest of the EU). “It’s a niche market because unlike in other ­countries, the government gives no incentives,” he says.

The UK also has only 19 ­filling stations with E85 bioethanol pumps – all at Morrisons supermarkets – and the closest one to London is in East Sussex.

“We plan to extend ­bioethanol to our London outlets,” says a Morrisons spokesman, “as soon as the Chancellor makes it more ­attractive to customers.”

"Biofuels should be seen only as a temporary measure"

Meanwhile, Ford is adding the Mondeo and two people-carriers to its FlexiFuel vehicle (FFV) range this spring.

“But biofuels should be seen only as a temporary measure,” says Rowe, “a ­stepping stone on the way to the holy grail of running cars on hydrogen.”

Ford’s FFVs cost the same as normal cars, but biofuel Saabs cost £600 more. “This is due to the different engineering,” according to Saab spokesman Joe Oliver, “but drivers get up to 20 per cent more power in our turbo-charged BioPower cars than the petrol ones.”

High-octane bioethanol makes cars go faster but with the London’s traffic problems this is less of a plus than it might at first appear.

On the downside, ­bioethanol has a lower energy content than conventional fuels, and so more of it is ­required – it is reckoned to be 30 per cent less efficient than petrol in miles per gallon terms. Also, vehicles running on pure bioethanol are ­difficult to start in cold weather, which is why it is usually mixed with petrol.

Saab’s fellow Swedish manufacturer Volvo also has five FlexiFuel cars available here, selling a few dozen of them a year.

Sweden is the leader in the move towards biofuel ­driving, thanks to the tax concessions made by its government to ­encourage it. And helpfully, half the country’s filling ­stations have E85 pumps, which obviously helps.