Flexible Fuel Vehicles, or FFVs, are vehicles that can run on bioethanol, bioethanol-petrol blends, or conventional petrol. For the motorist, this means a unique flexibility as it is possible to choose between two types of fuel according to availability and price.

For technical reasons, it is not advisable to use 100% bioethanol as fuel in our temperate climatic regions. That is why so-called E85 is used in Europe – a blend of about 85% bioethanol and about 15% petrol. The addition of petrol improves cold-starting characteristics especially in the winter. Since August 2008 there is an industry standard in Germany (DIN 51625) that guarantees the quality of E85.

The pioneers of motoring and automobile construction early on promoted the idea of using ethanol as a fuel. As they made their trailblazing inventions in automobile and engine development, ethanol was also considered as a fuel to power their forward-looking developments.

As early as 1860, Nikolaus August Otto used ethanol as fuel in the prototypes of his own internal combustion engine. Henry Ford had conceived his legendary Model T, which was to revolutionise the mass production of cars, as a vehicle powered by bioethanol, and predicted that fuel would be produced from biomass in the future. Today, bioethanol is being produced from biomass on an industrial scale throughout the world. In Europe, bioethanol is mostly produced from cereals and sugar beet.

In Germany, there is a longstanding tradition of using bioethanol: it has been used ever since 1925 as an additive to improve anti-knock characteristics.

In Brazil, and in the USA, too, FFVs have been a feature of the road scene for some time. In Brazil, vehicles exclusively using ethanol as fuel already have a long tradition - they have been on the market there since the 1980s. However, over time, they have been ousted more and more by FFVs, in other words by models that can run on petrol as well as bioethanol. Today, roughly 90% of new car registrations in Brazil are flexible fuel vehicles. In the USA, there are already about eight million FFVs on the road.

In Europe, by contrast - with the exception of Sweden - FFVs are not yet widely spread. The first model with flexible fuel technology available on the German market was the Ford Mondeo in 2005.
Today, several car manufacturer offer models with flexible fuel technology on the German market: Audi the A4, Opel the Insignia, Ford the Galaxy, Focus, Mondeo and S-MAX models, Saab the 9-3 and 9-5 models, Renault the Laguna and Latitude, and Volvo the C30, S40, V50 models.

The Fuel of the Future
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