Stellantis announced this Friday morning (31) a complete electrification plan for its car line in Brazil. In a presentation, the parent company of brands such as Fiat, Jeep, Peugeot and Citroën confirmed that it will focus on the development of flex-fuel hybrid models, with a strong commitment to ethanol to reduce CO² emission levels.
- Ethanol is Brazil’s big bet in presentation at the UN; understand
- Brazil will be Volkswagen’s biofuel development center
According to Antonio Filosa, President of Stellantis for South America, the benefits of ethanol are more advantageous both economically and environmentally. For this, the company carried out heavy tests with various types of motorization to validate its bet on the hybrid + flex model.
/i717560.jpeg)
The exercise had a partnership with Bosch, which should be the main supplier of electric motors for these cars in the future. The German company installed an emissions simulator in a Jeep Compass, which was fueled with ethanol and traveled a distance of more than 240km. The result was as follows:
–
Feedly: subscribe to our RSS feed and don’t miss any Canaltech content on your favorite news aggregator.
–
- Fuel (E27): 60,64 kg CO2eq
- 100% electric (BEV) with European energy: 30.41 kg CO2eq
- Etanol (E100): 25,79 kg CO2eq
- 100% electric (BEV) with Brazilian energy: 21.45 kg CO2eq
“It is perceived that there is a technical tie between the use of a 100% electric car with our energy matrix and a car fueled 100% with ethanol. These data were important for us to opt for the bet on the hybrid powered, primarily, on ethanol. It is a important virtuous cycle, which goes from the planting to the vehicle”, said Filosaa, in a press conference.
Company created to accelerate this process
As part of its startup incubation strategy, Stellantis has already revealed who will be the main pillar in the development of ethanol hybrids. This is your company Bio-Electro.
According to Filosa, Bio-Electro will work with a large set of strategic partnerships, with a view to accelerating the development and implementation of new motor-propulsion and mobility decarbonisation solutions. Its major strategic objective is to nationalize solutions, technology and production, driving a sectorial wave of reindustrialization.
/i717562.jpeg)
“We are going to bring the production of these vehicles to South America, mainly Brazil, where we have some of our most modern plants, such as the one in Goiana, in Pernambuco. We need to reach a really advantageous level of production scale and this process involves manufacturing local”, comments Filosa.
Stellantis, as Volkswagen has already announced in the near past, considers the entire ethanol production cycle to validate this decarbonization strategy through sugarcane fuel, in what is known as the circular economy. It starts with developing more CO²-efficient products and the supply chain, moves on to more efficient manufacturing, the product, the dealer network and the user. At the end of the product cycle, another cycle opens, with remanufacturing, reuse and recycling.
How are the electrics?
According to Filosa, electric cars should be 20% of Stellantis’ sales mix in 2030 here in Brazil. The company promises to continue investing and bringing imported models with this engine, but continues with the discourse that ethanol brings us a great advantage over other countries.
/i483490.jpeg)
“Brazil has a clean energy matrix and the electric vehicle continues to make sense here. But, while we do not reach a larger scale level, the ethanol hybrid remains the most suitable model for our market. This gives us an advantage”, ” explains the executive.
To the Canaltech, Filosa also made it clear what the company’s position is on synthetic gasoline, which should be the solution in Europe, for example. “We don’t need synthetic gasoline, as it is very expensive to develop and, as we already have a whole modern and efficient ethanol chain, it would not make sense to make this switch”, he stressed.
Stellantis’ idea is to present, later this year, its first big step towards electrification with ethanol. It was not said, however, if it will be an engine or some other investment. The company announced a few years ago that, by 2025, the investment cycle would be around R$ 15 billion in Brazil, already considering this hybrid ethanol strategy.
According to Filosa, we’ll see cars being launched with this technology in a year or two, but more consistently.
Read the article on Canaltech.
Trending no Canaltech:
- How ChatGPT lied to convince a human to work for him
- Midjourney cites “abuse” and ends free access
- FreedomGPT | How is the chatbot that answers everything without censorship
- What is the best cheap cell phone to buy today?
- Study shows photosynthesis may be different than previously thought
- What are the advantages of direct currency conversion between Brazil and China?
