Ford Motor Company has called for wider availability of ethanol in the United States and a more integrated approach to the roll-out process.
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During a panel discussion before the senate energy and natural resources committee on ‘transportation biofuels, the automaker’s director of vehicle environmental engineering, Robert Brown said: “Diversifying our transportation energy supplies and, in particular, expanding America’s use of biofuels is an important issue to Ford and the American people.
“The instability of the world’s oil supply, growing worldwide demand for oil, the fragility of our domestic infrastructure, and increasing political pressure on climate change are all leading to renewed interest in finding alternatives to oil and in finding more efficient ways to use the oil we have.”
He acknowledged that automakers have responsibility to make vehicles that can use alternative fuels and said Ford had already “placed more than 2m E85 FFVs on America’s roads”.
Brown added that Ford, along with GM and DaimlerChrysler, last summer voluntarily committed to double the production of FFVs by 2010 with a subsequent additional Ford commitment to include half of its vehicles produced each year from 2012, “provided there are sufficient amounts of fuel and retail facilities for to support consumers”.
And that’s the rub, Brown said.
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By GlobalData“There is a limit to what we can achieve on our own. We believe that our nation’s energy challenges can only be properly addressed by an integrated approach: a partnership of all stakeholders which includes the automotive industry, the fuel industry, government, and consumers.
“There is no silver bullet that will diversify our transportation fuels, and this is not a short term problem. Six million flexible fuel vehicles are on the roads today; however, there are only about 1,000 E85 pumps out of 170,000 retail gasoline stations nationwide.
“One key near-term goal is to increase the number of E85 retail stations in the midwest to at least 10% of the existing gasoline stations or about 6,000 stations.”
He said Ford last summer said it would help develop and support the so-called ‘midwest ethanol corridor’ which expanded the availability of ethanol in Illinois and Missouri by about one-third.
Longer term, Ford has endorsed the ‘25 x ’25’ campaign which sets a goal of getting 25% of U.S. energy needs from renewable sources by 2025.
“To achieve this level of biofuels in transportation, we need policies that expand ethanol feedstock diversity, increase ethanol production and accelerate infrastructure development on a national scale – critical building blocks that will lead to competitive E85 pricing and customer convenience,” Brown said.
“The challenges are considerable but not insurmountable, and there is an enormous amount we can achieve, at a lower cost and in a shorter timeframe if we act together in an integrated manner.”
