Bosch Site Visit

During our visit to Bosch we learned more than we would ever want to know about Flex Fuel and the advancement of the engines that use ethanol. To me I do not think that this was that important because I believe that we will never really use FlexFuel because electric cars are going to take over especially once Tesla releases their budget car. FlexFuel to me does not seem like a solution but instead just another way to prolong actually solving the problem. With that being said I did learn a lot about the technology that was interesting.

At the end of our visit we got a complete breakdown of how the engine worked so that was all new information but way too highly technical to include on a blog and personally I thought it was too technical to include in our visit but oh well. Some of the easier to discuss stuff I learned was that 70% of Americans who have a FlexFuel engine do not even know it. The reason being that we as a country do not really promote the use of ethanol more so than including it standard in our gasoline. This is a major reason why this technology is not really effective in America meanwhile hear in Brazil cars are capable of running on 100% Ethanol which allows the technology to be much more effective in terms of being used. However it is important to note that a full tank of 100% Ethanol will not go nearly as far as a tank filled with gasoline.

These technologies could be improved by providing FlexFuel engines with better mileage and by promoting the use of Ethanol gasoline more by making it cheaper per BTU than gasoline via government grants and tax brakes but as of now, with a two year development time and a generally $8000 higher price, these vehicles just are not practical. As for policies that regulate it, Brazil focuses on it while the US has no real desire to use it which I am okay with because, as I already mentioned, I do not believe that this technology really serves that much of a purpose and I would 10x rather have an electric car than a FlexFuel vehicle. The money factor was already discussed above and the environmental factor is really the only driving force behind this technology as burning gasoline mixed with Ethanol produces less CO2 than burning straight gasoline does, but using electric causes 0 CO2 emmissions, especially if the charging station is solar-powered. Just saying. Oh and one last thing, Bosch didn't allow pictures and referred to their 2013 products only as "project A B C..." and so on so evidently this is a very hush hush industry which I don't really understand seeing as how all one has to do would be take apart the engine to figure out how it is built but whatever.