New Cold Start Technology

VW last week introduced the 102-horsepower 1.6-liter Polo with E-Flex badge, which denotes the installation of a Flex Start system. It's a joint development with Bosch, consisting of a few measures to render possible cold starts at temperatures down to 32 degrees F, without any gasoline aid.

British Sugar has opened the first bioethanol factory in the UK this week, making the fuel from locally-grown sugar beet. The £20 million site which is located in Wissington in Norfolk will produce 70 million litres of ethanol a year from 700,000 tonnes of sugar beet.

SIOUX FALLS, SD -- The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), the nation’s largest ethanol advocacy association, has unveiled the Ethanol Factor, a new online interactive calculator which demonstrates how choosing ethanol blends at the pump results in cleaner emissions, reduced dependence on oil, and real savings for consumer pocketbooks. The calculator is found at www.ethanolfactor.org.

Craig Ammann of KL Process Design Group and a South Dakota Harley-Davidson dealership converted Ammann's 2004 Electra Glide Harley-Davidson motorcycle to run on ethanol.

Volvo Cars has one of the car market's broadest ranges of E85 models. All told, five models are on offer, each available with one or two Flexifuel engines. Most recently, the Volvo V70 and Volvo S80 were introduced with a five-cylinder 2.5-litre turbocharged Flexifuel engine producing 200 hp (147 kW) and 300 Nm of torque.

Siouxland Ethanol LLC is using recovered landfill gas piped in from the L.P. Gill landfill located a mile away, and blending it with natural gas in the thermal oxidizer for its 50 MMgy ethanol plant.