Targa RX-8 fires up on E85

Mazda is entering an E85-fueled RX-8 in this month's Targa Tasmania, but the car company has no current plans to introduce the ethanol/petrol blend to a wider audience.

The organising team of Targa Tasmania, the country's premier tarmac rally, is encouraging competitors to enter the event driving hybrids or cars running low-carbon-content fuels. Toyota has already volunteered a Camry Hybrid for this year's event and now, Mazda Motorsport has also declared its hand, providing an ethanol-fuelled RX-8 SP for previous winner of the event, Steve Glenney.

But on a global scale, Mazda is not encouraged by the benefits of E85 to develop production cars that can handle the biofuel. 

"I guess it's one of those infrastructure things that we have to embrace," said Mazda Australia MD Doug Dickson last week.

"Ethanol as a fuel has probably lost a bit of prominence recently; it's probably something that needs to be brought back to the forefront, but then the world tends to be concentrating on electric, where there's probably far higher costs of infrastructure development than there is for E85.

"But I think even with E85, there's still infrastructure changes required..."

It seems that Australians are showing signs of understanding that electric and hybrid-drive vehicles help the environment, but diesel is a harder sell for the car industry -- and as for E85, that's barely made a dint in the public's perception.

Those who are aware of E85, are also aware, perhaps, that it has been commonly distilled from food crops, making it unconscionable to use as a fuel for one's car, when there are people starving throughout the world.

"There's every possibility that ethanol as a product has probably diminished because of that factor and whereas Australia might take a responsible attitude towards it, that might not be the case in other regions," says Dickson, alluding to Coskata's program to set up an waste-recycling E85 production facility and the means of distributing it here in Australia.

"We've basically taken the view that we'll concentrate first on the most ubiquitous technology... which is current IC [internal combustion] technology. That'll be our first priority."

Dickson was speaking during a lunch hosted by Mazda Australia for visiting Japanese executives. One of the executives, Masazumi Wakayama, conveyed to the attending journalists that E85 is not off the scope at Mazda, it just doesn't share the same prominence as other alternative-energy systems and fuels. 

"We have actually basically completed the development study for E85," he said, but admitted that the company is unsure as to how it should proceed from there, even though current and upcoming engine technology would lend itself easily to combustion of the biofuel. It's like Mazda is leaving E85 in reserve for certain markets, where it would make more sense. Brazil is one such market and arguably, Australia could be also.

"It depends on which market that we are entering or competing in," says Wakayama-san. "For example, we do not have a presence in Brazil at the moment, but if we are going to have a presence in Brazil... we need ethanol-compatible E100 [engines] in Brazil..."

E100 (100 per cent ethanol, no petrol content), has been ruled out in most markets due to problems with cold starting in cool climates, but could be viable in a country like Australia. Wakayama-san, Mazda's head of global sales, marketing and customer service, concedes he's no engineer, but does agree that the development of production engines to run on pure ethanol or an ethanol blend is "not that costly".

For the time being, the Japanese manufacturer is "prepared for any entry into the market when we see the necessity".

But, with what could be called a Japanese-centric view of the world, Mazda is unlikely to rush into E85-capable production cars for this very simple reason: the Japanese don't produce corn or sugar cane, the staple foods traditionally used in the production of ethanol.

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