Bioethanol Lotus Exige

Considerably more power and performance and substantially reduced CO2 emissions – these are the benefits of a supercharged Lotus Exige running on bioethanol fuel.

Lotus Engineering has built this one-off experimental vehicle – called the 265E – to demonstrate to other manufacturers that it understands how best to harness a fuel that is predicted to become increasingly important when oil stocks dwindle in 40 years’ time.

The car runs on a pump fuel known as E85 – a combination of 85 per cent ethyl alcohol (ethanol) and 15 per cent petrol – which burns far quicker than regular unleaded and has an octane rating as high as 106 RON.

With careful remapping of the engine management system and a few other modifications, E85 boosts the engine’s top-end efficiency and, in the case of the supercharged Exige S, raises power from 218bhp to 264bhp.

We’ve driven the 265E and it is devastatingly quick – 60mph arrives in 3.9sec – with clean, instant response and heaps more punch at the top end. Development drivers say that at any given point around Lotus’s Hethel test track, the 265E is around 10mph faster than the petrol-powered Exige S. The brakes have been upgraded to cope.

The reduction in CO2 emissions is calculated to be 70 per cent if you take it from ‘(oil) well to wheels’, as the plants grown to produce the alcohol consume CO2. To be viable, though, there needs to be a tax cut on bioethanol, as its biggest drawback is that it doesn’t go so far to the gallon. Good job it’s a renewable fuel source.