Up until the 90s, the fight between the carrot-brandishing environ(mentalists) and the rest of the sane world was a very quiet one. A no-meat diet was something for people with a love of beards and badgers and these few were largely obscured. The turn of the Millennium however heralded a change in society's perception of the environment. Suddenly people began to question the ethics of how Mildred the cow ended up on a bed of polystyrene, nestled next to the pork chops and spice mixes. A-list celebrities started to drive Prius' with their silly food-blender hybrids and it was now trendy to save the planet.
The once strong bastion of the combustion engine came under siege and detractors cried foul of how our love of black gold was ruining the ozone layer and that we were on borrowed time. Curiously though, many deemed Biofuel to be the future, a fuel source that converts vegetable matter into ethanol. It promised, and delivered, an increase in engine power and reliability whilst reducing emissions but faded from the limelight. Could it be making a comeback?
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| Look into my eyes!!! |
Many will be surprised to hear that it is not being brought back to fuel the Prius that will ultimately drive Angelina Jolie and her Malawian orphanage around, but in a rather bonkers Swedish hypercar, the Koenigsegg Agera R. The brainchild of the mad (extremely bald) engineeer Christian von Koenigsegg this Bugatti Veyron-beating monster delivers 1140hp on E85 bioethanol, which is the equivalent of a 2000hp ozone killer. Ingeniously though the engine is able to run on both bioethanol and petrol thanks to its Flexfuel system. There is a trade-off however, in that running the engine on petrol reduces power output to a mere 960hp (one has to make sacrifices eh?).
The body continues the Koenigsegg design language of understated fury through science and maths. It is clear that every curve and scoop was designed to give the Agera R gecko-like grip and even the Top Gear-designed spoiler has been optimized to hunker the car down.
One thing is troubling though: bioethanol is made from food. This car and its fuel posits itself as green and good for the environment but this comes at the expense of growing food for transport. In a world of famines, hunger and droughts it is a miracle that it has caught on. The Americans have started to direct large sections of the corn crop that has given them obesity, into the production of fuel and it is increasing year-on-year. The ultimate success of bioethanol will depend upon human conscience: shall we fuel our twin-turbo monsters in a eco-friendly way making Americans thinner, or shall we accept that there are better options like Hydrogen and feed some Somali pirates?
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