Ferrari shows its green side

With its bright red cars dominating the stand you could have been forgiven for missing the big story on the Ferrari stand at the Detroit show. A sole silver F430 Spider was the big story on the Italian marque's plinth, a rather subtle decal down its flanks outlining that this prancing pony likes bio-fuel. Ferrari is keen to exploit North America's growing interest in bio-fuel E85 as a viable alternative fuel, and has developed a demonstration prototype for the show. Bio-fuel isn't new to Ferrari, its F1 cars using 5.75% bio-mass in their fuels, and its 430 GT racers use E10 bio-fuels with 10% ethanol.

The E85, 85% ethanol equipped car demonstrates Ferrari's recently outlined goals to significantly reduce its environmental impact by cutting emissions by 40% by 2012. That's an ambitious target for the company, and it obviously sees the E85 enabled car as providing one means of getting there. One bonus of running the plant derived fuel, aside from 5% reduction in emissions - not exactly ground-breaking given the regular petrol car's 420g/km starting point - is an increase in the F430's power by 10bhp, peak torque also rising by 4%.

Argue, as many other companies using bio-fuels do, that due to the absorption of CO₂ when crops for bio-fuels are growing Ferrari could claim far greater emissions savings. However you look at it we kind of like the idea that you could have a Ferrari that you could claim is green, yet has more power than the regular car.

Kyle Fortune