Meetings of the boards of directors of automakers around the world have never been more tense. The reason could not be less challenging: which powertrain technology should prevail in the coming years and how to direct efforts and investments in the right direction? The cards are on the table, and hundreds of billions of dollars in research and development need to be allocated, which could generate equally billionaire profits (or losses).

Proponents of the purely electric car are having to face cost and availability challenges with regard to the raw materials for their car batteries, at the same time that consumers are less and less willing to pay more for such a car. type. Recently, Tesla itself has had to give big discounts in its main markets, the United States and China, to find new buyers for its cars. The reasons for the lack of interest are the same as always: the delay in charging the batteries, the low autonomy of some entry-level models, the limited supply network and the high price compared to models similar to pure combustion.

On the other hand, the pressure to replace the old, trusty gas engine keeps increasing. In Europe, for example, from 2035, they will no longer be able to be manufactured. In addition, pure combustion cars are starting to be seen by consumers as an outdated technology, which limits their sales. Toyota itself, which has refused to make big changes to its vehicles lately, has seen its market share drop in the United States in recent years. This leads us to think that these two solutions may face great difficulties in attracting interest from new vehicle consumers.

It seems clear that anyone looking for a new car today is looking for attributes linked to greater technology and energy efficiency, while maintaining the practicality of fast fueling, widely available and, above all, a low purchase price. I don't see all these attributes in electric cars, which leads me to conclude that they are unlikely to be sales leaders in most consumer countries.

There is another component of the purchase decision that also leaves the eventual dominance of electric vehicles in check: the potential for the vehicle to depreciate as the time to replace the batteries approaches, which can take from 8 to 15 years, depending on the rate of purchase. car use. With the price of a new battery exceeding the value of the hull after 8 years, the consumer will need to aggressively depreciate the value of their equity over this period, which will leave many owners simply furious and disappointed.

Promising technologies, such as hydrogen and fuel cells, also do not seem ready and mature to reach the markets in the medium term; the most optimistic expect these vehicles to be viable only after 2040. This is where hybrid combustion and electricity cars come in as an intermediate solution, until other, more viable alternatives emerge. Hybrid cars are cheaper than electric ones, have the practicality of fast fueling, do not depreciate so quickly, are economical and have excellent autonomy.

However, they still consume fossil fuels, which poses a challenge for us to find a renewable liquid fuel with low carbon emissions in the atmosphere to replace it. Well, that fuel already exists! This is ethanol, whether it comes from corn or sugar cane. According to consultancy Datagro , a flex car fuel (gasoline, ethanol) hybrid emits 27 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer driven in Brazil, against 120 grams of carbon dioxide from an electric car in Europe.

Despite the convincing numbers, they can be even better: it is enough for automakers to develop engines optimized to consume ethanol, taking advantage of the higher octane rating (around 120 octanes, against 80 for pure gasoline) to increase the engine's compression ratio. Allied to the dominant trend of current engines, which are increasingly smaller and rely on turbines to compensate for the loss of power resulting from size reduction, ethanol proves to be perfect for use in small, extremely efficient and economical engines, in addition to being cheap. to produce and maintain, with fewer cylinders and less weight.

According to sources in the automotive industry that I consulted, such a vehicle can easily be up to 20% more economical than its similar flex-fuel vehicle, reducing consumer costs, increasing the car's autonomy and further reducing the emission of pollutants. Hybridization, in turn, depending on its intensity, can increase the efficiency of a hybrid car by up to 50% in general use. In summary, a hybrid ethanol car would be up to 70% more efficient than a similar flex-fuel car, commonly sold in Brazil.

In addition to these advantages, the automobile industry would need a fraction of the investments currently directed towards the development of purely electric cars to place these vehicles on the market, with only fuel stations being encouraged to adapt some pumps for ethanol, as has been done in Brazil since the 1980s, with enormous success.

Another advantage of this transition, in addition to environmental gains, would be the maintenance of the production chain of the industries behind current engine components, which employ millions of people around the world. We would maintain technical and well-paid jobs, while avoiding a loss of tax revenue that these companies collect from society.

It would be up to ethanol producers to face the challenge of increasing fuel production at a cost that is similar to or even lower than that of gasoline, something that is already happening today. A liter of ethanol is worth approximately between 70% and 80% of the price of gasoline in most producing countries, generating jobs and foreign exchange for these countries, many of them developing economies eager for economic growth, such as India and Brazil.

Even a developed country with few agricultural frontiers to be explored, like the United States, has room to increase its ethanol production by building more corn distilleries, something that would probably happen in Brazil, another major producer of the grain. It is concluded, therefore, that the hybrid ethanol car can be an excellent environmental, social, manufacturing and marketing solution, especially for countries that already dominate the production of fuel on a large scale, placing itself as another excellent option on the menu. from automakers to their consumers, who are increasingly eager for new automotive technology.