Ever since the debut of the Audi R10 in 2006, the mighty diesel-powered sports cars have been running on a gas-to-liquid (GTL) diesel fuel supplied by Shell. For the 2008 running of the 24 hours of Le Mans coming up in a few weeks, Audi and Shell will try a new blend that combines the GTL fuel with a BTL (biomass-to-liquid) fuel supplied by Choren. Choren is a German company that has been collaborating with Audi's parent company Volkswagen to develop the BTL diesel branded as SunFuel. Like cellulosic ethanol, BTL is produced from non-food biomass like wood chips. Choren plans to have the worlds first commercial demonstration plant open in Freiberg, Germany within a year. A small percentage of BTL is being mixed into the GTL fuel for this year's race. This will be the first ever use of second-gen biofuel at Le Mans. Shell's GTL fuel is branded as V-Power and is sold at over 7,000 stations in Europe.

[Source: Shell]

Two years after its racing debut at the 2006 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the Audi R10 TDI is making its first ever visit to the classic Spa-Francorchamps track in Belgium. The R10s are running in the European Le Mans Series for the first time this year and Spa will be a whole new challenge for Audi. The length of the Belgian track has been cut by more than half to 4.4miles from its original 9.3miles but it still remains one of the most challenging tracks in the world. The diesel-powered Audis will again be taking on the dominant Peugeot 908 HDis but the R10s are fueled by a GTL fuel supplied by technical partner Shell. GTL is a gas to liquid fuel produced from natural gas. GTL has an advantage over conventional petroleum diesel in that it is free of sulfur and produces less particulate emissions without any changes to the engine. The same processes used to produce the liquid fuel from natural gas can be used to produce fuel from a syngas derived from biomass. Audi's press release is after the jump.

Up to this point, Toyota has been far and away the leader in bringing hybrid drive-train technology to the automotive market place. They have also produced many very efficient conventionally powered vehicles to market. They have even produced full plug-in electric vehicles, although they did take those back and dispose of them much like GM and other car-makers did with theirs. The one area they have so far avoided is ethanol power and flex-fuel vehicles.

That is now changing, at least in the Brazilian market. Brazil has long been a proponent of ethanol as a fuel where it's produced from sugar cane. Ethanol at the pump is widely available in Brazil and there are many vehicles in that market that are capable of running on either straight ethanol or a blend of gasoline and ethanol. Toyota has confirmed that they will be bringing a vehicle to market in Brazil in the Spring of 2007, that is capable of running on E100 or any combination of gasoline and ethanol.

Toyota has begun trials of gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuel cars in Europe. In GTL, a very clean diesel fuel is produced from natural gas. The process is similar to the one for producing diesel from coal although cars running on GTL fuel produce fewer particulate emissions. Although GTL is expensive, it could become a desirable fuel in large cities were diesel particulate emissions are becoming a major health hazard.

[Source: CNET News.com]