Click the Exige for a high-res gallery

The World's Sexiest Greenest Car Show is back; bigger, better and sexier than ever... so says the home page of The Co-Operated Insurance Sexy Green Car Show. Like last year, the Sexy Green Car Show promises to show off some of the best green car concepts to a captive British audience. Chief among these vehicles will be the Lotus Exige 270E Tri-Fuel. Initially shown at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show, the Exige 270E is capable of running on gasoline, ethanol or methanol. A sophisticated computer system can detect what type of fuel the vehicle has been fed and can adjust necessary engine parameters to use that fuel. In the process, Lotus was able to tune the engine to extract a bit more power, 270 horses to be exact.

In addition to the car itself, Lotus is reportedly working on a new method of creating methanol which involves the extraction of waste carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A chemical reaction with hydrogen produces both methanol and water. If a clean source for the production of methanol were indeed possible, flex-fuel vehicles could add it to their stable of power sources.


[Source: Just-Auto]

Click the Exige for a high-res gallery

Back in mid-2006, Lotus unveiled a flex-fuel E85-capable Exige 265E that was being used as a technology demonstrator. Lotus has used the 265E to learn about optimizing the performance and efficiency of ethanol and flex-fuel engines. At this week's Geneva Motor Show, Lotus is unveiling the next stage of this research with the Exige 270E Tri-Fuel. This one is capable of running on gasoline, ethanol or methanol. Paging Bob Zubrin: your car is ready. With an E85-compatible engine, the process of calibrating the powerplant basically involves a two-dimensional continuum of possible fuels going from gasoline to E85. Adding methanol into the mix adds a third dimension to the map and makes the question much more complex. Detecting the fuel blend and determining the appropriate fuel flow for optimal performance is more difficult in this scenario, but Lotus has done this and upped the power to 270hp.

The other aspect of this project is the work that Lotus is doing with researchers on synthetic methanol as an alternative to bio-ethanol. Lotus describes a method of producing a carbon-neutral methanol fuel by extracting atmospheric carbon dioxide and reacting with hydrogen to produce methanol and water. The idea is that the hydrogen could be produced by renewable means such as solar, wind, or tidal power -- or any number of other methods, for that matter. This has many advantages over using either hydrogen or electricity directly. It eliminates the issue of storing and transporting hydrogen as well as the limitations of batteries. As a liquid fuel, methanol could be relatively easily distributed and used. There is, of course, a big question of the efficiency of the whole cycle. There are also other means of producing methanol and, of course, other synthetic alcohols like butanol.


[Source: Lotus]