This year Brazil celebrates 30 years of flex-fuel vehicles on the market. By this time 90% of all autos sold in the country use both gasoline and ethanol. While American and European developers think on the best way to make ethanol vaporize, Brazil does not even have this problem.

Ethanol is hard to vaporize, this is why there has been invented E85 the fuel that consists of 15 points of gasoline to 85 of ethanol. However, Brazilian cars can run on E100, pure ethanol, due to higher average temperatures in Southern Hemisphere. The only problem rises when it is colder than 57 degrees F, because then a little amount of gasoline is required in the intake manifold during cranking. This is why Brazilian vehicles have to have cold-start systems which consist of a reservoir, an electric pump and one or two nozzles at the intake manifold level.

A week ago Volkswagen introduced Polo E-Flex that runs on 1.6-liter engine and provides 102 horsepower. The car has a cold-start system allowing pure ethanol even at 32 degrees F. The secret is that there is a special fuel rail that heats the ethanol making it vaporize easier. A control unit monitors temperature conditions and launches the heating as soon as the driver's door is unlocked. The process continues through the warming-up phase, thus assuring ethanol temperature high enough for good vaporization.