Bentley, the British-based luxury carmaker owned by Germany's Volkswagen, reckons biofuels are the key to cutting its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions on the way to a greener future.
In the short to medium term, this means embracing ethanol as the main so-called renewable fuel. But, unfortunately for Bentley and the likes of GM, the science points increasingly to this being a dead-end street. Some experts reckon this push for ethanol shows Bentley needs a quick and cheap way to at least appear to be improving fuel economy.

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To be fair to Bentley, it is not alone in this belief. At last year's Detroit car show, GM CEO Rick Wagoner said ethanol was the best way to cut CO2 emissions. He said hybrids and fuel cells would have little impact on overall use of gasoline over the next 15 years, but half of GM's vehicles will be able to run on flex-fuel (ethanol or gasoline) by 2012. Wagoner said that if all the flex-fuel vehicles made by GM, Ford and Chrysler were to run on ethanol through 2020 the U.S. could displace 29 billion gallons of gasoline annually, or 18 percent of the projected annual usage.
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Bedwell [J.D. Powers analyst rjw] said though it's not surprising that Bentley is turning to ethanol now.
"As for Bentley, they need to do something quickly as regards CO2. Low production volumes mean developing new powertrains for Bentley cars may not be feasible, whereas conversion to E85 (ethanol) is pretty cheap. Also, Audi is pulling back from hybrids so there wouldn't be a suitable donor system. Diesel is an option, but again, I think the volumes are too low. V8 diesels are generally being replaced by six cylinder diesels, which aren't suitable for Bentley. V12 diesel is a possibility, but it's not that frugal," Bedwell said.
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