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Print articleThe Virgin boss took delivery of the ?33,000 car last November as part of Virgin's promotion of alternative fuels. Unfortunately, the Bioethanol E85 fuel is not readily available anywhere near where it is driven in London.
The fuel, which is made out of sugar cane or corn and mixed with unleaded petrol (85% bioethanol 15% petrol) is not available in London. According to the Daily Mail, Morrisons, the only supermarket chain to stock the fuel, are interested in providing more pumps, but will only stock it in London if the cars are excempt from the Congestion Charge.
The problem with biofuel cars, as this clearly demonstrates, is that there is no way for the Congestion Charge system to know exactly what fuel is being used. So if these cars are to be made except from Congestion Charge, there is nothing stopping the drivers continuing to drive unleaded fuel.
Two thing will need to happen to convince folk with biofuel cars to switch more permanently to a bio-fuel: make it much cheaper; make it more available.
Just two weeks ago, Sir Richard launched his biodiesel train and said: ?The tax on clean fuels is, quite bizarrely, higher than on dirty fuels.? Accompanying him at the launch of his train was the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, who has the power to grant Sir Richard his wish.
Not everyone thinks that biofuels are the way to go, last month, a coalition of environmental groups, including Greenpeace and WWF, launched a campaign called ?Tell the Government to choose the right biofuel. Or the orang-utan gets it.? where they argue that biofuels are not the correct choice of alternative fuel because they would require huge amounts of land to feed all the vehicles that want to run on it. They fear that rain-forests will be felled to make way for corn or sugar cane production, and that fuel production will compete with food production.
