Nissan will soon turn to biofuel in a bid to make its cars even more environmentally-friendly.
The automotive giant aims to release a new fleet of greener vehicles run exclusively on fuel that is derived entirely from plants, such as corn or sugar cane, by 2020.
The car firm says bio-ethanol will give their vehicles a cruising range that tops 370 miles. This will outstrip the Tesla Model S, which can only reach a maximum of 253 miles.
Moreover, no EV is yet to smash the 300-mile range barrier.
But How Will It Work?
The plan is for a reformer to transform a tank of ethanol into hydrogen, which will then be emptied into a fuel stack. Here, power will be generated.
Nissan claim that such cars will be easier to develop and sell than hydrogen-powers cars because they don’t rely on a hydrogen infrastructure.
Toyota is one automotive organisation that is working on hydrogen-powered cars, but a total lack of sound infrastructure will make it hard for them to shift a significant amount of units.
Nissan themselves still have plans to develop hydrogen cars, having signed to a partnership with Ford and Daimler in 2013 with the intention of working on a hydrogen fuel cell system.
Now, though, the Japanese brand say that biofuel makes more sense because there is already an existing infrastructure that will encourage adoption.
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