News

More foreign flex-fuel vehicles needed

Efforts to increase ethanol usage in the U.S. continue on several fronts.

Phil Lampert, who heads up the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, says oneof those battles is convincing the foreign-based automakers to produce flex-fuel vehicles, or FFV’s.

“Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia, Mitsubishi, BMW—they’re not producing flexible fuel vehicles,” Lampert says, “and in 2008, the imports sold 53 percent of all ofthe automobiles and light trucks sold in the United States.”

Lampert says while some progress has been made, FFV’s still constitute less than four percent of the vehicles on the road today.

“I would hope that we focus our efforts towardseither encouraging, or strongly pushing, or finally mandating these foreign/imports to build flexible-fuel vehicles,” he says, “because again, they’re dominating the sales of motor vehicles in the U.S.”

Lampert made his remarks during an ethanol issues forumheld recently in Omaha.