With the government’s new regulations and increasing awareness of greener mobility solutions, OEMs have started exploring alternative fuels including EVs, hybrids and flex fuel vehicles. India has accelerated its ethanol blending targets – 20% by 2025, with discussion ongoing for 30% by 2030. To achieve this goal and boost ethanol availability, official guidelines have expanded ethanol production and authorized sugar mills to shift production.
We have already witnessed the debut of some flex fuel protypes including Maruti WagonR flex-fuel prototype in 2023 and Toyota Innova Hycross in 2023 and Corolla Altis in 2022. Now, Mahindra & Mahindra is gearing up to join the bandwagon with E30-rated flex-fuel engines, which are currently under development.
Engine reengineering:
To make its engines compatible to E30 to E100 fuels, Mahindra will need to reengineer them with ethanol content sensors to monitor real-time ethanol concentration along with fuel rail and injector heaters for cold starts.
How does a flex fuel engine work?
A flex fuel engine is an internal combustion engine (ICE), which can run on blended ethanol or methanol fuels. The same ICE engine automatically adjusts to the amount of blend present in the fuel. It has fuel injectors and sensors that measure the ethanol-to-petrol ratio and transmit the information to the ECU (electronic control unit) of the vehicle.
The ECU controls fuel injection timing, air-to-fuel ratio and spark timing. Since ethanol has a lower energy content, but higher octane rating than petrol, it burns differently. The ECU optimizes combustion based on the detected fuel blend. When this fuel mixture enters the combustion chamber, ethanol vaporizes faster allowing the engine to run at higher compression ratios, which enhances both power and efficiency.
Mahindra’s hybrid plans
The homegrown automaker is also working on hybrid technology, which is likely to debut on Mahindra XUV 3XO in 2026. The compact hybrid SUV is expected to be offered with a 1.2L, 3-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine. Mahindra is also exploring range extender hybrids for its existing INGLO platform based SUVs – codenamed M130 and M330.
