This paper presents a study performed in 10 vehicles available in Brazilian market where the drivability with ethanol and gasoline, also referred as gasohol were compared.
The motivation for this work came from the constant competition of the automotive industry, where engineers are searching for ways to improve the quality of the products aiming the “best in class” drivability with the best cost efficiency.
For the Brazilian market, a further complexity is added to the development and verification process, which is the need to design and verify the controls and calibration considering the two fuels available in the market, the ethanol and the gasoline.
In order to determine how the drivability is impacted by the ethanol, the paper presents a study where the drivability data were generated using the objective drivability measurement system AVL-DRIVE™. The ethanol and gasoline data were then compared using the statistical test Mann-Whitney method where the medians were tested against differences.
The results were combined to identify trends that can support a conclusion about how the ethanol impacts the drivability.