We look back to when we touted alcohol as the fuel of the future
The benefits of alcohol were that it was renewable, it could be grown by any nation and didn’t ‘knock’ – a significant problem with petrol.
But it wasn’t alcohol that would be adopted as an additive to raise the octane rating of petrol but a chemical, discovered in 1921 by GM researchers, that had the same effect when used in smaller quantities and, it must be said, had the key advantage of being patentable: tetraethyllead. This proved an environmental disaster that lasted for a century. And which substance is today increasingly being used as an additive in petrol to reduce its harm to our planet? That’s right…Whereas some countries imposed punitive taxes on foreign cars to protect their domestic industries, Britain allowed all comers, and we saw this as a positive.
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