Toyota close to rolling out hybrid flex-fuel vehicles in Brazil

In Brazil, Bloomberg reports that Toyota hasn’t had to spend a lot of money on “tweaking and some calibration” to get its hybrid vehicles to also run on flex-fuel, allowing for hydrous ethanol to fuel hybrid vehicles. The R&D is almost finished and the Latin American CEO for the company is ready to roll them out as soon as they’re finished, but a host of challenges from infrastructure to taxes means that vehicles manufactured in Brazil aren’t competitive elsewhere. A Federal deputy proposed recently legislation that would put ethanol-fueled hybrid vehicle’s like Toyota’s on an even playing field with electric cars, tax-wise at least.