— The growth of biofuel technology will help boost Brazil's economy and create new jobs, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday.
Speaking at a ceremony to launch the new Volkswagen Gol in Sao Jose dos Campos in the state of Sao Paulo, Lula said a time will come when the world will embrace biofuels, and Brazil will be able to sell more cars.
Cars currently produced in Brazil are mostly flexible-fuel models, designed for simultaneous use of gasoline and ethanol.
Brazil developed flexible-fuel cars in 2003, which quickly became a commercial success. Till March 2008, five million units had been sold, representing 10 percent of motor vehicles and 15.6 percent of light vehicles in the country.
Brazil also has three million cars running only on ethanol, and even the gasoline used by other cars is blended with 20 to 25 percent ethanol.
The international market will realize that the creativity of Brazilian people is not good only for football and samba, but also for designing and producing a car that will be the most competitive, said Lula.
A product of Brazilian design, the low-cost subcompact VW Gol has been a consistent bestseller in Brazil for over two decades since being first introduced in the early 1980s.
