rafael bennertz the brazilian ethanol car: a...
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RAFAEL BENNERTZ
THE BRAZILIAN ETHANOL CAR:
A sociotechnical analysis.
O CARRO BRASILEIRO A ÁLCOOL:
Uma análise sociotécnica.
CAMPINAS
2014
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NÚMERO: 321/2014
UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS
INSTITUTO DE GEOCIÊNCIAS
RAFAEL BENNERTZ
“THE BRAZILIAN ETHANOL CAR:
A sociotechnical analysis”
SUPERVISOR: PROFA. DRA. Lea Maria Leme Strini Velho
“O CARRO BRASILEIRO A ÁLCOOL:
Uma análise sociotécnica”
DOCTORAL THESIS PRESENTED TO THE INSTITUTE OF GEOSCIENCES OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMPINAS IN THE PROGRAM OF SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY POLICY TO OBTAIN A Ph.D. DEGREE IN SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY POLICY
TESE DE DOUTORADO APRESENTADA AO INSTITUTO DE GEOCIÊNCIAS
DA UNICAMP NO PROGRAMA DE POLÍTICA CIENTÍFICA E TECNOLÓGICA
PARA OBTENÇÃO DO TÍTULO DE DOUTOR EM POLÍTICA CIENTÍFICA E
TECNOLÓGICA
ESTE EXEMPLAR CORRESPONDE À VERSÃO FINAL DA
TESE DEFENDIDA PELO ALUNO RAFAEL BENNERTZ E
ORIENTADO PELA PROFA. DRA. LEA MARIA LEME STRINI
VELHO.
CAMPINAS
2014
Ficha catalográficaUniversidade Estadual de CampinasBiblioteca do Instituto de GeociênciasCássia Raquel da Silva - CRB 8/5752
Bennertz, Rafael, 1984- B438b BenThe brazilian ethanol car : A sociotechnical analysis / Rafael Bennertz. –
Campinas, SP : [s.n.], 2014.
BenOrientador: Lea Maria Leme Strini Velho. BenTese (doutorado) – Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de
Geociências.
Ben1. Automóveis - História. 2. Automovéis - Inovações tecnológicas. 3.
Sociologia da ciência. 4. Álcool como combustível - Brasil. I. Velho, Lea MariaLeme Strini,1952-. II. Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Instituto deGeociências. III. Título.
Informações para Biblioteca Digital
Título em outro idioma: O carro brasileiro a álcool : uma análise sociotecnicaPalavras-chave em inglês:Car - HistoryCar - Technological innovationsSociology of scienceAlcohol as fuel - BrazilÁrea de concentração: Política Científica e TecnológicaTitulação: Doutor em Política Científica e TecnológicaBanca examinadora:Lea Maria Leme Strini Velho [Orientador]Noela Ivernizzi CAstilloJosé Manuel Carvalho de MelloMarko Synésio Alves MonteiroRafael de Brito DiasData de defesa: 24-11-2014Programa de Pós-Graduação: Política Científica e Tecnológica
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À minha mãe e ao meu pai.
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AKNWOLEDGMENTS
I am in debt with many of you out there who in some way or another gave me the
emotional and material (sociotechnical?) means to conduct this research and write up the
thesis. It is needless to say that I take full responsibility for the content of this work. To
make it easier for me to express my gratitude I’ll briefly reconstruct the journey of this own
thesis by highlighting on its main stations. Those who helped me conduct and finish this
work are from various points on the map and come from social worlds which are placed on
different moments of this research. Please forgive me for having a faulty memory and not
mentioning all of you.
Campinas/SP is obviously the first stop on the journey of my research. I’m deeply thankful
to Lea Velho, my supervisor, for all her guidance, lessons (sorry, I took longer to
understand some of them), and support throughout the whole journey. For believing in my
project since the beginning, for teaching me valuable lessons on the implicit rules of
research and for your continuous efforts to help me find my way to study the ethanol car in
Brazil. Without your trust, guidance and work this research would have never been possible
in the first place. To my professors at the Science and Technology Policy Department
(DPCT) at Unicamp, who introduced me in this curious and challenging world of science
and technology policy studies. Special thanks to Marko Monteiro, Maria Conceição da
Costa and Renato Dagnino for their insightful remarks in classes or during many informal
talks. To my colleagues from DPCT, with whom I had the opportunity to share an
intellectually stimulating environment. More than that, we constituted each other’s social
family. I wouldn’t be able to name all of you, but I want to thank Maiko Rafael Spiess for a
friendship that started during our undergraduate days and spanned throughout our academic
trajectories. I also wanted to express my deepest gratitude to Adriana Teixeira, Valdirene
Pinotti and Maria Gorete for making the lifes of many of us students at DPCT way easier.
Also in Campinas I had the wonderful experience of sharing an apartment with very good
friends, Matheus Tait Lima, Alexandre Melloni and Rolo, whose company made Campinas
way more pleasant.
While conducting field work I’ve been blessed to encounter people willing to help either by
being key informants or by assisting me in collecting the information needed to reconstruct
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the history of the ethanol car in Brazil. Part of my data sources was assembled during my
masters (also at DPCT), so I am also thankful to those who helped me find data to write up
this thesis even when it was merely an open ended promise. From Brasilia/DF, where I
collected various documents and carried out a few interviews I am grateful to José Rincon
Ferreira, Bautista Vidal, José Antônio Silvério, João Valentin Bin, Luiz Celso Parisi
Negrão, Beatriz Coelho Caiado, Jordana Padovani and Aldo Costa. From São José dos
Campos/SP I am thankful to Paulo Ewald, João Bosco and Alessandra M. David for giving
me access to the part of the story that happened within CTA. In São Paulo/SP I went to the
headquarters of ANFAVEA, their staff were helpful when I was conduct research in their
database. Also in São Paulo I met Luc de Ferran, who gave an instructive interview. Last
but not least I want to thank for the all the support I received from the staff at the INT, in
Rio de Janeiro/RJ, while I was collecting data for this work.
During my training I was happy to be granted a scholarship from Capes to participate in the
Programa Institucional de Bolsas de Doutorado Sanduíche no Exterior (PDSE), (process
number 4614-11-9). From January to December 2012 I stood at the Science and
Technology Policy Studies Department (STePS) at the University of Twente, in
Enschede/NL, where I met a stimulating and intellectually challenging atmosphere, that
gave me opportunity to develop further the sociotechnical perspective used to analyze the
development of the ethanol car in Brazil. My adaptation to this new setting was made much
easier for the friendly support of many individuals, out of which I will name just a few.
Arie Rip, who in many ways helped me make the most out of my experience at the
University of Twente. I am especially grateful for your lessons on the craftwork of
academic writing and for our numerous discussions about science and technology
dynamics. Stefan Kuhlmann, for accepting my proposal of stay and ensuring my
involvement in the department’s formal and informal activities. I was pleased to have the
opportunity to discuss my ideas with professors at STePS and fellow PhD students alike. In
thanking Peter Stegmaier for his instigating comments and friendly advices I want to thank
all the professors I met at STePS. From the people at STePS I also want to thank to Evelien
Rietberg who helped me get through Dutch redtape and whose support went beyond her
formal tasks. From the student community I am deeply glad to have met: Carla Alvial
Palavicino (and through her the Latin Community in Enschede), Tjerk Timan, Jens Soethe
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and La Pauline whose presence made me feel home while away from home. Apart from
lsocial activities, there are some friends how also offered their comments on earlier
versions of chapters and sections of this thesis and I am grateful to Gaby Bortz, Joel
Haroldo Baade, Eduardo Urias, Maiko R Spiess, Camila Zeitoum and Ivo Maathuis for
their attentive reading and suggestions.
Blumenau/SC is the second most recurrent station of the journey of this thesis and the site
where most of the emotional strength needed to start and to finish this thesis came from.
First of all, I am grateful to my mother, Iara Regina Piazza, and to my father, Valmor
Bennertz, who have been continuously supportive and loving throughout the years. I am
thankful to my family for believing in me even when I was not sure about what I was
doing. Specially, I am grateful to my sister, Regina Bennertz, whose help in proofreading
was extremely important during the final stretch of this thesis. As my hometown, Blumenau
is a station where there are too many friends I wanted to mention here. Nonetheless, I’ll
name a few who had been lifelong friends and ended up listening to me talking about this
research perhaps more than you ever wanted: Jaime Baade, Reinaldo Coelho and Rodrigo
Zanluca. Marcos A Mattedi who introduced me to the social studies of science in my
undergraduate days. When returning from the period I spent in Enschede I have found
myself in the need to rent and share a place. It was in this setting that I met Marcelo Labes
a friend with whom I share an apartment, but also interest in the social sciences and in
writing. Last but not least: Lu Melo, thank you for all the delicious pancakes!
I am also greatly thankful to CAPES and CNPq whose financial support during the research
and the ‘doutorado sanduiche’ created the basic conductions for the development of this
work.
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There’s no handkerchief in my pocket,
Not much money in my wallet,
My shoes are not shinny
as we should be.
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UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS
INSTITUTO DE GEOCIÊNCIAS
O CARRO BRASILEIRO A ÁLCOOL:
Uma análise sociotécnica.
RESUMO
Tese de Doutorado
Rafael Bennertz
Esta tese apresenta a história do carro a álcool no Brasil, a partir de uma perspectiva sociotécnica, informada
por estudos conduzidos nos campos dos Estudos Sociais da Ciência e da Tecnologia, Dinâmicas da Inovação,
e Politicas de Ciência e Tecnologia. A história do carro a álcool no Brasil desde o início do século XX é
interessante por si só e merece ser recontada. Ao tratar o carro a álcool como uma configuração sociotécnica e
traçando a sua jornada inovativa, mais aspectos do desenvolvimento se tornam visíveis: o emaranhamento dos
desenvolvimentos técnicos, econômicos e sociais (Capítulo 1); a importância do discurso sobre o Carro a
Álcool Brasileiro e como ele se tornou uma entidade discursiva por si só (Capítulo 2); o papel especial que
teve o estado Brasileiro em estimular o desenvolvimento do carro a álcool e mantendo o seu enraizamento
social (Capítulo 3); o declínio parcial do carro a álcool depois de 1989 e seu re-avivamento noutra forma, o
carro flex, que ilustra que não é a substituição de velhas por novas tecnologias, mas uma colcha de retalhos de
velhas e novas tecnologias em continua evolução (Capítulo 4).
A jornada inovativa do carro a álcool no Brasil, incluindo suas várias não-linearidades, começou com a
pesquisa e o desenvolvimento conduzido no Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia, foi menos visível nas décadas
de 1950 e de 1960s, e depois se tornou novamente importante nas décadas de 1970 e 1980, como uma
resposta para a crise do petróleo de 1973 e para a dependência brasileira em petróleo. Por causa das mudanças
nos contextos econômicos e políticos, ele quase desaparece na década de 1990. Nos próximos três capítulos
foca-se a análise em três aspectos chaves da dinâmica sociotécnica na jornada inovativa do carro a álcool. O
capítulo 2 trata do Carro a Álcool como uma entidade discursiva presente nas páginas da revista automotiva
Quatro Rodas, que ao se tornar uma referência constante na revista reforçava o momentum para o
desenvolvimento tecnológico do carro a álcool no Brasil. No capítulo 3 mostra-se como o estado Brasileiro
macro-orquestrou o carro a álcool, conduzindo pesquisas e desenvolvimentos para o desenvolvimento do
artefato sociotécnico e ao mesmo tempo criando as condições para o enraizamento social do carro. O capítulo
4 reconstrói o declínio do carro a álcool durante a década de 1990 e a emergência do carro flex durante a
década de 2000 como uma colcha de retalhos de velhas e novas tecnologias em continua evolução.
Nas conclusões, se dá novamente destaque à importância da abordagem multi-nível, assim como também o
modo como a jornada inovativa do carro a álcool no Brasil foi moldada pelo regime tecnológico do
automóvel, o regime nacional de inovação, e por novas constituencies de design e de manutenção, que em
contra-partida foram modificadas pelo que aconteceu na jornada inovativa do carro a álcool no Brasil. Assim,
esta tese não apenas apresenta uma reconstrução do desenvolvimento do carro a álcool no Brasil, mas também
dá destaque à importantes elementos da jornada inovativa em contexto e contribui para os Estudos Sociais da
Ciência e da Tecnologia, Dinâmicas da Inovação, e Políticas de Ciência e Tecnologia.
Palavras chaves: Carro a álcool; Análise sociotécnica; Brasil, Estudos Sociais da Ciência e da Tecnologia;
Jornada da inovação.
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UNIVERSITY OF CAMPINAS
INSTITUTE OF GEOSCIENCE
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY POSTGRADUATION PROGRAMME
THE BRAZILIAN ETHANOL CAR: A SOCIOTECHNICAL ANALYSIS.
ABSTRACT
Doctoral Thesis
Rafael Bennertz
This thesis presents the history of the ethanol car in Brazil, analyzing it from a sociotechnical perspective,
informed by scholarly work in Social Studies of Science, Innovation Dynamics and Science and Technology
Policy. The history of the ethanol car in Brazil since the early twentieth century until today is interesting in its
own right and deserves to be retold. By treating the ethanol car as a sociotechnical configuration and tracing
its innovation journey, further aspects of the development become visible: the entanglement of technical,
economic and social developments (Chapter 1); the importance of the discourse about the Brazilian Ethanol
Car and how it became a discursive entity in its own right (Chapter 2); the special role of the Brazilian state in
stimulating the development of the ethanol car and ensuring its embedding in society (Chapter 3); the partial
decline of the ethanol car after 1989 and its revival in another form, the Flexible Fuel Vehicle, which
illustrates that it is not substitution of old by new technologies, but an evolving patchwork of old and new
technologies (Chapter 4).
The innovation journey of the ethanol car, including various non-linearities, started as a research and
development project conducted at the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia, was less visible in the 1950s and
1960s, and then became important in the 1970s and the 1980s, as a response to the 1973 oil crisis and Brazil’s
dependence on imported oil. Because of changing economic and political contexts, it almost disappeared
during the 1990s. In the next three chapters I zoom in on three key dynamics of sociotechnical development
in the innovation journey of the ethanol car. Chapter 2 treats the Brazilian Ethanol Car as a discursive entity
present on the pages of the automobile magazine Quatro Rodas, that by becoming a recurrent reference in the
magazine reinforced the momentum for the technological development of the ethanol car in Brazil. In Chapter
3 it is shown how the Brazilian state macro-enacted the ethanol car, that is, at the same time conducting
research for the development of the sociotechnical artifact, and creating the conditions for the societal
embedding of the car. Chapter 4 reconstructs the decline of the ethanol car during the 1990s and the
emergence of the flex-fuel vehicle during the 2000s as an evolving patchworks of old and new technologies,
and argues that this is the general phenomenon encompassing different specific patterns.
In the conclusion, the importance of the multi-level approach is highlighted again, as well as the way the
innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil was shaped by the automobile technological regime, the
national innovation regime, and by new design and maintenance constituencies, which in their turn were
modified by what happened in the innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil. Thus, this thesis not only
offers a sociotechnical reconstruction of the development of the ethanol car in Brazil, but also, by highlighting
important elements of innovation journeys in context and taking part in the reflections about the tools and
approaches of the sociotechnical perspective, contributes to the scholarly fields of social studies of science
and technology, innovation dynamics and science and technology policy studies.
Key words: Ethanol car; Sociotechnical Analysis; Brazil; Social Studies of Science and Technology;
Innovation Journey.
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SUMMARY
LIST OF ABREVIATIONS .............................................................................................................................. xxi
FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................................... xxi
TABLES ..................................................................................................................................................... xxiii
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................................1
CHAPTER 1: DEVELOPMENT OF THE ETHANOL CAR IN BRAZIL: THE BIG PICTURE. ..............7
1.2 A REPERTOIRE OF CONCEPTS ................................................................................................................9
1.3 DEVELOPMENT OF THE ETHANOL CAR IN BRAZIL ..............................................................................16
1.3.1 The early-history of the ethanol car in Brazil ..............................................................................17
1.3.2 The early development of the ethanol car 1973 – 1979 ..............................................................24
1.3.3 The societal embedding of the ethanol car in Brazil, its partial collapse, and its partial
revival through the Flexible Fuel Vehicle. .................................................................................32
CONCLUSIONS ...........................................................................................................................................38
CHAPTER 2: THE BRAZILIAN ETHANOL CAR ...................................................................................41
2.1 DISCURSIVE ENTITIES, AND THEIR ROLE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DYNAMICS. ........................43
2.2 FOLLOWING A DISCURSIVE ENTITY. ...................................................................................................49
2.3 BEC’S LIFE WITHIN QUATRO RODAS. ................................................................................................52
2.4 DOWN – UP – DOWN THE STABILIZATION LADDER ............................................................................63
CONCLUSIONS ...........................................................................................................................................69
CHAPTER 3: THE ROLES OF THE STATE IN DEVELOPING AND EMBEDDING THE
ETHANOL CAR IN SOCIETY. ..................................................................................................................73
3.1 GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DYNAMICS.......................................75
3.2 MACRO-ENACTING AND EMBEDDING BY THE STATE ..........................................................................80
CONCLUSIONS ...........................................................................................................................................96
CHAPTER 4: AN EVOLVING PATCHWORK OF OLD AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES.................... 103
4.1 EVOLVING PATCHWORKS OF OLD AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES - EPONT .........................................105
4.2 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS ..................................................................................................113
CONCLUSIONS .........................................................................................................................................125
CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................................127
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FIGURES
FIGURE 1 - A SOCIOTECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF AN INNOVATION JOURNEY. ....................................... 11
FIGURE 2 - VISUAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A LANDSCAPE. ............................................................ 15
FIGURE 3 - EARLY TWENTIES; INT'S FORD T FUELLED WITH ETHANOL. ......................................... 19
FIGURE 4 - MONTEIRO LOBATO ...................................................................................................... 21
FIGURE 5 - THE 1973 OIL CRISIS. .................................................................................................... 25
FIGURE 6 - A STAMP BEING FIXED AN ETHANOL FUELLED CAR. ...................................................... 34
FIGURE 7 - THE FUEL FOR THE BRAZILIAN CAR ............................................................................... 41
FIGURE 8 - THE FIRST ETHANOL CAR TESTED BY QUATRO RODAS .................................................. 52
FIGURE 9 - THE MINISTER OF AERONAUTICS DRIVES AN ETHANOL FUELED CAR DURING THE
NATIONAL INTEGRATION CIRCUIT .......................................................................................... 74
FIGURE 10 - ORGANS INVOLVED IN PTE. ........................................................................................ 85
FIGURE 11 - DISTRIBUTION OF EXPERIMENTAL FLEETS IN 1979. ..................................................... 89
FIGURE 12 - ETHANOL CARS BECOME AVAILABLE FOR EVERYONE. ................................................ 91
FIGURE 13 - BRAZIL – SUPPLY/DEMAND OF OIL AND ETHANOL NEED. ........................................ 117
FIGURE 14 - A SOCIOTECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF AN INNOVATION JOURNEY. ................................... 128
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TABLES
TABLE 1 - GASOLINE ENGINES CONVERTED TO RUN ON ALCOHOL PER YEAR (1979-1982). ............ 36
TABLE 2 - PERFORMANCE TESTS WITH ETHANOL FUELLED CARS.................................................... 54
TABLE 3 - ANNUAL PRODUCTION OF CARS IN BRAZIL (1979-1989). .............................................. 56
TABLE 4 - MODALITIES IN THE ARTICLES AND EDITORIAL TEXTS IN QUATRO RODAS (1973-
1989)....................................................................................................................................... 65
TABLE 5 - ETHANOL FUEL CONSUMPTION IN BRAZIL (TOTAL IN MILLION LITTERS) ...................... 121
TABLE 6 - CAR PRODUCTION IN BRAZIL BY FUEL (2003-2013). .................................................... 124
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LIST OF ABREVIATIONS
AEA – Associação de Engenharia Automotiva (Automotive Engineering Association)
ANFAVEA – Associação Nacional de Fabricantes de Veiculos Automotores (National
Automaker’s association)
BEC – Carro a álcool Brasileiro [a entidade discursiva] (The Brazilian Ethanol Car [The
discursive entity])
CAPES - Comissão de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (Coordination for
the Improvement of Higher Education Personel)
CAT – Centro de Apoio Tecnológico (Technology Support Center)
CDPA – Comissão de Defesa da Produção Açucareira (Committee for the Defence of Sugar
Production)
CEAM – Comissão de Estudos do Álcool Motor (Commission of Studies on Alcohol-
engine)
CENAL – Comissão Executiva Nacional do Álcool (National Executive Comission on
Ethanol)
CME – Comissão de Minas e Energia (National Comission on Mines and Energy)
CNA – Comissão Nacional do Álcool (National Commission of Alcohol)
CNAL – Conselho Nacional do Álcool (National Council on Alcohol)
CNI – Confederação Nacional da Indústria (National Confederation of the Industry)
CNP – Conselho Nacional de Petróleo (National Council on Oil)
COASE – Conselho para Assuntos de Energia (Council for Energy Issues)
CTA – Centro de Tecnologia Aeroespacial (Aerospace Technology Center)
CTI - Coordenadoria de Informações Tecnológicas (Coordination of Technological
Information)
Deinfra – Departamento de Infra-estrutura industrial (Department of Industrial
Infrastructure)
E100 – O carro a álcool[um elemento sociomaterial] (the Brazilian ethanol car [a
sociomaterial element])
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EECM – Extação Experimental de Combustíveis e Minérios (Experimental Station of Fuel
and Ores)
EMBRAPA – Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária (Brazilian Corporation of
Agricultural Research)
EPSP – Escola Politécnica de São Paulo (Polytechnic School of São Paulo)
FINEP – Financiadora de estudos e projetos (Brazilian Innovation Agency)
FNT – Fundo Nacional de Tecnologia (National Technology Fund)
IAA – Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool (Sugar and Alcohol Institute)
ICT – Tecnologias da Informação e da comunicação (Information and Communication
Technologies)
IME – Instituto Militar de Engenharia (Military Institute of Engineering)
INT – Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia (National Institute of Technology)
IPI – Imposto sobre Produtos Industrializados (Tax on Industrialized Products)
ITA – Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronautica (Aeronautics Technology Institute)
MIC – Ministério da Indústria e do Comércio (Ministry of Industry and Trade)
NIR – National Innovation Regime (Regime Nacional de Inovação)
OEM – Original Equipment Manufacturer
OLAE – Eletrônica Orgânica de Grandes Areas (Organic Large-Area Electronics)
PBDCT - Plano Básico de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Basic Plan for
Scientific and Technological Development)
PCP – Pre-Commercial Procurement (Procurement pré-comercial)
PRI – Instituto Público de Pesquisa (Public Research Institute)
Proálcool – Programa Brasileiro do Álcool (Brazilian Alcohol Program)
PROCANA - Programa de melhoramento genético da cana-de-açúcar (Sugarcane Genetic
Improvment Programme)
PTE – Programa Tecnológico do Etanol (Ethanol Technology Program)
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RFID - Radiofrequency Identification Tags (Etiquetas de identificação por radio-
freqüêencia)
SAE-Brazil – Sociedade dos Engenheiros Automotivos no Brasil (Society of the Automotive
Engineers in Brazil)
SBIR - Small Business Innovation Program (Programa de Inovação em Pequenos
Negócios)
SOPRAL – Sociedade dos Produtores de álcool (Society of Ethanol Producers)
STI – Secretaria de Tecnologia Industrial (Office of Industrial Technology)
TEP - Tonelada equivalente de petróleo (Tonne of oil equivalent)
TSR 2 – a British military aircraft Project (um projeto de avião militar britânico)
UnB – University of Brasília (Universidade de Brasília)
1
INTRODUCTION
The story of the ethanol car in Brazil is an interesting one. From its early years to the
programme’s institutionalization in the 1970s, the success in the 1980s and its subsequent
decline, to be revived again by the advent of the Flexible Fuel Car in the 2000s. The story
has been told by journalists and commentators, and analyzed for its social, technical,
economic and policy aspects. (Santos, 1993; Ripoli, 1983; Silva and Fischette, 2008;
Ferreira, 2003; Figueiredo, 2005; Oliveira, 2002; Moreira and Goldenberg, 1999, Berger,
2010).1 What has not been done is the reconstruction and analysis of the sociotechnical
dynamics of its development and embedding in society. In this thesis I will apply the
sociotechnical perspective to this case, but also contribute to it by zooming in into specific
aspects of the case like the role of the label “the brazilian ethanol car” to refer to the
development of a working sociotechnical artifact. Thus, the case is interesting for the
historical reconstruction carried out and also because these specific aspects of
sociotechnical dynamics speak to STS, technology dynamics and technology policy studies.
Why emphasize sociotechnical dynamics? This perspective has been shown to be important
to understand and address the complexity of actual technological developments and their
embedding in society. The perspective was put on the scholarly map through the Bijker et
al. 1987 volume, which continues to be a key reference (cf. it being reprinted in 2013). The
volume marked the coming together of recent history of technology, which addresses
contexts and creates rich pictures; the newly emerging sociology of technology, e.g. SCOT
(Social Construction of Technology) and ANT (Actor-Network Theory); and indirectly,
evolutionary economics of technical change.2 In recognizing these different disciplinary
contributions, the volume begins to operationalize the approach of what one of its editors,
Hughes, called the “seamless web” of artefacts, systems, people, organizations, and
institutions (Hughes, 1986).
1 Ferreira, 2003, Berger, 2010, and Bennertz (2009) looked at the case from a sociotechnical perspective.
2 No economist authored a chapter in the Bijker et al, 1987, ‘The Social Construction of Technological
Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology”. but Van den Belt and Rip’s chapter
builds on the work of evolutionary economists Nelson & Winter (1977) and Dosi (1982).
2
Thus, the sociotechnical perspective follows Hughes (1986) claim that science, technology
and society are interconnected and mutually shape each other. Sometimes, they are still an
undifferentiated mix, as when high-temperature superconductivity was discovered in a
laboratory setting, but seen as the basis of new technology, and clothed with expectations
about the societal changes that would follow (Nowotny and Felt 1997). The sociotechnical
perspective is a multidisciplinary approach building upon studies that symmetrically
analyze the role of heterogeneous, social and material actors. A sociotechnical perspective
considers material affordances and constraints, as well as the meaning created by culture as
intrinsically indissociable (Bijker, 1995). Trying to establish where society ends and where
science & technology begin is a counterproductive task. One should look at processes and
phenomena identifying the entanglements of science, technology and society, highlighting
their interactions, not reinforcing an artificial divide among them.
The analysis of these entanglements is conducted with the help of a conceptual repertoire
that invites the analyst (and the readers) to bring the interconnectedness of heterogeneous
elements to the foreground. I will outline this conceptual repertoire in Chapter 1, and add to
it in the later chapters. The sociotechnical perspective has been used to deconstruct
simplistic versions of accounting for technological developments and their embedding in
society. My aim in this thesis is to use it as a tool to grasp the ongoing societal construction
of technology in society. This helps to unfold the story of the ethanol car in Brazil, and
links it to recent work in sociotechnical analysis of science, technology and society.
Since the Bijker et al. 1987 volume,3 there have been a plethora of case studies, from the
same community (Bijker & Law, 1992; Bijker’s, 1995) and others, all taking the
sociotechnical perspective. There has been further work on Large Technical Systems (e.g.
Mayntz and Hughes, 1988), developing Hughes’ seminal work (1983). And there has been
a new development emphasizing the multi-level character of sociotechnical developments,
conceptualizing/theorizing it and offering relevant empirical research (Rip and Kemp 1998,
Geels 2005). This has created links with the study of technology and innovation systems
(e.g. Nelson 1993). My thesis will build on these new developments when reconstructing
3 Actually, the book was based on a conference at the University of Twente in 1984. Clearly, It was in the
early 1980s that the overlap and convergence between the different disciplinary strands was becoming visible.
3
the history of the ethanol car in Brazil, and add to them by looking at specific phenomena
within the development of the ethanol car in Brazil.
Nowadays the Brazilian experience with the use of ethanol fuel is a recurrent reference as a
leading example on the development of a biofuel economy. Commonly people consider it
exclusively as an outcome of the military efforts to reach energy independence after the oil
crisis of 1973. However, the history of the use of ethanol as an automotive fuel in Brazil
did not start with the launch of the Brazilian governmental programme Proálcool in 1975.
There were earlier relevant activities, by researchers and by the State. As such activities
continued, there was more than the Proálcool programme. Because there was a sort of
coherence in the activities and in the visions behind them, one could speak of a de facto
programme, or a programme+, to emphasize that it was broader than the formally
established Proálcool programme. By taking a sociotechnical perspective the notion of a
programme+ allows me to raise questions about the role of the state in the overall
development, which go further than traditional science policy questions about policies and
programmes and their implementation (this will be taken up in Chapter 3).
The emergence of ethanol car in Brazil dates back to the late 1920s, with experiments on
ethanol fuel carried out at the Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia – INT, 4
a Public Research
Institution (PRI) in Brazil. At that time automotive races being powered by ethanol and a
mandatory blend of gasoline and ethanol turning to be the standard composition of gasoline
in Brazilian. By the time the first oil crisis hit the country, in 1973, the research at INT had
already been stopped, nevertheless, Brazilian cars were propelled by a certain amount of
ethanol. The emergence of an economic external threat to the Brazilian dictatorial regime –
the energy dependence – created the necessity for the government to invest in alternative
sources of energy. Among many options, which also included nuclear energy and
hydroelectric power, ethanol became the Brazilian substitute for oil as an automotive fuel.
Its production and use were already widespread in the country, although after 1973 both
needed to be improved and the government took the lead to do so. Ethanol was already part
of the Brazilian automotive regime and the oil crisis gave it momentum.
4 In English: National Institute of Technology
4
To increase the use and the production of ethanol in Brazil social and technical elements
became re-aligned in various layers of the societal fabric. There was the Centro de
Tecnologia Aeroespacial - CTA contracted by the Ministry of Industry and Trade to
conduct research and experiments up to the development of prototypes of ethanol cars.5
Also significant was the creation of experimental fleets of ethanol cars, as well as the
production of ethanol cars by automakers in the country. All this was sustained by
reference to a shared goal, namely to make The Brazilian Ethanol Car (BEC) real.6 In a
sense, the Brazilian Ethanol Car existed already in discourses before it was actually running
on the roads. As a discursive entity, it exerted force, justifying actions to realize the goal,
but it was also dependent on the material developments of the E100. In this way, it was the
core of what I called the programme+ of the Brazilian ethanol car. In Chapter 2 I will
consider its de facto implementation by tracing how the ethanol car was presented in a
popular automobile magazine, Quatro Rodas, whose discursive practices within articles and
performance tests influenced the societal embedding of the E100.
By the mid-1980s, motor cars with engines using 100% ethanol were widespread and
accepted in Brazil. But then, circumstances changed: in the late 1980s oil prices decreased,
selling sugar became more lucrative than making ethanol and, there was a shortage of
ethanol on the market. The government stopped financial support for the use of ethanol fuel
which affected the sales of ethanol cars. The latter’s acceptance decreased sharply, but not
to the point that it would completely disappear from sight. To some extent, ethanol cars and
gasoline cars co-existed. Gas stations continued selling ethanol and gasoline besides
existing ethanol cars needed maintenance.
The situation changed when the automotive industry launched the Flexible-Fuel Vehicle
(FFV) in 2003. FFVs can be fueled with gasoline, ethanol or a blend of these at any
proportion. Its flexibility increased the options for the consumers. The acceptance of the
FFV has grown steadily; in 2012 it had a 88% market share (ANFAVEA, 2013: 60) in
Brazil. From these brief indications, it will be clear that there is no simple substitution of
one technology by another. As will be argued In Chapter 4, one should think about it in
5 In English: Aerospace Technology Center.
6 In Portuguese: “O carro Brasileiro a álcool” or “o carro a álcool” as it became to be known, when the
nationalistic character of the technology was already taken for granted.
5
terms of an evolving patchwork of technologies. Many processes take place before a
technology is adopted and becomes part of the societal fabric. The history of the ethanol car
in Brazil offers examples of some of such processes, and I will particularly focus at the
meso level (see Chapter 1 for further discussion). Thus, issues at micro level- such as the
production of ethanol, the routines within laboratories - and at macro level - the Brazilian
economy, and the relations between politics and policy - are outside the scope of this thesis.
Not because these issues are not worth pursuing, but because they have already been
studied and I can take them into account for the influence they had on the adoption of the
ethanol car in Brazil.
During the early history period, I identified the creation of research practices, relations
between PRIs and broader societal needs, the development of knowledge on ethanol
production and use and the emergence of institutional elements that supported the
production and the use of ethanol as an automotive fuel, such as the enactment of the blend
of gasoline and ethanol. The study of the early history of the ethanol car in Brazil affords
the comprehension of the building up of scientific and technological competencies within
the country, the emergence of The Brazilian Ethanol Car (BEC) as a broad sociotechnical
promise, the development of a prototype of the Ethanol Car in Brazil (E100), and it sheds
some light on the nature of the role played by the Brazilian State.
After 1973, policy makers and consumers alike would talk about The Brazilian Ethanol Car
(BEC) in their discourses. Even before being launched by the industry, BEC was part of the
Brazilian cultural repertoire appearing in newspaper articles, political speeches and on the
pages of Quatro Rodas. BEC was considered a promise for reducing the country’s oil
imports, but it was also a technological artifact, a car whose performance had to equal or be
better than that of the gasoline car. Looking at how BEC existed in discourse offers an
example of how nonmaterial elements can influence the life of an innovation, how they
shape the technical artifact and how the latter affects the way people would refer to BEC in
their discourses.
The outburst of the Oil crisis in 1973 was faced by the government as an external threat to
the country, which pushed the government to search for energy alternatives. The
authoritarian government that was ruling the country reintroduced the ethanol car into the
6
national agenda by coordinating research that would lead to the development of the
technology to use ethanol as a fuel, but also to technological development and its adoption
in Brazil. It established the Secretaria de Tecnologia Industrial – STI as the governmental
organ that coordinated funding for the production of ethanol and the research work on the
development of the E100.7 Thus, the government was a central actor that created the
conditions, conducted R&D and pushed the societal embedding of the ethanol car in Brazil
during the 1920s, 1970s and 1980s.
By the late 1980s, oil prices started to decrease and sugar prices started to increase, leading
to a shortage of ethanol in the market. Despite technological and economic projections, the
contextual conditions for the development and maintenance of the E100 changed, the
country adopted a more liberal orientation that considered the costs to maintain the whole
ethanol programme functioning too high. The E100 declined and the Gasoline car, specially
the “carro 1000”, became central to the Brazilian automotive sociotechnical regime.
Nonetheless, the supply and maintenance infrastructures created to support the E100 did
not disappeared. The E100 car and the Gasoline car co-existed and interacted, such co-
existence created conditions for the emergence of the FFV, as an evolving patchwork of
new and old technologies benefit from both sociotechnical configurations.
These considerations about what can be learned from the sociotechnical analysis of the
development of the Brazilian ethanol car informed the three focused chapters, each with its
own discussion of relevant literature, and each having its own conclusions. Chapter 2
addresses the role of an element present in discourses in the process of consolidating BEC
as a functioning artifact. Chapter 3 observes how the government took a pro-active role,
coordinating various elements to get the ethanol car developed and embedded in Brazil.
Chapter 4 reconstructs the later developments (since the early 1990s) and reflects on the
character of the dynamics between old and new technologies.
Chapter 1, after presenting the relevant conceptual repertoire for sociotechnical analysis,
offers the “big picture” of the developments, while Chapter 5 after a brief look at the
findings and offers concluding comments.
7 In English: Office of Industrial Technology.
7
CHAPTER 1: DEVELOPMENT OF THE ETHANOL CAR IN BRAZIL: THE BIG
PICTURE.
INTRODUCTION
In a historical reconstruction of science and technology dynamics in general, and of the
Brazilian ethanol car focused here, one can, and to some extent must, rely on the stories
people write and tell about what happened. Nevertheless, there are risks in doing that, as
historians know. It is not just a matter of faulty memories, partial views and biases. There is
also the tendency to go for singular origins and linear causalities, which may seem obvious
in retrospect, but were not necessarily there in the complexities of actual developments.
This is emphasized in the sociotechnical perspective (with the risk of being confined to the
here and now and neglecting larger patterns that might be playing out as well).
In the case of the Brazilian ethanol car, this is the story commonly told by enthusiasts and
critics about how it was born: It is June 1975, General Ernesto Geisel, president of Brazil’s,
enters the laboratory of an absent-minded professor. An idealist, as people used to call him.
This laboratory, the Laboratory of Engines (PMO) at the Aerospace Technical Center
(CTA), is part of a military complex made up of offices and classrooms and is governed by
military discipline. Its major objectives were to offer top quality technical solutions to
issues related to national security; scientific and technological development; and the
training of a highly qualified work force of engineers to lead Brazil out of
underdevelopment. The complex, the Institute of Technology of Aeronautics (ITA), is the
country´s most important and qualified engineering school, a military school, inaugurated
in 1951, that follows the MIT model. After the usual formalities, the professor – Urbano
Stumpf – managed to capture the President´s attention. What was supposed to be a short
visit of fifteen minutes ended up lasting for more than two hours, and it was the starting
point for what turned out to be a major technological programme. All the secrets, promises
and details of Stumpf´s ambitious project were presented to the head of the State, the most
powerful man around. Jobs would be created, technical and scientific competencies would
be developed, the economy would be boosted, the industry would get its share and energy
independence would be achieved. After a period with little investment in an alternative fuel
8
like ethanol, and in which the ethanol car was just a possibility, the enactment of the
Brazilian Ethanol Car was set in motion. Shortly after Geisel´s visit to Stumpf´s laboratory,
in November 1975, the programme was started as a national initiative.
The scene described above is considered to be the birth of the Brazilian Ethanol Car.
Interviewees mentioned it and the story was published in Science magazine. (Hammond,
1977). Nevertheless, it is a founding myth, rather than the full story. It may not even have
happened in exactly this way. And, in any case, it is not the origin, but more like a knotting
together of earlier strands. The advent of the ethanol car in Brazil did not start in the 1970s
following the first oil shock in 1973. The first attempts to offer an alternative to gasoline in
Brazilian territory date back to the early 1920s. Since then, many developments took place,
sometimes moving the ethanol car in Brazil closer to becoming a stabilized innovation, but
at other moments there was contestation of the status of the Brazilian Ethanol Car. This is
not a simple story of drivers leading to outcomes. Rather, there are evolving patterns in an
overall trajectory of the Ethanol Car in Brazil, which is full of vicissitudes and contextual
specificities. It is necessary to trace sociotechnical dynamics to do justice to the complex
story. And I can use the metaphor of an innovation journey, as introduced by Van de Ven et
al. (1999) to highlight complexities, set-backs, and emerging new directions, in contrast to
the common linear view of how an innovation develops. I will come back to this concept
and broaden its scope in the next section. For the moment, it allows me to say that this
chapter presents the Ethanol Car innovation journey in its context in Brazil.
The historical reconstruction offered in this chapter can profit from understanding of
general processes visible in science and technology dynamics, such as the role of
sociotechnical promises and protected spaces, and the influence of an overarching
“landscape” in which science and technology developments take place. I will come back to
these concepts in the next section, but note here the importance of the role of the State in
building up a national innovation regime, an important part of the landscape. This has been
somewhat neglected in sociotechnical analysis. In Brazil, it is particularly important
because
Parts of the military government and military groups outside the government had
continuously pursued a strategy of self-sufficiency in key inputs, especially fuel.
With their strong values about national security and the need for national self-
9
sufficiency, the military sectors saw the oil crisis allied to the high dependency of
the country on the world fuel market as a threat to national sovereignty. Oliveira
(2002: 132)
Hence, this chapter offers the big picture of the development of the ethanol car in Brazil
until the 1970s. While the next chapters take an analytical approach, they do offer further
historical detail, and round out the big picture until the present.
1.2 A REPERTOIRE OF CONCEPTS
When the sociotechnical perspective came into its own during the 1980s (cf. Chapter 1),it
combined empirical approaches to trace sociotechnical developments with concepts to
capture the complexity of technological change, innovation and its embedding in society.
Rather than giving a comprehensive overview, I will be selective and discuss those
concepts and underlying perspectives that are relevant for my reconstruction of the
sociotechnical development of the Brazilian ethanol car. This implies that I move away
from the tradition in Science and Technology Studies to focus on micro interactions and
processes. For example, the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach (Bijker
1995) offers important insights, but should be seen as part of broader approach, the Societal
Construction of Technology.8 This broader approach includes the role of the political order,
for example the developmentalist perspective of the Brazilian military regime mentioned
above, and the shift to neo-liberal approaches after the transition to democracy. But also, at
a lower level, the evolving innovation regime in a country (see below for this concept).
I introduced the notion of innovation journey, following Van de Ven et al. (1999) to capture
vicissitudes, set-backs and new directions as these occur. In the case studies upon which
their book draws, the emphasis is on the innovation processes in firms (see Van de Ven et
al. 1989). They argue against a common perception of processes of innovation as linear,
and pushed by heroic efforts. (cf. stories of success and failure). Rip and Schot (2002)
added market introduction and embedding in society to the innovation journey, because
innovation continues (and will include economic and social innovation). Visible already in
their mapping approach is the idea that there may be recurrent patterns in those journeys, in
spite of the contingencies. This idea was further developed and published in Rip (2010),
8 The term 'Societal Construction of Technology' was originally introduced by Rip (1990): for a full
discussion, see Disco and Van der Meulen (1998: 6).
10
who claimed that in addition to the basic pattern of industrial product and process
innovation, which has been studied extensively in the literature, there were three other basic
patterns: large systems and infrastructures, information and communication technologies
with their combination of hardware and software (and orgware), and technologies in
agriculture and health that depend for their performance on the working of living entities.
Rip (2010) discusses the journeys of industrial products and processes in detail, but limits
himself to a few remarks only about large systems and infrastructures (long lead times must
be taken into account, both private and public actors are involved, and there is little or no
possibility of testing the overall system in a protected space). Thus, when looking at an
evolving sociotechnical system, linked to broader societal developments, I cannot just
follow his analysis. Still, some of the concepts and findings can be helpful for my study of
the Brazilian ethanol car as a sociotechnical system, including a variety of specific
innovations. The existing literature on large technical systems, from Mayntz and Hughes
(1988) onwards, is of little help as well because it focuses on large installations like power
plants.
There is a basic issue in using the notion of innovation journey. Innovations have no simple
starting point (as in epic stories about a new technological option recognized and developed
within a lab). Various activities and strands of development get entangled, come together
and become subject of concerted efforts. It is only then that Rip’s analysis of innovation
journeys becomes applicable (cf. also Hughes (1983) on momentum; there, a similar
criticism applies). The further dynamics will be shaped by the nature of this “coming
together” and concertation.9 Any historical reconstruction suffers from the retrospective
bias of knowing the end result, with the consequent temptation to define the starting point
as the predecessor of the end result. In my empirical reconstruction in this chapter, I will
keep the original, and maybe continuing, variety visible, but will not go into much detail.
My focus is on what happens after 1970, when the ethanol car is seen as a challenge that
needs concerted efforts.
My innovation journey approach has to take these considerations into account. Also,
“innovation journeys are part of larger processes, and are entangled with organizations,
9 Rip (2010) recognizes this when speaking of different patterns of innovation journeys, but does not develop
this question of there being no simple starting point.
11
other technologies, sector dynamics, and anticipations of, and responses from, society” (Rip
2012: 158). Some elements can be captured with concepts like sociotechnical regimes and
innovation regimes, and emerging constituencies (Staudenmaier, 1989). Others are
contingent on the specific embedding of the journey. The overall conceptualization is
visualized in the figure below (Figure 1). The multi-level approach, important in recent
literature, is not visible in this Figure, but will inform my analysis.
Figure 1 - A sociotechnical analysis of an innovation journey.
Innovation Journey
Including expanding system and societal embedding
News constituencies
NB: technological and innovation regimes shape innovation journey, but are changing as well because of what happens in the innovation journey.
Source: Elaborated by the author.
The historical reconstruction of an innovation journey allows the characterization of
patterns as well as the contingencies and specificities visible in sociotechnical
developments. The multi-level analysis (Geels, 2005) has its conceptual limitations (Rip,
2012), but its emphasis on niches, and more generally, protected spaces, on regimes of
various kinds, and on the sociotechnical landscape, with its gradients of force, as a
backdrop remains important to understand and analyse sociotechnical developments. I will
discuss each of these three sets of concepts.
The starting point for our discussion, and for innovation journeys, is that new technological
options are hopeful monstrosities, which still have low performance (or even no
12
performance at all) but carry promises about possible new breakthrough developments, new
applications, and solutions for various technical and societal demands, as they were
identified by technology enactors. Those promises are then further articulated, and/or
redefined into more specific promises about the functionality of the sociotechnical artifact
or process to be developed.10
Protected spaces for the development of the fledgling
technological option will emerge this way, or be created on purpose, as for example when
IBM needed to develop a personal computer to compete with Apple, and created a
dedicated team, with its own budget, and working in relative isolation (Rip and Schot,
2002).The important point is that protected spaces allow for trial and error, and for tests
before the full challenges of the “real world” have to be met. This can extend to tentative
market introduction, for example with lead users, or in a market niche where experiences
can be evaluated. We will actually encounter examples in the introduction of the ethanol
car in the 1970s.
The point about testing in a safe environment has been made in the literature. Van den Belt
and Rip (1987) discuss how in the late 19th
century synthetic chemical dyestuffs were tried
out in test labs reproducing the circumstances in textile dying firms. Since then, test labs
and dedicated test beds have become a common feature of technology development. Law
and Callon (1988; 1992), discussing the development of a military aircraft, add to this by
arguing that the macro-level protected space was constituted by the agreement between the
British and French governments to develop such an aircraft.11
As others have shown, a
macro-level protected space can also emerge because of shared projections about a
desirable future thanks to new technology. An example is the promise of the (electronic)
information superhighway in the early 1990s; Konrad (2004) showed how this allowed
German cities to continue with new projects even when earlier ones failed. Parandian et al.
(2012) mention the ups and downs of the projection of a hydrogen economy, and discuss
the waiting games that can be the result of such diffuse promises, in their case about so-
called plastic electronics. The projection of a Brazilian ethanol car, when shared by
10
We will come back to the discussion about technological promises, will be developed in chapter 2. 11
The actual development of the aircraft in its micro-level protected space encountered various setbacks. At
first, these were seen as challenges to be overcome, but when the overall political constellation shifted and the
governments wanted to dissolve their agreement, the macro-level protected space crumbled, and the project
was stopped.
13
different actors, will create a similar macro-level protected space by defining problems as
challenges for further development, rather than failures. In other words, there is more than
the government’s Proálcool programme and its implementation. If one wants to think in
terms of a programme, it would be a programme+, not commissioned by the government
but by the shared projection about a Brazilian ethanol car. The Proálcool programme is part
of it, and an important part because it created a node in the network, and allowed the
government to intervene.12
The notion of a regime, as used in political science and in common parlance, for example
when referring to a dictatorial regime, was introduced in technology and innovation studies
by Nelson and Winter (1977), and further developed by Van den Belt and Rip (1987).13
They illustrated their idea of a technical regime by referring to strong expectations of
engineers and industrialists about the development of aircraft in the 1920s. After the
introduction of the DC-3 aircraft, a technological regime emerged where a steel outer frame
and piston engines below the wings would be the model (it remained the model until the
advent of jet engines in the 1950s). Another example is the technological regime of the
motor car. Since the early developments of the automobile, the internal combustion engine
has been the dominant engine for cars. Also gasoline has been the main fuel for motorized
vehicles. In the 1920s, a few key improvements like electrical ignition were developed
(Abernathy and Clark, 1985), but then the regime was in place, and further developments
remained within that frame, and in that sense were incremental, like increasing safety,
improving efficiency, reducing consumption of fuel. Van den Ende and Kemp (1999)
indicate a further feature of regimes when they show how computers at first just substituted
computing tasks in what they call a computing regime, and only by the 1960s became
important in their own right (partly because of the advent of programming languages), and
allowed new kinds of performance.
Rip and Kemp (1998), emphasizing the key role of regimes in sociotechnical dynamics,
offered a general characterization.
12
Such a broader view on government science and technology policy programs is discussed in Rip (1997). 13
Dosi (1982) addresses the same phenomena, but speaks of a technological paradigm.
14
“A technological regime is the rule-set or grammar embedded in a
complex of engineering practices, production process technologies,
product characteristics, skills, procedures, ways of handling relevant
artifacts and persons, ways of defining problems – all of them embedded
in institutions and infrastructures.” (Rip and Kemp 1998: 338).
A technological, and more generally, a sociotechnical regime structures the way technology
development and innovation are shaped in specific sectors.
The notion of regimes can also be applied to other aspects of the dynamics of
sociotechnical developments. In particular, to improve on the concept of a national system
of research and innovation (cf. Nelson, 1993) which is often reduced to organigrams of the
organisations in the national system and their interactions, but would profit from paying
attention to the rules that govern the system. Delvenne (2011) has shown how the
institutions in the Walloon region of Belgium were shaped by overall views on
modernization and how to go about innovation. To do so he introduced the notion of an
innovation regime, which I will take up, in spite of the fact that it may create confusion,
because it is not about rules for innovation as Van de Poel (1998, 2003) discusses them for
specific sectors,14
but about the public infrastructure enabling innovation. National science
and innovation regimes consist of institutions, rules and arrangements that shape ongoing
science and innovation, and are themselves shaped by explicit governance, i.e. STI policies,
as well as evolve and respond to broader changes. The focus on institutions rather than
policies is important to understand long-term dynamics, possibilities and constraints. In
Brazil, the establishment of public research institutes since the early 1900s, and their
eventual division of labour with universities, are instances of the evolving innovation
regime.
Staudenmaier (1989) has observed that a technology, in its development and embedding in
society, will be carried by dedicated actors and structures. He used the automobile regime,
now in a broad sense, so including roads and garages, users and their practices, to show that
there is a design constituency (the developers), a maintenance constituency (ensuring the
14
Van de Poel (1998) distinguished four innovation patterns: supplier-dependent innovation; user-driven
innovation; mission-oriented innovation; and R&D-dependent innovation, building on an earlier typology
proposed by Pavitt (1984). In my case of the Brazilian ethanol car, none of these patterns apply. There is
exploratory technological development, inspired by overall promises, which is then combined and upgraded
in the government-led Proálcool program. Formally, this Program would count as mission-orientated
innovation, but it did not start from zero, and the emphasis is on embedding in society.
15
functioning) and an impact constituency (users and their practices). One can see them as
parts of an innovation regime, but focused on a particular technology. One can also see
them as part of the evolving sociotechnical landscape, because the constituencies become
embedded, and hence continue, shaping further developments already by their mere
existence.15
The final concept to discuss briefly is the sociotechnical landscape. It is often used, for
example in the sustainability transition literature, in a loose sense, to refer to broad societal
contexts. Indeed, there are partly exogenous elements such as the macro-economic, cultural
aspects and macro-political characteristics that enable and constrain scientific and
technological developments. By speaking of a “landscape”, however, attention is drawn to
the nature of the shaping. “Sociotechnical landscapes do not determine, but provide deep-
structural ‘gradients of force’ that make some actions easier than others”. (Geels and Schot,
2007: 403). There are hills and valleys in this landscape, as has been visualized by Sahal
(1985: 79), using height contours like those used to visualize electromagnetic potential
fields, to show how actual development paths may follow a route of least resistance.
Figure 2 - Visual characterization of a landscape.
Source: Sahal, 1985, p. 79.
15
Note that maintenance and impact constituencies may occur without there being a design constituency. This
is how Sørensen (1991) analysed what he called the Norwegian motor car.
16
In the case of the Brazilian ethanol car, one can see earlier landscapes and continuities. The
early initiatives of the 1920s were linked to the worldwide interest in what was then called
chemiourgy, the transformation of natural materials into useful products. The term
‘chemiourgy’ has disappeared, but the practices and ideals are still there, as in the notion of
a biobased economy. Generally, technology is linked with modernists’ ideals of progress,
control over nature and eventually social welfare.
The landscape in Brazil had its political and economic “gradients of force” characterized by
the military dictatorship, the national economy, energy dependency and the importance of
the sugar-sector. Also, how the country faced its Oil dependency problem was conditioned
to the position the automobile had in Brazilian culture, to the economic, political and
technological power that the automotive industry had in the country since the Plano de
Metas (see Section 3). At the same time, scientific and technical promises shaped the
thinking about possibilities and strategies. With Jasanoff (2004) one can speak of co-
production of technology and evolving socio-political order.
1.3 DEVELOPMENT OF THE ETHANOL CAR IN BRAZIL
The story of the ethanol vehicle will be presented in chronological order, with occasional
explicit references to innovation journeys, landscapes, regimes and niches. Four main
phases in the history of the ethanol car can be distinguished: 1. the pre-history of the
ethanol car in Brazil, including first attempts to develop an ethanol car, and its stagnation
until the oil crisis in 1973 (1920s to early 1970s); 2. The early developments of the ethanol
car by the government after the oil shock in 1973 and the parallel emergence of the fuel
blend (1973-1979); 3. The stabilization of the programme+ (i.e. the overall constellation,
not just the Proálcool programme) for the Brazilian Ethanol Car, and the societal
embedding of the ethanol car in Brazil (1979-1989); and 4. The collapse of the ethanol car
in Brazil and its partial revival (1990-now). This periodization is based on the character of
the sociotechnical dynamics, not on overall changes in Brazil, like the rise of the dictatorial
regime in 1964 and the transition to a democracy in 1985.
17
1.3.1 The early-history of the ethanol car in Brazil
Taking a longer-term perspective, the ethanol car in Brazil has its origins in the early 1920s
(Bennertz, 2009; Ripoli, 1983; Schwartzman, Castro, 1985: 07). The Brazilian Ministry of
Agriculture charged the Experimental Station on Fuels and Ores (Estação Experimental de
Combustíveis e Minérios – EECM)16
with the task of finding fuel alternatives, which
included developing engines to run on alcohol (i.e. ethanol)17
. The outbreak of the Second
World War, and the consequent shortage of oil-based fuels, influenced the search for fuels
in Brazil. There were strong initiatives to prospect oil, but ethanol use was also being
pursued, and in 1942 the results of research on fuels were presented during the I Congresso
Nacional de Carburantes. Systematic search for fuel sources lead to the discovery of the
first oil field in Brazil during the late 1930s and eventually, the foundation of Petrobras in
1953. Petrobras was responsible for coordinating, organizing and conducting oil
prospection and commercialization in the country. Apparently, the government began to
direct its official focus more towards the production of fossil fuels and prospection of oil
within the country than towards the development of alternative fuels. Major and systematic
research on the ethanol car stagnated from 1942 until the first oil shock occurred in 1973.
Nevertheless, things happened: there are references to a scientific meeting about the use of
ethanol as a fuel, to the use of ethanol18
in automotive races at Gavea, Rio de Janeiro, and
to the distribution of a blend of ethanol and other carburant fuels by Usina Serra Grande
Alagoas – USGA, a local distillery in the state of Alagoas, Brazil19
. And importantly,
ethanol was blended to all the gasoline in the country, an initiative that required national
coordination
Ethanol engines were explored in Brazil in the early-1920s, within the then recently created
the Estação Experimental de Combustíveis e Minários – EECM). In 1923 the Ministry of
Agriculture charged the EECM, a Public Research Institute (PRI), to carry out research on
the applicability of alcohol (ethanol) as a fuel. As seen in the preface of the first edition of
16
Estação Experimental de Combustíveis e Minérios (EECM). A governmental organ regulated by the
Ministry of Agriculture, created before the National Institute of Technology (INT) was established. (Castro
and Schwartzman, [1981] 2008: 11). 17
Hereafter, ethanol. I will generally speak of ethanol rather than ethyl alcohol or the common sense wording
alcohol, even when the original sources use other terms, in order to keep the flow of the text. 18
First National Congress on Industrial Applications of Alcohol, in the early 1930s. (Ripoli, 1983). 19
For a journalistic account of those first initiatives, see Ripoli (1983).
18
Oliveira ([193?] 1942), Ministry of Agriculture was the primary responsible for research
funding on the use of ethanol in automotive engines, but the initiative had wider
government support. President Epitácio Pessoa (1919-1922) addressed ethanol as a possible
substitute for gasoline, which by that time was heavily imported, and he considered ethanol
a solution for the sugar sector, that was facing overproduction and sales constraints (Castro
and Schwartzman [1981] 2008: 15)20
.
Two aspects need to be taken into consideration in order to contextualize early-history the
Brazilian initiative to use ethanol as a fuel. First, ethanol was produced to handle the
overproduction of sugar, as a way to stock it (cf. Decree N. 22.789, from 1st of June,
1933).21
Second, the use of ethanol as a fuel also followed an international trend. Oliveira
(1942) and also Pleeth (1949) point out an international movement towards the use of
ethanol as fuel, emerging after the First World War. Research projects on alternative fuels
were carried in the United States, France, England, Germany, Italy and Sweden. “During
the great war, the necessity for producing a motor fuel from indigenous sources encouraged
the use of alcohol”. (Pleeth, 1949: 18).
Besides EECM, experiments with ethanol engines and fuel were carried out at the Escola
Politecnica de São Paulo - EPSP22
. The net effect was the creation of a body of knowledge
about the use of ethanol as a fuel. A book, “Álcool-Motor e Motores a Explosão”, was
published by Oliveira ([193?] 1942: 21), showing the results from six years of tests carried
at the EPSP and EECM. One outcome was the development of a prototype motor car, a
Ford T fuelled with ethanol,23
which did not have the same performance as the gasoline-
powered version, but did run for 230km in an automotive race in Gavea (RJ) in 1925. In the
late 1920s the same car completed road journeys of a distance equivalent to the city of Rio
de Janeiro/RJ to São Paulo/SP24
. Most importantly, the State then decided to start blending
20
Here, there is another dynamic in emerging patchworks of old and new technologies (see Chapter 4).
Ethanol production in the sugar sector is driven by its own economic dynamics, but when available, it can be
used for purposes in another sector. If that continues, the sectors get entangled. 21
This is a general phenomenon: how to handle agricultural surpluses. In 19th
Century Germany’s ethanol was
produced from potatoes when a big harvest created an oversupply. 22
In English: Politechnic School of São Paulo. Founded in 1893 as an Engineering School, it was
incorporated by the University of São Paulo in 1934, when this university was created. 23
Hydrated Ethyl Alcohol consists of 30% water and 70% alcohol. (Marcolin, 2008). 24
For more information see: INT/MCT, 2002?: 27-30.
19
anhydrous ethanol to all gasoline sold in the country, 25
and created the Alcohol and Sugar
Institute (IAA). The latter was in charge of deciding, each year, the proportion of ethanol to
be blended to gasoline, which until 1975 varied from 1% to 5% (Decree 19.717, 20th Feb.
1931).
Figure 3 - Early Twenties; INT's Ford T fuelled with ethanol.26
Source: Ripoli, 1983: 12-13.
In this same period, the Brazilian State became a central actor in pushing scientific and
technological developments. Among other initiatives, it created universities and institutes
of applied sciences. To present the Brazilian National Innovation Regime (cf. Section 2) I
will divide it in two phases, the first one starting with Public Research Institutes like EECM
and EPSP, from the 1920s to the late 1940s, and the second phase from the 1950s to the
1980s. For this periodization, I draw on Dias (2009), who claims that Brazilian Science and
Technology Policy started to become institutionalized during the 1950s, with national
coordination of systematically planed actions to support science and technology initiatives.
25
Alcohol 96ºGL. (Oliveira, 1942: 18). On the beginning of the same page, Fonseca da Costa claims that
although it was more costly, the circumstances allowed the use of anhydrous alcohol as a fuel blend. 26
One can identify the following texts in the picture: “Alcool” and “Estação Experimental de Combustíveis e
Minérios”.
20
Also during the 1950s the industrial base of the country changed from exporting primary
goods to import-substitution industrialization, highly influenced by national-
developmentalist ideals. That became stronger after the military coup in 1964; in the 1970s
it did not just push science and technology activities, they also influenced the State’s
decision to enact the specific sociotechnical system of the Brazilian Ethanol Car.
Before the 1920s, there were already PRIs, specialized in public health, agriculture and
energy, following a pattern that could be seen worldwide in modernizing countries.
Research on sanitation and tropical diseases was the responsibility of Instituto Manguinhos
(1907). On agriculture and better use of the soil for plantations for example of coffee,
research was initially conducted at the Instituto Agronômico de Campinas (1887). Those
were not the only PRIs in Brazil, but the most active. Public research institutes were a key
component of NIR since 1920s. Research institutions, rules and arrangements devoted to
carry research in various fields aimed to overcome some of the country’s socio-economic
bottlenecks, energy, agriculture and tropical diseases being among those. (Schwartzman
and Castro, 1985).
Universities as such did not exist before the 1930s, although there were military,
engineering, law and medical schools, whose focus was on training for professions. With
the advent of the Estado Novo (1937-1945), modernization came explicitly on the agenda,
industrial growth started to be stimulated and new PRIs and Universities were created to
serve the emerging productive sector. This could have led to a strengthening of the
interactions in the National Innovation Regime, but that turned out to take more time. Up to
the 1970s, relations between the Brazilian Universities and the productive sector had been
characterized by actions that believed Universities should offer the results of their
researches to the industry, who would used the earlier according to their needs. Thus,
policies mechanisms focused on transferring knowledge from the public sector to the
private sector who would use such knowledge as and if needed. (Dagnino and Velho, 1998;
Klein and Schwartzman, 1993). More than that, during the late 1960s and early 1970s
another project was set in motion. The government applied protectionist and market reserve
mechanisms to sectors linked to military interests, as part of a long term project of
technological autonomy which, basically consisted in “protected legislation for infant
21
industries (market reserve); creation of research and development laboratories attached to
state enterprises in strategic sectors; and reform of the higher education system”. (Dagnino
and Velho, 1998: 234).
After this excursion to the institutions at the time, I return to the ethanol car. Influenced by
earlier initiatives, and based on the results of research carried out at INT, in 1931, as soon
as Getúlio Vargas became the head of the provisional State he decided to promote the use
of ethanol fuel by institutionalizing the addition of 5% of ethanol in every litter of imported
gasoline to be sold in Brazil (Decree 19.717, 20th Feb. 1931). In 1938 he further stipulated
that national gasoline producers had to add ethanol to the gasoline in proportions defined by
the Instituto do Açucar e do Álcool - IAA (Decree 737, 23). This situation continued, with
varying amounts of ethanol blended with gasoline during the 1960s and 1970s. Little
further development of the ethanol car was done, however, from the 1940s to 1975,
probably because the State was focusing on an import-substitution policy, with increasing
efforts to find and extract oil in the national territory, rather than import substitution by
producing alternative fuels. Parts of this struggle can be seen during the oil campaign, a
nationalistic movement that emerged after 1938, when oil was found in Bahia until the
creation of Petrobras in 1952. O petróleo é noso campaign, dates back to the O Poço do
Visconde, a children’s book, written and published by Monteiro Lobato in 1937.
As Wikipedia says:
José Bento Renato Monteiro Lobato (April 18, 1882 – July 4, 1948) was one of Brazil's most
influential writers, mostly for his children's books set in the fictional Sítio do Picapau Amarelo [in
a free translation by the author: ‘Yellow Woodpecker’s Farm’] but he had also been previously
a prolific writer of fiction, a translator and an art critic. He also founded one of Brazil's first
publishing houses, Companhia Editora Nacional, and was a supporter of nationalism.
(...)
Politically, Lobato was strongly in favor of a state monopoly for iron and oil exploration in
Brazil and battled publicly for it between 1931 and 1939. For his libertarian views, he was
arrested by the then dictatorial government of Getúlio Dornelles Vargas in 1941. This
movement, called O Petróleo é Nosso was highly successful, and the same Getúlio Vargas, after
being democratically elected president, created Petrobras in 1952.
Source: Wikipedia, 2014.
Figure 4 - Monteiro Lobato
22
Although INT continued to do research on ethanol and the occurrence of the I Congresso
Nacional de Carburantes, organized in 1942, kept the possibilities visible. The finding of
oil in Brazil and the subsequent creation of Petrobras, in 1953, dominated national policy
and restricted research funding on alternative fuels. Only Urbano Stumpf, while conducting
his undergraduate experiments in CTA, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, appeared to carry
on research on the Brazilian ethanol car. (Ripoli, 1983).
During the 1950s, the State influenced and strengthened the national industry through its
Plano de Metas, a set of policies aimed to empower specific economic sectors, namely the
energy sector, transport sector, consumer goods sector, food and education. O Plano de
Metas was extremely influential in supporting and strengthening the automotive regime by
attracting foreign companies to settle and start producing in Brazil, with at least 70% of the
components being supplied nationally. (GOMES, 1991). This policy was linked to the
country’s import substitution strategy. Also, more roads were built, in order to interconnect
the whole country. The automotive regime was growing and it substituted the railroad
regime in Brazil.
At the same time, two institutions for the coordination of science and technology activities
were created. First, the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico –
CNPq was founded in 195127
, aimed to support and stimulate scientific research. Also the
Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES was created in
1951 with the objective of expanding and consolidating post-graduate education in the
country. The rationale was the modernizing view in which federal investment in science
and technology would lead to economic development. This was the ideal; there were few
signs that the research community established links with the productive sector. Another
attempt to link science and technology with strategic sectors of economy was the creation,
in the 1950s, of the Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica - ITA, a military engineering
centre, containing an engineering school and a R&D centre, whose objective was to provide
technical and personnel support to the Brazilian aeronautics (Schwartzman, 2001). ITA
came to be considered the best engineering school in Brazil and the first prototypes of the
27
In English: National Research Council. Until 1971 it was called Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa.
23
Brazilian Ethanol Car were developed by Stumpf within one of Centro Técnico de
Aeronáutica – CTA’s laboratories.28
The military coup in 1964 and a further strengthening of the National-Developmentalism
orientation influenced the further evolution of the national innovation regime from the
1960s to the 1980s. Science and technology activities continued to be considered central for
overcoming underdevelopment, and more universities were created. The National
Technology Fund was established to support the areas that were considered most important
for the national development like physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering. The
National Technology Fund started with the idea that economic incentives could lead the
private investors to develop their own technology, instead of importing it from abroad; very
soon it begun to support selected teaching and research programmes. (Dagnino and Velho,
1998)
Many policies of the military period (1964 – 1985), and initiatives in creating funding
agencies, universities, steering research, depict science and technology activities as central
components of a strategy for economic development. In 1967 Financiadora de Estudos e
Projetos – FINEP was established, a public company founded to financially support
innovation and industrial development activities. Other science and technology successful
examples from that period are: the creation of Embraer in 196929
, influenced by the import-
substitution policy, by the government, who gave it contracts and trained its engineers at
ITA/CTA, mainly focusing on the internal market until 1985. An important PRI that was
created in that period is Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária – EMBRAPA30
,
which was founded in 1972. In 1973 the government enacted the I Plano Básico de
Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico – PBDCT (SALLES FILHO, 2002),31
which
aimed to promote the links between universities, research and the industry, by stimulating
cooperation, funding researches, offering more interesting interest rates for loans to finance
28
In English: Aeronautics Technology Center. Nowadays it is called Departamento de Ciência e Tecnologia
Aeroespacial – DCTA. 29
Embraer is commercial conglomerate that provides aeronautical services. It started as a government-owned
corporation and was sold. It`s privatization took place in the 1990s. 30
`Brazilian Enterprise for Agricultural Research`, a State-owned company. 31
In English: I Basic Plan for Scientific and Technological Development
24
researches that would benefit the industry and also giving tax reductions for the acquisition
of instruments for industrial laboratories.
The sociotechnical landscape in which the ethanol car emerged, Brazil of the early-1970s,
was different from the one visualized in the early-1920s, when the use of ethanol was an
international sociotechnical promise. In the 1970s ethanol was blended to all the gasoline
sold in the country and, thus, part of the Brazilian automotive sociotechnical regime. A
body of knowledge, materialized in reports of a functioning E100 prototype, had been
constructed at the laboratories of EECM and CTA. With the modernization of the country
more roads had been constructed and automakers were developing cars inside Brazil. The
State, moved by ideals of national development, pushed modernization efforts by
consolidating parts of the national industry, funding the creation of Universities, enacting
policies to strengthen science and technology activities. From the experiments within the
laboratories, the ethanol sociotechnical system had been expanded and new elements were
incorporated to its sociotechnical constellation. Knowledge and a prototype of ethanol
powered engines, anhydrous ethanol blended to gasoline, gasoline cars, and national
development were among the elements that had been constructed until the early 1970s.
1.3.2 The early development of the ethanol car 1973 – 1979
In 1973 the world faced a boom in oil prices, the 1973 oil shock, which stimulated the
search for alternative energy sources. Brazil, as many other countries, began to take the
search for alternative energy sources seriously. Among many alternatives, there were
hydroelectricity, nuclear energy and ethanol fuel.32
Eventually ethanol,33
made from sugar
cane, became the Brazilian answer to the oil crisis. It is not surprising that under the
dictatorial regime, governance was assertive and many efforts were allocated to develop
and get the Brazilian Ethanol Car embedded (E100) in society. There were hierarchical
structures that allowed the government to push for what it wanted, and there were
sociotechnical elements that afforded the investment of time and resources on the
32
Also the recent discovery of offshore oil (Pre-sal oil) is an outcome of the initiatives started after 1973. 33
Actually, the choice of ethanol from sugar cane was not made without external interference. By the moment
of the decision to invest in ethanol as the alternative fuel, the military government and sugar producers were
allies. On the one hand, overproduction of sugar would be commercially used and on the other hand, the
ethanol programme would receive political support from sugar producers, an important economic actor in
Brazil. (Santos, 1993: 17-19).
25
development of the ethanol car in Brazil. The Brazilian State took upon itself the
development of the sociotechnical system of the E100. It not only pushed the development
of the E100, but it enacted it at different levels, from early technological developments to
broader societal embedding.34
Figure 5 - The 1973 Oil crisis.
Source: Quatro Rodas, November, 1973: 126-127 Acervo digital Quatro Rodas.
A few systematic attempts to increase the use of ethanol in the country, before the
enactment of Proálcool, were also seen within Petrobras. Already before the first oil shock
(1973) Brazil was facing problems regarding its balance of trade, mainly because of large
expenditure on imported fuels and fuel additives. Between 1969 and 1974, Shigeaki Ueki
was occupying the position of director of Petrobras and proposed to substitute tetraethyl
lead by anhydrous alcohol as a fuel additive used to increase the octane rating of gasoline,
but there he encountered resistance (Silva and Fischetti, 2008: 67-70)35,36
Only when
34
Which also included aligning the ethanol car with the automotive sociotechnical regime and the sugar and
alcohol sectors. More details in Ch4. 35
Tetraethyl lead had been imported and anhydrous alcohol was produced in the country, therefore the
substitution would decreased imports expenditure and also make the anhydrous alcohol market broader.
26
President Ernesto Geisel invited him to become the Minister of Mines and Energy he could
direct more efforts towards the plan of using ethanol as a fuel. As Ministry of Mines and
Energy, Shigeaki Ueki contacted some industrialists, mainly from the sugar and the gas
industry, who in 1974 produced a document about the financial viability of producing more
alcohol entitled “A Fotossíntese como Fonte de Energia”37
.
The programme did not start with a blank slate. Many things were in place already. Brazil
had a long tradition as sugar producer and exporter, as well as previous experience in
working on ethanol as an alternative fuel, such as those carried out by Oliveira, Stumpf and
others. It is part of larger patterns, relating to alternative fuels worldwide, and to the gradual
build-up of a public research infrastructure. As noted, research carried at EECM and
EECM, created a body of knowledge about the use of ethanol as a fuel that supported the
emergence of the E100.
The proposition to use ethanol fuel, or even as a fuel additive required a lot of work, its
enactors had to promote it, negotiate with other governmental and business actors. (Silva
and Fischetti, 2008).The programme set up in 1975 was new, but it addressed ongoing
national problems. Specifically, it aimed to reduce the country`s expenditure on oil imports,
its energy dependence and to handle its sugar surplus. It first focused on increasing the
amount of ethanol to be blended with gasoline, and later on the development of an engine
that could run solely on ethanol, a 100% ethanol car. The prototype of an ethanol car was
available already, and the State could concentrate on further development and embedding
the car in society, actually acting similarly to a systems builder (Hughes,1983)38
.
The technological viability of the E100 was initially pursued in the laboratories of a PRI,
CTA/ITA. Urbano Stumpf graduated in Engineering from ITA 39
and was teaching at the
36
Actually, anhydrous alcohol was first produced from molasses that is a by-product of the production of
sugar. “as an activity dependent of sugar production, the volume (of molasses) produced was higher than the
needs of the industry and for exports. Once the overproduction was calculated, it was produced as anhydrous
alcohol for the combustion blend” (CNI, 1981: 39). 37
I did not have access this document, but it was often mentioned in interviews, documents as well as in
publications such as Silva and Fischetti, 2008. 38
His analysis of system building and expansion is applicable also when the State encountered a reverse
salient (Hughes’s terminology), the corrosion of the engines caused by ethanol, and turned it into a critical
problem to be faced by the State. 39
In 1950 and in 1951 he became a professor at ITA and he began to supervise students doing research about
the use of Ethanol as a fuel. Some interviewees pointed out that his research woork was heavily influenced by
the that carried out at INT during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1952 he published a paper about the potential use of
27
University of Brasilia when he was invited to return to ITA40
to help find technological
solution to decrease fuel consumption by in the Brazilian cars.41
Within the laboratories of
ITA, Stumpf coordinated a team of researchers that besides increasing the amount of
ethanol blended to gasoline, aimed to develop an engine fit to run solely on ethanol. To
meet acceptable standards for most of the engines used in cars in Brazil, the laboratory
conducted bench tests on engines representative of 80% of the national fleet (Stumpf, 1978;
1982; Silverio, 2008)
In September 1975, the Secretariat of Industrial Technology, from the Ministry of Industry
and Commerce, in collaboration with researchers from CTA, elaborated a document to
present the results of 18 months of the contracted research on the use of ethanol as a fuel42
.
Within the document three options to increase the use of ethanol as a fuel were
recommended: i. as anhydrous ethanol blended to gasoline43
, in low amounts; ii. parallel to
gasoline or diesel, in engines that would then require double carburetion systems; and, iii.
as an exclusive fuel, in cars whose engines were either retrofitted or designed to run on
ethanol. The oil crisis had shown the fragility of the Brazilian energy dependence, and
dedicated research and development gave more plausibility to the idealistic vision from the
1920s of using pure ethanol as an automotive fuel.
ethanol as fuel in the “Revista de Engenharia do Rio Grande do Sul” (Silva and Fischete, 2008: 48). From
1959 to 1964 Urbano Stumpf taught at EESC-USP(Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos – Universidade de
São Paulo) and from 1965 to 1972 he was teaching at UnB (Universidade de Brasilia). 40
Where he would be equipped with laboratories, financial and human resources to focus on the development
of Ethanol as a fuel and of the E100. 41
Stumpf was an engineer graduated from ITA, who did research on ethanol as a fuel and was working at
Universidade de Brasilia (UnB). The details of his transfer from UnB to CTA are unclear/lost. One can only
speculate how exactly Stumpf moved from UnB to ITA, not many documents from that period are easily
available for investigation. Different sources sustain that the person responsible for inviting Ernesto Urbano
Stumpf to go back to ITA was Bautista Vidal, the secretary of Industrial Technology during Geisel’s
presidential mandate. (Silva and Fischetti, 2008: 75; Bautista Vidal in an interview to the author in 2008). It is
interesting that, from the story told (the myth of origin), Stumpf was sent to work at CTA, under orders of a
member of the government, Bautista Vidal, but without the president’s knowledge about it. 42
MIC/STI, 1975. 43
Hydrous and Anhydrous alcohol differ from each other in the amount of water each one contains.
According to the Brazilian National Agency of Oil, Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP: 2011), the maximal
amount of water in Hydrous Ethanol Fuel is 4.9% of the total volume, while in Anhydrous Ethanol Fuel it is
0.4% of the total volume. According to Filho (1980: 254), in the late 1970s and early 1980s anhydrous
alcohol blended to gasoline consisted of 99.3% of alcohol. In 2011, Ramírez Triana describes the process
through which anhydrous alcohol is produced in Brazil: “water excess must be eliminated from hydrated
ethanol for the compulsory blends. The alcohol passes through a dehydration process, where benzene is
added concentration the alcohol, which suffers a final distillation. Benzene is almost fully recovered from the
mix using a special column. After this separation, anhydrous ethanol is ready to be stored” (2011: 4607)
28
In November of 1975 President Geisel launched Proálcool,44
the national programme of
ethanol. It set up a financing scheme for the production of ethanol to be used as a fuel45,46
.
At the same time, the laboratories of CTA were commissioned to continue research on the
use of ethanol as a fuel. These focused on three main topics: to increase the amount of
ethanol blended to gasoline, to adapt/retrofit gasoline engines to run on 100% ethanol, and
to design engines that would be fueled with 100% ethanol. After that, the government set
the maximum amount of ethanol to be blended to gasoline at 25%, given that amount of
ethanol in the blend should not result in the reduction of the power output from the fuel, nor
in an increase of fuel consumption. Knowledge on retrofitting engines and the design of
new engines to run only on ethanol were fully developed only a couple of years later,
building on outcomes of the studies of engines fueled by the blends.
After 1975 governmental action was based on increasing the amount of ethanol in the
blend. In parallel, researchers in CTA were responsible for adapting a gasoline engine to
run on pure ethanol. The first prototype developed by CTA was a Dodge Polara (Quatro
Rodas, August 1976), a gasoline engine retrofitted to run on pure ethanol. At that moment,
the major adaptations on the engine were increasing the compression ratio in the
combustion chamber, changing parts of the carburetor, conceiving a stronger ignition coil
and creating a preheating system for the fuel. Based on the experience acquired with this
project, CTA engineers developed the basic guidelines to adapt the engines of other cars,
starting with a VW Beetle 1300 and a Gurgel Xavante. Together with the Dodge Polara,
they were the first three prototypes of retrofitted ethanol cars developed by CTA.
In order to make public the research outcomes of research carried out at CTA/ITA, the
Office of Industrial Technology (STI), the organ that coordinated the ethanol programme in
44
Decree N 76.593, 14th
November, 1975. 45
Details of this financing - Loan program to produce ethanol - scheme can be found in: MIC-STI. (1981). It
is however important to highlight, that according to Hira and Oliveira (2009) there was a huge loan ($1
billion) from the World Bank, and another huge loan ($1 billion) from European and American banks to
invest in R&D for the programme. 46
During Proálcool the government acted in two main ways to promote the use of ethanol fuel, giving
incentives to the production of ethanol and to the use of ethanol as a fuel. The first has already been
extensively studied (see, for instance: Santos 1993), but little attention has been given to technologies for the
use of ethanol as a fuel. Research work CTA aimed at the use of ethanol in buses, airplanes and cars. Only the
latter is the focus of this chapter.
29
Brazil, organized an automotive trip that was called “The National Integration Circuit”.47
The three prototypes which had been converted to run on Ethanol travelled approximately
8,000 kilometres across the country. The cars had stickers saying “fuelled with ethanol”
and the caravan stopped in many cities to show the possibility of using ethanol as an
automotive fuel. The main purpose of the caravan was to convince the population that
ethanol was a sound and reliable alternative to gasoline. The circuit was also intended to
test the cars. Until then no long endurance tests on roads had been made on them and it was
the opportunity for CTA/ITA engineers to test the performance of the converted engines on
the road.
The double purpose of showing the feasibility of an ethanol fueled car to the Brazilian
society and doing a field performance test for the prototypes could have killed the ethanol
car in its uterus if there had been major problems with the prototypes. Instead, during the
caravan, on 10th November 1976 the head of the Office of Industrial Technology, Bautista
Vidal, announced that the country was ready to produce ethanol cars. It would start with the
conversion of automotive fleets owned by state companies and, thus, the first Brazilian
automobiles to be powered by alcohol would be the official State cars, taxi fleets and buses.
48
A follow up of the National Integration Circuit, on both counts, was the introduction of
ethanol engines in the fleets of State owned companies, allowing further practical
experience. Building on the guidelines it had developed previously, CTA/ITA used the
engines it had converted as models, which set the standards for future research and engine
conversions. CTA started converting gasoline engines of cars from the fleets of State
owned companies. In the beginning, only State-owned companies in the state of São Paulo
had part of their fleets converted to run on 100% ethanol, but that did not last long. In May
1977 some experimental engines were converted and started to operate in State-owned
companies, constituting the experimental fleets. The experimental fleets evidenced the
problems that needed to be overcome to make the ethanol car prepared to be used
47
The National Integration Circuit was organized by the Secretariat of Industrial technology in 1976. During
this period the three prototypes visited many important cities in Brazil. It received a lot of attention from the
media, and government actors used it as a platform for governmental propaganda, such as saying that “it had
been proved that country has conditions to have a 100% ethanol car. (Folha de São Paulo: 9th Nov., 1976) 48
Later on the plan to convert busses to run on Ethanol was abandoned.
30
everywhere within the Brazilian territory. Between August and September 1977 Telesp49
put on service the first 25 cars, out of a 400 fleet, converted to alcohol in order to reduce its
costs with fuel consumption (Folha da tarde, 2nd
May, 1979; Brazil, [1979?]: 91). This
number increased and after that experimental fleets were created inside other state owned
companies so that one of the strategies of STI could be carried: to improve the alcohol
distribution system all over the country so as to serve the enlarging geographical
distribution of the fleets.
As the programme+ expanded, CTA faced work and geographical limitations. To overcome
these limitations, Technology Support Centers were set up across the country, inside the
infrastructure of a university or a public research institute. Technology Support Centers
monitored the experimental fleets located in their vicinity and reported on the performance
of each car to CTA. The technological support centre held annually meetings, reporting on
general problems and solutions.50
Concurrently, CTA carried out researches on adapting
other types of engines, which increased the variety of cars to be used in the experimental
fleets and reported back to the Secretariat of Industrial Technology. An informant who was
working in CTA at that time mentioned that they had developed the guidelines for adapting
80% of the brands of cars available on the Brazilian market.51
The direct results of the
creation of experimental fleets are summarized in: standardization of the average amount of
alcohol added to petrol in 14%, for the whole country, and the development of the
technology for the conversion of more car engines. Those were the followings: Dodge
Polara 1800 cc; Volkswagen 1300 cc; Volkswagen 1500/1600 cc; Ford Corcel 1400 cc;
Ford V8 1800 cc and the Opala 2400 cc. The Institute carried out more bench tests, with
other models of engines and began to set standards for converting regular engines. Those
engines equipped the automobiles in the governmental fleets (hereafter: experimental
fleets) and soon there were state-owned cars running on ethanol all over the country.
Through the Technology Support Centers, technical problems were identified and solutions
were sought. Based on their reporting, CTA would then modify some of its technical
49
The telephone state-owned company from the state of São Paulo. 50
The meetings of the Technological Support Centres gave birth to the Brazilian Society of Automotive
Engineers (SAE-Brazil), as one sees that its first meeting was held together with the meeting of the
Technology Support Centres (CATs). [STI, 1983] 51
Silverio; Paulo – Interview with the author, 2008; Brasil (1979?).
31
guidelines for the retrofitting/adapting of gasoline engines to ethanol. Technical problems
as corrosion caused by ethanol on some of the small parts of the engines, the difficulty of
starting the car in cold weather conditions, and also the high fuel consumption of some
models were identified within the experimental fleets and led to continuous improvements
of the engines. Not only did the experimental fleets, thus, act as a protected space for the
development and improvement of ethanol cars, but it also influenced the decision of the
automotive industry to produce ethanol cars regularly,52
which as a net effect increased the
embedding in society of the 100% ethanol car, the Brazilian Ethanol Car.
Experimental fleets were protected spaces for the development of the ethanol car: they were
opportunities to learn about the technical problems that could inhibit the use of alcohol. As
a protected space for experimenting with “converted” ethanol cars, the fleets brought to the
fore some technical, infra-structural obstacles for increasing the number of ethanol cars in
Brazil. The most important obstacles were: the definition of technical norms for ethanol
engines; the construction of a system for characterizing and controlling the quality of
alcohol fuel; the constitution of a system for transport and distribution of alcohol; the
continuous improvement of the technology of alcohol use and the balance between the
production of alcohol and its consumption (Brazil, [1979?]: 92).
These strategies of the government, through STI/MIC, of creating experimental fleets,
using Technological Support Centres to report on their performance and to accredit
retrofitting shops, after 1979, were very important because they brought new users to the
E100 sociotechnical constellation. It developed representations of the Brazilian Ethanol Car
(BEC)53
, and expanded the reach of the E100 by testing, further developing the technology
and pushing its societal embedding. The shops mediated the relations of the Government,
E100, and its users. More than that, the developments in the experimental fleets allowed
negotiations to occur among the governmental organs, the automakers, the repair shops that
were authorized to convert the cars and the producers of auto parts in Brazil (Brasil,
[1979?]: 92). Linkages were built between PRI and the industry.
52
All technology of the ethanol car that was developed under the coordination of STI was made available to
the automotive industry, without government asking for royalties, considering it would not be exported. 53
In Portuguese: O carro a álcool Brasileiro (BEC).
32
In 1979, in a protocol of intentions with the National Association of Automotive
Assemblers (ANFAVEA), the State also promised to maintain a reliable increasing amount
of ethanol available at pump stations, by buying it from the ethanol distilleries and
distributing it throughout the country via Petrobras. Both supply and demand were tackled
by programme+, and innovation was being pushed side by side with its consumption.
Planalsucar, another government initiative (see Chapter 3), had an important role in the
project. Its mission was to develop new varieties of sugar cane which would increase the
production of ethanol for each cultivated hectare. Universities and other PRIs were also
responsible for monitoring the experimental fleets, as I will show later.54
The private
initiative worked to increase the productivity of ethanol. There was important R&D
contribution from Coopersucar, a cooperative of sugar and ethanol producers which was
active in generating new sugar cane varieties and also improving industrial processes for
ethanol production, and from IAC during the 1990s, when it enacted PROCANA, who
produced incremental innovations on sugarcane varieties for the agribusiness sector.
(Olalde, 1992; Hasegawa, 2005). After the signature of the protocol with the government,
major automotive assemblers and retrofitting shops became more active in developing the
E100 and converting gasoline cars to run on ethanol. Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company,
was responsible for buying ethanol from the producers and selling it to filling stations. All
these actors, and some other, interacted on different levels and influenced the development
and embedding of the E100.
1.3.3 From the E100’s societal embedding to its partial revival as the Flexible Fuel
Vehicle.
The societal embedding of the E100 in Brazil, its decline after the ethanol shortage in 1989
and its subsequent partial revival mark the next two phases of the development of the
ethanol car in Brazil. Chapter 3 and 4 offer the substantial data and further analysis of those
processes, and here, I will present a brief reconstruction of government attempts to make
the E100 part of the Brazilian sociotechnical landscape. First, this subsection presents
limited data on how the government was pushing the development of E100 as a
54
For the development of the Brazilian ethanol car, the government relied mostly on Public Research
Institutes (PRI), and by basing its developments on PRIs the State was playing it safe. The rules and
arrangements that emerged from the previous relations of the State with the PRIs were, to some extent, stable
and so the State could be more certain of the outcomes of these relations.
33
sociotechnical artifact, and how it expanded the E100’s maintenance constituency. Second,
I present the decline of the E100 as a partial view of the dynamics within the innovation
journey of the ethanol car. The sales of E100s reduced and governmental incentives were
removed, but the E100 did not disappear and its maintenance constituency remained active.
The E100 co-existed with the gasoline car, with which the E100 established sociotechnical
interactions; hence, one can speak of an evolving patchwork of the E100 and the gasoline
car, an example of the general idea of an evolving patchwork of old and new technologies.
After the first period (1975-1979) in which ethanol was added to gasoline, tests were
carried out within the laboratories of CTA/ITA and in governmental fleets; the
programme+ was sufficiently robust to enter into a next phase, of societal embedding and
solidification of the ethanol car programme. A mark was that in 1979 by the National
Association of Automotive Assemblers (ANFAVEA) and representatives of the Brazilian
government signed a joint protocol of intentions to start producing and commercializing
ethanol-fueled cars. (Brazil and ANFAVEA, 1979). The industry committed itself to
produce and assemble ethanol cars, while the government guaranteed the supply
(production and distribution) of ethanol fuel all over Brazil. Not only did the State push the
development of the Brazilian Ethanol Car, but it also developed policies to support its
embedding in the Brazilian society. In sum, the government actions that had been taken to
support the uptake of the ethanol car, were the creation of the accreditation scheme,
inducing drivers to buy ethanol cars by giving them tax reductions, stopping the sales of
petrol at filling stations on Sundays, and subsidizing the sugar agro-industry to produce
ethanol for the internal market instead of sugar for export. Hence, there were subsidies
and/or tax reduction to ethanol producers, to ethanol car’s users, to ethanol sales at pump
stations and to the automotive industries willing to invest in the production of ethanol cars.
The drawbacks identified in the previous stage were to a large extent overcome, and the
E100 was on its way to success.
Technological Support Centres had a central role after 1979 because they were responsible
for accrediting repair shops to convert gasoline engines that could run on ethanol. After the
establishment of experimental fleets and parallel to the first years of the production of
ethanol cars, the Secretariat of Industrial Technology (STI) promoted the use of ethanol by
34
accrediting retrofitting shops to convert gasoline powered cars to run on ethanol (Stumpf,
1982: 32). The first crediting centre was CTA, who accredited the Technology Support
Centres. Those, in their turn trained the mechanics of retrofitting shops to perform the
adaptations in accordance to the specifications set by the Secretariat of Industrial
Technology. (O Estado de São Paulo, 6th
June, 1979). Every car retrofit by an accredited
shop received a stamp indicating that it was legally adapted to run on ethanol. At that time,
to buy ethanol at the pump station it was necessary to have an official stamp, on the car´s
windscreen. (Folha da Tarde, 19th
August, 1981).
Figure 6 - A stamp being fixed an ethanol fuelled car.
Sorce: Folha da Tarde, 19th
August, 1981.
The stamp proved the engine was converted under specific technical standards, based on
the exemplars developed at CTA/ITA with support of the data collected by the
Technological Support Centres, that guaranteed its alignment with the standards of
functionality and efficiency set up by the government. The material base for this regulation
was that not every retrofitting shop was accredited to make the conversion. This intended to
35
be a quality control measure for the adaptations, but it also allowed the government to
monitor the demand and plan the supply of ethanol. Fuel stations were not allowed to sell
ethanol to drivers whose car did not have the official stamp., but as it has been reported
(Quatro Rodas, January 1981; Folha da Tarde, 14th February, 1981), one third of retrofitted
cars were adapted illegally and gas station attendants did not ask for the official stamps
before filling up cars, a situation that influenced the balance between supply and demand of
ethanol, affecting the ethanol crisis of the late 1980s.
In 1982, there were 300 retrofitting shops accredited to perform the conversion of gasoline
engines to run on Ethanol. It is reported that by that same year 50,000 conversions were
made (Boscolo, 1982: 39), not to mention the estimate that 20,000 more engines had been
converted illegally (Folha da Tarde, 14th
February 1981). The records about the amount of
conversions made by accredited retro-fitting shops as displayed in governmental
documents, e.g. the reports from STI, do not continue after 1982.
Retrofitting shops were linked to government because although independent they were
endorsed and accredited by Technological Support Centres that, in their turn, were
accredited by the Secretariat of Industrial Technology, located in the Ministry of Industry
and Commerce. This is very important because it brought new users to BEC´s
sociotechnical constellation and developed representations of BEC. In this sense, the
retrofitting shops mediated the relations of the Government, BEC, E100, and its users.
Nonetheless, the Technology Support Centres became a new actor in the innovation regime,
with some independence towards CTA and the government. They became part of what
Staudenmaier (1989) called a maintenance constituency. Another, and complementary part
of this maintenance constituency were the garages accredited to retrofit gasoline engines.
Their experience and competencies remained after the success story of the Brazilian
Ethanol car collapsed at the end of the 1980s. Its importance, as maintenance constituency,
can be one explanation for the easy insertion of the flexible fuel vehicle launched in 2003
by Volkswagen do Brazil.
36
Table 1 - Gasoline engines converted to run on Alcohol per year (1979-1982).
Year Number of Engines Converted
1979 4,970
1980 28,653
1981 16,198
198255 1,463
Source: MIC/CENAL. (1983).
Also, the government responded to the changing economic situation by annually specifying
minimal levels of blending as well as production quotes of ethanol. Nevertheless, in 1980,
the price of sugar increased and in response, the government felt necessary to increase the
price of ethanol from 40% to 65% of the price of gasoline, and also suspended some credit
subsidies. Both initiatives negatively influenced the purchase of new ethanol cars. New
incentives for the ethanol car were then created in 1981-1982. For the next two years the
price of ethanol would remain at 59% of the price of gasoline or less. Another attempt to
get the ethanol car taken up was by benefiting taxi drivers who would pay less, because
they were excepted from paying Tax on Industrialized Products (IPI)56
and the Tax on the
circulation of goods (ICM)57
, and would have attractive financing conditions when buying
new ethanol cars to use them as taxis. Moreover, taxi drivers using ethanol cars also had an
extra discount on ethanol prices at the filling stations, paying less than 59% of the gasoline
price. (A Noticia, 1982; A Gazeta Mercantil, 1982). When oil prices decreased enormously
in 1986 the government cut its expenses on research and development of engines.
Especially after 1986 the major form of governmental support for the societal embedding of
the E100 consisted in constantly redefining the rations of the ethanol-gasoline blend. (Hira
and de Oliveira, 2009: 2454).
Looking back one sees how the Brazilian government attempt to get the ethanol car
embedded in society required continuing adjustments and repair work. This was visible
already in the late 1970s, in its concern with the increasing costs of the programme, as well
55
From 1983 on the Governmental reports have no information about the engines conversion any more. 56
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Imposto sobre Produto Industrializado (IPI). 57
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Imposto sobre Circulação de Mercadorias (ICM).
37
as with the harsh criticism the programme was receiving because of the opportunity costs of
the economic subsidies dispensed to the programme. Governmental efforts, nonetheless,
got the Brazilian ethanol car embedded in Brazilian society. In 1986 E100 production
represented approximately 76% of automotive sales of that year. (ANFAVEA, 2010). The
E100 was aligned to the automotive sociotechnical regime, it was accepted by users and it
was also in accordance with environmental regulations of the period. Three years later,
however, the socio technical constellation changed and the Ethanol Car project collapsed
and faced almost fifteen years of stagnation. By the late 1980s, a shift occurred in the
external constellation under which the Brazilian Ethanol Car programme had been
successful, and the programme, as well most of the use of ethanol cars, collapsed. The
prices of sugar and oil on international markets had not moved as expected, the political
regime was in transition to democracy and the substitution of imported oil became less of a
priority, and there was a strong move towards the liberalization of the economy, which was
pushed by the Washington Consensus that recommended to reduce State intervention in the
economy. In 1989 there was a huge shortage of ethanol, long queues of ethanol powered
cars waiting for ethanol at the pump stations could be seen everywhere in the country. The
ethanol car programme (or better, programme+) had been built upon a more or less stable
external constellation. Once this constellation changed, the ethanol car programme was
undermined, its sales dropped to 10% of the automotive market in 1990 (ANFAVEA,
2010).
Although new ethanol car sales were insignificant, the artifact remained in use, fuel stations
were still selling ethanol, and ethanol cars were still being driven in Brazilian cities. The
E100 did not fully collapse as a sociotechnical configuration, continued to exist and to
populate Brazil throughout its users and its maintenance constituency. After 1989, within
the space of a few years, the ethanol car was totally dropped from government concern, but
it survived to some extent in practice (cf. maintenance community, as it will be discussed in
chapter 4). Eventually there was a resurrection: the use of ethanol as a main fuel re-
emerged, because of the Flexible Fuel Vehicle, first launched by Volkswagen do Brazil in
2003 (the emergence of the FFV will be detailed in Chapter 4).
38
CONCLUSIONS
The historical reconstruction of the ethanol car´s innovation journey, informed by a
sociotechnical analysis allowed the visualization of larger patterns within the dynamics of
science and technology. The metaphor of an innovation journey, informed by a
sociotechnical analysis allowed the identification of some setbacks and the many
complexities involved in the process. Specially, I observed the influence of the
sociotechnical regime on the development of the ethanol car, the strengthening of the
Brazilian NIR, the emergence of the ethanol car maintenance constituency and the co-
production of technology and the socio-political order, as the sociotechnical system of the
ethanol car was expanding and the E100 was getting embedded in the Brazilian societal
fabric. Within the innovation journey of the ethanol car sociotechnical system in Brazil new
entities emerged, the State macro-enacted the ethanol car while it also strengthened the
NIR, the ethanol maintenance constituency was created and helped to support the
continuity of the E100 after the ethanol shortage of 1989. Elements of the National
Innovation Regime were re-aligned, and, through the co-existence of the E100 and the
gasoline car, an evolving patchwork of old and new technologies became more evident.
Linked to international trends, BEC emerged, in a very open ended way, within the cultural
repertoire in Brazil in the 1920s. Elements that were constructed before the enactment of
programme+ influenced the way the ethanol car emerged. Since the 1920s until the early
1970s Brazil had been trying to develop an ethanol car, and by doing so it created the
material conditions for the emergence of E100, and it strengthened the NIR. The ethanol as
a fuel was already part of the Brazilian automotive sociotechnical regime, and there were
references to a prototype of an E100, which provided material elements to be linked to BEC
after 1973 in the realization of the E100. There were promises, about fuel independence and
revenues for industrialists that influenced the consolidation of protected spaces for the
development of the ethanol car.
For the development of the specific sociotechnical system the State pushed the socio-
material development of the E100, while it worked on its societal embedding, which
empowered BEC. The institutions, rules and arrangements in a NIR differ in relation to
their embeddedness in Society. In Brazil, for instance, PRI as knowledge production
39
sources for the government were more articulated than for the industry. This suggests that
in the dynamics of the Brazilian Innovation Regime, because of its “historical
circumstances”, the PRIs institutes were closely connected to the needs, or missions put on
them by the State. PRIs were much more oriented towards coming up with pragmatic
solutions for governmental issues, rather than towards interacting with the industry. BEC
was first developed by PRIs, which in Brazil had a tradition of conducting research on
issues in the interest of the nation, instead of being linked with the industry, whose main
R&D activities were conducted abroad. This last point supports a more general argument
that the role of the State, in sociotechnical dynamics, is limited/shaped by the type of the
interactions between the elements present in the National Innovation Regime. On the one
hand, it was pushing the development of a sociotechnical artifact and its societal
embedding, on the other hand it was strengthening the Brazilian NIR. By acting in different
levels and constructing alignment among the many actors involved in the process. The State
facilitated linkagesand sociotechnical interactions, between PRI and the automotive
industry while developing the E100. This is already different from general beliefs that there
were few interactions of PRIs and the industry in ways that can lead to innovation in Brazil.
The contextualization of the innovation journey within the Brazilian societal fabric allowed
us to see the emergence of the Centros de Apoio Technológico – CATs and their
importance. While developing the sociotechnical artifact the state played another important
role, creating a protected space for the development of the E100. The government charged
CTA with the role of developing the artifact, but the latter also set up the E100 CATs,
which helped to improve the technology of the E100 by making it resilient to different
conditions throughout the country. The activities carried within the CATs created
competencies within PRIs and the automotive sector to work with the E100. For example,
when corrosion needed to be overcome new interactions among auto-assemblers, the small
parts auto-industry, the CATs and CTA were established. In this protected space the E100
was nourishing and competencies were built. The practices and knowledge developed in the
protected space were important for the maintenance of the ethanol car before and after
1989. The first meeting of Society of Automotive Engineers, Brazil (SAE-Brazil) was held
together with the meetings of the CATs, hence one can infer that the emergence of the
E100 maintenance constituency created experiences and competencies to identify the
40
possibility of developing the Flexible Fuel Vehicle. A more detailed version of the analysis
on how the State pushed the programme+, coordinated actions and carried the development
of the E100 and nurtured BEC, as in the National Integration Circuit is offered in chapter 3.
It is important to note that the maintenance constituency of the E100 was a key element in
the expansion of the E100 sociotechnical system, because, to some extent it mediated the
relations between E100 within the societal fabric. Reverse salients, as corrosion and the
cold ignition problem, were identified and overcome with researches within the laboratories
of CTA or another CAT, and with governmental propaganda & subsidizing the state pushed
the societal embedding of the E100. The E100 and BEC were being co-constructed. The
expectations about the E100, the CATs, the ethanol car drivers and the ethanol supply
infrastructure were what Staudenmaier (1989) called maintenance constituency. By
identifying the elements of the E100’s maintenance constituency I can comprehend better
how the ethanol car survived its decline in the late 1980s (See chapter 4). For now, it is
important to note that the E100 maintenance constituency allowed its partial survival after
1989. The E100 maintenance constituency influenced the expansion of the ethanol car
sociotechnical system, enlarging its embeddedness and creating more links with elements
of the landscape (NIR, cultural repertoire). When the crisis in 1989 hit the E100 it was able
to survive, co-existing with the Gasoline car. The ethanol car and the gasoline car did not
substitute each other, but co-existed.
Important elements of the innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil were identified in
this historical reconstruction, and some of them deserve to be analysed in more details
because they allow us to see further patterns in the process of development and societal
embedding of an innovation. Thus, the next chapters offer further details and analysis about
the complexities visualized in the innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil, focusing
on: the role played by BEC, mainly its emergence and stabilization within a popular
automotive magazine (Chapter 2); the role played by the State in pushing the development
of a sociotechnical artifact and its societal embedding (Chapter 3) and the evolution of a
patchwork of old and new technologies which became more visible with the advent of the
FFV (Chapter 4).
41
CHAPTER 2: THE BRAZILIAN ETHANOL CAR
INTRODUCTION
From the 1970s onwards, the Brazilian ethanol car could be referred to as an objective of
the new Proalcool Programme, and as an emerging sociotechnical artefact, as it is
illustrated by the following headlines: “Esta é a resposta brasileira para os problemas
brasileiros” – “That is the Brazilian answer to Brazilian problems”(O Globo, 21 may,
1976), “as vantagens do carro a álcool” – “The advantages of the ethanol car” (Folha de
São Paulo, 27 Feb, 1978). The Brazilian Ethanol Car is an open-ended national
sociotechnical promise, built upon the outcomes of earlier public research that gave him
national appeal, for being a “Brazilian” car.
Figure 7 - The fuel for the brazilian car
Source: Quantro Rodas. Dez, 1975:114-115. Acervo digital Quatro Rodas.
This chapter offers an analysis of the rise of the ethanol car in Brazil with the help of
discourse analysis, an approach which has been neglected in previous studies of the ethanol
car’s journey. Thus, I will not conduct a comprehensive analysis of the journey here (other
42
elements will be discussed in Ch4), but I will focus on how the embedding of the ethanol
car can be traced through the evolution of the references to it. This implies that I will treat
the Brazilian Ethanol Car as a ‘discursive entity’: an entity that exists, but only in discourse
(written, oral), as part of the repertoire. To indicate that I am analyzing a discursive entity
rather than a material artefact, I use capital letters; occasionally, I will use the acronym
BEC for the same purpose. The Brazilian Ethanol Car as a discursive entity is an instance
of a general class of discursive entities that occur in and around the world of science and
technology: general and specific promises that start to lead a life of their own because they
can be used by others and circulate more widely.
How to study such phenomena, and particularly the emergence of the discursive entity ‘the
Brazilian Ethanol Car (BEC)’? Appropriate analytical tools come from the broad field of
discourse analysis (Gee, 2010; Jørgensen and Phillips, 2002). I will focus on the emergence
of BEC as a discursive entity. The entrance point for my analysis are articles on, and
performance tests of, motor cars in Quatro Rodas, a monthly automotive magazine
published by Grupo Abril in Brazil since the early 1950s. Thus I look at media documents
rather than documents from developers and the direct enactors of ethanol car, which would
be more oriented towards the production, development and societal embedding of the
sociomaterial artefact. Quatro Rodas emerged in the Brazilian landscape in August 1960,
during the early years of the settlement of the automotive industries in Brazil, thus it
became the first and most well known automotive magazine of the country. Given its
importance in the Brazilian automotive culture Quatro Rodas allows us to look at the
reception side of the ethanol car in Brazil. Quatro Rodas presented the ethanol car to the
Brazilian society, and eventually presented it as a successful technological innovation,
which has influenced its societal embedding. Quatro Rodas mediated the interactions
between ethanol car producers and consumers by carrying out and publishing performance
tests with ethanol cars, as well as publishing articles about the ethanol car, the Brazilian
fuel policy and alternative fuels, in general. By doing so, Quatro Rodas can be said to have
enacted the ethanol car, it brought it into being for those who did not own an ethanol car.
Their evaluations included requirements for improvements that could be read as requests on
43
the automakers. In a first step of the analysis, the texts of the performance tests and articles
in Quatro Rodas will be used as a well-defined data set that allows me to trace the Brazilian
Ethanol Car (BEC) as a discursive entity over time, at least within the pages of Quatro
Rodas. Interpretation of these findings in terms of the overall trajectory of the E100 will be
somewhat speculative because only incidentally further data can be used. Still, the chapter
affords reflection upon the role of discursive entities within sociotechnical dynamics.
The chapter is organized in four main sections and the introduction. First, a literature
review of the roles of discursive entities in science and technology dynamics. Second, there
is the methodology that guided the data collection and analysis of the chapter. The third
section presents and discusses the findings from Quatro Rodas. In the conclusion, I discuss
the achievements of using Quatro Rodas as a data set, as well as how the Brazilian Ethanol
Car (BEC) was present in discourses and influenced the trajectory of the ethanol car in
Brazil. It also reflects upon the role of discursive entities in science and technology
dynamics.
2.1 DISCURSIVE ENTITIES, AND THEIR ROLE IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DYNAMICS.
Anticipations and projections abound in the early stages of an innovation journey. There are
a variety of ideas about the direction of development, and promises about the importance of
the innovation. There is also, and increasingly so over time, specific requirements about the
functionality of the innovation, its technical specificities and how they will do better than
the previous one. These are promises, because there is no assurance the new will be able to
perform as its enactors envisioned. So what is their role in science and technology
dynamics? The literature has focused on two: (a) promise (i.e. a promised solution) –
requirement cycles (Van Lente, 1993; Poel, 1998; Parandian et al, 2012); (b) open-ended
promises with a life of their own (Van Lente, 1993; Konrad, 2006; Parandian, 2012); either
way they are discursive entities.
As noted, the role of BEC is of an intermediary position between the promise-requirement
cycles and the open-ended promises. In general, a discursive entity exists in discourses and
has a meaning of its own. Take, for instance, Chernobyl, which is a city but people can say
44
“after Chernobyl we don’t want nuclear energy anymore”, using Chernobyl as a reference
to the nuclear disaster that took place on 30 April, 1986, to the consequences of the disaster
and the eventual lessons learned from it. Let me be a bit more informal and give you
another example of a discursive entity that exists in discourses and has a meaning of its
own. That’s a typical Brazilian discursive entity, it emerged within recent touristic practices
and spanned worldwide as something trendy. First, think of favela chique, the restaurant
Brand that has branches in Paris, London, Glasgow, and Miami, and now think about
Cidade de Deus, from Fernando Meirelles. In sum, “the force of the favela brand has
become, as we see, capable of transcending geographical and territorial referentials,
promoting Brazil as well as anything wishing to present itself as ‘alternative’, ‘hip’,
‘recycled”. (Freire-Medeiros, 2007: 64; ibid, 2009: 583). In actor-network terminology, this
discursive entity is a point representation of many social and technical associations. The
emergence of a discursive entity can be accompanied by a change in the character and
meaning of the term. Brand names are a similar kind of discursive entity as Chernobyl, as
Favela, as Xerox that now can indicate photocopying in general, as people might often say:
‘let’s make a Xerox’ even if the photocopy machine is not even a xerox®.
A second interesting type of discursive entity is what McGee (1980) called ideographs. An
ideograph is a term which is used with an open-ended meaning and often has a positive
connotation. Examples are democracy, development, freedom, security, progress and
eventually new politics and/or old politics. They are terms that can be mobilized for
different political causes or interests. By claiming that one’s cause is about democracy one
creates advantages over opponents who are now depicted as less democratic. Van Lente
(1993) and Rip (1997) mention the examples of ‘industry’ and ‘sustainability’ as
ideographs in discourses about the relevance of science.
A third kind of discursive entity consists of umbrella terms. An explicit example is offered
by the European Commission (2010), when it stated:
The Commission uses ‘Roma’ as an umbrella term that includes groups of
people who share similar cultural characteristics and a history of
segregation in European societies, such as the Roma (who mainly live in
Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans), Sinti, Travellers, Kalé etc.
45
The Commission is aware that the extension of the term ‘Roma’ to all
these groups is contentious, and it has no intention to ‘assimilate’ the
members of these other groups to the Roma themselves in cultural terms.
Umbrella terms also occur in science and technology and take a different complexion. A
clear example is ‘nanotechnology’. It encompasses such a big variety of practices,
instruments, elements, interests, theories that official documents are now using the plural,
‘nanotechnologies’ when referring to the field. Rip and Voss (2013) identified a further
element present in umbrella terms in science and technology. They act as conduits of
scientific promises about the intended achievements of scientific fields.
Terms such as nanotechnology carry scientific promises about a new field, and promises
about long term societal relevance. The institutionalization of the field is then intrinsically
linked to societal relevance (thus, a conduit). Important for my questions about BEC is that
they show how what starts in discourse, e.g. as a promise, gets linked up to emerging
configurations, in their case an interorganisational field of knowledge production, and
becomes a label for this very emerging field. In the case of BEC there is an
interorganisational field of technology development and embedding in society, with a
strong role of the Brazilian government. The cases discussed by Rip and Voss have strong
bottom-up dynamics, which is helpful as a reminder that there is more than the
implementation of a government programme (i.e. Proálcool). A sociotechnical
configuration/artefact needs to be embedded in discursive practices as well so it can be
working properly.
This discussion of discursive entities helps us to position the open-ended promises about
new scientific statements and technological devices. The dynamics of promises and
expectations in science and technology have been studied by Parandian, et al. (2012: 567)
and there they called it the ‘dual dynamics of promises’ to emphasize their
interdependency. From open-ended promises to specific promises, discursive entities in
sociotechnical dynamics are identified as concrete promise-requirement cycles. Open-
ended promises are considered to be about emerging scientific fields, new technological
devices, and sociotechnical novelties in the discursive practices of spokespersons. In
discourses, open-ended promises are linked to specific promises and expectations about the
46
future implications and utility of these emerging entities in the real world. Those can be
their economic performance or their contribution to sustainable development, for example.
In practice the open-ended promises precede material objects and also create protected
spaces where material development can occur. Open-ended technological and scientific
promises are diffuse, they envision a better, faster, healthier, less polluting, more efficient
(anything!) world and they create a protected rhetorical space (van Lente and Rip, 1998:
222-223), which allows material devices to be developed further in concrete micro-level
spaces.
Figura 5 - The dual dynamics of promise-requirement cycles.
Source: Parandian, Rip and Te Kulve, TASM2012.
47
Following discursive entities one can reflect upon how strong words and phrases contribute
to the stabilization of sociotechnical configurations and eventually to the expansion of the
sociotechnical system. Strong words or short phrases, like ‘Plastics!’ or ‘The hydrogen
economy” that are used as labels to capture a diffuse promise, which carry the weight of
persuasion. The phenomenon that I am interested in can thus be defined as: Consecutive
references to an evolving, partially stabilized sociotechnical configuration by a name or
short phrase, found in discourses, which links many features of the new configuration in
such a way that the identity of the configuration gets stabilized, even if problematically.
Hence, The Brazilian Ethanol Car (BEC) is an interesting discursive entity because it is a
sociotechnical promise that was connected to the government who created a macro-
protected space for its development, but which was also being referred to by actors at the
reception side of its development.
Overall changes in modalities, that qualify or express how sound is the discursive entity’s
‘existence’, indicate the movement from sociotechnical promises to more or less
functioning objects. In scientific practices they indicate the stage on the road from claims to
facts. In the classic study Laboratory Life, Latour and Woolgar (1979) trace how scientific
claims become forceful until they become a scientific fact. They do so by observing how
scientists mobilize heterogeneous elements in texts/academic papers. The ladder of facticity
proposed by Latour and Woolgar (1979) was about scientific facts, and how those were
rhetorically constructed to become a fact. In a similar way, Robinson, Ruivenkamp and
Rip (2007) observed that scientific promises went through a, what they call, stabilization
ladder before they reached a level of maturity and stabilization in which the claims’
veracity (reality) would not be easily contested. In order to trace discursive entities one
needs to analyze discursive practices of spokespersons and observe how the discursive
entity is characterized by them. When spokespersons make reference to a discursive entity
they link them in relation to other elements of a given sociotechnical landscape.
Modalities can be found in discursive references to specific sociotechnical promises, which
indicate the status of the discursive entity. Robinson, Ruivenkamp and Rip (2007) mapped
the linkages of molecular machines to visions and shared agendas in scholarly and popular
48
magazine articles. They looked for statements that expressed certain positions towards the
new field/technology. The authors` set of modalities consists of: (i) Science fictions, that
indicate long-term fictional ideas which are accepted as scientific and technological
fantasies for which there are no demands for enactment; (ii) Visionary linkages, that
indicate long-term technological possibilities and are taken as reality-based fantasies, that
eventually might become reality; (iii) Guiding visions that consist of discourses in which
the innovation is considered plausible and there is one (or more) actor who becomes
responsible to enact it; (iv) Expectation linkages, which refer to a link with a clearly
identifiable expectations about the importance of an emerging technology; (v) A shared
agenda, which shows how a technology is or will be developed; (vi) Proofs which are
discourses that link technological developments to a proof of their functionality.
The categorization offered by Robinson, et al (2007) cannot be unreflexively applied to the
data set from Quatro Rodas about the emergence and stabilization of BEC. Especially in
performance tests, which require a working device. In performance tests one will hardly
ever find modalities of science fiction, visionary linkages, guiding visions, expectation
linkages or shared agendas. Also the modality of proof of concept needs to be reformulated
and substituted by prototypes. To cover up to the uptake and the societal embedding of a
sociotechnical artifact, it becomes necessary to introduce two new modalities to the ones
offered by the authors. Preliminary use, as characterization of references to BEC as a
working artifact which still needed further developments to live up to its promises. This
modality is more visible in relation to the experimental fleets – which were evaluated by
the technology support centers – and the few prototypes tested by Quatro Rodas. The
second new modality is unproblematic acceptance that indicates references to BEC as a
highly stable innovation, which could still be further developed to achieve even better
performance results but was, nevertheless, living up to its expectations. This last modality
becomes evident around 1984 and after, when BEC took over the pages of Quatro Rodas at
the same time as the production of ethanol cars was booming (see next section for detailed
data). When referring to new scientific fields and/or new technologies, spokespersons
implicitly or explicitly give their opinion about them and they do so by linking the novelty
49
to one of the views – modalities – presented above. I will offer a few examples that support
the premise that BEC was forceful because it linked Brazilian social and economic
problems to the national identity at the same time it carried both, open-ended and specific,
sociotechnical promises. See, (in addition tothe examples mentioned earlier) the following
references to BEC in popular media articles: “O nosso primeiro carro a álcool já em testes”
(Quatro Rodas, 1976: 98-101) – “Our first ethanol car already being tested”; “Carro a
álcool terá TRU 50%” – “The Ethanol Car will have a 50% lower road tax” (O Estado de
São Paulo, 8 August, 1979); “Seminário de avaliação do carro a álcool” – “Seminar of
evaluation of the ethanol car” 1982. (Sopral,1982: 03). In these quotes, the Brazilian
Ethanol Car (BEC) became a label, rather than a single unit of an ethanol car, with linkages
to the national identity, economics and sociotechnical developments. Sometimes texts
would refer back to The Ethanol Car, rather than to the Brazilian Ethanol Car. This,
however, does not imply that the nationalistic element was neglected, but rather it was
reinforced because it was being taken for granted.
2.2 FOLLOWING A DISCURSIVE ENTITY.
Herein, I am going to look at how articles and performance tests published in Quatro Rodas
referred to the ethanol car. Precisely, I am looking at how Quatro Rodas linked the E100 to
BEC, and thus used discursive practices to connect the E100 to the Brazilian broader
landscape and automotive sociotechnical regime. There are two major advantages of using
Quatro Rodas as an entrance point to conduct such an analysis. First, it offers a data-set in
which it is possible to observe the trajectory of BEC over time (1973-1989). Secondly, it
allows the analyst to look at the sociotechnical dynamics from a different perspective, from
the reception side rather than from the production side.
There are different kinds of data available in Quatro Rodas. There are editorial notes,
articles and performance tests. Since its early years Quatro Rodas carried and published
performance tests of gasoline powered cars. By the time ethanol emerged as a fuel option, it
also started to carry performance tests on ethanol powered cars. Every issue of Quatro
Rodas has at least 3 performance tests. That sums up about 36 performance tests in a year
50
and 504 from 1975 to 1989. In the same period there are 227 performance test on ethanol
(or blend) fuelled cars, almost half of the estimated total performance tests. Moments of
apparent inactivity, when there were few performance tests and articles about the E100, can
indicate that the E100 was more stable and embedded into Brazilian society. Besides
articles and performance tests, the existence of the E100 can be seen, for instance, in cars’
price tables, which were published at the end of each issue, and included a column for
ethanol models just beside the gasoline models’ column. Ethanol and gasoline cars started
to co-exist for the wider society. A time series analysis of the performance tests can show
the different status BEC had throughout the years. There are no direct conclusions about
what was happening in the overall journey of the ethanol car in Brazil, however I will use
my overall picture (Chapter 2) to position my Quatro Rodas findings, and I will amplify the
findings by using other sources like newspapers, reports from STI (Office of Industrial
Technology) and from proceedings of professional meetings. Those additional data will
help me fill out the picture when necessary.
As a commercial magazine, Quatro Rodas was expected to publish about ethanol cars when
this subject was “news worthy or article worthy”. One can expect to have many articles
being published in the first years of the ethanol Programme, or during 1979 and early
1980s, when the Ethanol Car was still a novelty. From then on it published performance
tests of ethanol cars as soon as they were homologated by STI. Other moments of peaks of
publication might occur when controversies emerged, such as when there was a shortage of
ethanol in the pump stations in 1989, or in moments when ethanol car sales were not as
expressive as the government and the industry had expected it to be, like in 1981 and 1982.
After STI and ANFAVEA (Brazil and Anfavea, 1979) signed the joint protocol of
intentions to develop the E100, the E100 could be produced and sold by automakers. As a
result of the broader change in the status of the E100, marked by leaving its protected space
and meeting a wider selction environment, Quatro Rodas started to test the E100 in
performance tests similar to the ones also carried in gasoline cars.
51
Quatro Rodas is an interesting source because it is relatively independent from the
government policies to enact Proálcool.58
Rather than analyzing the emergence of the
discursive entity in documents or news produced by the government, the technology’s
enactor, Quatro Rodas allows one to see how the discursive entity (The Brazilian Ethanol
Car - BEC) emerged in the reception perspective. Quatro Rodas is a contrast to policy
documents, or other governmental papers that could have been produced by public relations
offices. Articles and performance tests published in Quatro Rodas are relatively
independent from the interests of the government.
First, I do content analysis of the performance tests. Second, I look for modalities in the
way the magazine depicts BEC in articles, editorial notes and performance tests. By
searching for modalities, I focus on how BEC is discursively linked to elements that
supported or contested its stabilization.
The first round of analysis was conducted upon all the performance tests of ethanol-fuelled
cars as that were carried and published by Quatro Rodas from 1973 to 1989. The period
from which those articles and editorial notes have been collected corresponds to the period
between the first oil crisis and the shortage of ethanol fuel in Brazil. Hence, there is a time
series of the performance tests, showing how the magazine referred to the ethanol car, its
stabilization and further complexities (i.e. the resurgence of performance tests of gasoline
cars – retrofit and brand new - in the late 1980s.). A vantage point for the analysis is that
the data-set is well defined, the structure of the text remained stable over time, permitting
me to trace historical patterns. Besides what will be highlighted in the time series, the
performance tests will also be characterized in terms of the different modalities (i to vii)
presented earlier.
58
Here I say that it was relatively independent from the government because despite being a popular
automotive magazine, which focused on a ‘pure’ technical orientation, Quatro Rodas is part of the media
conglomerate Grupo Abril, known for collaborating with the military in censoring cultural, artistic and
political discourses that contested the legitimacy of the dictatorial regime in Brazil. (Kushnir, 2004). As a
large midia conglomerate Abril, and the magazines it publishes including Veja, Playboy Brazil and Quatro
Rodas, can be held accountable for influencing mass markets. At this stage, it is rather speculative to infer the
amount of interference of the censorship mechanisms in the content of the articles or even the performance
tests of ethanol powered cars. Nonetheless, the government push, through these same censorship mechanisms,
to promote BEC is an aspect of the process that ought to be investigated further.
52
The main part of the second round of analysis is based on editorial notes and articles
published in Quatro Rodas from 1973 to 1989. The selection of these texts was based on
their titles. In short, all the articles that linked BEC to the E100, to the oil crises, to the
national energy policy, to alternative fuels, to gasoline, and to automakers were collected. I
identified the linkages present in each text, how they interconnected BEC to other elements
of the Brazilian automotive sociotechnical regime and sociotechnical landscape. By doing
this I could also detect how the linkages were represented in the articles titles and whether
the articles were contesting or solidifying the societal embedding of the E100.
2.3 BEC’S LIFE WITHIN QUATRO RODAS.
Quatro Rodas conducted performance tests on a regular basis so that each monthly issue
contained an average of three performance tests of new models, or on recently
improved/adapted models.
Figure 8 - The first ethanol car tested by Quatro Rodas
Source: Quatro Rodas. August, 1976: 94 – 95. Acervo digital Quatro Rodas.
53
There were different kinds of performance tests, some aimed to compare different models
of cars within the same category, while others tested the newest models or newest releases.
The exception to this is the assessment tests carried on cars that had run for 30,000km or
more, and then had their components analyzed by the magazine group of mechanics, or by
independent research institutes, such as IPT. Once the government announced measures to
increase the use of ethanol as fuel, to reduce gasoline and oil consumption, the magazine
started testing the cars fuelled with ethanol blends. There were specific performance tests
on cars fuelled with the blend made of 80% of gasoline and 20% of ethanol (E20xG);
comparative performance tests on cars fuelled with ethanol (100%) versus cars fuelled with
gasoline (E20xE100) ; performance tests on cars that were retrofit to run on ethanol (E100-
R); performance tests on individual cars fuelled with ethanol (100%) (E100-1x), which
were similar to the performance tests that were carried on gasoline cars; comparative
performance tests carried on ethanol (100%) versus ethanol (100%) fuelled cars (E100-2x,
E100-3x and E100-4x), as also was done to gasoline x gasoline fuelled cars; and eventually
ethanol fuelled motorcycles and Sport Utility Vehicles – SUVs. As ethanol models were
being launched Quatro Rodas tested them. The table bellow shows the number of
performance tests of ethanol-powered cars in each year.
54
Table 2 - Performance Tests with ethanol fuelled cars.
Year E20x
G
E20xE100 E100xD E100 M E100 Total
R59 1x60 2x61 3x
62
4x
63
1975 1 1
1976 1 1 2
1977
1978
1979 1 1
1980 7 1 1 9
1981 1 2 1 8 1 15
1982 9 1 10
1983 1 14 5 20
1984 25 4 2 1 32
1985 1 25 7 33
1986 1 30 2 1 34
1987 22 7 1 30
1988 24 1 25
1989 3 13 16
Total 2 12 2 2 2 173 28 4 1 227
Source: Elaborated by the author, based on Quatro Rodas issues from 1973-1989.
One notices that there are no performance tests published between 1977 and 1978. That is
probably due to the fact that the previous performance tests (1975 and 1976) were carried
with the first prototype developed by CTA and two cars that were fuelled with the blend.
One can only speculate that the reason for Quatro Rodas to publish a test of a prototype is
related to testing or inquiring about the feasibility of the governmental Programme, or as
59
Retrofit (R) 60
Performance test of a single unit (1x). 61
Comparative performance test between two units (2x). 62
Comparative performance test among three units (3x). 63
Comparative performance test among four units (4x).
55
governmental propaganda. In either case, it contributed to the consolidation of BEC by
showing the possibility of auto assemblers developing ethanol cars using the prototype
developed by CTA as an example to be followed. The performance test of a prototype can
be a technical demonstration for users (general consumer public) and for specialized users
(auto assemblers, small auto-parts producers, mechanics, and so forth).
How were the new performance tests introduced by Quatro Rodas. “Recent and successful
experiences prove the efficiency – although lower than that of the gasoline – of ethanol as a
fuel for automobiles and light trucks.” (Quatro Rodas, 1974: 86). As the first text about
ethanol published by Quatro Rodas it shows the existence of a sociotechnical guiding
vision: a technology needs to be developed for the use of ethanol as a fuel substitute for
gasoline. And so it was. In consonance with the governmental activities towards the
development of the E100, this first performance test on a car fuelled with ethanol compared
the performance of a Volkswagen Beetle 1300cc, first fueled with gasoline and then with
the blend E20+G80.64
It concluded that the blend of 20% of ethanol in the gasoline did not
create immediate problems for the performance of the car, but also that broader impacts
were, at that moment, unpredictable. A similar test, carried out in 1976 on another model
was more precise in describing the problem caused by the addition of higher percentage
(20%) of ethanol in the blend. The problem identified was the increased consumption of the
models fueled with the blend, and to reduce the consumption it was the proposed to
increase the compression rate of the carburetor. Thus, the first appearances of ethanol fuel
in the pages of Quatro Rodas indicate that it was linked to both, broader sociotechnical
promises and specific technological requirements for ethanol fueled cars.
After testing cars fuelled with the blend, Quatro Rodas tested an E100 and linked it to
BEC. The first E100 tested was the Dodge 1800GL retrofit by CTA to run on ethanol. It
was a prototype and the magazine called it the first Brazilian ethanol car (O primeiro carro
a álcool brasileiro). The performance test of this prototype links the E100 to BEC, it
describes the major modifications that CTA made on the engine. A subheading within the
text says: “the technical personnel modified the carburetor and the ignition system, they
64
The Proalcool decree is from 14th November, 1975 (Ch2).
56
built a special new collector and increased the compression rate to 12:1” (Quatro Rodas,
1976, August: 100-101), and, thus, aligns BEC to specific requirements for engine. More
than that, the performance test claims that “if the auto assemblers follow the indications for
adaptations developed by CTA and if the production of ethanol is stimulated, ethanol cars
can eventually substitute gasoline cars in time” (idem: 100).In fact, sales of ethanol cars
increased overtime, and Quatro Rodas followed. The table below offers an overview of the
production of ethanol and gasoline cars between 1979 – 1989.
Table 3 - Annual production of Cars in Brazil (1979-1989).
Source: Elaborated by the author, based on Anfavea, 2013:60.
In 1979, Anfavea and STI signed the protocol of intentions which allowed automakers to
produce ethanol cars. It was, however, a reasonably complex process before automakers
could actually start producing ethanol fuelled cars. Each model had to be homologated by
the governmental organ, STI. (Brazil and Anfavea, 1979). In April 1980, before ethanol
models started being homologated, Quatro Rodas took an important step in contributing to
the E100’s societal embedding. It published an article in which it aligned the ethanol car to
Year Ethanol % Gasoline %
1979 4624 0,40% 1003861 89,00%
1980 254015 21,80% 778464 66,80%
1981 128828 16,50% 532492 68,20%
1982 237585 27,60% 452496 52,70%
1983 592984 66,10% 204361 22,80%
1984 560492 64,80% 195225 22,60%
1985 642147 66,40% 204508 21,20%
1986 699183 66,20% 219347 20,80%
1987 460555 50,10% 307377 33,40%
1988 569310 53,30% 344190 32,20%
1989 398275 39,30% 456365 45,00%
Annual Car Production. [1], [2]
57
other elements of the automotive sociotechnical regime: It started by saying that ethanol
was available everywhere in Brazil. “In the city and on the road, ethanol is available.
Without any problem of distribution, it is already possible to drive throughout almost the
entire country on cars powered with ethanol, with the advantage of this fuel costing half of
the price of gasoline.”(Quatro Rodas, 1980, April: 57). It also mentioned corrosion, as a
minor problem, which would be tackled in due time because researches on the further
development of the E100 would continue. The article gave important information for
potential drivers of an E100, regarding automobiles and fuel prices and taxes, for example
it informed that “ethanol cars also have the privilege in the payment of TRU and can be
paid in thirty six installments” (idem: 62). Lastly, informed the future ethanol car driver by
offering two address lists. The first one, with the addresses of all the retrofitting shops
accredited by STI to perform adaptations in gasoline cars which would then run on ethanol.
The second list consisted of the addresses of fuel stations that were selling ethanol,
organized in accordance to the major cities in all the Brazilian States.
In further issues Quatro Rodas continued publishing articles that gave more details about
the advantages of the ethanol. It also started doing so by testing the E100 and comparing it
to gasoline models. “Quatro Rodas decided to do a series of comparative tests between the
cars assembled in Brazil that offer along the gasoline engine, the ethanol option” (Quatro
Rodas, 1980, June: 36). With this statement of purpose Quatro Rodas introduced the
performance test between a Volkswagen Beetle powered by gasoline and another beetle
that was powered by ethanol. The ethanol model showed better performance and, while its
fuel consumption was higher, governmental incentives made it economically more
attractive than the gasoline counterpart. That was also the core of the message from the
following performance test carried by Quatro Rodas. However, at that time, the latter did
mention the problem of ethanol corroding parts of the engine. “One of the properties of
ethanol is to attack the metals. (…) And the industry already developed some kinds of
treatments that reduce the corrosive effect of ethanol considerably, not to mention the
additives available in the market.” (Quatro Rodas, 1980, July: 47).
58
Besides buying a brand new E100 one could also have one’s gasoline car retrofitted to run
on ethanol. Hence, Quatro Rodas conducted performance tests on retrofit models. It
evaluated another Beetle, this time converted to run on ethanol. Interesting is the
justification for choosing the Beetle for the performance test.
The beetle was chosen for being the cheapest of the national cars, the most diffused one
within some sectors – of the taxis, for example, and the one that has been most interested
in the eventual transformation of its engine for using only ethanol. Because the
consumers of other models usually have the economic conditions to purchase a new car
and then opt for the ethanol model or gasoline model. (Quatro Rodas, 1980, August: 46-
Free translation by the author).
With this justification Quatro Rodas aligned BEC to elements of the Brazilian
sociotechnical landscape. The argument was directed towards taxi cabs, saying that taxis
would only have benefits from retrofitting the engines of their cars. For other consumers, it
suggested retrofitting to take place only if the engine needed major repairs. Despite better
performance, users should avoid retrofitting the engine of a brand new car, mainly because
the cost was too high. Coupling the expenses of retrotofiting with those of repairing an
‘old’ engine, was advised instead.
If in 1980 performance tests of ethanol cars had become visible in the magazine, in 1981
the expansion of tests of the E100 started. From 1980 July until 1981 February, other
models were tested, all supporting the claim that the ethanol models outperformed and were
more economic than the gasoline models. The ethanol car started to be evaluated in its own
right, which happened in February of 1981, when there was an individual performance test
of a VW Gol fuelled with ethanol. During the expansion of the E100, three main technical
problems were identified in the performance tests, reflecting the growth in sales (Table 3).
The low autonomy of the E100, the difficulties in starting the engine in cold weather
conditions, and the recurrence of corrosion were the reverse salients that the E100 had to
face in the expansion of its sociotechnical system65
. Automakers started to suggest drivers
65
A discursive entity functions as a justification for the expansion of the sociotechnical system. In the
literature on Large Technological Systems (Hughes, 1983), this has not got much attention, but I see
indications when looking at the change of focus from general developments (consumption and performance
similar to the gasoline car) to specific developments that were sought to overcome reverse salients (corrosion,
and cold start ignition). One indication of such activities, of overcoming reverse salient is the development of
59
to use their additives to protect the engine from corrosion (Quatro Rodas, 1980, Nov.: 52-
3),thus, fuel additives and other sociotechnical practices (e.g. covering the inner parts of the
engines with tin)were also brought into the sociotechnical configuration of BEC.
Another element that was included into BEC’s sociotechnical configuration were the
motorcycles. Quatro Rodas does not usually publish performance tests of motorcycles, but
in March 1981 it carried a test on a motorcycle Honda 125cc fuelled with ethanol and
classified it as “a great option for motorcyclists” (Quatro Rodas, 1981, March: 40).To
overcome the cold start problem in the motorcycle, automakers included a button that when
pressed sent gasoline – from a small container located within the engine – to the
carburettor, similar to what someE100 models had, an automatic system to inject gasoline
into the carburettor in cold weather. (Quatro Rodas, 1981, May: 39; idem, September: 62).
One of the first market niches into which the E100 was introduced was the Taxis’ niche,
however that was not only market niche in which the ethanol car circulated, luxury
consumers were also aligned with BEC. In June of 1981 Quatro Rodas published a
performance test of an Alfa Romeo TI, powered by ethanol and said that “the newest
ethanol car in Brazil has a performance similar to its gasoline version, with the same luxury
and comfort” (Quatro Rodas, June, 1981).When such linkages were enacted in discoursive
practices more elements were being aligned to the E100. In discourses from Quatro Rodas
BEC was linked to the dynamics of technical problems & solutions as well as to social
stratification.
The assessment of the performance of the E100 also included endurance tests that identified
further technical problems and, eventually, their solutions. In October 1981 Quatro Rodas
published a performance test that consisted of having the ethanol car running 30,000km on
Brazilian roads while the driver annotated his impressions of the car as well as the
problems that emerged. The results were that the ethanol car had similar qualities and
problems as the gasoline version previously tested in 1979. The problems identified in the
ethanol model were the corrosion of the exhaust pipe, and the necessity to regulate the
the 3
rd generation of ethanol cars (Quatro Rodas, July 1982: 107-110) and the development of the non-
corrosive ethanol (Quatro Rodas, February 1982: 92-98).
60
engine according to specific weather conditions. “An engine tuned in a very cold morning
will have an irregular idling when there is a hot sun.” (Quatro Rodas, 1981, October: 46).
Corrosion was again mentioned as a major problem in the 30,000km performance test
published on January, 1982. More than that, it claimed that the additives suggested did not
prevent the engines to be attacked by corrosion (Quatro Rodas, 1982, January: 38).
Nevertheless, corrosion attacked different models to different degrees. For instance, the
model that passed through the 30,000km test in February showed fewer problems of
corrosion. (Idem, February: 36). Another recurrent problem, the cold ignition influenced
the various models differently: “the cold start, in this 1982 coupé model, is immediate and
often easier than in a gasoline car”. (idem, ibidem: 44).
Comparison among ethanol powered models started in May 1981, marking the fact that
BEC was becoming independent from the gasoline car, despite the remanescence of
technical problems that still needed to be overcome. At first, Quatro Rodas compared two
models of ethanol cars, eventually it compared three different models (Quatro Rodas, 1983,
February: 28-35), and even four different ethanol models among themselves, meanwhile it
continued carrying performance tests on individual models. In Quatro Rodas’ view, the
ethanol car had good performance and the technical problems were being solved. As
claimed by the magazine in comparative test of two different ethanol cars: “The ethanol
version of Marajó and Panorama showed, once again, that there is no reason for concerns
regarding the functioning of this kind of engine: there was no problem related to cold start,
once a sensitive topic in ethanol cars”. (Quatro Rodas, 1983, March: 32).
From 1983 to 1985 performance tests continued to praise the ethanol car, its increasing
performance and decreasing fuel consumption. Within this period more than fifty
performance tests on ethanol cars were conducted and only one of them compared an
ethanol model with a gasoline model, what used to be the rule in 1980 and 1981 rather than
the exception. The large number of performance tests of E100 models in this period
supports the claim that the ethanol car was becoming a recurrent reference within the
magazine. More than that, Quatro Rodas was taking BEC for granted. One indication of
that is seen in 1983 when the term ethanol disappears from the headlines in the list of
61
contents of the magazine. It is plausible to assume that this is simply because the term did
not call the readers’ attention anymore, which means that ethanol cars were becoming more
embedded in society, since the term did not have the novelty element it once had.
After these three years of praising BEC, Quatro Rodas started to contest the status of BEC,
and once again it published performance tests of engines fuelled with alternatives. In March
1985 Quatro Rodas carried a comparative performance test between two cars fuelled with
bio-diesels (Quatro Rodas, 1985, March: 57-60). Those cars could not be commercialized,
for they first needed to be homologated by STI, but carrying their performance test shows
there were other fuel alternatives being considered as plausible options to Gasoline and to
Ethanol. In articles mentioning another possible change in the Brazilian fuel policy, the
issues of 1986 staged the return of the gasoline car. Since 1983 there were no comparative
tests of ethanol and gasoline models, but as stated by Quatro Rodas “emerging from the
discussion about possible changes in the ethanol fuel policies, fed and re-fed, in the last
months, emerged the idea of converting an ethanol car to use gasoline” (1986, April: 3).
The same issue published a performance test on a retrofitted car powered with gasoline.
More than that, it gave instructions on how ethanol car owners could proceed to retrofit
their cars back to gasoline. It claimed that the adaptation was easy to be made, but not
advisable at that moment. Only in December of the same year a brand new gasoline car was
tested by Quatro Rodas, the heading of the performance test said it was an exception, and
the subheading stated: “this Uno on gasoline showed that it can pretty well defy the
advantages of ethanol.” (Quatro Rodas, 1986, December: 79)
With the re-emergence of the gasoline powered car, one would think that comparative
performance tests between ethanol and gasoline models would again be carried out by
Quatro Rodas. However, this only happened in 1989, three years after the last comparative
performance test. In performance tests of gasoline models reference were made to the
ethanol version. On the list of items of the 1988 September issue one reads “Premio CSC
on gasoline: keeps the same performance of the ethanol model” and “Marajó on gasoline
still losing to its ethanol version”. (Quatro Rodas, 1988, September: 3). These remarks
seem to indicate that the ethanol model became the standard for comparison. It was only in
62
1989, when Quatro Rodas had a comparative test on a brand new ethanol automobile and a
brand new gasoline version that the gasoline model outperformed the ethanol (Quatro
Rodas, 1989, February: 40). The number of performance tests on ethanol cars reduced from
39, in 1986, to 15 in 1989. Following a decrease in sales, the E100 started to be left out of
the performance tests carried by Quatro Rodas, reshaping BEC’s modality.
From the performance tests with ethanol fueled cars, one can see that there are two major
changes on BEC. First, the status of the ethanol car from being highly unstable
(characterized by the prototype modality) changed to be gradually more accepted after
1980. That is more visible from 1982 onwards since ethanol cars started to be compared
among themselves, not needing to have their performance compared to gasoline-powered
cars. This is already expected, because it materializes the agreement of the Government and
the automakers association to start producing ethanol cars that were to be sold to the public
in 1979. In practice only in 1980 that general consumers could buy ethanol powered cars
because of the necessity of homologating each model before it could be mass produced.
From a sociotechnical configuration that was being tested and slowly introduced in
protected spaces, the Ethanol Car became available to the general consumers, affecting how
Quatro Rodas referred to BEC, e.g. having the ethanol as a standard for comparisons when
the gasoline model was re-emerging.
The second change is in the number of performance tests carried between 1982 and 1987.
Performance tests that fall into the modality of unproblematic acceptance, characterized by
E100xE100 and E100 performance tests, more than doubled in the period, and the ones that
characterized preliminary use were reduced to half of the amount visible in the previous
year, coming to disappear from 1983 to 1987. That indicates two different, but
complementary, findings: one is that the number of cars that were accredited by the
government to be sold with ethanol fueled engines had increased, and secondly the ethanol
car was climbing up the “stabilization ladder”, therefore it was becoming more embedded
in the Brazilian Society. BEC was taken for granted in that period of time. There was a
development from a promise to an entity that was available to the common consumer, the
ethanol car engines had arrived. Nevertheless, there is an indication of a decline of the
63
ethanol car in 1989, when ethanol cars are again compared to gasoline powered models and
the number of E100 performance tests decreases significantly.
The performance tests carried by Quatro Rodas can be read as doing what explorers do
when traveling around new sites and reporting back: they ‘unveil’ the unknown landscape.
Each test shows different features of BEC. They are describing and performing BEC at the
same time. They provide information on new models, that had been recently released, claim
for basic functionalities and make the ethanol car exist for wider audiences.
2.4 DOWN – UP – DOWN THE STABILIZATION LADDER
This section looks at how BEC became more stable, as a technological innovation which
had its materiality increased through discursive practices. BEC went from an open-ended
promise to a functioning object, which was embedded within the societal fabric. The stages
of this road are characterized in terms of modalities, from science fiction to unproblematic
acceptance – thus, a stabilization ladder. The analysis is not about whether the discourse in
the articles is for or against BEC, rather it focuses on whether the discourses depict the
innovation as a functioning artefact or a promise that still needs to be realized.
The data-set offers the possibility of looking at the status of BEC within the articles and
editorial notes. The frequency of those is not the same as of the performance tests, only
occasionally BEC was considered “newsworthy” material. That means that articles and
editorial notes mentioned BEC (or related subjects) only when something was happening in
out there. Policies needed to be adapted because of changing circumstances, prices changed
in a similar pace, and at these moments Quatro Rodas would link BEC to the broader
automotive sociotechnical regime.
The previous section showed that BEC arrived on the pages of Quatro Rodas as a vision
that linked ethanol to the substitution of oil and portrayed it as a technological development
whose feasibility was based on the positive outcomes of researches carried in CTA.
“Recent and successful experiences prove the efficiency – although lower than that of the
gasoline – of ethanol as an automotive and light trucks fuel.” (Quatro Rodas, 1974,
64
January: 86). Within Quatro Rodas the modalities of BEC became more visible in times
when events in the broad innovation journey of the E100 reinforce or contested the
embedding of the E100. Thus, in this description, I will focus on the modalities that
occurred after the signature of the protocol of intentions between ANFAVEA and the
Brazilian government, on moments when there were possible threats to the E100, and
during the collapse of the ethanol car.
The overall changes in the modalities that were used to qualify BEC are shown in the table
below, Table – 3. In the following paragraphs I will describe the main changes in the
modalities related to BEC.
65
TABLE 4 - MODALITIES IN THE ARTICLES AND EDITORIAL TEXTS IN QUATRO RODAS (1973-1989).66
Year 19
73
19
74
19
75
19
76
19
77
19
78
19
79
19
80
19
81
19
82
19
83
19
84
19
85
19
86
19
87
19
88
19
89
Contest
ed
accepta
nce
2 1 2
Stabiliz
ation
1 1
Prelimi
nary
Use
3 6 10 3 3 1
Prototy
pe
2 1
Shared
agenda
1 1
Expect
ations
linkage
s
2 1
Guidin
g
visions
Vision
ary
linkage
s
1 1
Source: Elaborated by the author, based on Quatro Rodas issues from 1973-1989.
66
Although in its very early stages emerging technologies can be, and often are, seen as products of Science
Fictions, no article published in the magazine during the studied period linked BEC to the modality of science
fiction.
66
The time series presented in table 3 shows the amount of articles that were dedicated to
BEC, discussing it directly or indirectly, when it was related to broader changes in the
automotive regime, the national innovation regime, the fuel policy and the broader
landscape, as when linking BEC to oil and sugar prices fluctuations. The main pattern
visible in the analysis of the modalities, as depicted by table 3, is a clear upwards curve,
with a peak in the occurrence of articles between 1980 – 1984. Moreover, the peak is
correlated to the homologation of new E100 models after the joint signature of the protocol
of intentions between auto-assemblers and the government, what explains the change in
BEC’s modality from an open-ended promise to a sociotechnical configuration which was
beginning to be introduced into the wider selection environment. During the subsequent
period BEC went through a period it was considered stable until 1988, when it began to
have its societal embedding contested. In sum, table 3 shows a movement from a
sociotechnical promise that became stabilized and latter on was contested. It is to this
overall picture, of the changes in BEC modalities, that I link the analysis of how BEC
climbed its stabilization ladder.
Articles about the use of ethanol as fuel started to appear in 1975, discussing the
augmentation of the amount ethanol in the country’s mandatory blend, but it was only after
1979 that the magazine directly addressed the E100. Before 1979, articles that mentioned
the use of ethanol as fuel did so but only indirectly, by discussing the national fuel policy or
the energy crisis, thus, linking ethanol to broader societal issues. In December 1975, after
the promulgation of Proálcool and before the commercial launching of ethanol cars,
Quatro Rodas assessed the fuel blend made of gasoline and ethanol (E20). When doing so,
it was linking ethanol with sociotechnical expectations as it stated “Brazil will save 200
million of dollars each year, with 10% of ethanol in the gasoline. And Brazilians will gain
50 thousand job positions” (Quatro Rodas, 1975, December: 118-119). In the 1980s, BEC
became more stable, there were articles listing locations of fuel stations and retrofitting
shops, as well as the advantages of the ethanol car. In June of that year there was an article
about the advantages of Ethanol fuel, it listed the subsidies, tax-reductions, and general
advantages/incentives to buy ethanol cars, which characterized the preliminary use of the
67
E100. (Quatro Rodas, 1980, June). With preliminary use, technical problems as corrosion
were identified and solutions started to be sought. (Idem, December). Still, Quatro Rodas
reported that ethanol car drivers were satisfied with their choices to drive ethanol cars. In a
pool conducted and then published in January of 1981, from six hundred ethanol car
owners “the majority of the interviewees would repeat the acquisition of the ethanol car”
(Quatro Rodas, 1981, January: 49). BEC was becoming not just a recurrent reference
within Quatro Rodas but it was also becoming more stabilized as practices of use were
getting standardized. Indications of this are visible in February and in March. The magazine
published an article about the hydrometer,67
which was to be installed in every ethanol
pump, affording an instantaneous assessment of the quality of the ethanol for indicating the
amount of water in the fuel (Quatro Rodas, 1981, February), and announced there would be
a research about the exhaust gas from ethanol fueled cars, indicating that the ethanol car
would have a longer life spam and, thus, needed to be evaluated in terms of its impacts on
the quality of air. (Quatro Rodas, 1981: March). After 1979, Quatro Rodas depicted BEC
as an artefact that was going through its preliminary use, showing the advantages of the
emerging technology as well as identifying problems that could prevent its further
acceptance among drivers, thus hindering its societal embedding.
After identifying elements that had the ability to hamper the further uptake of BEC, Quatro
Rodas made visible the efforts to overcome these reverse salients. It mentioned the
production and commercialization, by IAA, of a non-corrosive ethanol fuel (Quatro Rodas,
1981, February: 94), suggested the use of fuel additives – already there within the stage
where ethanol was produced – to prevent engines to be corroded by ethanol (Quatro Rodas,
1981, March: 90), and evaluated different fuel filters, that purified the fuel and so promised
to prevent the engines from choking (Quatro Rodas, 1981, April: 101-107). Most of all
Quatro Rodas reported on developments made by automakers to improve BEC. “Engines
with indirect injection, more economic, that heat faster and function better, less subject to
corrosion and with ignition systems that are more efficient – are some of the novelties that
will improve the ethanol car in some time” (Quatro Rodas, 1982, July: 109).
67
A hydrometer is an instrument used to measure the relative density of liquids, in this case of ethanol.
68
The preliminary use of the ethanol car did not only identify technical problems that needed
to be overcome so BEC could be further ‘adopted’ in the country, its further societal
embedding also required another kind of maintenance. In August 1982, an article within
Quatro Rodas claimed “ethanol car sales restarted to increase in March of this year and did
not stop yet. That is a sign that technical improvements and the stimulus from the
government are working” (Quatro Rodas, 1982, August: 50). From a working device, that
was going through its preliminary use, BEC became more stabilized with further
sociotechnical adjustments, pushing the advancement of its system. As said in 1983: “the
ethanol car now reaches its pinnacle” (Quatro Rodas, 1983, March: 53), which in our
terminology means that the ethanol was beginning to be referred to as a sociotechnical
configuration, that was characterized by unproblematic acceptance.
Clearly, there were adjustments that needed to be done. Changes in the Brazilian
sociotechnical landscape were reported by Quatro Rodas as well as the need for
governmental initiatives, as reduced end prices for ethanol and tax exceptions for ethanol
cars, to keep BEC as a central element of the Brazilian automotive sociotechnical regime
(Quatro Rodas, 1984, February: 86-91). In February the magazine was voicing concerns
about the continuity of the advantages of the ethanol car, fears which were dissipated in
August, when it said that it continued to be cheaper to drive ethanol cars than gasoline cars
(Quatro Rodas, 1984, August: 89). In later years, further changes in the national fuel
policy induced the magazine to pay more attention to the gasoline car again (cf. findings for
the performance tests in 3.2).
After a short period of unproblematic acceptance the ethanol car’s status was challenged by
the gasoline car. Indicative is the article about the ethanol car retrofit to run on gasoline,
published in April 1986. That article followed the concerns already published in March,
when Quatro Rodas claimed that ethanol would only beat gasoline during long distance
trips, and only if the government maintained the lower prices of ethanol (Quatro Rodas,
1986, March: 69). Thus, indicating a step down on the stabilization ladder. The attractive
prices for ethanol cars were not maintained by the government, and rather than dominance
of the ethanol car, there was co-existence of ethanol and gasoline cars. In September of
69
1988 an article said: “Ethanol x Gasoline: the fuel choice, again a current debate” (Quatro
Rodas, 1988, September: 43). Eventually, the removal of economic incentives by the
government, in July 1988 made the gasoline car regain preeminence as it sales started to
increase with the policy changes in that year (Quatro Rodas, 1989, Jan: 30). The view
spread by the magazine was that the unproblematic acceptance of BEC was supported by
the artificially lower prices it had in comparison to the gasoline model. Hence, when the
gasoline car became more economically attractive than the ethanol models Quatro Rodas
suggested consumers to start retrofitting their cars to run on gasoline again or to buy new
gasoline models.
CONCLUSIONS
In Quatro Rodas I looked at how different performance tests and articles referred to BEC.
The performance tests and the modalities present in articles indicate the changes of
consumer’s perceptions, as well as it advertised the technological innovations about the use
of the blend, the use of ethanol fuel, and the Ethanol Car. Two main changes can be
identified within the trajectory/journey of BEC within Quatro Rodas. First, there is an
increasing stabilization of BEC, which continued until the late 1980s. Second, BEC’s
stability is challenged by the gasoline car, already before BEC’s collapse in 1989. The
rhetorical force of the articles published in Quatro Rodas lies in the way they presented
BEC to Brazil. First, they presented BEC and ethanol as one of the options to overcome the
oil scarcity. Second, claimed that BEC was the Brazilian choice and that it was a working
artefact that needed sociotechnical repair that, nevertheless, was already functional. Once
the government removed the incentives for the E100 and its production decreased, Quatro
Rodas also reduced the number of articles about ethanol cars or Proálcool.
The types of the performance test that were carried out indicate a trajectory where the
ethanol car was gradually presented more independently from the conventional gasoline
powered car. The comparison between E100 and gasoline powered cars shows that there
was a promise and a requirement for the E100, to perform as well as, or eventually
70
outperform its existing competitor. Once it reached maturity it became eligible to be
evaluated in its own right. Performance test that fall into the modality of unproblematic
acceptance (E100) more than doubled from 1982 to 1983, and the ones that characterized
preliminary use (E100xE20) were reduced to half of the amount from the previous year.
The number of cars that were accredited by the government to be sold equipped with
ethanol fueled engines, as well as the homologation of models that could be retrofitted had
increased strongly. The ethanol car was climbing up the “stabilization ladder”, as it was
becoming more embedded in the Brazilian Society. The performance tests show how the
ethanol car became mature and eventually was evaluated in its own right. There have been
changes in the status of the ethanol car as visible in the modalities used in Quatro Rodas.
Those changes were following broader material and circumstantial changes that affected
the status of the ethanol car in the wider societal fabric.
There is something intriguing when one looks at the modalities visible in the performance
tests and the modalities present in the articles. First, within the articles it is possible to
identify modalities of shared agendas but not of modalities of prototypes, as it had been
seen on performance tests. While the performance tests would have more variation in the
modalities within the same years, the articles appear to be pretty much stable, in
consonance to wider events or policy changes.
Eventually, the performance tests, since the prototypes, contributed to the consolidation of
BEC by showing the possibility of auto assemblers developing ethanol cars using the
prototype developed by CTA as an example to be followed. The performance test of a
prototype can be a technical demonstration for users (general consumer public) and for
specialized users (auto assemblers, small auto-parts producers, mechanics, and so forth).
‘Ethanol car, eventually you are going to own one’.68
This is a famous slogan from a
campaign started by ethanol producers (SOPRAL), in 1983, which got support from the
government and became part of the Brazilian cultural repertoire. At first, the slogan
referred to a functional sociotechnical configuration, pushing consumers to buy ethanol
68
Carro a álcool, você ainda vai ter um.
71
cars, but when the ethanol car was in decline the slogan had an ironic connotation, as if
mocking ethanol car owners (Quatro Rodas, 1995: 42-47). It presented BEC as a
sociotechnical expectation, as a functioning, as a highly stable innovation, as well as a
contested sociotechnical configuration. Within the discursive practices of the magazine
BEC became a mediator between the promises, the artefact, the automotive sociotechnical
regime, the government and the drivers. Further interpretation of my findings requires data
from other sources.
What is clear is that at the beginning of a sociotechnical innovation journey discursive
entities are independent of actual material development, but as they influence action by
mobilizing resources and allies they become subordinated to the actual development of the
promising options they had put on the agenda.
The discursive entity BEC and its force did not emerge easily, there were social and
technical struggles, which are reflected in the articles published in Quarto Rodas, and more
broadly. The historical reconstruction in Chapter 3 will pay attention to it, including the
question whether the government was sustaining the life of the ethanol car artificially or not
(cf. above). Actually, as I will show in the next chapters, the E100 survived despite the fact
that the discursive entity BEC was being deconstructed. Nonetheless, as I will show in
Chapter 4 BEC as a label was still powerful, as it was associated to the “Flex Fuel
Vehicle”.
72
73
CHAPTER 3: THE ROLES OF THE STATE IN DEVELOPING AND EMBEDDING THE ETHANOL
CAR IN SOCIETY.
INTRODUCTION
The active role played by the Brazilian government in intervening in sociotechnical
dynamics is unusual, at least in developed countries, with their neoliberal economies
(except in circumstances of war and security threats). In developing countries, the State can
– and often does – act as an enactor of emerging technologies, although its role has not
been systematically approached in this way yet. That is especially the case where national
economies are facing external or even internal threats, similar to what happens in times of
crisis, as the energy crisis. Over time, the Brazilian State has seen itself as responsible to
build the nation and to shape it in various ways and. With the outburst of the dictatorial
regime, in April 1964, this characteristic of the State became stronger, as it exerted control
at various levels, including guiding scientific, technological and economic activities in the
country.69
In that manner, the assumption that State was pushing and orchestrating the
development of BEC at the micro, meso and macro levels fits this picture.
69
The dictatorial regime in Brazil (1964-1985) was also responsible for the restriction of civil and individual
rights. The period is marked by extreme violence, including reports of torture and deaths, from the
government as well as its opponents. Despite the importance of this topic for the recent history of democracy
in Brazil it is outside the scope of this research. Here, we focus on the way the dictatorial regime was shaping
the nation, specifically by enacting the ethanol car project.
74
FIGURE 9 - THE MINISTER OF AERONAUTICS DRIVES AN ETHANOL FUELED CAR DURING THE NATIONAL
INTEGRATION CIRCUIT.
Source: Arquivo Folha.
This chapter offers an historical reconstruction of the role of the government in the
development and societal embedding of the ethanol car in Brazil. Besides enacting
technological developments, the government set ethanol prices and required certification of
ethanol cars prior to being fuelled at the pump stations. In other words, the government
pushed the societal embedding of the innovation. How it went about it and what the
outcomes were (and why) invite reflection on the role of governments in innovation policy.
The brief literature review offered in this chapter prepares for such a reflection and informs
the historical reconstruction. The various actors who played an important role in the history
of the Brazilian ethanol car are analyzed in terms of how they created contextual elements
that shaped the innovation journey of the ethanol car.
75
A subsidiary theme of the chapter that is important for the question of the role of the state
in innovation is the evolving innovation regime. States can create and maintain
sociotechnical regimes (for Brazil, this was already reconstructed in Chapter 1). The nation
states can also push projects which, on the one hand, will draw on the existing innovation
regime and may be shaped by it, and, on the other hand, may well strengthen or shift the
direction of the national innovation regimes - this is what happened with the big R&D
programmes of the 1960s and 1970s, like the Apollo Project (for a Man on the Moon) and
the ‘War on Cancer’ in the USA (Rettig, 1977). This combination of actions of the State
towards the further institutionalization of the national innovation regime and the roles it
plays on the development of specific sociotechnical projects is visible in the case of the
Brazilian Ethanol Car.
There is also a reflexive question: how a State can do better in modulating the development
of sociotechnical systems (in Brazil and more generally). This question arises because of
the relative success of the Brazilian Ethanol Car program (and the program+, i.e. including
additional activities contributing to the development and embedding in Brazilian society of
the ethanol car), which was then followed by a decline of the ethanol car sales after 1989
until 2003. I tell this part of the story in Chapter 4, so the full discussion of this theme has
to wait until the concluding section of Chapter 4.
After the introduction, the chapter is structured in three sections. Section 2 briefly
discusses the literature on State influence on science and technology activities, and
particularly the question of supporting desirable innovation. The next section, 3, is
dedicated to presenting the data, findings and their interpretations. The fourth and last
section offers conclusions cross-analyzing the findings with the discussions presented in the
theory and literature section.
3.1 GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DYNAMICS
Governments influence the dynamics of science and technology development and their
embedding in society through science and technology policies and through a variety of
interventions, by ministries, as the ministry of industry, and agencies not directly
76
responsible for science and technology policies, because innovation policy is distributed
across ministries and agencies. Science and technology policies emerged as such after
WWII, with the publication of the Bush Report to the US President, Science: The Endless
Frontier (Bush: 1945).70
It was a particular kind of science and technology policy that the
Report advocated: scientific knowledge would lead society to progress and could contribute
to the country’s economic and social development. In that sense it was a science-push
model. Since then, science and technology policies guide scientific and technological
activities into the directions governments consider priority. At that time science policies
began to emerge aiming at directing resources for scientific researches, creation of
laboratories, and setting up institutions that would guide and push dedicated basic
researches, within the United States of America. From the late 1940s onwards
industrialized as well as developing countries started following the lead and began to
emulate science policies within their own territories (Velho, 2011: 130). Developed and
developing countries started to organize their scientific activities so that science would
create knowledge that would eventually be taken up by the private sector. Governments
created laboratories, universities, started to allocate more resources for science and later,
started to evaluated them in a systematic way. After some criticism of the science push
model, in the 1960s and 1970s science and technology began to be jointly used to approach
immediate societal problems, the demand-pull model. Nevertheless, State intervention in
science and technology dynamics in general, and specifically in R&D activities is just one
element of science and technology policies. Rather than discussing science and technology
policies in detail, I focus on the ways the State can and does intervene in science and
technology activities.
The reason why governments can and do intervene in science and technology developments
are diverse, but the general argument in the literature is in terms of a market deficit. Market
deficit refers to the situation where investments in R&D by private actors are less than
socially optimal. Thus, there is reason to compensate by government. This is actually a
general point about the production of collective goods. In the case of R&D investments,
70
Vannevar Bush was the director of the war-time Office of scientific research and development of the United
States. His Report was influential, for example in the setting up of the US National Science Foundation.
77
there is the reluctance of firms to invest in activities with a high level of uncertainty
regarding the success of research and innovation. The problem of uncertainty then shifts to
the government: How would a government (or a particular government ministry or agency)
know in what to invest, and how? Will it be able to identify “winners” so as to avoid
spending tax payers’ money on “losers”? Thus, a government deficit comes into play. Still,
governments feel a responsibility, definitely after 1945, to do something. What has
happened is that governments develop new competencies (as for military R&D and
innovation, and before that, but to a lesser extent, in agriculture and health) or seek advice.
Alternatively, Governments can go for general measures, ranging from responsive-mode
funding of R&D proposals to fiscal incentives, e.g. tax reduction on R&D expenditure of
firms. The thinking behind this refers to building up of capacity. Recently, there is a fourth
type of argument for governments to invest: the need to address so-called grand or societal
challenges (Foray et al. 2012).
In practice, the discourse that supports government intervention in science and technology
dynamics is about economic and/or societal challenges to be addressed. Either to strengthen
the internal market, or to produce more accessible goods to overcome societal needs (like
cheaper computers or tablets to be used in public schools, greener and greening
technologies) that can also be identified as internal challenges (such as reducing the
country’s energy dependence, and more infrastructural problems like distribution of
electricity or access to communication landlines, mobiles and internet).
There is a large literature on the role of the State in supporting R&D and innovation.
Among the pro-active roles, an interesting approach is procurement, well known in the
military sector, but applicable more widely. Procurement is the guarantee of a demand (of
the government, or created by the government through requirements it sets) for new
technology development. The government does not specify the technology, only the
performance requirements that have to be met. (Edler and Gheorghiou, 2007).
Within procurement activities there is the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) which
attempts to stimulate innovation. It stands for a practice that “involves the purchase of
78
research by a contracting authority which the contracting authority undertakes with the
objective of stimulating innovation that the contracting authority or some other party may
benefit from at a later stage when goods or services not currently available are developed
from the outcomes of the research.” (Rigby, 2013: 6). Pre-Commercial Procurement is
expected to generate innovations for the public as well as for the private sector, most of all
it might lead to wider societal embedding because it aims to contribute to the public good
by supporting innovations that will benefit society in general. Governmental support of
R&D activities through Pre-Commercial Procurement is justified by the possibility of
generating positive externalities, as spin-offs and knowledge overflows that can benefit a
broader set of actors in the societal fabric, as well as increasing the capacity of innovation
within public sectors. The most well-known examples of Pre-Commercial Procurement are
the US Small Business Innovation Program (SBIR), and the UK SBRI, whose major aims
are stimulating small businesses to carry technological innovations, as solutions for Federal
research and development needs.
Another pro-active route is ‘technology forcing’ through regulation, e.g. on low-pollution
cars in the California Sunshine Act in the late 1970s. (Schot and Rip, 1997). What I have
called the enactment of the Brazilian ethanol car had elements of procurement and
technology forcing, but added orchestration of embedding in society. That is what makes its
history additionally interesting for analytical purposes.
Since the focus of this chapter lies on the role played by the State in influencing science
and technology dynamics, it is important to link the role of the state to the discussion (in
Ch2), to the conformation and evolution of the Brazilian National Innovation Regime. Our
expectation is that the Brazilian government (and public research institutes) played an
important role influencing the conformation and evolution of the National Innovation
Regime.71
71
Actually, political contexts in a broader sense influence scientific and technological developments. For that
reason, De la Bruhèze (1992) introduced the concept of Political Construction Of Technology (PCOT), in
addition to Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) (cf. Bijker 1995). He illustrated the use of this concept
in his history of radio-active waste disposal management and debate in the US.
79
The case of the Brazilian Ethanol Car suggests a third main possibility for the role of the
State: the State as macro-enactor. This is known from war time situations, as in the
Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb. Certain civil challenges can also be seen as a
war: the war on hunger, the war on cancer and can thus lead to macro-enactor roles. While
the terminology is different, the present discussion of Grand Challenges has the same
thrust.
The role of a macro-enactor, as proposed here, is inspired by Rip (1995). Rip draws on
history, sociology and economics of technology to show that actual innovation and
embedding in society is a multi-actor process which can be stimulated and coordinated by
an alliance or consortium of actors, i.e. a macro-actor. To emphasize that a macro-actor
sees itself as responsible for the enactment of the innovation, I will use the term ‘macro-
enactor’. There are actors active in creating micro- and meso-alignment among the various
and heterogeneous actors involved in the process of the introduction of new technologies in
society. In addition, macro-actors coordinate the activities that mutually shape the
technology and the interests of its main stakeholders. A macro-actor does so from a
position that is distant from the local and from immediate interest of the actors who are
enacting the innovation, but does play a pro-active role. What I see in my case study is that
the government is not delegating, but actively creating conditions and incentives to embed
the new technology in society.
The historical reconstruction of the role of the State in Brazil as presented here relies on
secondary sources such as papers about biofuel policies in Brazil, published in refereed
journals; books discussing the biofuels in Brazil; newspaper articles; official documents
and grey literature collected in the archives of the National Institute of Technology (INT72
),
the Ministry of Industry and Trade73
, the Center for Aeronautic Technology (CTA74
), the
National Association of Manufactures of Motor Vehicles (ANFAVEA75
), as well as
interviews conducted during visits to these archives. It is important to note that despite the
72
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia, Rio de Janeiro. 73
Ministério da Indústria e do Comércio. 74
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Centro de Tecnologia Aeroespacial, São José dos Campos. 75
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Associação Nacional dos Fabricantes de Veículos Automotores.
80
collection of data from primary sources, the chapter does not aim to offer new findings
related to the policies for the ethanol car, nor to unveil any hidden information; its objective
(as mentioned earlier) lies in offering new interpretations on the data in the light of a
sociotechnical analysis of government policies involving ethanol fuel.
3.2 MACRO-ENACTING AND EMBEDDING BY THE STATE
This section presents data on how the Brazilian State influenced the development as well as
the societal embedding of the ethanol car in Brazil, from the early 1920s to 1989, when a
crises affected the ethanol program+. Thus, it will present state measures to fund and
incentivize the production and the consumption of ethanol fuel, governmental actions
aimed to create organs that would coordinate initiatives that supported the development and
societal embedding of the ethanol car and of the ethanol fuel. This section presents data that
shows how the government was actively pushing the E100 R&D activities and its wide
adoption in Brazil. Since most of these actions and initiatives overlap in time they will be
present in a almost-chronological order, focusing on the measures that are most important
to show the State influencing the National Innovation Regime and the development of the
ethanol car.
As shown in Chapter 1, the history of the ethanol car in Brazil goes back to 1921, with the
first attempts to enact the E100, when the government established in Rio de Janeiro, under
the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade and Industry, the Experimental Station of Fuels and Ores
(EECM76
). Actually, EECM was the first governmental organ to conduct researches on the
use of ethanol fuel. Later, in 1934 EECM became part of the National Institute of
Technology (INT), under the Ministry of Labour, Industry and Commerce. The presidency
of Getúlio Vargas created mechanisms to control the production of sugar and ethanol at the
same time as it created a demand for ethanol in the country. The sugar industry was facing
technical and economic problems and this measure aimed to strengthen the sugar industry,
against the hegemony of the coffee industry elite. To mediate negotiations between sugar
producers, sugar cane growers, traders and consumers, the government established in 1931
76
Abbreviation of Estação Experimental de Combustíveis e Minérios. (already mentioned in chapter 1).
81
the Commission of Studies on Alcohol-engine (CEAM77
) under the Ministry of
Agriculture, and the Committee for the Defence of Sugar Production (CDPA78
) under the
Ministry of Finance. Still in 1931, the addition of 5% of ethanol to all imported gasoline
became mandatory. Two years later, the government merged CEAM and CDPA together
and created the Institute of Sugar and Alcohol (IAA79
), which was subordinated to the
Ministry of Agriculture. When the government created the Ministry of Industry and Trade
in 1960, this Ministry assumed the management and coordination of IAA (Rico et al, 2010:
1876-7). “The direct functions of IAA were the installation and operating of distilling
plants, the marketing monopoly of anhydrous ethanol, the pricing for purchase and sale of
ethanol and the establishment of limits for the production of ethanol and sugar mills; and
technical and financial assistance to plant owners” (ibid, 1877). Along with creating the
conditions for the emergence of the ethanol fuel in Brazil, by giving incentives for its
production via CEAM, CDPA and IAA, the government created alignment among the
various actors involved in the production of ethanol and its consumption. CEAM, CDPA
and, later on IAA regulated the production and the commercialization of ethanol at the
same time as it guaranteed the existence of a market for the ethanol produced in the country
by making the blend mandatory.
Despite its growing recognition as a fuel additive, and the government actions to expand
the production of anhydrous ethanol, after World War II ethanol use decreased. The earlier
scaling up of the importance of ethanol as an automotive fuel can be seen in the creation of
the National Council on Oil (CNP80
) in 1938, who was responsible to set the prices of oil
derivatives, but also intervened in the ethanol pricing. Research conducted at the National
Institute of Technology showed that, considering the engines used in Brazil, the ideal
percentage of ethanol in the álcool-motor was around 10%.81
As a consequence, the
government extended the mandatory blend to all gasoline consumed in the country. The
ratio of the blend, however, could vary from 0% to 25%, and it did so according to the
77
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Comissão de Estudos do Álcool Motor. 78
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Comissão de Defesa da Produção Açucareira. 79
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Instituto do Açucar e do Álcool. 80
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Comissão Nacional do Petroleo. 81
Expression used since the 1920s to refer to the blend of gasoline and anhydrous ethanol.
82
necessity, caused either by overproduction of sugar or low stocks of anhydrous ethanol.
Notwithstanding its growing importance in the national landscape and in the Brazilian
automotive sociotechnical regime, low productivity and low levels of industrialization
marked the production of ethanol, which influenced its consumption since it was still more
expensive than gasoline.
The onset of the Second World War created a favourable landscape for the production of
anhydrous ethanol. The support given by IAA made ethanol production reach 700,000 liters
per day. Compared to 5,000 liters per day produced at the time the government created
IAA, the 700,000 liters per day mark was a remarkable achievement for ethanol producers.
Still, ethanol production did not meet the needs of the country during the war and its
production continued facing obstacles. High prices of imported dehydrating products and
high transport costs caused investments to be directed to the production of sugar instead of
ethanol. As documented by Rico et al. (2010), from the late 1940s to the late 1960s many
initiatives and actions were enacted to modernize and increase the production of anhydrous
ethanol. Prices were controlled, the production was changed from the Northeast to the
Center-South of the country, the higher production costs in the North-Northeast were
reduced to be about equal to the costs in the Center-South, through governmental subsidies
and funds that protected and improved the sugar and alcohol sectors. The most important of
those initiatives to support sugar end ethanol production was setting of the National Plan
for Improvement of Sugarcane (PLANALSUCAR)82
, already mentioned in chapter 1,
which was responsible for the modernization of the sector in the late 1960s. Despite going
through a process of modernization, the sugar sector still encountered barriers to achieve
independence. In the early 1970s sugar sales stagnated because of the low prices it achieved
in the international market (Santos, 1993: 17-19), and once more the sector needed
governmental help to reduce financial losses.
After enacting Planalsucar, and modernizing its infrastructure for sugar production, Brazil
went through a period of recession in producing sugar due to its low prices in the
international market. Coupled with the oil crises in 1973, the economic deficits in the
82
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Programa Nacional de Melhoramento da Cana de Açúcar.
83
country’s balance of trade enlarged its macro-economic problems. (Santos: 1993). The
government saw itself in a situation that required action to be taken. In 1975 the State
created the National Alcohol Program (Proálcool83
), with the aim to reduce oil imports and
its derivatives. To implement Proálcool it created the National Commission of Alcohol
(CNA84
) within the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIC), charged IAA with controlling
the production of ethanol, and charged CNP with the role of controlling the prices and
strategies to sell anhydrous ethanol fuel. In 1979 CNA was replaced by the National
Council on Alcohol (CNAL85
), a legislative organ responsible for formulating policies and
guidelines for Proálcool. Actions proposed by CNA were carried out by its executive body,
the National Executive Commission of Alcohol (CENAL86
), also created in 1979. By
creating these governmental organs the Brazilian state aimed to influence the production
and the use of ethanol fuel, as well as it aimed at aligning actors and to the overall goals of
the broader set of activities (the programme+).
The sugar sector benefitted directly from Proalcool, since it became an important
instrument to drain its overproduction. In this context IAA gained prominence among sugar
and ethanol producers for establishing the annual quota for ethanol production and thus
becoming a stage for lobbying from the sector. During the first years of the ethanol blend,
between the harvests of 1976/77 and 1977/78 the production of ethanol raised from 664
million litters to 1.470,7 million litters. (Santos, 1983: 69). Those changes were pushed by
the governments initiatives to support the sector as the subsidized credit for distilleries to
produce ethanol instead of sugar, and the parity of prices between sugar and ethanol.
Nonetheless, by the end of 1978, IAA and the sugar & ethanol producers are considered to
have taken the ethanol as a safety-net against sugar prices oscillations (Santos, 1983: 88).
Taking the data presented so far one can see, as Goldemberg et al (1993: 845) note that the
role of the State in promoting the use of ethanol fuel in Brazil consisted of guaranteeing
purchase, providing financial incentives in terms of loans for the production of ethanol, and
83
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Programa Nacional do Álcool. 84
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Comissão Nacional do Álcool. 85
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Conselho Nacional do Álcool. 86
Abbreviation in Portugese for Comissão Executiva Nacional de Álcool.
84
making ethanol prices attractive to consumers. This is not the whole story, though; the
government also enacted a specific sociotechnical configuration, the ethanol car. As noted
by Oliveira (2002: 133), universities and research centres developed the basics of the
technology which allowed automakers to produce ethanol-fuelled cars.
After the early experiences before the Second World War, systematic initiatives of the
government in enacting the ethanol car were visible again only a few years before the oil
crisis of 1973. The government, actually the Office of Industrial Technology (STI), created
a working group for Energy Alternatives to conduct studies and experiments with
renewable energy sources. At that time the National Institute for Technology INT and
Center for Aeronautics Technology were responsible, respectively, for conducting
researches on the production and the use of ethanol fuel (MIC, 1979). In order to coordinate
such efforts – and thus align actors – the government created the Ethanol Technology
Program (PTE87
) in 1974, which later became the Industrial Technology Program for
Energy alternatives from Vegetable Origin88
. By this moment, the secretary of the Office of
Industrial Technology(STI89
), Bautista Vidal, had already arranged to transfer Urbano
Stumpf from the University of Brasilia (UnB) to the Center for Aeronautics Technology,
where he was to coordinate researchers about the development of an ethanol car and the use
of ethanol fuel (Vidal, 2008). The Table below shows the various organs that were aligned
and contributed to the Ethanol Technology Program (PTE).
87
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Programa Tecnológico do Etanol. 88
Translation from the Portuguese for Programa Tecnológico Industrial de alternativas Energéticas de Origem
Vegetal. 89
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Secretaria de Tecnologia Industrial. STI was created in 1972 within the
Ministry of Industry and Trade (STI, 1975?).
85
FIGURE 10 - ORGANS INVOLVED IN PTE.
Source: MIC, 1979: 35.
86
From an open-ended promise, the E100 started to acquire more concrete shape within the
Center for Aeronautics Technology (CTA). Formally, the Office of Industrial Technology
(STI) initially contracted the group in CTA to conduct studies aimed at decreasing fuel
consumption, reducing the emission of pollutants and increase the security and quality of
Brazilian cars (Stumpf, 1977; MIC/STI, 1974: 34). Nevertheless, eighteen months after the
beginning of the contract, CTA shifted its focus towards the development and improvement
of the technology to use ethanol as fuel, as the government considered it the most
appropriate solution for the problems raised by STI (MIC/STI, 1975). Only two months
after CTA delivered the report O etanol como combustível to STI, the Brazilian government
created the Proálcool program (decree n.º 76.593)90
.
After the creation of Proálcool, the government, through STI, organized the Semana de
Tecnologia Industrial. Etanol: combustível e matéria prima91
, a scientific and professional
symposium in which many aspects of the production and use of ethanol fuel were discussed
(MIC/STI, 1976). More than just a scientific and professional meeting, this event was an
attempt from the government to align actors towards the broader program+. It discussed the
implications of ethanol use for the transport system, for the economy, the perspectives for
the large-scale production of ethanol, the use of ethanol in the chemical industry, as well as
the technology for the use and for the production of ethanol. The meeting had an important
effect in supporting CTA with data on various experiments, which were mobilized to argue
in favour of the feasibility of using ethanol as a fuel blended with gasoline, or as a fuel
independent from gasoline. The ethanol car (E100) was considered technically feasible in
the sense that gasoline cars could be converted/retrofitted to run on ethanol. On the other
hand, ethanol cars could be developed by auto-assemblers if they retooled their factories
before they started making adjustments in their gasoline powered cars.
90
Between the period comprehended from CTA being contracted by STI to the launching of the Proálcool,
the by then President General Ernesto Geisel visited the facilities of CTA and spent many hours talking to
Urbano Stumpf about the feasibility of using ethanol as fuel. This situation has already been reported in
Chapter 1. 91
Free translation by the author: Industrial technology’s week: fuel and raw material.
87
Before the automakers took up the production of ethanol cars, the government had to
continue enacting the E100, pushing further developments in its technologies and creating
societal acceptance for the car. As argued by Stumpf (1978: 431. Free translation by the
author), “the adaptation of gasoline engines to use ethanol consists basically in changing
the compression ratio, heating the admission system, changing the metering system of the
carburettor, changing the ignition advance curve, and adding a cold ignition system.” Based
on such technical guidelines, CTA developed conversion kits for some of the brands of the
engines running in Brazil. Those conversion kits were meant to be used in experimental
fleets, but later on they should and were made available for the general consumer, through
retrofitting shops (ibidem). The experiments of CTA in adapting gasoline cars to run on
ethanol were demonstrated in the National Integration Circuit, which consisted of three
retrofitted cars travelling across the country from 13th
of October 1976 to 17th
of November
1976 (see Chapter 1 for more information about the National Integration Circuit), and also
made visible in a performance test carried out by Quatro Rodas in 1976. (Atualidades do
CNP, 1977; Quatro Rodas, 1976, August: 100-101).
As a response to the developments made by CTA, the government created, in September of
1978, a technical group coordinated by the Office of Industrial Technology (STI) and
composed by the Conselho Nacional de Metrologia, Normalização e Qualidade Industrial -
CONMETRO,92
the Comissão de Desenvolvimento Industrial - CDI,93
the Instituto do
açúcar e do álcool – IAA, the Centro de Tecnologia Aeroespacial - CTA, the Conselho
Nacional do Petróleo - CNP, automakers and automakers` unions, whose aim was to
discuss the possibilities of setting experimental fleets in State owned companies,
governmental organs, as well as within the industries (MIC/STI, 1979). STI coordinated the
implementation of experimental fleets by transferring the technology for retrofitting
engines, and by evaluating the reports from each experimental fleet sent to STI/CTA by the
Technology Support Centers. The first experimental fleets were created in State-owned
companies (as already mentioned in Chapter 1), starting 13th
of May 1977 with TELESP
92
In English: National Council of Metrology, Stardardization and Industrial Quality. (free translation by the
author). 93
In English: National Commission for Industrial Development. (Free translation by the author).
88
owning 25 ethanol retrofitted cars, a number that eventually evolved to 725. In 1979, there
were ten fleets under test in the major regions of the country (idem, 91). Apart from
indicating how the State was developing the ethanol car, these actions also show that it
acted as a macro-enactor who aligned actors and pushed the societal embedding of the
ethanol car in Brazil.
89
FIGURE 11 - DISTRIBUTION OF EXPERIMENTAL FLEETS IN 1979.
Source: MIC/STI, (1979, 93)
90
After the initial developments of the E100 technology, which included the development of
prototypes by the Center for Aeronautics Technology (CTA), and the setting up of
experimental fleets to fine tune the E100, the State made moves towards pushing the
E100’s acceptance with the public, so as to support ethanol consumption in Brazil. First, it
increased the amount of anhydrous ethanol in the blend and then supported the purchase of
pure ethanol at fuel stations. Following the suggestions by the engineers from CTA and
reinforcing the previous policy from 1966, the government first set the limit for the
mandatory blend at 20% of anhydrous ethanol (Brasil, 1979?: 90).94
Such a measure
increased the country’s ethanol consumption, but that was not enough after the second oil
shock in 1979. The government needed to reduce oil consumption even more, and it was
high time the E100 was removed from its protected space in experimental fleets and made
available to a broader set of consumers, the regular drivers.
At first, the traditional automotive firms in the country (Fiat, Ford, GM and Chrysler) did
not commit themselves to producing the ethanol cars because their headquarters were
probably avoiding the costs of investing in developing a new engine technology. Silva and
Fischetti argue that in 1979 the President (João Figueiredo 1979-1985) permitted the
installation of a Toyota’s Factory in Brazil and agreed that it would be the only auto-
assembler to produce ethanol cars in Brazil. Silva and Fischetti claim that because of
lobbying from ANFAVEA, on the following day the presidents of each of the traditional
automotive firms in the country were gathered in Figueiredo’s office to discuss their plans
to produce the ethanol car in Brazil. (Silva and Fischetti, 2008: 85).
In 1979, the government signed a protocol of intentions with ANFAVEA, in a sense fixing
the compromises of the industry and the government. (Brasil and ANFAVEA, 1979). The
former guaranteed the production of ethanol cars, while the latter guaranteed the
availability of ethanol fuel and offered tax exceptions for ethanol cars. The protocol was an
important instrument in assuring supply of ethanol fuel and in giving the automotive
industry the reliability it needed from the government in order to retool factories. Thus, the
94
Nonetheless, according to CENAL, the amounts of ethanol in the total consumption of gasoline in the
country varied, increasing over time. In practice it turned to be: 1,1% in 1975; 1,2% in 1976; 4,8% in 1977;
11,1% in 1978; 16,7% in 1979; and it was estimated to be 16,5 in 1980. (1981: 27).
91
protocol pushed the adherence of the auto-assemblers to start producing ethanol cars (Hira
and de Oliveira, 2009: 2453). In order to push the societal embedding of the ethanol car the
government reduced the Tax on Industrialized Products (IPI) 95
for ethanol cars from 11%
to 5%, while it maintained the 11% of IPI for gasoline cars. The government also reduced
the Tax on Property of Motor Vehicles (IPVA) 96
and excepted ethanol fuel from the Single
Tax on Liquid Fuel (Taxa Única), which was in force at the time (Quatro Rodas, 1980c: 64-
66; Santos, 1993: 154).97
Figure 12 - Ethanol cars become available for everyone.
Source: Quatro Rodas. Abril, 1980: 3. Quatro Rodas Acervo Digital.
Assuring the supply of ethanol to the expanding fleet of ethanol fueled cars also required
further negotiations of the government with the sugar & ethanol sector. The sector was
going through a crisis in which sugar prices in the international market were falling and the
government pushed the alignment of the sugar & ethanol producers to the ethanol car. To
95
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Imposto sobre Produto Industrializado (IPI). 96
Abbreviation in Portuguese for Impostro sobre Propriedade de Veiculo Automotor (IPVA). 97
Foreign investment to compensate for the loss income was substantial, including $1billion in loans from
nine European and American banks and another $1 billion in loans from the World Bank (Barzelay, 1986,
cited after Hira and de Oliveira, 2009: 2453).
92
increase the uptake of the E100 beyond the experimental fleets, the government also
subsidized the modernization and expansion of distilleries, the installation of new
autonomous mills and ethanol mills attached to sugar mills, and supported the production
of ethanol by guaranteeing purchase by Petrobras and assuring payment for ethanol
producers. From 1975 to 1979 IAA determined ethanol prices, and from 1979 to 1990 a
joint effort of IAA, CNP and the Ministry of Finance set the prices. (Rico et al., 2010:
1881-4). After the initiatives taken by the government and due to prices fluctuations, the
sector starts to recognize the importance of ethanol, and their support was central in
exerting force towards the expansion of Proálcool (Santos: 1983: 110).
One recurrent source for dispute and consequently bargain from the sugar producers was
the parity of sugar and ethanol. The definition of a standard amount of sugar necessary to
produce ethanol directly influences the adherence of sugar & ethanol producers to
Proálcool because it can push producers to sell ethanol instead of sugar. Initially, in 1975,
the government considered that every 60kg of standart sugar would produce 44 litters of
ethanol. This ratio was changes numerous time and since the beginning of proalcool
producers tried persuade the government to adopt the ratio suggested by COOPERSUCAR,
of 37.5 litters of ethanol for 60kg of sugar. In late 1970 the ratio was set in 38 liters of
ethanol for 60kg of sugar, a price that the producers located in the center-south considered
satisfactory. (Santos, 1983: 125).
Creating and maintaining the attractiveness of ethanol prices for consumers was an ongoing
matter of concern for the government, who wanted to push the uptake of the E100, but also
needed to reduce the costs of the maintenance of Proálcool. By the end of 1980 sugar prices
in international markets increased and the government changed the final price of ethanol
from 40% to 65% of the price of gasoline. Credit subsidies for the program were also
reduced in June 1981. Further adjustments continued to be made by the government in
1981 and 1982, when taxes on ethanol cars were reduced once again and ethanol prices
were set at 59% of the price of gasoline, or lower, for the two coming years. Moreover, the
government induced taxi drivers to use ethanol cars: they benefitted from subsidies for the
purchase of ethanol cars and from prices of ethanol for them being below the prices paid by
93
regular consumers. When adjusting the retail prices of ethanol the government had to take
into consideration the interest of sugar producers, motor car drivers and fluctuating oil &
sugar prices in the international market.98
Until 1986 it was, to some extent, successful in
doing so, as the data from Quatro Rodas showed (Chapter 1), but its broad uptake also
depended on material conditions, including the fine-tuning of the performance of the E100.
By 1986, owning an ethanol fuelled car was more attractive than owning a gasoline car
(Chapter 1). After 1986, the government continued to incentivize the use of ethanol by
constantly redefining the ratio of the ethanol-gasoline blend,99
but soon after oil prices
started to drop and “a significant rise in world sugar prices led the government to free sugar
export market restrictions. This led directly to severe ethanol shortages and shook
consumer confidence in alcohol-based vehicles, leading ironically to Brazil becoming the
world’s largest importer of ethanol from 1989–96.” (Hira and de Oliveira, 2009: 2454).
Apart from setting ethanol prices for retailing, the macro-enacting of the E100 by the
government also involved coordination of further improvements of the E100 through the
technological support centres (CATs). Since May 1979, STI was accrediting retrofitting
shops that were allowed to retrofit gasoline engines to run on ethanol. Retrofitting shops
that wanted to be accredited by STI should retrofit one engine and submit it to be evaluated
by the nearest CAT (see further Chapter 1).100
If the retrofitting followed the standards set
by STI it was approved by the CAT, which then sent its technical assessment report to STI
and the latter accredited the retrofitting shop. 101
Once accredited a retrofitting shop would
have been authorized to retrofit only engines of the same model it submitted to evaluation,
and each car it retrofitted received an official stamp, that pump-stations were obliged to
98
For a detailed analysis of the bargain processes through which the Brazilian state accommodated the
divergent interests of private and public actors in elaborating policies to support the broad ethanol program in
Brazil, see Santos, 1993. 99
This, as we mentioned before, was the standard composition of commercial gasoline in the country since
1975. 100
According to Vargas (1980), there were 12 CATs in 1980. 101
Nonetheless, unofficial retrofitting was a recurrent practice. For instance, O Jornal da Tarde (8th March
1980) mentions that more than 1000 taxi drivers in the city of São Paulo had their cars retrofitted in garages
that were not accredited by STI. In the same month, O Estado de São Paulo (22nd
May, 1980) complains that
accreditation of retrofitting generates a black market for ethanol cars and ethanol sales.
94
check before selling ethanol fuel to drivers.102
If the retrofitting shop wanted to retrofit
other models of engines it needed to repeat the procedure with an engine of the model it
intended to retrofit. In a similar manner auto-assemblers had to wait until STI homologated
ethanol engines before they could sell ethanol-powered cars.103
For the government, this
scheme served two purposes: to plan the annual demand and supply of ethanol, based on
the number of retrofitted cars, and to have a systematic reporting system on the
technological problems identified by the shops, the solutions sought and the need for
further work on the engines by CTA (Vargas, 1980; Santos, 1993: 128).
By creating the conditions for interactions between CATs, retrofitting shops and auto-
assemblers, the government was strengthening the Brazilian automotive sector while
enacting the E100. As ethanol engines are not simple adaptations of gasoline engines,
CENAL reported that in 1983 ethanol engines had 300 components that were different from
the gasoline models. CTA first developed these components in interaction with Original
Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) during its researches and experiments, but latter on
those components were developed by the automotive industry itself, mainly from the
interactions between retrofitting shops, STI and Original Equipment Manufacturers.
(CENAL, 1983: 12). The development of the ethanol car was a major challenge for the
OEMs, as they had to develop carburettors, spark plugs and tanks protected against the
corrosive effect of ethanol, more powerful batteries and cold ignition systems especially
developed for the use of ethanol fuel (Mahle, 2000: 77). In sum, the coordination from the
government via the Office of Industrial Technology (STI) afforded new interactions
between actors within the Brazilian automotive sector to take place and, eventually,
changed the Brazilian automotive sector.
The enactment of ethanol car strengthened the automotive sector in Brazil to the point that
the Brazilian union of OEMs stated that the ethanol car was the Brazilian automotive
sector’s ‘salvation plank’ during the early 1980s. (Sindipeças Noticias, 1990: 7). OEMs
102
As mentioned in Chapter 2, not all pump-stations bothered to check this requirement from STI before
selling ethanol. 103
As noted in Chapter 1, before a new ethanol car model could be launched to the market, auto-assemblers
had to submit a prototype to be tested and approved by STI.
95
were pushed to be innovative because of automakers and government requirements, as for
instance, when better quality components that would support the use of ethanol fuel were
required by the industry as well as by the government. By using components developed by
OEMs in Brazil, auto-assemblers from abroad pushed the development of innovation
within the internal market and, thus, strengthened the Brazilian automotive sector. The
enactment of the E100 was changing the national regime of innovation, it created a space
for the interactions between the design and maintenance constituencies of the ethanol car.
Interactions among actors of the Brazilian automotive sector included regular meetings of
the CATs organized by the Office of Industrial Technology (STI). There are few documents
available reporting those meetings, but there is the proceedings of the 11th
meeting of the
CATs, from 1983 (STI/MIT, 1983). Considering that CATs were created in 1977 (ch2)
there must have been about two meetings each year until 1983. Apart from the direct effects
of those meetings on the enactment of the E100, they also started changing the nature of the
interactions between actors of the Brazilian automotive sector. The 11th
meeting of the
CATs was organized together with the first meeting of the Brazilian Society of Automotive
Engineering (SAE-Brazil). Although STI organized the meetings of the CATs, it did not
coordinate or push the creation of SAE-Brazil. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that it
emerged from informal practices and interactions during the meetings of the CATs. Thus,
interactions started by the government began to have a life of their own, mainly through
horizontal interactions that were taking place without direct governmental interference.
Despite difficulties in obtaining data from within the auto-assemblers about their in-house
developments of the E100, it was constantly mentioned in my interviews that they
improved the E100 technology further. Gatti Junior (2010) claims that some of the foreign
auto-assemblers settled in Brazil (Volkswagen, Ford, Fiat and General Motors) started
working on the development of ethanol cars before 1979. Whether this is correct or not, the
efforts of the auto-assemblers to improve the E100 only became evident with their
participation in the joint meetings of SAE-Brazil and of the CATs (STI/MIC, 1983;
STI/MIC, 1986), where they presented results their in-house research and experiments. An
interviewee, who was the chief engineer of one of the auto-assemblers installed in Brazil,
96
reinforced the point made by Gatti Junior (2010) and claimed that the development of the
ethanol cars by the auto-assemblers did not use much of what CTA had developed. In his
point of view, CTA only proved the possibility of having an ethanol powered engine. Once
ethanol cars started populating the Brazilian landscape and started being used on a daily
basis many problems became more evident. Auto-assemblers carried their research and
development activities without relying on CTA. The same interviewee also claims that
interactions within the automotive sector were facilitated by professional associations like
SAE-Brazil, but those interactions focused only on legislation, specifications and future
trends, never about developments that required industrial secrecy. (Ferran, Oct, 2011).
Independently of this question about the extent to which the E100 needed to be further
developed by auto-assemblers, the transfer of the E100 technology from CTA to auto-
assemblers, and mainly the requirement of the government for auto-assemblers to produce
ethanol cars, pushed the automotive sector to become more innovative and to respond to
what were larger societal needs of the country.
From the data I infer that the development and the societal embedding of the ethanol car
went hand in hand. The government was concerned with developing a working ethanol
engine, increasing the consumption and the production of ethanol, at the same time as it
was putting ethanol cars and the ethanol fuel into the daily routine of car drivers. The
government was building prototypes, instruments and schemes to guarantee the quality of
the fuel, the quality of the ethanol cars and their performance, while it tried to stimulate the
ethanol consumption in the country.
CONCLUSIONS
In a sociotechnical analysis of the developments related to BEC, the State is seen to play
various roles, on different levels. There are more actors that influenced the development of
BEC, but the State was central because it not only organized those actors, but it shaped the
country in many different ways (planning the economy, building up the National
Innovation Regime, giving incentives to industries, etc.), which was characteristic of the
Brazilian State during the dictatorship, but also before it. Building up and maintaining an
97
Innovation Regime that can be drawn upon by various actors, including the State, is
important. For specific technologies, the State can do procurement, can do technology
forcing, and can also do macro-enactment, as it did for the BEC and was quite successful in
it.
The role of the government in the development of the E100 was dual: it pushed the
enactment of a new sociotechnical configuration while it strengthened the Brazilian regime
of innovation within the automotive sector by creating spaces for sociotechnical
interactions to emerge. This started already in the 1920s, when the Brazilian State was
interested in building a national innovation regime with emphasis on Public Research
Institutes (PRIs), as INT, IAC and Fiocruz, conducting applied researches addressing broad
social and economic issues, and on Universities educating a work force to be employed by
the industry, agriculture or by the State. PRIs were intended to create a reservoir of
scientific and technological options that could eventually support concrete technological
development, mainly in agriculture, energy and tropical diseases, as with the development
of vaccines (see Chapter 1). This continued, also after 1973, but by then the State took
another role upon itself as well, that of enactor of a sociotechnical configuration, the
Brazilian Ethanol Car.
The Brazilian State already had a long tradition of supporting the emergence of national
industries – mainly state-owned companies – but in the case of the Brazilian Ethanol Car
the State enacted a whole new sociotechnical configuration and pushed the development of
a specific artifact. The government enacted this new sociotechnical configuration on
different societal layers, from the development of the artefacts – ethanol car and the ethanol
fuel – to the development of a new fuel regime, reinforcing the tendency of using of ethanol
that initiated in the 1920s.
The success of the State varied according to the role it was performing. It was much more
successful in pushing the development than it was (as it turned out from 1989 onwards) in
guaranteeing that new ethanol cars were still going to be sold if circumstances changed. At
different levels (niches, regimes and landscapes) the State played different roles. In niches
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it pushed developments and created protected spaces. At the level of regimes, the State
created the conditions for the emergence of the Ethanol Fuel Regime by creating demand
for ethanol fuel, negotiating with sugar producers to convince them producing ethanol
instead of sugar and with auto-assemblers so they would start making ethanol cars,
centralizing the distribution via Petrobras, building a body of knowledge about the ethanol
engines by accrediting shops to retrofit gasoline engines to run on ethanol. In promoting
broader changes, the State changed the Brazilian landscape when it stimulated the
production and the use of ethanol, via tax incentives, by promoting the ethanol car via
governmental propaganda, and by making repair shops follow STI’s standards, it created
the E100 design and maintenance constituencies.
The ethanol car was enacted and got embedded in Brazilian society because the State did
not limit itself to play its traditional role of taking general measures like fiscal ones, and
setting global priorities, but because the government orchestrated, as a macro-enactor, the
development and embedding of the ethanol car. Without much need for democratic
accountability, and with an overall consensus about the importance of the Brazilian Ethanol
Car, the government could be assertive and enact the development of the Brazilian Ethanol
Car.
In our case study, I identified an approach, macro-enacting by the State, which has been
neglected in the literature about government influencing science and technology dynamics.
The closest the literature comes to this phenomenon is in its discussion of strategic
procurement (Edler and Georghiou, 2007).104
They would say that the state created the
demand for ethanol cars, by setting incentives for ethanol use. But the Brazilian military
government did not limit itself to setting incentives. In practice it created the conditions, it
conducted R&D, it coordinated actors and it took measures to get ethanol accepted by
users. Thus, macro-enacting goes a step further than procurement. Still, the macro-enacting
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Strategic procurement is located at the demand side of innovation policies. As presented by Edler and
Georghiou (2007), such policies aim to increase the demand for innovation and speed up its diffusion by
creating new functional requirements for products and services or better articulating demand, but without
specifying solutions to be pursued.
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by the Brazilian State did incorporate some strategic procurement practices to increase the
demand for innovations.
In general, the state created and maintained Public Research Institutes as a key part of the
Brazilian National Innovation Regime (NIR), which played an important role in the
development of the ethanol car. The development of the ethanol car (mainly during its early
years, before going to the private sector) was shaped by the Brazilian NIR, but it also
created new dynamics and changed the NIR.
Even more generally, the enactment of a new sociotechnical configuration requires
alignments at all levels. Thus, it will depend, first, on the intensity and solidness of its
linkages to other actors/products/structures/desires/resources in the societal fabric, and
second, on the continuation of the constellation under which it was installed and the
adaptation to its eventual changes.
There are lessons about the role of government in sociotechnical dynamics from this story
of the Brazilian Ethanol Car. When facing external threats, governments can push
technological development by acting as a macro-enactor working towards the development
and societal embedding of a technology which is considered to be beneficial for the
country. Macro-enacting by a government can be quite effective. If this is the first lesson,
the second lesson is that this does require certain political and cultural conditions to be
successful. It is possible to see a political and cultural style of how the Brazilian State
influenced the development of the ethanol car, which links up to a general characteristic of
the Brazilian state in relation to science and technology dynamics (planning the economy
and building up a NIR). What may be hard to avoid in such macro-actor type interventions
is a focus on immediate success and thus too little reflection on broader circumstances and
enabling conditions.
In a counterfactual inference, the case of the Brazilian ethanol car shows how long term
viability could have benefitted by anticipatory consideration of alternative
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constellations.105
. For instance, although the State had been relatively successful to interest
the automotive and sugar sectors it failed to maintain them aligned to the E100. Fuel
producers were primarily sugar producers and as the prices changed they also focused on
producing sugar. Auto-assemblers were aligned by the prospects of increasing sales of the
ethanol fuelled cars due to the full adoption of the new fuel pushed by policy measures that
would make the new car more attractive than gasoline cars. As ethanol became absent at
fuel stations drivers started to buy gasoline powered cars instead of ethanol models, and
they also started converting their cars back to gasoline. At the same time the political
regime was changing from developmentalist dictatorship towards a democratic republic
whose first elected president was in favor of reduced state intervention.
The circumstances had changed and influenced the behavior of major allies of the ethanol
car in Brazil. But those changes are not completely surprising. For instance, the country
was in a transition to democracy since 1985. If the government had made use of
prospective tools based on the consideration of alternative scenarios, and the acting upon
such alternative scenarios, it could have foreseen such an outcome, and eventually
prevented the crisis of the ethanol car in the decade of 1990.
A further reflexive comment is that after the success of enacting the Brazilian Ethanol Car
the State might have reviewed its role in the NIR and decided to do more enacting of
specific sociotechnical projects. But that is not what happened; the State did not act as an
enactor of further projects. One reason for that is that the dictatorial regime was replaced by
a democratic regime with aimed to reduce the interventionist role played by the state in
which it is much more difficult to do macro-enacting. Then, the State needs to
accommodate diverse claims and needs to negotiate at more length with the actors involved
to build up shared agendas, because of that goals, measures and consensus take longer to be
achieved. Also the neoliberal position, on which many countries, including Brazil, based
their policies at the time, implied reluctance of the State exerting strong influence and
105
One can broaden this point by reference to the reflexive governance literature, which includes discussion
of anticipation of long-term effects and experimentation and adaptability of strategies (Voss et al. 2006).
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control on economic activities. The unexpected relative failure of the Brazilian Ethanol Car
project then made it politically difficult to propose an enactment role for the State.
In conclusion, there is no reason to write off the macro-enactment role. The lesson to be
learned is that the macro-enactment should be more reflexive. The State based its early
enacting of the Brazilian Ethanol Car on circumstances, like the price of oil, the price of
sugar and the stability of the political regime, but these eventually changed. When the
shortage of ethanol fuel occurred, the program was abandoned, BEC’s importance declined
and E100’s production collapsed. It did not completely disappear and the parts of the
system that remained and were taken up again for the development of the Flexible Fuel
Vehicle (FFV) (see Chapter 4). If the State had been sensitive to possible changes in the
constellations on which they were building the actual macro-enactment of a new
sociotechnical configuration, they could have done better in 1989. In other words, the
relative failure of the project is due to lack of reflexivity, and thus lack of resilience, not to
the fact that an enactment role was taken by the government. States can do enactment but it
needs to be a reflexive enactment.
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CHAPTER 4: AN EVOLVING PATCHWORK OF OLD AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES.
INTRODUCTION
The image of a rise and then a decline of the Brazilian ethanol car (E100) offers a dramatic
story, and this is how the developments around 1990 have been characterized in
newspapers “going down the ladder: the problem now is to stop the decline of ethanol car’s
sales” (Isto é Senhor, Septemper 13, 1989), and how the story lived on. Earlier (in Ch2), I
have softened the drama by speaking of a partial decline and showing that ethanol cars
remained running on Brazilian roads, despite its removal from public concentrated efforts.
An example of its partial decline –or partial survival, as one wishes – can be seen in an
article published in Folha de São Paulo about the automotive sector in Brazil, which
reported that the E100 represented 12% of the automotive sales in the country in 1994
(Filho, 1997). In this chapter, I will make a next step, and introduce another image, that of
an evolving patchwork of old and new technologies (EPONT). That image is theoretically
important, because it transcends the present dominant interest in the replacement of an old
technology by a new technology (cf. the concept of a disruptive technology by Christensen
(1998); Christensen and Bower, (1995), with the concomitant image of a heroic battle
between the old and the new. In my broader perspective, such a battle can happen;
however, it is but one of the possible trajectories in the evolution of patchworks of old and
new technologies. The broader perspective is necessary, because it captures the complexity
of what happened around and with the Brazilian ethanol car. The decline of the ethanol car
in the 1990’s and its partial resurrection in the early 2000s, when the Flexible Fuel Vehicle
(FFV) arrived on the scene, are interesting in their own right and the history deserves to be
re-constructed, as a sequel to the history presented in Chapter 1. There will be historical
contingencies, both in the partial decline and the subsequent partial revival, but the
historical reconstruction can also be taken as an occasion to explore general dynamics of
decline and perhaps revival of a sociotechnical configuration, or more generally, of patterns
in evolving patchworks of old and new technologies. I assume that the so-called collapse of
the ethanol car was not inevitable, and that even when the sociotechnical system of the
ethanol car did not survive, there were traces left, e.g. in institutional arrangements, and
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widespread practices (Cf. discussion on Maintenance Constituencies in Chap2). These
ideas will inform my historical reconstruction, and make it relevant for the general question
about patterns in evolving patchworks of old and new technologies.
In this chapter, I will look at the elements present in the decline of the Ethanol car as well
as those elements that were present in the emergence of the FFV. In order to offer a
contribution to the understanding of the rise and fall of sociotechnical configurations, and
of the technologies involved in them, I conduct a selective historical reconstruction of the
decline of the E100 and of the emergence of the Flex-Fuel Vehicle - FFV. The focus is on
the processes that reduced the centrality of the E100 to Brazilian automotive and fuel policy
after 1989, and the processes that gave room for the FFV to emerge as a sociotechnical
configuration that was simultaneously linked to ethanol and gasoline, their community of
users, institutions, their production, distribution and users networks. While this is a specific
case, I will highlight elements that allow a broader understanding of the patterns in the
patchworks of old and new technologies. At the same time, the specifics of the case, like
the role of the innovation maintenance constituency, of the available infrastructure and the
wide-spread practices add to our understanding of how old and new technologies can
interact.
The study of the emergence of a new technology, through the actual sociotechnical
configurations, allows to understand how novelties arise and get socially embedded, but
leaves open the question of its counter-part movement, the decline of existing technologies.
There are relatively few studies which looked in detail into the decline and disappearance
of sociotechnical configurations (see Section 4.1), and even fewer who managed to identify
a pattern in this dynamics. Our case study in this chapter combines both aspects: decline of
a technology as well as emergence of a new technology. Actually, the two were related.
Elements introduced (or highlighted) in the enactment of the ethanol car were eventually
picked up in the new sociotechnical configuration, in particular the maintenance
constituency and a number of institutional arrangements. Hence, the (FFV) benefited from
distribution lines, technological capacities within the sector, and a certain degree of social
acceptance among users of both gasoline and ethanol cars.
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Of course, this pattern in the evolving patchwork of old and new technologies is just one
possible pattern. Nevertheless, it is interesting, because it contrasts with the present
dominant view in the literature about the heroic battle between an old and a new, so-called
disruptive, technology. One might consider other possible patterns, and in the next section
on theory and literature I will refer to some. The focus of this chapter, however, is not on
the general question of patterns in evolving patchworks of old and new technologies, but
what happened in this particular case of the decline of E100 and the emergence of the FFV
on the Brazilian scene. The historical reconstruction in Section 5.2 allows consideration of
the processes that took place. The alignments that maintained a technology, here the E100,
dissolved, and there was debate about its future. In general, when a new technological
option becomes available its societal embedding has to realize links with specific niches,
regulations and the overall landscape, but can build on what was there already.
4.1 EVOLVING PATCHWORKS OF OLD AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES - EPONT
The discussion in this section will be broader than strictly necessary for the analysis and
understanding of my case. The concept of a patchwork of old and new technologies that I
introduced to overcome the focus on substitution of old technologies by new technologies,
deserves to be discussed in its own right.106
This will then allow me to raise questions about
which pattern there might be in the patchwork that I see in my case.
The music sector offers interesting examples of old and new technologies, their changing
relationships also in connection to changing industry structures and business models. In
general, technologies exist together and there can be interconnections and dependencies,
including attempts at alignment (which can range from standardization to coordination in
product-value chains). Given my case, I am particularly interested in the evolution of
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There is a question of terminology when I speaking of old and new technologies. This terminology is quite
common nowadays, but the actual dynamics are primarily about innovation, new products and their uptake.
The term ‘technology’ can be used as denoting an artefact, or better, a cluster of artefacts, but also as a way of
producing a range of quite different artefacts (for example biotechnology and nanotechnology). In the
discussion of disruptive technology, the rhetoric is about the background technology, but the learning curves
(discussed below) and other competition phenomena are about artefacts. In line with recent literature, I will
continue to speak of a patchwork old and new technologies, even when the patchwork is primarily one of
innovations, devices and sociotechnical systems.
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patchworks of old and new technology over time, and the possibility of there being patterns
in the evolution. Substitution of old by new, extensively documented and discussed in the
literature, is one such pattern, but one can also think of more or less peaceful cohabitation.
In the music sector, with music being available for free on the internet, being charged for
downloading, with vinyl discs returning to the mass market and with live concerts, one sees
examples of both.
There are other patterns, like emergence of a new technology with a new functionality, as
the example of the bicycle (cf. Bijker 1995) and of the computer as mixed case (Van den
Ende and Kemp 1999). To be symmetrical, one should also consider decline, independent
of there being a new technology. One could argue that the supersonic aircraft Concorde
disappeared because its advantages (reducing transatlantic travel time so as to enable face-
to-face meetings of busy managers or policy makers) became less important with the
advent of video-conferencing. The general point here is that changes in the sociotechnical
landscape may make a technology less relevant or attractive. This is at least part of the
reason for the decline of the Brazilian ethanol car, as will become clear in the next section.
External changes, that is, independent from the performance of the technology, make what
was embedded in society become dis-embedded, and if there are alternatives that can be
pursued, there is little attempt at re-alignment.
The way I described patterns in the evolving patchworks of old and new technologies is
still superficial in the sense that it is a mapping exercise, characterizing the outcomes of the
processes rather than their dynamics and mechanisms. While there are many historical and
contemporary case studies which show in some detail what happened, the challenge is to
identify general dynamics and mechanisms. My earlier reference to interconnections and
dependencies, when further developed, would be one entrance point (and will discuss this
below). Another entrance point would be to argue that a feature of a particular case could
be a general phenomenon. An example from the case of sailing ships being replaced by
steam ships for long-distance transportation (one of the cases in Geels 2005), is what is
now sometimes called the ‘sailing ship effect. The ‘sailing ship effect’ describes a situation
in which competition with a new technology leads to improvements in the old technology.
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The actual sailing ship ocean transport regime/configuration was a mature regime, but
when competition from steam ships became more serious, definitely from the mid-19th
century onward, innovations of the sailing ship configuration occurred, which maintained
its competitive position for another few decades. Being challenged to innovate because of
competition from a newcomer might actually be so successful that the newcomer is reduced
to occupying a small niche. One can analyze the various possibilities in terms of the
learning curves that occur (I will develop this point below when discussing disruptive
technologies).
From the perspective of a newly emerging technology, with still uncertain performance, the
challenge is to create openings for its development so as to enable it to come into its own
(cf. how niches can function as protected spaces for such development, but have to open up
to the selection pressures in the wider world to survive there; this has been called Strategic
Niche Management (Van den Belt and Rip 1987, and Schot & Geels 2008)).As I showed in
Ch4, the Brazilian Government pro-actively created such spaces for development of the
ethanol car. One could raise the question whether the protection had been too strong, so that
when protection stopped in 1990, the ethanol car was not sufficiently robust to survive in
its earlier glory. This is not a question that can be answered simply, as I shall show.
Another point is that newly emerging technology is not yet aligned to its technological,
business and societal contexts, and pressures to align it to the existing situation might be
counterproductive, because allowing only incremental innovation. In that sense, some de-
alignment with respect to the existing situation should be tolerated (perhaps pushed), but it
should be combined with attention to re-alignment in a new situation where the new
technology would be an integral part. The net effect might well be that the new technology
would build on and include items from the old situation.
Abernathy and Clark (1985) when discussing different types of innovation drew attention to
a further aspect, that a new technology requires new capacities of the firm, and when the
innovation is successful, it will make earlier technological capacity obsolescent. A similar
point applies to existing user and market linkages, which can become obsolescent when a
new product comes with new functionalities and uses. Abernathy and Clark create a two-
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by-two matrix of types of innovation, depending on the extent of obsolescence they create
for technological capacity and user/market linkages of the firm. When both existing
technology capacity and existing linkages are disrupted, they speak of architectural
innovation. The case of the Ford model T, which they discuss at length, is an example.
This perspective allows firms (and consulting firms) to understand what is involved in
envisaged innovation, and act more effectively on that basis. Hoogma (2000) used a
slightly adapted version of the Abernathy and Clark scheme to analyze a number of cases
of development and introduction of electric cars in the 1980s and 1990s, and concluded that
innovations stretching existing technological capacities at the same time as user/market
linkages had little chance to succeed. He also observed, though, that a stepwise innovation
journey, starting with just new technology and existing user/market linkages, or existing
technology but new user/market linkages, could be successful, and could then add the other
renewal (in markets or technology, respectively), eventually achieving a situation of
architectural innovation, where both the technology and market were new. In the case of the
Brazilian ethanol car, the technology was new, but existing user/market linkages were used.
This case shows an aspect which was not considered by Abernathy and Clark: the
possibility that the innovation disrupts existing societal embedding of the motor car, or at
least, requires some renewal. Deuten et al (1997) have pointed this out already, and
considered its implication for firms. In my case of the ethanol car in Brazil, it was the
government which stepped in as a macro-enactor (see Chapter 3) and tried to create societal
embedding.
Another very general dynamic is related to the multi-level character of technological
developments and their embedding in society. Sociotechnical landscape changes can play
havoc with societal embedment as it is stabilizing. This is clear for cases of decline, as of
the ethanol car in Brazil, but influence of the gradually or abruptly changing sociotechnical
landscape is there all the time, in all the four patterns. Developments at the regime level
have their own dynamics, e.g. alliances, some standardization, struggles for a dominant
design, which affect the success of the firms involved in the innovation. Interesting
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examples are professional video-recording and subsequently consumer video-recording, as
analyzed by Deuten (2003) (see also Cusumano et al. 1997).
A third general dynamic derives from interconnections through (often mutual)
dependencies, as I noted already. For instance, the current computer sociotechnical sector is
linked to the semiconductor sector. The current automotive sector is inter-connected with
the oil sector, with its refining and distribution activities. For the ethanol car, the equivalent
is the dependence on the sugar-based ethanol production sector. In Chapter 3, I have shown
how the Brazilian government actively regulated this dependency to support the
development and uptake of the ethanol car. Those interconnections may create a situation
where sectors (or at least specific product-value chains in them) become aligned, that is,
mutually adjusted and working productively. There will often be some coordination, for
example between gasoline divisions of oil companies and motor car companies (and
sometimes also suppliers and service companies), also with respect to process and product
innovation.
Conversely, when a new and promising technology appears, such alignments may not be
adequate. An interesting example is polymer-based semiconductors, also called Organic
Large-Area Electronics (OLAE). On that basis, OLED, photovoltaics and Radiofrequency
Identification tags – RFID can be produced through ink jet printing, 107
so that suddenly
printing companies become an important actor, and chemical material producers have to
redefine their relationships (see Parandian 2012). Existing alignments may have to be given
up (thus, de-alignment) and new alignments have to be formed (re-alignment). Abernathy
and Clark’s (1985) analysis in terms of little or large obsolescence of existing technical
capacities, and little or large change in user/market relations, can be retold in terms of de-
alignment (of the old) and re-alignment (of the new). This broader terminology is important
to show that alignment does not only occur in business to business relationships, but also
with users, and with society more generally (including what Rip, 1995, called macro-
alignment actors interested in the societal alignment of technologies being developed by
others).
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Radiofrequency identification tags that can be made smaller and cheaper through OLAE.
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Interconnections can also be part of substitution, because substitution need not be the all-
out replacement of an old technology, or better, sociotechnical configuration, by a new one.
It makes a difference whether substitution is of a component or device in the sociotechnical
configuration which improves its present performance, or whether the whole configuration
is being replaced by an alternative (as was the case with steamships replacing sailing ships).
The electric starter for automobiles, introduced by GM Company in 1912, and taken up
across the sector, improved the performance, but did not change the configuration
(Abernathy and Clark 1985). Over time, however, it was part of a transformation of the
automobile from a rugged means of transport to a comfortable “house on four wheels”, a
transformation that started in the 1930s with closed and streamlined steel bodies of cars.
The ethanol car is an intermediate case, because it started as the replacement of one type of
engine with another, but then required further technical changes as well as sociotechnical
changes, like ethanol pump stations and maintenance and repair shops with skills to handle
the ethanol engine.
In the competition between an old and a new technology (cf. Christensen 1998; Christensen
and Bower 1995, on disruptive technologies), the promised performance of the fledgling
new technology is a key element in setting the competition in motion. The promise then has
to be realized, first at the level of R&D, turning proof of principle into a prototype, and
production for a test market (cf. above on strategic niche management). The real
competition starts when the new technology faces the old technology in its established
markets, often still at a disadvantage with respect to the established market and the
alignments of the old technology. Christensen and his followers use the phenomenon of
learning curves to make case for the disruptive technology: its learning curve, i.e.
increasing performance, is steeper than that of the old technology, so it will eventually
overtake it.
Learning curves indicate the incremental learning with increasing total production over
time, and the opportunities of learning-by-doing that occur that way. In a number of areas
(in the chemical industry, for example) learning curves with a slope of about 25% have
been documented (Lieberman 1984; 1987). A new and potentially disruptive technology
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starts out as a hopeful monstrosity, not having great performance, but being expected to
improve rapidly with increasing total production and thus experience.108
The phenomenon
of a learning curve has occurred in the innovation journey of the E100 in Brazil as well, as
Goldemberg, et al (2004: 304) have shown: the costs of production and retailing of ethanol
were reduced, creating what they call the ‘long-term competitiveness of the ethanol fuel’.
The story is one of a relatively slow learning curve of the mature technology, and the
projected rapid (i.e. steep) learning curve of the potentially disruptive technology. The
steep learning curve (with achieved performance on the vertical axis) is destined to
overtake the slower learning curve at some moment – unless the sailing ship effect occurs,
and the mature technology is spurred to become more innovative again, so that its learning
curve becomes steeper and the potentially disruptive technology cannot overtake it, at least
not for the time being. Disappointment may then set in, and investment in the potentially
disruptive technology may disappear, or be limited to niche applications.
This discussion of dynamics and mechanisms in the patchwork of old and new technologies
have focused on the conditions for success of new technologies, with de-alignment and re-
alignment, and with steep learning curves. For the decline of (old) technologies there is
much less literature.
Geels, after analysing transitions of sociotechnical systems, from a multi-level perspective,
moved on to study destabilization and decline of sociotechnical regimes supporting
sociotechnical systems. Turnheim and Geels (2012) offer a characterization of the
phenomena of destabilization of sociotechnical regimes. In Turnheim’s and Geels’s (2012)
view, the phenomenon of destabilization of industries and technologies is the result of
increasing external pressures and weakening actors’ commitments to established regimes.
They identify four possible core explanations for the destabilization process, of which three
are important for my analysis. First, disruptive innovations determine the decline of
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The experience with such steep learning curves, for example in the integrated circuits (“chips”) sector has
led to strategies of firms introducing new chips wanting “to go down the learning curve fast” and increase
opportunities to do so by selling the product below actual costs of production at time t1, thus increasing turn-
over as well as opportunities for learning. At time t2, productions costs will have become so low that the
company can start making a profit, and recuperate the losses it had intentionally accepted earlier.
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“traditional/old” industries and technologies; second, market changes cause technologies
and industries to decline, and third, the loss of political legitimacy makes stakeholders
reduce their support.109
Another approach to understanding the dynamics of old and new technologies is suggested
by Stegmaier and Kuhlmann (2013), who share the concern that the dynamics of
abandonment and discontinuation of a sociotechnical configuration have not yet been
systematically analyzed. Their focus is on the governance of the discontinuation of
sociotechnical configurations, which has policy implications for the purposeful
discontinuation of sociotechnical systems. Their research program points to further insights
into the dynamics of new and old technologies. The core assumption behind Stegmaier and
Kuhlmann’s research program is that “the success of a new technology goes hand in hand
with hybridization, fading out, marginalization or failure of existing technologies”
(Stegmaier and Kuhlmann 2013: 02). This speaks to the overall notion of evolving
patchworks of new and old technologies.
There is a general point behind these recent attempts to consider the decline of
technologies. The competitive performance and societal embedding of an
artefact/technology is not given once and for all. Even after being stabilized, a technology
can have its societal embedding contested. Hence, there is a further consideration, about
resilience of a technology to survive socio-political, cultural and economic changes. The
continuation of a technology depends on its continuous embedding in society, within the
societal arrangements it was “introduced” and which its emergence modified. Even so,
there are no guarantees. As technologies get embedded, markets changes, consumer
interests are changed by new arrangements, legislation will introduce new considerations,
and re-alignments will be needed. One can say that continuous alignment and repair work
needs to take place for a technology to be resilient while facing broader socio-political,
cultural and economic changes.
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The fourth explanation is that firms decline because of bad choices of responses to market adversities and
poor economic and managerial performance, negatively affecting the stabilization of sociotechnical regimes.
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In this respect, the de-alignment and re-alignment path, one of the sociotechnical transition
pathways discussed by Geels and Schot (2007), could be interesting, even if they only
consider occasional success of the new technology. They integrate the substitution
approach to the dynamics of alignments and de-alignments caused by gradual
improvements in technologies and technological systems. But they focus on niche
innovations creating changes within the sector which might result in the disuse of the old
technology. This is just one possibility, I would argue. It is not fully adequate to understand
the phenomena in the case of the ethanol car. The vacuum created after the decline of the
ethanol car with respect to its earlier embedding in society was not filled by any new niche
innovation, at least not the in the short turn, as their approach would suggest. There was a
return to the gasoline car. Such was the case at least until 2003, when a niche-innovation
that combined elements of the gasoline sociotechnical configuration, and the ethanol
sociotechnical configuration, the FFV, emerged and turned into a successful sociotechnical
configuration.
The decline of a technology or a sociotechnical configuration needs to be understood not
just as its failure to keep up with changes but also as a more interactive movement. As
technologies, artifacts or sociotechnical configurations emerge they get embedded in
society, and their maintenance depends on the continuity of its embedding. Understanding
embedding as a multilayered alignment implies that the decline of a sociotechnical
configuration should be studied as a movement in which various elements de-align and re-
align in different layers of the societal fabric. There may not be a general pattern, but it is
important to do case studies and inquire whether there might be bits and pieces of a general
pattern. That is a question I will ask after doing the further historical reconstruction in the
next section.
4.2 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
This section is about what happened to the ethanol car in Brazil between 1989 and 2003,
and how this might speak to the general considerations in the preceding section. The
ethanol car did not collapse: fewer people owned ethanol cars (also because of the re-
114
retrofitting) and its production decreased, but it did not completely disappear from Brazil.
In every-day life, it continued to exist despite being removed from explicit governmental
support. The Brazilian government terminated the Proalcool program, stopped its financial
support and other subsidizing mechanisms. Using the E100 to reduce oil imports was not
within the government’s priorities anymore. However, people still owned ethanol cars, and
its production and distribution lines were not dismantled, they continued fulfilling their
functions. There were still mechanics and repair shops that once specialized in fixing
ethanol cars and continued to do so after 1989. Their number might well have decreased
from 1989 to 2003, but they were there, and served a function. For such a situation, to
speak of the death of the ethanol car is imprecise and dramatic, and does not allow us to
understand the variety of arrangements enacted for the societal embedding of the E100 in
Brazil, nor the evolving patchworks of new and old technologies that made the
development and uptake of the FFV possible. For some years, the gasoline engine was the
only alternative, but this changed in 2003, when Volkswagen do Brasil released the Flexible
Fuel Vehicle (FFV), a car with an engine that could use any mix of gasoline and ethanol in
the same tank (Revista Pesquisa FAPESP, 2012).110
Being fuelled by ethanol as well as
gasoline, the FFV interlinked trajectories of two different but overlapping sociotechnical
configurations, the gasoline and the ethanol powered cars. Key societal and material
elements of the ethanol car and the gasoline car became integrated into the sociotechnical
system of the FFV.
The historical reconstruction is based on textual data, collected on newspapers, academic
journals, popular magazines and governmental documents with special attention to
sociotechnical interactions between the ethanol car, the gasoline car and the flexible fuel
vehicle. First, I document the partial collapse of the ethanol car and show how it was
influenced by changing external and internal conditions, the lack of reflexive governance
evidenced by long-term planning based on presumed static contextual circumstances. After
indicating briefly what happened with the ethanol car during the 1990s and early 2000s,
110
The prospect of such a multi-fuel engine had been noted earlier, in an article about Stumpf claiming to
have developed a multi-fuel engine and to be waiting for investors to support his project. (Sindipeças
Noticias. 1986).
115
when the FFV was introduced into the Brazilian broader societal fabric, there is a brief
reconstruction of the development of the FFV, as part of the patchwork of old and new
technologies. Then the main historical narrative continues showing that the FFV has
become socially embedded, for building on the infrastructures for the ethanol car.
The first part of the story is how a technology, the E100, solidly embedded in society in the
1980s, turned out to get into problems because its solidity was conditional on certain
exogenous and endogenous features. When these changed, societal embedding was
reduced. Because of the confluence of these changes in a short period of time, this
reduction took on a dramatic complexion, giving rise to stories about the collapse of the
ethanol car.
The trajectory of the ethanol car is marked by increasing acceptance in the mid-1980s and a
striking decrease in sales after 1989, which followed a widespread ethanol shortage across
the country. The success of the ethanol program was conditional on a number of external
factors, which were not solely dependent on the technology’s performance, but mainly the
maintenance of low sugar prices and the continuity of the high oil prices. Ethanol and sugar
producers were unreliable sociotechnical allies. Once sugarcane companies could profit
more from selling sugar than from producing ethanol, they focused on producing sugar
rather than ethanol. That was what happened in 1989 when sugar prices in the international
market increased. Another unreliable ally was the government, who freed sugar from export
restrictions from the government, so de-aligning further elements of the E100’s societal
embedding, and thus creating circumstance in which a widespread shortage of ethanol fuel
in Brazil could occur. Concurrently, oil prices decreased, making gasoline more attractive
to drivers. (Hira and Oliveira, 2009: 2454). The ethanol shortage occurred in 1989, and
once again, gasoline became the first fuel option in Brazil. For example, there is evidence
that ethanol cars were being retrofitted back to run on gasoline (O Globo, 25th February,
1982).
One can ask a reflexive question: was the possibility of such changing circumstances not
considered, so that the effect, the partial collapse of the ethanol car, came as an unpleasant
116
surprise? Technological analysis and prediction carried by MIC/STI did consider broader
changes in the overall circumstances that made the E100’s sociotechnical configuration
possible, yet did not explicitly mention a reversal leading to a return of the gasoline car.
Their predictions were based on the assumption of a continuous increase of oil prices and
decrease of ethanol prices because of the finitude of world oil reserves and because of the
learning curve in the ethanol production technologies and processes. The quote below, from
1981, sets the scene for the program, taking these predictions as given:
Projections of total fuel supply and demand until the end of the century suggest a need
for between 62 and 36 billion liters of ethanol and other petroleum substitutes, with
higher figure being the most likely to occur at the end of the century. Alcohol would then
represent about 50% of transportation fuels, and the alcohol program would probably
be at a mature stage. Such forecasts suggest a very large program whose impact on
society must be carefully considered during its early stages. (MIC/STI, 1981: 11).
The Brazilian State, in general, and STI specifically, built their assessments on detailed
forecasts that, for example, predicted a world shortage of oil to take place from 1990
onwards and that oil prices would increase 5% each year steadily. (MIC/STI, 1984: 100-1).
The Table below shows the summary of one of such forecasts exercise, without going into
the details, just offering it as an example of the planning processes.
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FIGURE 13 - BRAZIL – SUPPLY/DEMAND OF OIL AND ETHANOL NEED.
Source: MIC, 1979: 20
What actually happened in the late 1980s was that international oil prices started to
decrease while sugar prices began to rise. This destabilized the societal arrangements that
had facilitated the embedding of the E100. To cope with the changes it would have been
necessary to increase the government subsidies to ethanol use, maintaining its consumer
price lower than the consumer price for the gasoline. The government did not do so,
however, it reduced the subsidies to the ethanol program. Such a measure was influenced
by the change in the political regime, with the election of Fernando Collor in 1990.111
Collor, a liberal in favour of minimum government interference in the economy, who was
inspired by the Washington consensus suggestions, cut expenses with the country’s earlier
protectionist policies. The subsidies were removed during the 1990s (Hira and Oliveira,
2009: 2454). During this same period Planalsucar and IAA were also closed down, and
111
In a similar way Law and Callon also associate the change on the political orientation of the government
to the abandonment of the TSR 2 project in Britain. (1988: 293; 1992)
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Proálcool was officially ended in February 1991. The effects of the changing circumstances
were already perceptible in 1989, when sugar and ethanol producers directed their
production towards sugar, leading to the shortage of ethanol in Brazil. (Bastin, 2010: 158).
Again reflecting general policy changes, the government took two further measures that
weakened the societal embedding of the ethanol car. Market protection was removed,
making imported gasoline-based cars available in the country. And the government allowed
for the production of 1.0 cars, the 1000cc cars, which benefitted from the tax exception
from the Taxes on Industrial Products (IPI).112
(Hira and Oliveira, 2009). As a consequence
there were re-alignments within the Brazilian automotive sector: the Brazilian car industry
had to compete with imported cars of much superior quality, and the ethanol car had to
compete with the emerging popularity of the 1000cc car that consumed less gasoline per
kilometre than previous models available on the Brazilian market.
If before 1989 research and development (R&D) activities in the automobile sector were
focused on the improvement of the performance of the ethanol car (as discussed in Ch3),
after the policy changes of the early 1990s, in-house R&D were re-aligned with the
gasoline car and its performance, aiming at competing with imported gasoline cars, in
particular with regard aiming to increase the energy efficiency of the Brazilian cars (Bastin
2010: 158). From then on, the E100 had the imported gasoline as its direct competitor.
At the consumers’ side, one sees a movement going back to gasoline cars, buying 1000cc
and imported cars, but also continuation even if reduced of the use of E100s.From 1989 to
1990 the production of ethanol cars decreased from 345,605 units per year to 71,523 units
per year (ANFAVEA, 2010: 64). While this is a dramatic decrease, it also shows that there
was still a market for ethanol cars, and they continued to be produced. Their visibility was
reduced, but they did not disappear.
Interestingly, in 1990 the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) found it appropriate to
publish an opinion paper elaborating on the importance and benefits of the Proálcool
Programme. CNI’s opinion paper is mainly a retrospective evaluation of the Proálcool
112
Acronym for, in Portuguese, Imposto sobre Produto Industrializado (IPI).
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Programme, indicating the challenges it had had to face (like its early lack of credibility,
and the imprevisibility of oil derivatives fuel prices), and praising Proálcool for its strategic
importance in the long term and during energy crises and for its spillovers on many
economic sectors. (CNI, 1990).113
In the final recommendations the document points out
that the Brazilian automotive sector might need to follow a world trend and invest in
developing a hybrid engine, in this case one allowing a blend of gasoline and hydrated
alcohol in any proportion. They note that its viability depends, however, on the ethanol
supply remaining more or less stable across the country.
With the CNI opinion paper future developments in the E100 technology are considered,
taking us into the second part of the story, covering the period 1990-2003. A site where it is
possible to find traces of the life of the E100 is within the pages of Quatro Rodas,114
which
continued to publish performance tests of ethanol cars throughout the 1990s. In 1992 the
magazine published a paper about the new advances of the E100 (Quatro Rodas, 1992) In
1993, there was a E100xE20 comparative test (1993a), an E100 performance test of a car
equipped with a new injection system (1993b), an E100 endurance performance test, in
which the ethanol car was praised for the good conditions of its components after running
for 16 months, covering 60,000km, (1993c). In 1994, there was a performance test of a car
that used the newly developed electronic injection system (Quatro Rodas, 1994). Later on,
in 1999, there is an article claiming that the E100 allows consumers to save money, at the
same time it argues that the gasoline car offers a longer fuel autonomy, allowing drivers to
drive longer without needing to stop for re-fuelling. These data show that there was interest
in ethanol cars during the 1990s, and that car manufacturers appeared to be working on
improving the E100’s overall performance.
113
According to CNI (1990), Proálcool pushed the development of new and more productive varieties of
sugar-cane, higher efficiency of the industrial process of transforming sugar into ethanol, it pushed
innovations within the alcohol-chemistry sector, improved air-quality, but most of all, it considered to have
improved the overall performance of the ethanol engine. It did so by pushing auto-assemblers and OEMs to
conduct in house R&D aimed to develop components compatible with ethanol fuelled cars. Particular
examples of such developments are the search for solving the corrosion and the cold ignition problems. 114
For more information about Quatro Rodas, see Chapter 2.
120
Also in newspapers the ethanol car was alive, in opinion articles which mention the
Brazilian Ethanol Car and Proálcool. For instance, an article by the director of the
Department of Industrial Infrastructure (Deinfra), who in 1995 quoted the president of the
Automotive Engineering Association (AEA) claiming the ethanol engine to represent the
Brazilian independence, and being responsible for creating the large automotive and
OEMs’ research centres in Brazil. “Proálcool is responsible for the development of the
large automotive and original equipment manufacturers’ technology research and
development centres in Brazil.” (Bertelli, 1995). In 1995 and 1996 there were a few opinion
articles suggesting the resurrection of the government ethanol program in Brazil, because of
its alleged economic, technological and environmental benefits to the country (Goldenberg,
1995; Leite, 1995a; Leite, 1995b; Navarro Junior, 1996). In the pages of magazines and
newspapers, the ethanol car continued to be a presence during the 1990s, contesting the
widely accepted view that claims for the death of the E100.
The ethanol car was not just a discursive entity, existing in documents, newspaper articles
and within Quatro Rodas. It was a material artefact, running on the Brazilian roads, and
still being produced, even if in small numbers. Also, ethanol consumption in the country
did not decrease significantly after 1989, as the Table below shows. (The Table also shows
an increase in ethanol consumption of about 40% by the mid 2000s, as an effect of the
diffusion of the Flexible Fuel Vehicle since 2003.).
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Table 5 - Ethanol fuel consumption in Brazil (Total in million litters)
Year Total Consumption
1986 10,839
1987 11,055
1988 11,726
1989 12,690
1990 11,430
1991 11,898
1992 11,613
1993 12,105
1994 12,886
1995 13,318
1996 13,839
1997 13,319
1998 13,054
1999 13,053
2000 11,148
2001 10,265
2002 11,028
2003 11,019
2004 12,286
2005 13,294
2006 12,295
2007 16,593
2008 19,584
2009 22,823
2010 23,230
Source: Brasil, 2013: 52.
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The sociotechnical dynamics shifted when the Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) that runs on
gasoline, ethanol or any mix of both fuels was introduced in the Brazilian market in 2003.
The early development of the FFV occurred in the private sector, and outside Brazil, with
the German Original Equipment Manufacturer Bosch playing a leading role. Thus, the
pattern in the patchwork of old and new technologies was different from the pattern
between gasoline and ethanol fuelled cars, already because of the key role of the Brazilian
government in the latter (see Chapter 2). Eventually, however, local development occurred
which built on and solidified competencies developed by the Original Equipment
Manufacturers (OEMs) and auto-assembly firms during the development of the ethanol car
(as described by Bastin2010: 160-161; CNI, 1990).115
For our general question about patchworks of old and new technologies, it is interesting to
briefly trace the early research and development on the FFV, in general and in Brazil,
before continuing with the third part of the main story of this chapter. Bosch was the first
firm to develop the FFV technology, it started to work on this technology already in the late
1980s (Tromboni de Souza Nascimento, et al, 2009), partly due to the intent of using
ethanol fuel for cars in the US. Bosch developed a fuel detection system in Germany, for
BMW who wanted to introduce a flex-fuel vehicle in the US (Gatti Junior, 2010: 105). The
project ended up not being implemented and the Brazilian team had access to the project,
which they did not to import to Brazil. But the injection system developed by Bosch for
ethanol cars in Brazil created competencies that prepared its engineers for the development
of the FFV technology.
In 1999 Magneti Marelli, another OEM acting in Brazil whose headquarters are in Italy,
was conducting in-house R&D activities in Brazil to develop the FFV technology. By 2002,
when Marelli registered a patent on a software fuel sensor, it was already lobbying with
automakers and sugarcane producers to introduce the FFV technology in automobiles
assembled here. By 2002, Magneti Marelli had already established partnerships with
Volkswagen and Fiat, but by the mid of the year it closed a deal with Volkswagen which
115
“the incremental innovation of the flex fuel engine shows us the evolution of the technological capacity of
the auto-assemblers and of the OEM industry during the years, starting with the competencies acquired in the
development of the ethanol car”. (Bastin, 2010: 167).
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resulted in the commercial launching of a Flexible Fuel Vehicle in March 2003 (Tromboni
de Souza Nascimento, et al, 2009:113). In June of the same year General Motors launched a
FFV equipped with Delphi technology and in September Volkswagen launched another
FFV, now equipped with Bosch technology. (Yu, et al. 2010: 1256). By 2008, these three
companies were responsible for the biggest share in the FFV market, Magneti Marelli
leading and being followed by Bosch and Delphi, respectively.
The advantage of the flexible fuel vehicle which helped its societal embedding in Brazil
was its compatibility with existing technological capacities and infrastructures, institutional
arrangements and societal alignments. The technology developed by Magneti Marelli for
the FFV consists of a software, that is added to an internal combustion engine without
requiring the introduction of new parts to the engine assembly process, and thus reducing
the amount of additional costs for the production the FFV. (Tromboni de Souza
Nascimento, et al, 2009: 114-116). By using the internal combustion engine as a platform,
the FFV is aligned to and benefits from the ethanol and the gasoline distribution
infrastructures, reducing the social and technical costs for the adoption of the FFV. “The
countrywide infrastructure for ethanol and gasoline distribution, already in place, allowed
immediate adoption of flexible fuel cars by customers, after its launch in 2003 March.”
(ibidem: 111).
Since its launching, the Flexible Fuel Vehicle has become embedded in the Brazilian
context: in 2009 it represented 87% of the national automotive market. (ANFAVEA, 2010)
[See also Figure 14]. The FFV allows consumers to respond to changes in gasoline and
ethanol prices, a bottleneck that was evidenced in process of decline of the E100: when
ethanol was scarce in 1989, many car owners decided to retrofit their cars back to gasoline
because of the availability of gasoline.
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Table 6 - Car production in Brazil by fuel (2003-2013).
Year Gasoline Powered Ethanol Powered Flex Fuel Vehicle
2003 1,561,283 34,919 49,264
2004 1,682,167 51,012 332,507
2005 1,333,221 29,402 880,941
2006 977,134 356 1,392,055
2007 767,368 - 1,936,931
2008 633,966 - 2,243,648
2009 385,756 - 2,541,153
2010 660,182 - 2,627,111
2011 469,448 - 2,550,875
2012 422,731 - 2,701,781
Source: Adapted from Anfavea, 2013: 61.
A reflexive question is whether the current successful societal embedding of the FFV
should be attributed to the fact it was mainly developed and enacted by private initiatives,
in contrast to how the Brazilian government enacted the E100 (see Chapter 3). The contrast
is not so simple, however. The government influenced the FFV, at least in two ways. First,
it reduced the taxes (IPI) on FFV vehicles, as it did earlier to push the societal embedding
of the E100 and at a later stage, with the compact 1000cc car. The state of São Paulo, which
concentrated two thirds of the sugarcane production in Brazil, reduced the tax on ethanol by
half. Second, Magneti Marelli lobbied for the FFV in 2002 and the government was
exceptionally fast in issuing the governmental green certification, which was mandatory for
the launching of any new car model (Tromboni de Souza Nascimento, 2009: 166; Hira and
Oliveira, 2009: 2454). Despite being by private industries, the FFV also benefit from the
government who also pushed its societal embedding (in a different manner from how it
pushed the societal embedding of the E100).
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Overall, it is striking that Brazil is the country where the uptake of the FFV has gone
farthest. There was adaptability to different fuels embedded in the technology, but this
feature could build on an existing material infrastructure for ethanol production and
distribution, and also on a maintenance constituency that supported the use of ethanol as an
automotive fuel. The Brazilian ethanol car, even if its 1980s form collapsed, left a legacy
that allowed the FFV to flourish.
CONCLUSIONS
What is possible to observe in this case are varieties of cohabitation, rather than direct
substitution. Despite earlier enthusiastic remarks the ethanol car has never substituted the
gasoline car, nor did the gasoline car fully replace the E100 later on. The E100 and the
Gasoline car co-existed. When subsidies for the E100 were removed the ethanol car did not
disappear. It was removed from policy concerns and efforts, but ethanol cars were still
being produced and were running on Brazilian roads, and their maintenance constituency
continued to exist. For instance, there were distribution lines and fuel stations that
continued supporting the E100 by selling ethanol. Since there were even E100s being
commercially launched during the 1990s, repair shops and automotive mechanics had to
continue offering their services to ethanol car owners.
There were broader effects. Already before the decline of the E100, the meetings of the
Technological Support Centers (CATs) evolved to the creation of the Society of the
Automotive Engineers in Brazil (SAE-Brazil), which became an important forum for
knowledge exchange, on ethanol cars as well as gasoline cars. Because of the development
of the E100, automakers were also developing more incremental innovations than before
the enactment of the E100.
Changes in the National Innovation Regime also included the role of Public Research
Institutions, for example in the improvement of ethanol as a fuel, as one can see with the
efforts to start producing ethanol from cellulosic sources (Dias, et al., 2011) Automotive
engines’ development and improvement were not depending anymore on Public Research
Institutions, now that automakers were doing their own R&D.
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The government continued to play a role, for example because the E100, the 1000cc
gasoline car and the FFV were excepted from IPI. Hence, the government assumed the risks
of excepting these automotive models from specific taxes (which reduced Government’s
income) because it apparently believed those investments could boost the national
technological dynamism and innovation, thus would push the creation of job posts and
reduce the country’s oil dependence in the long run. In contrast, consumers, the automotive
industry, and the sugarcane producers were more interested in the immediate benefits of the
various options. Less immediatism is visible in how OEMs of automotive components
developed the FFV technology. They pursued the promise of the new technology, as a
strategy to create new alliances and new markets. And so could profit from the practices
and infrastructures that had emerged with the ethanol car.
Until nowadays, the development of the FFV turned out quite successful. It bridged
government, industry and consumers’ needs despite claims of fuel inefficiency and lower
performance in relation to the gasoline car. A particularly important feature was the
flexibility it allowed the end user about fuel options. The decision of which fuel to choose,
that was earlier prescribed by the government was transferred to the end user, allowing him
to reflect and make his choices more or less at the gas station, just before filling up the tank
of his cars.
There is more to say, however. There was an alignment between macro-economic needs
(fuel independence), elements of the National Innovation Regime that had been
strengthened by the E100 project, consumers needs and desires (e.g. flexibility in changing
circumstances), availability of feedstock (ethanol production in large scale), technological
repertoire and industrial relations that were created during the E100 project, legislations (as
the mandatory blend and tax exceptions).
Clearly, the pattern of cohabitation that I see here is more than just co-existence. Old and
new technologies rearrange themselves in a collaborative way through mutual
sociotechnical interactions, rather than just compete among themselves.
127
The specificities of the case make it difficult to offer a general pattern in the evolving
patchwork of old and new technologies, just on the basis of this case study. But what is
generalizable is the importance of rearrangements of old as well as new technologies,
which may be characteristic of the cohabitation pattern. Sociotechnical interactions will
always occur, but in the cohabitation pattern they drive the dynamics, including the role of
earlier regime and landscape changes on which enable (as well as constrain) further
developments.
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis carried in this thesis showed how sociotechnical elements were constructed,
and unveiled the power of discursive entities, revealed the macro-enacting of the State, and
then drew attention to the evolving patchworks of old and new technologies. This approach
allowed highlighting the multitude of processes and actors involved in a sociotechnical
innovation journey, the non-linearities and set-backs. There are also longer-term patterns
that can be brought out by analyzing technological regimes and the national innovation
regime. The overall picture can be visualized as in the diagram from Chapter 1, reproduced
below.
128
FIGURE 14 - A SOCIOTECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF AN INNOVATION JOURNEY.
Innovation Journey
Including expanding system and societal embedding
News constituencies
NB: technological and innovation regimes shape innovation journey, but are changing as well because of what happens in the innovation journey.
This concluding chapter will first focus on the innovation journey, and then discuss
analytical aspects as discursive entities and the role of the state.
The innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil suffered large set-backs in the 1940s
and in the late 1980s, and it encountered reverse salients as corrosion of the engine,
insufficient fuel efficiency, the challenge of popular acceptance, and fuel & sugar prices
fluctuations. The internal and external – if we were to put an imaginary boundary between
what is inside and what is outside of a sociotechnical configuration – reverse salients as
engine and fuel efficiencies were overcome by research carried out in CTA and by
automakers, while prices were lowered artificially, by governmental subsidies for the
production and consumption of ethanol. The fluctuating prices of oil and sugar strongly
influenced the path taken by the E100 during its innovation journey. To get the car running
was not a matter of just improving its technology but getting it socially embedded. Hence,
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technical and social elements needed to be mobilized and integrated to the E100
sociotechnical configuration. From the early experiments carried at IPT to the development
of the FFV, other processes and phenomena took place. In particular, the country’s National
Innovation Regime (NIR) evolved, with its PRIs and their interactions with industrial
sectors. The Brazilian Ethanol Car (BEC), a discursive entity which mobilized and helped
solidifying visions about the E100, also pushed specific requirements for the economic and
technological performance of the E100. The Government macro-enacted the E100 by
pushing its sociomaterial development and its societal embedding. In the 2000s, the E100
emerged in another guise, as the outcome of de-alignments of the E100 and re-alignments
of the FFV, an example of an Evolving Patchwork of Old and New Technologies
(EPONT).
In the early period, from the 1920s onward, various elements were introduced to the
Brazilian sociotechnical landscape, the automotive sector and in creating a protected space
for the development of the ethanol car. By the time the automobile was being introduced in
the country by Santos Dumont fuel dependency emerged as a governmental concern, as
one can infer from the creation of a PRI, the Experimental Station of Fuels and Ores
(EECM) at the National Institute of Technology (INT), its mission included to conduct
research on various fuel sources. The advent of WWI and the sociotechnical landscape
changes it pushed (such as a worldwide fuel shortage) intensified the search for alternative
fuels. The government created the conditions (scientific and institutional) for INT to
conduct research work on the use of ethanol fuel. More than that, by Decree 19.717, from
20th Feb. 1931, the blend of ethanol and gasoline became the national automotive fuel. The
sociotechnical landscape underwent further changes, and ethanol production increased and
moved from the north to the centre-south. In the 1950’s the Brazilian automotive regime
changed, as did the National Innovation Regime, with Brazilian Universities being created,
scientific activities being coordinated and governmental efforts to industrialize the country.
From then on gasoline and ethanol began to co-exist as fuel sources, and all cars developed
in the country needed to be made to function on the blend. In 1964, with the coup d'état, the
military, who supported national developmentalism strengthened the National Innovation
130
Regime. Cognitive practices, materials, cars, institutions and fuels were aligned to support
the blend, and configured the broad landscape in which the E100 (ethanol car) was
developed in the 1970s.
Charging INT with the task of experimenting with the use of ethanol fuel was a reflection
of the country’s National Innovation Regime’s characteristics in the thirties. Having PRIs
serving in national interest issues such as agriculture and tropical diseases was a
characteristic of the National Innovation Regime of that period, which depended on PRIs to
build scientific and technological knowledge, and cognitive practices. The State was
proactive in pushing sociotechnical interactions between PRIs and the automotive sector.
Such trend can also be visible in the creation of Institute of Sugar and Alcohol (IAA),
through which the State acted as a mediator between sugar and ethanol producers,
distilleries and consumers. The creation of the automotive industry in the country, which
was intensified by the promulgation of the Plano de Metas in the early 1950s is another
indication of the State’s strengthening and structuring the Brazilian National Innovation
Regime. By pushing an import substitution policy the government was creating local
capabilities that would strengthen the National Innovation Regime, but in which the
government would continue exerting its influence through PRIs, funding R&D activities
and priority setting for science and technology activities.
Thus, the early history of the ethanol car in Brazil shows a process through which many
actors were mobilized, enlisted and coordinated, with the development of the ethanol car as
just one of the activities. Institutions, materials and discourses became aligned. The first
experiments with ethanol as fuel led to rearrangements of sociotechnical interactions to the
point that ethanol became linked to gasoline, to the automotive sociotechnical regime and
to the Brazilian sociotechnical landscape. The ethanol fuel became part of the daily life in
Brazil, found in the tanks of cars and in discourses. The military dictatorship’s strong
national developmentalist ideals linked up to the ethanol, as a national alternative to
gasoline.
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The Brazilian Ethanol Car (BEC) became a label that linked together an oil mitigation
program, a technological artifact and sociotechnical promises. From a sort of science fiction
promise in the 1920s, that cars could be powered by a fuel from vegetable sources and thus
reduce the country expenditure on oil, BEC became a recurrent reference used by people to
address a whole set of practices, policies, governmental actions, technical developments
and industrial interactions. BEC was not just an artefact and thus a component of a
sociotechnical configuration, but it was also a label that could represent the entire
configuration.
As a widespread reference, BEC went through a process of stabilization. In the early years
of the Brazilian ethanol program, BEC stood for a sociotechnical promise, but its status
matured. The data found in Quatro Rodas shows that BEC became more stable as the E100
was developed and improved. In the first couple of years after the government signed the
‘Protocol of Intentions’ with Anfavea (in 1979) the E100s were still being introduced in the
country and BEC’s acceptance among drivers was emerging slowly. Quatro Rodas was still
doubtful about how to present the ethanol car either as a promise or as a fully functioning
sociotechnical configuration. The first performance tests Quatro Rodas carried out
compared the Ethanol car to the Gasoline car, an indication of its sociotechnical immaturity
in the sense that it was not treated in its own right. After 1985, most of the performance
tests evaluated BEC as such. In the pages of Quatro Rodas, BEC became independent from
the gasoline car. But its status depended on circumstances that could change, and they did.
When the oil prices started to decrease at the end of the 1980s, BEC had its performance
challenged by the gasoline car, once again.
By reporting on the poor or strong performance of the E100, Quatro Rodas helped to enact
the ethanol car. Consumer’s visions of the car were based on newspapers articles, friends’
opinions, as well as on how Quatro Rodas presented BEC to more or less stable images of
a sociotechnical configuration that works. For being a recurrent reference BEC reinforced
the momentum for the E100’s development – sometimes securing and sometimes (when
pointing out limitations) threatening its protected space.
132
As in the early period, the National Innovation Regime in Brazil evolved further. Initially,
the National Innovation Regime in Brazil was heavily dependent on PRIs to produce
knowledge and eventually transfer it to the private initiative or to the government. PRIs
developed vaccines, treatments for tropical diseases, increased the productivity of soil and
so forth. In sum, PRIs took the lead in scientific and technological developments, as on the
development of the ethanol car. There were, nonetheless, some specificities. During the
development of the E100 the government created conditions for industry actors and PRIs to
interact, which lead to the creation of competencies within the sector, especially with the
automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers (for example when they benefitted from the
program in developing components that were resistant to corrosion). After the development
of the E100, relations between industry and PRIs were different. The former were less
dependent on the latter for innovations, as was clear later, in the development of the
Flexible Fuel Vehicle. Within the Brazilian automotive sociotechnical regime the
development of the E100, macro-enacted by the State, influenced the emergence of
sociotechnical interactions that resulted in less government dependency for the automotive
industry for technological development.
The setback of the E100 journey in the late 1980s came as bit of a surprise. The
government had macro-enacted the ethanol car and made it socially embedded, but had not
considered possible changes in circumstances and conditions for successful embedding. As
argued by Santos (1993), most of government’s actions were reactive and influenced by
lobbying from the sugar and ethanol sector as well as from the automakers. When oil prices
decreased and sugar prices increased in 1989, government was not prepared, nor willing, to
maintain the subsidies to the ethanol program. The E100 was not fully mature and its
embedding was still depending on the maintenance of artificial prices of ethanol. The
power inefficiency of the E100 aligned to the removal of subsidies heavily influenced its
collapse as the dominant sociotechnical configuration.
Despite the discontinuation of the program, the E100 was able to survive with support from
its maintenance constituency. The ethanol sociotechnical system and the gasoline
133
sociotechnical system still co-existed and collaborated, a form of co-habitation, from the
time of the mandatory blend until the commercial launching of the FFV in 2003.
The FFV fits into this Evolving Patchwork of Old and New Technologies (EPONT). The
ethanol car as much as the gasoline car had alignments throughout the Brazilian automotive
sociotechnical regime, but they were also aligned to other elements of the Brazilian
sociotechnical landscape, as the cultural repertoire, such as Petrobras Company, sugar cane
producers and the Brazilian balance of trade. Both sociotechnical configurations co-habited
with sociotechnical interactions that evolved into a patchwork of both technologies. The
idea of a competition between the two technological options does not describe the real
nature of the phenomena in the innovation journey of the E100. This is not the same as
saying that the cars did not compete for market shares, their competition led to a process in
which both sociotechnical systems went through learning curves. When the FFV arrived on
the scene, it could build on the infrastructures and practice, and become successful. In fact,
Brazil is now the country where the FFV has been most successful, dominating the motor
car market.
This is the story of the innovation journey of the ethanol car in Brazil, a historical
reconstruction informed by a sociotechnical perspective. The metaphor of an innovation
journey occurring at different levels of the societal fabric allowed me to look at the big
picture but also to zoom in and use theory and literature to improve our understanding of
the dynamics, without attempting to be exhaustive. Now I can ask the further question,
whether that understanding might be applicable to other innovation journeys in context.
The answers will be tentative, of course, because of the specificities of the case, and
because my research design was not comparative. What I can do is position my findings
with respect to the literature, and consider what we can learn from this exercise.
The sociotechnical dynamics under which the ethanol car came about in Brazil are unusual.
Instead of its development being pushed by firms or other private entrepreneurs, as the
literature on technological innovation usually presents innovations, our case is marked by
the government taking the lead. This possibility has been neglected by sociologists and
134
innovation scholars (although historians have reconstructed some cases). The role of
discourse in technological development has been given attention in the recent literature on
promises, and more generally, expectations, about new technology, but there has been less
attention to what one could call the next phase, where a stabilizing discursive entity like the
Brazilian Ethanol Car, was a key element in the embedding of a new technology in society.
Thirdly, my case forced me to reconsider the relation between old and new technologies as
being more complex than substitution of old by new, a dominant theme in the literature. I
introduced the general idea of an Evolving Patchwork of Old and New Technologies, and
in tracing this patchwork, I could show the importance of the continuing maintenance
constituencies of the so-called old technologies. In general, sociotechnical analysis
highlights the complex, multi-actor and multi-level character of the processes of
technological development and their embedding in society, and my case study confirms the
importance of such an analysis.
The leading role of the government, directly as well as indirectly through its strengthening
of the National Innovation Regime, is a striking feature of the case, and one which the
literature appears to locate as appropriate only in times of war or other external threats. In
the development of the E100, PRIs had a strong role in developing the technology, and they
were the backbone of the National Innovation Regime from the early 20th
century on. Later
on the government macro-enacted the ethanol car in Brazil, including anticipating the
societal embedding of the E100 in society. In general, the government played an proactive
role in the technical development of innovations, creating the conditions and conducting
research and development activities but also pushing the societal embedding of the
technology, gradually introducing it into the cultural repertoire. The enactment role of the
state (but less so the concern for embedding in society) is visible in the actions taken by
governments of countries that are experiencing external threats or that are at war. Although
it was not at war, Brazil experienced a long lasting authoritarian government that
emphasized economic and technological development through technocratic decision-
making processes. When the oil crisis of 1973 hit the country the authoritarian regime was
in a position to take a pro-active role in pursuing the development of the Brazilian answer
135
to the crisis. Although macro-enacting of large scale innovations is not a regular practice
within liberal economies, the case of the Brazilian ethanol car might be an indication that it
is a real possibility. One could argue that it was a legacy of an authoritarian regime which is
threatened by contextual dynamics. Still, one could learn from the attempt and its
vicissitudes. This can be important to better address what is now called Grand Challenges,
which are sometimes characterized as battles against the big problems of our societies.
The long turn effects of the state interventionism in Brazil were positive because they
pushed science and technology dynamism in the country, even if there was limited
reflexivity. The Brazilian government did not reflect much on how changing circumstances
and conditions, i.e. landscape changes, might affect the societal embedding of the ethanol
car in Brazil.
In general, innovation journeys are shaped by National Innovation Regimes, sociotechnical
landscapes and by sociotechnical regimes, which in turn are modified by the emergence of
sociotechnical innovations. As outlined in my general perspective, and exemplified in my
case study, emergent innovations need to be aligned and coordinated within a set of
previous sociotechnical arrangements and institutions. It is necessary to link any innovation
to macro-elements like for instance economics, but also to cognitive practices, available
materials, discursive entities and elements of the National Innovation Regime. Some of
these arrangements are more stabilized than others, but they all influence the way an
innovation comes about and is embedded in society. National Innovation Regimes,
sociotechnical landscapes and sociotechnical regimes are not fixed structures, they are
historical and contextually localized sociotechnical constellations that have achieved a
relatively high degree of stabilization. While being enacted and getting momentum an
innovation creates new alignments in the various constellations. Depending on the strength
of their associations the new alignments become part of a sociotechnical landscape, of the
National Innovation Regime and of specific sociotechnical regimes. An implication of this
perspective is that the common focus of private technology enactors on finding appropriate
demand and thus markets for their innovations, is insufficient. Attention should also be paid
to create alignments with sociotechnical landscapes and regimes,
136
In my analysis, I highlighted the role played by discursive entities in technological
development and its embedding in society. Recurrent discourse with reference to a label for
an emerging sociotechnical configuration, for example in popular magazines, helps to enact
the configuration, consolidates it, or challenges its entanglements within the societal fabric.
Recent literature on sociotechnical promises show how those are linked to ongoing
practices and materialization of the promises, but there has been much less attention to how
discursive entities and their stabilization functions after the introduction of the new
technology in society. This thesis could make this further step because of the concerted
attempt of the Brazilian government to work on embedding in society, and the responses to
this embedding as in the performance evaluations of the ethanol car in the magazine Quatro
Rodas. My findings indicate that it is possible to trace the ups and some downs of
stabilization, in particular through the modalities in the discourse. In principle, this should
be possible for other cases of innovation and its embedding. In practice, there will not
always be good data available and one has to fall back on the skills of a cultural historian to
tell a story on the basis of assorted and fragmented data.
While societal embedment may seem solid, it is actually a process of continuous
reproduction of alignments, including adaptation to changing circumstances. This need not
work out successfully, and lead to a decline of the technology without there necessarily
being a new technology to replace it. In the case of the Brazilian ethanol car, the (partial)
decline was dramatic because of the confluence of changing prices of oil and ethanol, and a
liberal government stopping the special support of ethanol fuel and the ethanol car. While
this was historically contingent, the general lesson is that success of a technology is always
conditional on circumstances that support the working of its particular configuration. One
could actually broaden the notion of resilience of a technology (in practice this would most
often be a sociotechnical system), so as to include survival under changing circumstances –
within certain limits, of course. As I argued in Chapter 4, the technology enactor, here the
Brazilian government and its agencies, considered only one optimistic scenario for oil and
ethanol prices. It could have been more reflexive. This is not to say that a technology
should be kept alive indefinitely, through special support measures. It is about societal
137
embedment as a process, requiring alignments and adaptations. If over time, and in
changing circumstances, these require more and more effort, there will come a moment
where actors will stop to invest in the continuation of the technology, and it will decline.
When this happened for the Brazilian ethanol car it could survive to some extent because of
its maintenance constituency, and was then saved by reincarnating in the Flexible Fuel
Vehicle. The general point here is that success is not a once-and-for-all achievement, and
that societal embedding must be seen as an ongoing process. This might well be more
important than the heroic stories of a battle of a new against an old technology. In Chapter
4 I introduced the notion of an Evolving Patchwork of Old and New Technologies
(EPONT) to emphasize that there are more patterns than the struggle of a new technology
to replace the old. I also indicated that there all sorts of interconnections between old and
new technologies, ranging from cohabitation to profiting, as in the case of the Flexible Fuel
Vehicle, of a maintenance constituency and material and institutional infrastructural
elements in place because of the old technology. .
This thesis was designed to look at big picture of the innovation journey of ethanol car in
Brazil and to zoom in on three different aspects of it to better comprehend the case. In this
final part of the concluding chapter, I have turned the tables, as it were. By contrasting
features of the case with insights from the existing literature I could contribute and
highlight new or at least less highlighted, but important aspects of innovation journeys in
context. Thus, the thesis not only exemplifies sociotechnical analysis and shows its
advantages, but also creates advances in the tools and approaches of sociotechnical
analysis.
138
139
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