

If the ECU is having to do heavy short term fuel correction, this becomes heavy long term correction and if the trend continues for a long enough period of time, the ECU uses this to indicate the ethanol content of a given blend and adjusts tuning accordingly.įlex fuel lets your car safely run any ratio of gasoline and ethanol safely. Ethanol requires more volume than gasoline to get the same burn at a given load. The virtual content sensor model leans on this concept heavily. All modern cars have oxygen (o2) sensors and the capability to adjust fueling in both a short term and long term manner. Some manufacturers have switched to a model of "virtual" content sensors.


This information about ethanol content is passed to the ECU and it adjusts the tuning accordingly to deliver fuel correctly and adjust any other engine operating parameters the manufacturer has deemed necessary. It assumes the rest to be ethanol, which will generally be true unless water has found its way into the blend somehow. As fuel passes through this sensor, it actually measures the amount of gasoline, despite being called an "ethanol" content sensor. Initially, most companies used a physical ethanol content sensor. This is known as being a flex fuel vehicle (FFV). Car manufacturers wanted to support E85 but since E85 isn't readily available everywhere, they had to setup the vehicles to be able to detect the amount of ethanol and adjust the tuning correctly. If you don't know what E85 is, click over to the E85 page and read up so that flex fuel will make more sense. It is basically the concept of a vehicle being able to run on blend of gasoline to blends and ethanol (E85). Flex fuel has been around for a while now.
