Green cars

Methanol: round two

2008-05-08T16:21:20Z

Last time I posted a story about the Trifuel Lotus Exige I found myself being accused of acting like some kind of motor industry propagandist for bio-fuels.

But, after talking through some of the comments I fielded with Lotus, I’ve come back to have another go at setting the record straight.

Methanol certainly isn’t a perfect fuel – but it is a viable CO2-neutral, non-fossil source of power. Short of shifting the entire motoring population to battery power, or waiting for the hydrogen economy to get started, it’s as good an alternative as any at present.

Lotus does accept there is a drawback with methanol’s more limited capacity to store energy. Even adjusting for its higher density than petrol, which is not the same, methanol can only store approximately 50% of the energy in a given tank volume than petrol. Therefore, if the use of a fossil fuel is not possible, Lotus reckons that society may need to accept the more frequent refuelling of vehicles.

Lotus also reckons that criticism of the safety of methanol can easily be countered, saying that the Environmental Protection Agency in the US has analysed methanol in some detail. Their modelling shows that if the US moved from gasoline to methanol as the primary fuel, then deaths, injuries and property damage would fall by 90-95 per cent This is because the flammability index of methanol is about the same as diesel, and if lit, a methanol fire will only radiate heat at the rate of 11 per cent that of gasoline.

So if methanol can be made safe, how efficient is it as a fuel? Here are some facts – rather than conjecture – from Lotus: methanol (and ethanol) both give better performance than gasoline – their octane ratings are considerably higher (so more boost and compression can be used), their latent heat of vaporization is higher (meaning they cool the air and so allow more charge mass to flow through the engine), a given mass of fuel and air contains more energy, they reject less heat to the engine structure during combustion and their flame speed is higher.

All of which leads Lotus to conclude that synthetic methanol is the closest easily-renewable fuel to what we have now and as such demands the smallest change to a fully renewable future.

And I wouldn’t disagree. Equally, I wouldn’t underestimate the scale of the conversion task either. But it’s a smaller task than converting the global car fleet to fuel cell vehicles.

California breezin'

2008-04-25T14:57:45Z

It’s hard not to feel better about life, wandering around a neat and tidy southern Californian city with the sun shining. But I can guarantee that you’ll also breath much more easily in this state.

Since the late 1960s, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has been at the forefront of driving down engine pollution.

It was California that demanded 1975-model year cars achieve massive reductions in pollution. Car makers said they couldn’t meet the targets, but eventually did by detuning engines and embracing the catalytic converter.

Honda, however, met the regulations with its landmark Civic CVCC engine, which was so clean it didn’t even need a cat.

Moreover, CARB effectively banned diesel cars in 2000 when they decided that ‘toxic’ particulates were a serious threat to human health.

Only Mercedes BlueTec engines have recently managed to meet the super-tight Californian diesel emissions regulations.

No surprise then, that California uses buses powered by super-clean Compressed Natural Gas.

UK politicians, particularly Ken Livingstone, make a huge song and dance about micro reductions in CO2, while happily gassing people with belching diesel buses and cabs.

Like many areas in UK life, we get hype, while the rest of the world gets action.

Technorati Tags: california,carb,air resources board,civic,mercedes bluetec

Fighting the greenwash

2008-04-23T10:27:26Z

I’m confused, not to mention being more than a bit frustrated. Why is it that as soon as the world’s automotive industry does as every card-holding greenie in the world wants, and begins to commit to strategies to reduce the carbon emissions associated with the 40 million new vehicles it produces every year, those same so-called climate champions simply find something else to whinge about?

I’ve just been reading a pathetic article about the Chevrolet Volt – the car that will become General Motors’ first ‘plug-in hybrid’. This dross suggested that the car simply didn’t matter; that its contribution to climate change would be minuscule while coal fuel power stations still existed. Rubbish.

Earlier this morning, I read that GM chief Rick Wagoner recently had to defend his strategy to make the use of biofuel more widespread throughout the company’s models. People have been blaming the car industry’s adoption of ethanol for the global hike in food prices. So the car is not only responsible for choking our grandchildren; it’s now starving displaced millions in the third world. It’s a wonder we don’t all sell up and become hermits.

What is it about the mindset of these car-haters that prevents them from playing an active, reasonable and constructive part of the process of making the car acceptable in the 21^st century?

Here are a few more grounded realities, as far as I understand them. When it becomes available in Britain sometime around 2011, the Chevrolet Volt will be able to do 40 miles without burning a single drop of petrol. If I get one, that means I’ll be able to drive it to work and back without producing any emissions of any kind, provided I charge it every night. I will need to fuel it only for longer-run weekend trips. In a typical month, I reckon that’ll save me three out of five trips to the pump. How can anyone argue that won’t reduce carbon emissions?

Charging your car from the mains rather than filling it from the pump puts greater overnight load on the country’s idling power stations, granted, but coal-fired power stations can be adapted for a lower carbon footprint. Better still, electricity can be generated without the production of any CO2 at all. And if your power comes from a renewable source, then it’s not just your car that’s emissions-free; it’s your microwave, your TV, and your iPod too.

The same argument stands up in the debate about biofuel, as far as I’m concerned. If the ethanol’s made the ‘cellulosic’ way, using biomass that would otherwise rot away or go to waste, then it’s not forcing up food prices as it’s not being produced at the expense of anything else. If we use switchgrass, a perennial of many of the world’s prairies and savannahs, we can make twice as much ethanol per kilo as we would from corn anyway.

No: both plug-in hybrid technology and biofuel combustion stand to markedly reduce the quantity of carbon dioxide emitted by cars – there’s just no arguing with it. Both are important. Both matter. And we should get behind any car-maker who adopts either of them. Rant over.

Biofuels aren't dead yet

2008-04-16T11:02:58Z

As a parable of our times the biofuels debate is brilliantly instructive. It seems that as soon as a ‘new’ technology comes along, the forces of environmental conservatism want to knock it down instantly, regardless of the facts or that some risk is inevitable in industrial activity.

It’s not that long ago that industry visionary Richard Parry-Jones was linking biofuels to long-term average tailpipe emissions of 40g/km within a couple of decades, while Bentley used the Geneva show to announce its backing for biofuels by future-proofing its models to accept the new fuel.

The US car industry has been pumping out ethanol capable cars in their hundreds of thousands for half a decade – and Brazil has been happily fuelling its entire car fleet on biofuel from sugar cane for thirty years. A third of Swedish cars are already biofuel capable, and the country plans to be completely independent of fossil fuels by 2030.

So what’s gone wrong in the UK?

It feels biofuels have become the chattering classes new bogeyman. If you believe the scare stories then biofuels will drive up the cost of food for the world’s poorest, cause more CO2 from their production than they save and cause the rain forests to be slashed-and-burned.

The truth is far less exciting. Second-generation biofuels are being made from waste green matter, such as the by-products of the food processing and timber industries.

Volkswagen, for example, has a shareholding in Iogen, a Canadian biotechnology company that

is developing a process that uses enzymes to turn timber waste and fast-growing grasses into ethanol.

Currently production is being proven in pilot plants, but there’s a chance industrial levels of production will be reached within the next decade.

Longer term, some biofuel visionaries would like to see vast growing areas created in Africa where the climate is suited to fast crop growing and the biofuels industry could bring long-term economic benefits.

So don’t believe the doom mongers: biofuels aren’t dead yet.

Death of the hot hatch

2008-03-13T18:42:10Z

History will likely remember Alistair Darling for several things, not least his visual similarity to a human badger. But there’s also the worrying possibility that future generations will look back on him as the Chancellor who killed off the affordable performance car.

Because now the dust has settled on yesterday’s budget statement it’s clear that it’s cheap, fast machinery that is set to suffer more than anything else.

Under the new regime, coming in from the 2010-11 financial year, anything that puts out over 225g/km of CO2 is going to be clobbered with a £750 registration tax and then £430 a year in road tax.

Anything that transgresses further – breaching the 255g/km barrier – will get hit for £950 when the plates get screwed on and £455 a year afterwards.

People with the wedge to fork out £50K for a XXL SUV or a CO2-spewing supercar are likely to dig slightly deeper and simply carry on as before. The Chancellor’s forecast revenue from the new measures demonstrates his clear belief that affluent punters’ buying habits aren’t going to change any time soon.

But this could well be the death-knell for less efficient performance machinery. Cars like the VW Golf R32 (255g/km), Subaru Impreza WRX (246g/km) and Mazda 3 MPS (231g/km) are all going to struggle to find buyers – not just when new and showroom-fresh, but more especially a few years down the line.

Presuming that VED continues to rise at the current rate, it’s not inconceivable that buyers in 2015 are going to be expected to fork out £750 or more a year to keep a six grand hot hatch on the road.

The most likely outcome? That manufacturers will withdraw from this whole bit of the market. I reckon that within a couple of years the sub-£20,000, over-225g/km car will simply cease to exist.

Technorati Tags: mike duff,hot hatches,hot hatch,alistair darling,co2,g/km,budget,uk,chancellor

The Nano effect

2008-03-12T15:12:00Z

It looks like UK PLC may soon be doing business with Ratan Tata.

A line hidden way into Alistair Darling's budget announced "a £40 million research, development and demonstration programme, which will focus on low-carbon vehicle concepts and the acceleration of their commercialisation."

The chancellor also recommended a new research, development and demonstration programme between the UK and India to develop a ‘low-cost, low-emission’ car. "The UK Government has today written to the Indian Government seeking their support for a collaborative programme."

I think it's great news. Let's just hope that, whatever they wrote, they didn't send it by Royal Mail.

Technorati Tags: budget,darling,tata,nano,india,co2,carbon

The end of the world isn't nigh

2008-02-25T14:52:11Z

Sometimes, amid the doom and gloom of our melting ice caps, doom-laden tabloid headlines and the malaise of humanity in general, we should take time to examine the evidence – and realise that not every member of society is hell-bent on ruining everything. Some folks are making good progress extracting us from the mire.

Take Ratan Tata. Not only has he stepped forward and saved Jaguar from near-certain death, but more recently he’s signed up and handed over several zillion rupees to help develop a car that really could make a difference. And I’m not talking about the recently launched Tata Nano.

I'm talking about something altogether more radical called the OneCAT – a three seater fibreglass car that weighs 350kg, runs on air, will cost around £2500, and can travel 200 miles for just £1.

When I heard about the OneCAT, which is being developed by French company Moteur Development International thanks largely to funding from Tata, I wondered whether the date wasn’t April the 1st. Yet the more you learn about the OneCAT, the more it makes sense.

The car runs on compressed air which then powers a piston engine. At higher speeds it burns a small amount of conventional fuel yet it is still classed as a zero emissions vehicle capable of around 70mph, with service intervals of 30,000 miles. A tank of compressed air takes about two minutes to fill and will last you for 10 hours, apparently, or approximately 190 miles, whichever comes first.

This, remember, is what the OneCAT is capable of right now. Imagine how its technology could be improved with a few more brains and bucks behind it. And by the way, Tata/MDI reckon they could have the OneCAT on sale ‘within a year.’

Oh yes, and did I tell you about the wooden supercar they’re developing in the States that weighs 1134kg, has a top speed of 240mph and does over 20 miles to the gallon?

Who said the end of the world is nigh?

Less is more with the Cayman

2008-02-25T13:03:04Z

So, Porsche and Ken are squaring up for a right ding dong about the proposed £25 congestion charge.

I'll leave it to my colleagues to dissect the moral and environmental implications, because I've found a way to drive the best car Porsche makes and still 'get away' with an £8 charge.

Criminally underrated, the base Cayman not only better subscribes to the original Porsche ideology than any other model, but produces 222g/km of Co2.

More fitting still, the Cayman only squeezes below the 225g/km limit with a manual gearbox, which surely is the only way to go.

No doubt the £25 charge is draconian, but would it be so bad if the city boys left their Turbos, Cayennes and GT2s outside the city and appreciated that, just occasionally, less can be more?

Has the C-charge started a class war?

2008-02-19T13:23:00Z

So Porsche is trying to get a judicial review called down on the proposed increase in London's congestion charge. First reaction: good on it - and it's a shame that other heavily affected companies (like Land Rover and Subaru) lack the guts to stick their heads above the parapet, too.

But if you're part of the 90 percent of the British population that lives outside greater London your reaction could quite possibly be one of shrugged shoulders and exhaled breath. Why, after all, does somebody need to drive their Porsche into central London between the hours of 7am and 6pm, Monday to Friday?

The thing is, this is an issue that's going to acquire a scary relevance for the rest of us - and sooner than most people realise. The technology and legislative framework for national road charging is being quietly assembled behind the scenes - and the view that vehicles with higher CO2 emissions are going to be hit disproportionately hard is in serious danger of becoming ingrained.

Put it this way - imagine that you live in Kensington and own a Porsche 911 that you keep on the road. Two years ago all you needed to do was to pay road tax and Kensington and Chelsea's resident parking fees. Then, against the wishes of the vast majority of local residents, the Congestion Charge was expanded westwards. As a bona fide resident you managed so secure the discounted rate - equivalent to 80p a day.

But now, without moving, changing your habits or doing anything other than existing, the bill for owning your car is going to increase to £25-a-day. That's a 3000 percent increase in the cost of owning a car that probably covers fewer than 5000 miles a year. This isn't a green-tinted, environmentally-focussed charge - it's class warfare.

Granted, we can't all afford to live in Kensington or own Porsche 911s - but once this framework is in place, and the link between marginally higher CO2 emissions and massively increased charges is put in place, they'll be after the rest of us soon enough. How long before the CO2 emissions of a petrol-powered Renault Scenic (192 g/km) or Mercedes E200 (195 g/km) are considered beyond the pale?

Don't expect the rest of the media to stick up for the beleagured motorist, certainly not to judge by the enthusiasm with which Transport for London's description of anything that puts out over 225 g/km of CO2 as a "gas guzzler" has been taken up.

Really? Well what about the LTI TX4 black cab? When fitted with the automatic gearbox that 99 percent of London's cabbies opt for it puts out a "gas guzzling" 233 g/km of CO2 - and yet it remains completely exempt from the congestion charge. And that's before you get on to working out how many passengers a double-decker bus has to be carrying to justify its 1600 g/km.

What's that expression again? Oh yes, blatant hypocracy.

Technorati tags: London, congestion charge, carbon tax, Duff

Ken's CO2-charge will make London a laughing stock

2008-02-12T13:13:36Z

Anybody old enough to remember those Nuclear-Free zones of the 1980s? Looney left local councils declared a small area of a city as a ‘nuclear-free zone’, to demonstrate their right-on credentials.

Lots of people scoffed. Would the Soviet Union, if it decided to nuke the UK, carefully avoid flattening its fellow communists? Would radiation fallout not drift across into the most ideologically-sound streets?

Well, the Nuclear-Free zone is back, but this time it’s called the London Congestion Charge.

Today, Mayor Ken Livingstone announced what has been threatened for the last two years. That cars in Band G (that’s emissions of 225g/km and above) would be charged £25 per day to move in the zone. And if you live in the zone, the 90 percent residents discount will be dropped, too.

Still, if you have a car in the A and B bands, entrance will now be free, instead of £8. There again, if too many of us buy these cars –such as Mini Cooper diesels - Band B will likely be charged at £4 per day from 2010.

The new regime comes in on 27 October and Red Ken says: "The CO2 emissions from the most high powered 4x4s and sports cars can be up to four times as great of those of the least polluting cars. The CO2 charge will encourage people to switch to cleaner vehicles or public transport and ensure that those who choose to carry on driving the most polluting vehicles help pay for the environmental damage they cause."

The C-Charge zone is a tiny – though influential – area in the middle of a very large city. How can virtually banning larger-engined vehicles make any difference at all to real-world CO2 levels? And petrol engines are far from 'polluting'. In fact, they are much cleaner than diesel engines - especially those engines in London's worn-out black cabs.

But why does micro-CO2 reduction make such a difference in Chelsea and Kensington, and yet there’s no need for a charge a few hundred feet away in North London, or in the East End? The only possible conclusion is that London is sliding back into the bad old days of political posturing, with politicians trying to impress their fellow ideologues across the world rather than actually achieve anything useful.

Red Ken may be pleased that, at the fag end of his political career, he has temporarily stopped Porsches moving in central London during the day. But the rest of us can see this move for what it is: the last thrashings of a bedsit revolutionary.

Technorati tags: Congestion charge, CO2, Ken Livingstone, London, Holloway

Word from a conspicuously fragile-looking glasshouse

2008-02-04T14:56:27Z

Ah, the joy of another Monday morning environmental heart-starter, delivered this time by the BBC News website. In this case it's a column from former oil company boss, and the possessor of most spectacular name-and-eyebrows combo I've ever seen, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart (right), who reckons that anything incapable of doing 35mpg should be banned.

Debate on this kind of thing is all to the good. But I'm wondering why I'm being lectured by a man who previously ran Shell, one of the world's largest oil companies.

Sir Mark boasts that he drives a hybrid. For which, congratulations (although I bet I could better his mpg in a Kia Ceed diesel), but he singularly fails to mention how many times he travelled the globe using Shell's spectacular fleet of corporate jets (which includes two Falcon 900 EXs if you're interested - the sort of air-going equivalent of a Rolls-Royce Phantom). I doubt he was breaking the 35mpg barrier during too many of these trips.

More recently he's moved on to become chairman of Anglo-American, one of the world's biggest mining concerns. And, weekend-hybrid-driving aside, I'm imagining that is backside is likely still very well acquainted by the soft embrace of the generously upholstered seats in the company's Citation V and Gulfstream IV.

"Do as I say, not as I do" has long been the mantra repeated by more affluent greenies, it's good to see the tradition is still flourishing.

Technorati tags: Shell, emisions, Mark Moody-Stuart, Duff

Green Trumps

2007-12-04T09:50:35Z

Is nothing sacred? Top Trumps is going green apparently, and I am therefore forced to quote the following: “Whereas engine size and horsepower used to be winning features on the key trump cards, now lowest CO2 emissions, fuel efficiency and greatest number of seats are superior. So, out go the Porsches and the Ferraris and in come hybrids and electric motors.”

That’s the official line from climate change charity, whatever that is, Marches Energy Agency who have developed this with the Top Trumps people. So that’s even worse because these cards are official. And the horror doesn’t stop there because a pack of them will be sent free to every Secondary school in the country. Surely in the interests of balance, a proper full fat set should be sent too so the kids can decide for themselves.

It gets even worser than worse because 21^st century role model and England goal keeper David James’s Chrysler is being used as the lead motor simply because it uses plant oil. Two points there deforestation and isn’t this the same Mr James who recently owned an eco-friendly GT40?

Obviously we are all paying for this as it is part funded by the EU, but it is depressing that a whole generation of youngsters will have some dismal picture of a hybrid MPV on their bedroom walls. It is our duty then to counter this propaganda by standing outside our local schools and handing out Athena prints of Countachs before it is too late.

Technorati tags: Green cars, hybrids, top trumps, james ruppert, blog, ferrari, porsche, gt40, david james

Bluemotion: over-inflated opinions

2007-11-20T17:08:20Z

We've got a VW Polo Bluemotion in the car park at the moment. I drove home and back, across London in heavy traffic, and it averaged around 45mpg. I was a little disappointed, I guess, as my old long-term S-Max used to average about 40mpg on the same trip.

As soon as I got onto the open road, however, the eco-gap opened up and the Bluemotion was doing 55-60mpg, which is much closer to the claimed figures.

The biggest shock was its ride. When I drove our German test car a couple of months ago I was surprised at how rigid the ride was on its admittedly high-pressure, low-resistance tyres. Well, they must have been over-inflated, because this car has an excellent ride, yet the VW press office has confirmed it is mechanically identical to the earlier car.

Making the car industry carbon neutral

2007-11-19T18:40:37Z

Interesting press release came forth from Nissan the other day. They were doing a bit of offsetting; there’s probably been a bit too much pomp issued about the new twin-turbo GT-R for the liking of the firm’s resident environmentalists, and so they sent out news that, come January, the number of wind farms at its Sunderland plant will rise from six to eight. And that inspired me to do a bit of adding up.

Nissan Sunderland will make 400,000 cars in 2007, split between Micra, Micra CC, Note and Qashqai models. Its wind farm will supply six per cent of its power; enough for 24,000 cars or thereabouts. I therefore reason that each windfarm supplies enough power to make 3000 cars sustainably. Seem fair enough so far?

There are currently around 40,000,000 new passengers cars being made globally every year. That means it’ll take 13,333 wind turbines to make all of the world's car production sustainable.

Using Sunderland as a model (where the original six-turbine farm cost £2.2mil), each 650kw turbine should set you back around £350,000. So by that measure, what’s the bill for making the whole car industry carbon-neutral? £4.6 billion. Sounds a lot, until you realise that Toyota is making around £7 billion a year right now.

As a cost it would obviously be shared out equally. Ferrari, for example, would probably only need one-and-a-bit wind turbines, where as General Motors would need three thousand of the things. And in a particularly windy year, the car industry could even feed power back into our respective national power grids, and go about saving polar bears, and generally making the greenies eat their words for ever running down the merits of the motor car.

Technorati tags: Car industry, carbon neutral, CO2, Saunders

Is climate change really anything to do with CO2?

2007-11-06T09:09:25Z

What I'm about to write could seem anything from unlikely, through impossible, to downright misguided depending on your point of view, but there's a chance that the whole global warming crisis - the one about the threat that will end the world as we know it - could be over by the end of the year. And why am I suddenly aware of this possibility? Because of a letter that appeared in The Times last week.

The author was Piers Corbyn, a man who runs a weather forecasting company called Weather Action. Corbyn, an ex-Marxist activist and holder of two impressive degrees, uses what’s called the ‘Solar Weather Technique’ to predict future weather patterns.

"The recent end-of-October rain, local floods and severe gales in the North of the UK were forecast by the same method, as were more seriously damaging storms which will hit much of Britain and Scandinavia - and have echoes across the world - around Nov 8-13 and Nov 24-28," he wrote. "Safety preparations should be made now, and not just against the anti-scientific brainwashing which will follow."

In short, Corbyn thinks that the Sun’s activity has a huge influence on our weather and is what's caused our increasing planetary temperatures, although this against a backdrop of a climate that has been cooling since the Medieval warm period. His website says "the technique uses predictable aspects of solar activity - particle and magnetic effects from the Sun - as the basis for forecasting weather many months ... and even years ... in advance."

In a different letter, to The Independent newspaper, Corbyn claimed "temperature and climate change in our epoch is driven by... solar particle and magnetic effects.

So can action against climate change make a difference? Even if temperature trends can be changed - and controlling the Sun is a tall order, even for a Bush/Blair legacy - there is no evidence of connected change in weather extremes or useful outcomes.

Let's save the planet from real chemical pollutants, but CO2 is not one of them. Wouldn't it be better to work to predict our climate than to make vain attempts to change it?"

So, most controversially, Corbyn insists CO2 has nothing to do with rising temperatures and changing weather patterns. The theory runs that the Sun is the culprit; it's leaving a period of high activity and is now entering one its cooler phases, and so global temperatures should stay highish for another five years or so, before gently falling again.

So if you wake up one night in November to find your chimney stack has been blown off one of the gales predicted by Corbyn, it seems you can justifiably go out and buy a Porsche Cayenne, safe in the knowledge that our weather is being influenced by the Sun, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Just don’t expect the rest of the world – save perhaps David Bellamy – to agree with you. Reduction of CO2 output – no matter how barmy the approach – is a done global deal. We’ll just have to sit it out for the next few years to see what happens to global temperatures.

Even if Corbyn is right, by the time the evidence starts to pile up the car industry will have hybridized, electrified and lowered its collective resistance. The climate change argument has already locked in major changes to the car industry and automotive engineering. The big question now could be, will it all prove to be a waste of time, money and effort?

Technorati tags: Climate change, CO2, solar weather, Holloway