If Dr. Lyle Dennis’ website is to be believed, over 35,000 people have already expressed an interest in GM’s hybrid Volt, not due to launch until November 2010. While the Volt is perhaps not as striking as the Tesla roadster, nor as fast, it is much more likely to be affordable.
OK, you’re not literally going to be driving your car on tequila; instead this is about using ethanol made from the agave cactus. According to CleanTechnica, using the agave to produce ethanol might make more sense than using corn, or even sugar cane.
It is a little unclear from their article whether the 2,000 gallons/acre annually figure is from cellulosic ethanol, or if that would further improve the yield. Either way though, agave makes much more sense than corn as a source of plant based ethanol. It is happy growing in harsh wasteland areas (and actually improves the soil quality where it grows); it needs very little water and it grows without fertilizers (protecting the local drinking water from pollution). It’s also not “stealing” a food crop to make fuel.
Perhaps ethanol can become a viable fuel for the US market - let’s just hope the availability of margaritas is not affected.
Anybody who’s been following the US election news recently will have heard about McCain’s mocking of an answer Obama gave to a question in one of his campaign stops about saving fuel. Then he half-retracted it.
The truth of the discussion is that ensuring your tires (or tyres, for those English speakers outside the US) are correctly inflated does indeed help to maintain the efficiency. Having a handy little pressure gauge in your glove box and using it regularly will help keep your car running efficiently.
At the plugin hybrid vehicle symposium in San Jose last week JB Straubel, Tesla Motors‘ CTO, announced plans for a sports compact EV to join the stunning roadster (just starting to ship now) and the sedan that they announced for 2010 a few weeks ago. They expect sales of the new sports car to reach 100,000 units.
My December this year they are hoping to be producing 100 cars a month at their San Carlos factory in California (some of the slow production to date has been intentional as they wait for development of an improved powertrain). They also hope to reach sales of 20,000 units for the $60K (est.) sedan.
Katie Fehrenbacher at Earth2Tech has commented on an article in Sunday’s NY Times looking at the differences in two plans for getting off the addiction to oil. We think we have a better plan than either of them, inspired in part by both of them. Let’s look at the two plans first…
First up is Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place, which is trying to solve the problem by means of pure electric cars with exchangeable battery packs for range extension. Basically, for typical daily driving you run off the battery which you recharge at night. When you need to drive further, you can pull into a battery changing station and they’ll swap out your flat battery for a newly charged pack. Even better, the car is free (in the same way that your cell phone is free, when you sign a two year contract). Just pay a monthly contract that is similar to the monthly fuel bill you’re paying and they’ll lend you the car for free.
The Pickens Plan on the other hand is promoting the use of natural gas for vehicle power, and wind power for electricity. Natural gas solves the range problem in pretty much the same way as gasoline does today - you pull into a gas station and simply refill. CNG is already in use for vehicles in the US, so this is a well known technology; many taxis servicing the airport here in San Francisco are already CNG fueled, as are some of the buses and even some garbage trucks.
Warwick Manufacturing Group, based at Warwick University in the UK, has produced an environmentally friendly racing car called Eco 1. Originally designed to achieve a top speed of 125mph, the car now achieves speeds of over 150mph. And it gets there fast with a 0-60mph acceleration time of under 4 seconds.
We’ve written about pure electric cars, hybrids and plugin hybrids (PHEVs), but here’s something new: a car powered by a compressed air engine. Zero Pollution Motors is working on a car powered by a compressed air engine; the engine technology was developed by Formula One race car engineer Guy Negre.
Another California automotive startup, Fisker Automotive has plans for a luxury performance plugin hybrid (PHEV). The very slick looking 4 door car is powered by their Q Drive plugin hybrid system. The car will do 50 miles on pure electric power, so for many people their commute can be totally electric.
If you do need more than 50 miles range, there is a small gasoline engine in the car that will turn a generator to recharge the battery and run the electric motor.
Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s president, said, “We are currently working on the development of a Ferrari that will use alternative energy sources and which will be based on what we are doing at the moment in Formula One.”
The technology he’s referring to is Ferrari’s Kinetic Energy Recycling System (KERS), which is part of the requirements for the 2009 Formula One season. This move to make racing more efficient is partly driven by EU regulations forcing car manufacturers to reduce their fleet-average emissions to less than 130 grams per kilometer by 2012.
The grand prize winning car of the 2008 Shell Eco-Marathon Americas achieved 2,843.4 mpg on a 10 mile drive around the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. Congratulations to the team from Mater Dei High School team on their win, but is it really an eco-friendly achievement?
If Dr. Lyle Dennis’ website is to be believed, over 35,000 people have already expressed an interest in GM’s hybrid Volt, not due to launch until November 2010. While the Volt is perhaps not as striking as the Tesla roadster, nor as fast, it is much more likely to be affordable.
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in your glove box and using it regularly will help keep your car running efficiently.
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