Posted by jumperhead on May 2nd, 2008
Plug-in hybrid cars. There’s something about them, isn’t there? Is it an image problem? They may not belch out as many nasties as your average car, but they do tend to ferry around worthy celebs and the smugs residing in the country’s better post code areas. Greenbang thinks of hybrids, she thinks of Leonardo di Caprio and queasiness isn’t far behind.
Whatever the problem, the boffins at the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) have come up with an ingenious piece of technology that sidesteps all of that, with a bit of tech that can turn the average motor into an emissions saint.
The MIRA has unveiled a retrofit ‘hybrid conversion system’, which can be installed in your beloved petrol-beholden car and make it that bit more eco-friendly.
The 50/50 hybrid system uses two 35 KW motors to power the rear wheels, while the petrol fueled engine drives the front. The electric motors are powered by a removable battery pack that can be charged by the engine or plugged into your home’s mains.
MIRA reckons it can cut fuel costs by 61 percent and emissions by 39 percent but won’t have any impact on top speed or acceleration. MIRA insists, though, that its real benefit over purpose built hybrids is that you can bring the battery into your house and recharge it there, rather than having to run an extension lead out to your car.
But don’t go rushing to your nearest garage to pick up a system just yet. The system is only at prototype stage, and MIRA hasn’t released details yet on its potential cost or on a release date.
Posted by jumperhead on April 25th, 2008
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is a big name in green tech investing. Four big names, in fact, and it just can’t get enough of investing in green companies. It’s decided to get out its great big VC wallet, along with venture capitalist chum Rockport Capital Partners, and share some of the wealth with Norwegian electric car lot Think. Like Eddie Murphy, the joint venture the trio have established is coming to America.
And guess what the joint venture will be called… ready?… Think North America. Sometimes it’s like people aren’t even trying.
According to Think, the motor that they’ll be taking across the pond to the new world - named the City - is the “only crash tested and highway certified electric vehicle”. It looks like California will be Think’s first stab at the north American market.
The first City cars look like they’ll be hitting American shores in 2009, with some trial projects set to debut before then.
Think also has another electric vehicle in its stable - the Ox - a fully electric 4/5 seater that’s scheduled to hit the road some time in 2010 or 2011.
Posted by jumperhead on April 24th, 2008
Greenbang regularly brings you stories of research partnerships- bodies that come together with the purpose of enhancing the sum of human knowledge into all things green. However, it’s all too rare for her to be able to tell you how the partnerships went on - did they flourish, or flounder and split, like a scientific version of Fairport Convention?
Luckily today, Greenbang can bring you the results of a three-year research union between PSA Peugeot Citroën and Intelligent Energy in the form a spiffy new van sporting a prototype Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell.
The pair have been working on a system called the H2Origin. Here’s what it does:
This new-generation 10 kWe system delivers several important benefits:
• A range of 300 km, three times that of a conventional battery-powered EV
• Compact design for both the fuel cell stack and ancillary equipment, enabling integration into the front engine bay in place of the internal combustion engine.
• Vehicle start at temperatures as low as -20°C, representing a major advance for a fuel-cell powered vehicle.
A groundbreaking 700-bar hydrogen storage system also enhances mobility and makes the vehicle easier to operate:
• 70% more hydrogen can be carried on board, without any increase in the size or weight of the storage tanks.
• Range is extended, without having to plug the vehicle into a power source to recharge the batteries, enabling it to be used in a wider variety of applications.
• The hydrogen tanks are mounted on a sliding rack under the rear cargo area, making it fast and easy to swap in new ones. This offers a practical alternative to refueling at a service station and eliminates a major obstacle to the development of hydrogen vehicles.
Naturally, no word on when or if the public can get a look in.
Posted by jumperhead on April 18th, 2008
And if Arnie’s hydrogen handouts weren’t enough to delight the very (fuel) cells of your being, the UK now getting its own hydrogen fuelling station. Hurrah!
If you want to check it out though, you’re going to wend your way to Birmingham, where Brum academics are planning to use the fuelling station to help study “the viability of hydrogen in transport applications” using five hydrogen cars.
The Uni says it opened the fuel station on Thursday. And it also says this:
Birmingham engineers will be comparing five hydrogen powered vehicles with the University’s own fleet of petrol, diesel and pure ‘electric’ vehicles so that they can learn more about their efficiency and performance. The researchers will determine how these vehicles need to be adapted in order to make hydrogen an attractive and cost effective option as a future fuel.
As a direct result of this research it is hoped that the public sector will start to buy into these new technologies, providing support to companies in the supply chain who are moving from the technology demonstration phase into the early stages of commercialisation.
The Series 100 station has been specially designed by Air Products, a leading producer and supplier of hydrogen with over 50 years experience in hydrogen applications, to meet the fuelling needs of the first hydrogen vehicles to appear on the roads. The fueller comprises an integrated compression, hydrogen storage and dispensing system, and is optimised to fuel up to approximately six vehicles per day. Minimal onsite utilities are required for the fueller, which can be easily moved from site to site, making it ideal for hydrogen fuelling start up stations.
Professor Kevin Kendall, lead investigator from the University’s Department of Chemical Engineering, says, ‘We are delighted to be the home of England’s only hydrogen gas filling station. It is absolutely necessary that we have the means to refuel our fleet of hydrogen powered cars so that we can carry out our research project into the feasibility of hydrogen in a transport context.’
Posted by jumperhead on April 18th, 2008
With Arnie at the helm of California’s hydrogen highway, Greenbang thought it was time to look into this political history.
She did, and she found this quote from the man himself at a Republican convention:
“To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say, Don’t be economic girlie men!”
Hmmm. He’s no Shakespeare is he? Well as least he’s got the hydrogen thing to fall back on.
This week, his gassy dreams are getting a helping hand from the Air Resources Board, with a $7.7 million fund up for grabs for teams who can help “construct and improve hydrogen-fueling stations in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas” to help increase the number of refuelling stations out there.
According to the board, “the new station will meet the stated environmental requirements, capacities and specifications… The new/upgraded station should begin operation on or about December 31, 2009, and remain operational for at least three years after re-commissioning. The contractor/operator is to provide reports during the entire three years of station operation. ARB will provide 50/50 matching funding for the design, construction, and operation of the hydrogen station as well as the upgraded station. ARB will have no ownership interest to the hydrogen station.”
Posted by jumperhead on April 16th, 2008
Do you have more money than sense? Why not spend your money on a yacht? More money than sense but with a pang of environmental conscience? Then you might want to treat yourself to an eco-yacht from Sabdes. Or spend your money on buying up spare rainforest and putting it into trust for eternity, but that’s not going to impress supermodels and hangers on.
Back to the yacht. Sabdes has taken the covers off its latest big kahuna of a boat, called the Sabdes 50M, which it promises is “efficient in fuel and emissions, with an intent to be environmentally sensitive in both the vessel’s building and cruising life”.
But how, you might ask? It’s bigger than most people’s houses - how can it be eco-friendly, you might also ask?
Here’s what Sabdes says:
The easily driven hull is propelled by a hybrid diesel-electric system, and offers a much higher cruise speed than an equivalent length displacement yacht. The propulsion system uses a shaft motor/generator designed to put surplus energy back into its battery banks. The yacht’s total power consumption will be kept to a minimum by careful consideration of every technical element throughout; for instance, the vessel will have LED lighting, there will be more reliance on natural cooling to support the air conditioning system, and insulation and window materials are carefully selected. At anchor or in port, silent running can be achieved, by switching off the generators and running on the main battery banks. The vessel also has the ability to silently manouver [sic] in and out of harbour, by using its retractable bow and stern thrusters for propulsion.
Hybrid energy = good. But can a 50 metre long luxury yacht really be green? Greenbang just isn’t convinced.
Posted by jumperhead on April 16th, 2008
Greenbang likes a laugh and a joke, as you’ve probably noticed. But sometimes, Greenbang has to put on a sober suit and a sober voice and talk sensibly. Now is one of those times. Are you ready? Then she’ll being.
Tesla, the company behind the super-sexy, super-green vehicle to your left, has filed a suit against a designer hired to work on one of the vehicles, Henrik Fisker, and his chief operating officer, Bernhard Koehler, doing business under the name Fisker Coachbuild, according to the New York Times, alleging they took the contract for the design in order to get access to confidential information from Tesla and make a rival eco-car.
Fisker is the CEO of his own hybrid car firm called Fisker Automotive, which makes luxury hybrid cars. Its posh green motors should be shipping from the last quarter of next year.
The Times adds that they decided not to use Fisker’s designs which caused a delay in the car’s manufacture. The suit aims to prevent Fisker from using Tesla design documents, return his fees from the design contract as well as damages, the paper said.
Posted by jumperhead on April 11th, 2008
Here’s an interesting one. Apparently, there’s a problem with hybrid cars. They’re too quiet - a problem Greenbang would equate with rich people bemoaning that they have so much money, it gives them a headache thinking about how to spend it.
But no, this dearth of noise really is a problem. Without the roar of petrol echoing through a car, the powers that be think that oh-so-quiet hybrids will mean blind people and other pedestrian won’t be able to hear them coming.
To protect the blind, a bill is wending its way through the US parliament that would see hybrid makers compelled to put “audible means for alerting people that cars are nearby”, according to the International Herald Tribune.
The paper also says a study on hybrid cars found that hybrids had to 40 percent closer than normal cars before people can hear them.
Greenbang has an idea how to solve this problem: all hybrids to play tunes, like ice cream vans. And while they’re at it, carrying some ice cream wouldn’t be a bad idea too.
Posted by jumperhead on April 8th, 2008
Greenbang once had the pleasure of flying business class. On arrival she was asked by a smiling stewardess: “champagne or orange juice?” Greenbang assumed this was a trick question, posed by the powers that be to assess her suitability to be flying among the great and the overly monied. She of course did the decent thing and asked for both.
In future, in the alternate reality where Greenbang travels regularly on business class flights, her champagne will be served in plastic rather than glass. It’s all part of a plan by airlines to cut the weight of their aircraft and so be more fuel efficient, according to Wired and the Associated Press.
Among the weight cutting initiatives practiced by airlines are slashing the weight of meal trolleys and even cutlery and in-flight snacks, while some odds and ends like magazine racks, heavy wiring and ovens are getting dumped entirely.
Other airlines are preferring to cut out weight from their passengers: The Houston Chronicle says United is taxing those bringing on more than one bag, Air New Zealand is reportedly thinking about it, and some budget carriers like Australia’s Jetstar are already doing it, tiering fares depending on luggage.
With all that cost cutting, let’s pray there’s not more of this sort of behaviour on the cards…
Posted by jumperhead on April 7th, 2008
If you’re the type of person that biofuels are roughly level pegging with the feeling of stepping on a plug coupled with the sight of Jamie Oliver pulling the legs of a kitten in the evilness stakes, you might want to bust out the champagne right about now.
According to reports, the German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel has decided not to raise the amount of bioethanol in German car fuel from five percent to 10 percent. The government had originally intended to up the biofuels element to 10 percent next year but will now stick with five percent for the time being.
Apparently, according to Spiegel.de, the decision comes on the back of news that over three million motors couldn’t run on the higher ethanol fuel.
Originally, spiegel.de says, it was predicted that only one million vehicles would reject the 10 percent biofuel mixture, which would see them forced to fill up with ’super plus’ petrol instead.
“We don’t want to take responsibility if several million people who drive old cars, only because they live on lower wages, have to use expensive fuel,” Bloomberg quotes the minister as saying.
