A new online tool to promote sustainable travel and encourage flexible working was launched last month. The ways2work tool is the latest joint initiative from NBTN and Business in the Community (BITC) and represents a key output of this collaboration.

ways2work has been developed for business by business to increase efficiency through better ways of working and travelling. Its aim is to provide practical guidance in promoting sustainable travel and flexible working in companies as a strategic part of a business improvement programme.

This unique resource draws on the collective experience and expertise of the Sustainable Travel Steering Group – RWE npower (chair), Accenture, Boots UK, BSkyB, BT, Capgemini, E.ON, FirstGroup, GlaxoSmithKline, Highways Agency, Microsoft, Nationwide, NATS and The Wellcome Trust – with support from NBTN and BITC’s Business Action for Working Well campaign.

It includes practical advice on how to create and successfully run sustainable travel initiatives and flexible working programmes. More importantly, it provides the reader with a comprehensive list of business, environment and health benefits achieved by other organisations. These are designed to help practitioners make a good business case when advocating for change in their organisations.

Alex Gourlay, Chief Executive of the Health & Beauty Division, Alliance Boots, said: “A growing number of companies are recognising that there is a robust business case for investing in workforce wellness, particularly during difficult economic times. ways2work has been created by businesses for businesses to help companies develop initiatives that support corporate and employee wellness.”

NBTN’s Programme Director, Heather McInroy, added: “We hope that companies will use ways2work to help their employees find better ways to work and travel, by providing the infrastructure, work and technology options needed to minimise their environmental impacts and maximise their health and wellbeing on the journey to better business”.

The concept of ways2work synthesizes two parallel themes of travelling more sustainably and travelling less in relation to our work. It has been designed to be used by anyone with an interest in business efficiency, employee physical and psychological health and responsible business practice.

Editor’s note: This article was written by Ana Svab of the National Business Travel Network and originated from the ways2work website. The NBTN is a business-to-business network which enables companies to share best practice and reduce the impacts of work-related travel through more sustainable and active travel and facilitating reduced travel through technological solutions.

The Baldos II, designed and built by engineering students at the Luleå University of Technology, demonstrated a mileage of 152.2 kilometres per litre (359 miles per gallon) during a test run this past January. That’s about five times the mileage offered by the next most efficient car, making the Baldos II the most fuel-efficient vehicle ever approved for street use in Sweden.

Weighing just 155 kilograms (342 pounds), the one-seater can reach a top speed of 35 kilometres per hour (21.75 miles per hour) and features a hybrid drive train with an internal combustion engine (powered by ethanol) and an electric motor. In addition to its weight, size and drive train, another contributing factor to the vehicle’s fuel efficiency are the design choices made by the Luleå engineering team. The shape is designed to reduce wind resistance, the exhaust is analysed to ensure that every drop of fuel is used, and the roll resistance is “so low that a small dog could pull it forward.”

The name “Baldos” means “ice floe” in the indigenous Sami language. The name was chosen to represent how the car’s gentle movement echoes the almost frictionless motion of ice travelling on the surface of cold water.

Upon arriving in the US, the Baldos II will be a feature in the Swedish Embassy’s autumn show in the House of Sweden. The exhibition, “Shaping Tomorrow’s World — Infrastructure & Intelligent Mobility,” is scheduled for 30 September through 5 December.

Being powered by a petrol engine which seeks assistance from an electric motor, the CR-Z gets a hybrid badge slapped onto the back of it. This one detail could have a profound effect on how the public judges the car.

But don’t fear, because this is a different sort of hybrid. It is one you want to drive and want to be seen in.

I took the CR-Z away for four days to see how well it could juggle being environmentally conscious whilst also trying to appeal to people who like to drive well made, drivers’ cars.

The CR-Z looks like no other hybrid on the road today. Being a short coupe with 2+2 seating, it automatically distances itself from the perception people have of hybrids. The car in many ways has two personalities, both in design and technology. With an aggressive front which goes from being cheeky at some angles to angry at others, the CR-Z can be looked at for hours. With its sharp angles, it has a great futuristic, Japanese look.

The rear is a bit more subdued, with its hunched stance over the rear wheels and an aerodynamically effective tear-drop shape. These two design styles show the two personalities of the car. It is like a reverse mullet: party at the front and business at the back.

One thing I have noticed about the CR-Z is that it is very colour-sensitive. Having such striking futuristic lines, the car
looks best, in my opinion, in white or dark gray. I have seen the car in both red and aqua blue and it doesn’t pull off the same strikingly sporty look on the road.

The interior of the car is very driver-oriented. Sitting in the sporty driver’s seat, you’ll find that everything is accessible with all the major buttons being ergonomically centred toward the driver. The major touch points for the driver are good, but even better if the car is in “S” or “GT” spec.

However, the passenger side can be a lonely and plasticky place to sit, with the glove box and dash surrounds being made of low-quality plastics which are scratchy to touch. The rear seats are nothing more than a shelf with accompanying seatbelts.I found that flattening the seats to open up the cavernous 401 litres of space was a lot more sensible option. The use of the cheap plastics and poorly designed rear seats could have been a cost-cutting exercise to keep the car affordable at £17,000, as the major cost of the car is the hybrid power train.

When first reviewing the CR-Z, I thought it was a hybrid car with sporty credentials, but after living with it for a while I have found out that it is a sporty car with hybrid credentials. With its short wheelbase, short-throw manual gearbox and accurately weighted steering in a package which makes a good noise, it is a seriously fun car to drive on the twisty stuff. You can easily forget about the hybrid nature of the car because it is a slightly different system compared to other hybrids on the market.

Unlike the Toyota Prius, Lexus 450h and Honda Insight, the CR-Z cannot work solely off the electric motor.  Instead,
the electric motor is there to assist the traditional 1.5-litre, i-VTEC petrol engine to give you a boost and save fuel. The electric motor provides its peak torque instantly, improving initial acceleration and making the car feel nippy around town or out of corners. The torque curve of this new hybrid is unusually flat for a naturally aspirated engine, with the peak arriving at just 1,500 rpm so the car feels more balanced through the rev range. Think of it as a super-efficient, techy turbocharger.

Honda’s CR-Z produces a total power output of 122bhp with 14 of those horses coming from the electric motor. This produces a 0-62 time of 9.9 seconds, which breaks the 10-second mark though it’s not blistering. But with a good chassis and steering, with an exhaust note which wants to be heard, it is far from boring.

This car is about more than hooning, though. Remember, it has two personalities and these mood swings are dictated by the three driving modes:

To the right-hand side of the driver are three buttons. You can choose from either “Sport,” “Normal” or “Econ” and — depending on your decision — the throttle, steering, idle stop timing, climate control and the level of assistance provided by the electric motor will change.

“Sport” mode sharpens the throttle response, gets the most power from the hybrid system and increases the weight of the electric power steering to give the driver more feel. It’s all essential for a solid driving experience, but it can become a bit grouchy at slower speeds so you find yourself changing the driving mode to suit.

“Econ” mode is used for best efficiency and fuel economy. The throttle is numbed and less responsive so you don’t fly away from the lights, the air-conditioning is given a rest and the dashboard changes colour to a red mist when you start getting wasteful with the fuel. This mode is better suited for traffic and commuting, as the looser throttle lends to a more comfortable driving experience.

“Normal” achieves the best of both worlds and is what people will probably use most of the time, as “Sport” mode can be a bit aggressive all of the time.

The driving modes have one more trick up their sleeve in the shape of Eco Assist. Together with the “Econ” mode, the CR-Z uses Eco Assist to help educate drivers to achieve high fuel economy and therefore minimise exhaust emissions
and time and money at the pumps, through illuminating various displays with a rainbow’s worth of colour. This is a system transferred from the CR-Z’s bigger brother, the Honda Insight. Eco Assist can be treated as an Eco Tamogotchi and it can become a very addictive interactive experience. Small leaves will “grow” above the bar in the digital
display to show the driver’s eco progress, with more leaves and eventually a flower added if the system records a “perfect” score.

There is also an orbing light centred around the rev gauge which changes from a happy green if you are driving efficiently, to a moody blue, to an angry red if you are driving really inefficiently.

The CR-Z is also fitted with a shift indicator light (SIL), which alerts the driver to shift up or down at the most efficient time. Eco Assist, combined with the SIL, can improve fuel consumption by up to 10 per cent and leave you becoming incredibly geeky about your fuel consumption. On a 600-mile journey, I averaged 49 miles per gallon on mixed terrain whilst trying out all the driving modes.

So is the CR-Z a gamechanger? Yes it is. Its schizophrenic nature will help it to appeal to a new breed of drivers and even some to some critics of early hybrids, as it is a solid driver’s car. Starting at £17,000, it is also the cheapest and greenest car in comparison to its rivals, the VW Scirocco and Peugot RCZ.

Honda set out to make a sporty hybrid and many people, including me, thought that was just a hyperbolic oxymoron. But it is not an oxymoron. It is reality, and I want one.

If the logic is straightforward and the facts are indisputable — report after report indicate the UK’s power plants and grids will be hard-pressed to keep up with future demands — the message, though, is worrisome.

According to the consulting firm Saturn Energy, electricity “should cost about the same as petrol” and electric-car owners should pay a fuel duty for each mile driven to keep it that way. The funds raised from that duty could then be used to pay for new power plant construction, whether nuclear, wind or gas driven. Such improvements are needed to help keep the lights on in years to come, according to the consultancy, especially as more and more electric cars place greater pressure on the nation’s energy infrastructure.

Yet John McShane, managing director of Saturn Energy, also acknowledges an electric-car fuel duty would act as a disincentive to those considering plug-ins.

The fundamental problem, of course, is money: how much is needed to keep the lights on, etc., and who will pay? The answers at the moment, unfortunately, appear to be: “Too much,” and “Someone else.”

Those are questions the UK’s Green Investment Bank Commission has already begun wrestling with, though it remains to be seen whether the creating financing options it’s recommending will actually succeed.

What do you think? How can we best pay for the transition to a low-carbon economy? Will it take an outright and substantial carbon tax? Something else? Or do we simply continue with business as usual until the lights begin flickering? Let us know your thoughts.

The Nissan LEAF is a game-changing car. It brings all the style and comfort of a standard compact car bundled with the wizardry of Japanese electric technology.

Quite simply, it’s an amazing piece of engineering and, if it sells as a product, could encourage the mass rollout of electric vehicles worldwide. And that’s not all. If the battery technology works well, it could be seen in more than just cars – buildings of all sizes could be powered by Nissan’s technology. Nissan is attempting to summit an incredibly high mountain. And if it succeeds, its business will move from being one that makes cars to a company that revolutionised the electricity grid.

But I won’t be buying one. The benefits just don’t stack up against the costs … yet.

Nissan’s hope is that the car will attract early adopters – the type of people who queue up overnight to buy an iPad or a new mobile phone on launch day. These people – some of whom are my friends – wear ‘crazy t-shirts’, subscribe to private members clubs and are fixated with being the first people to get their hands on new technology. It makes them feel special and cool. And what’s wrong with that?

Nothing, when what you buy is around £500 or even £1000. I can understand why people would do that.

For years, Microsoft has relied on such good-hearted people to test its software and report the problems (free of charge). Bug testing. And version 1 always, ALWAYS has bugs in it.

The Nissan LEAF will be £23,000. That’s more than the average UK salary. And for a car that’s being produced in canary blue, I don’t think many early adopters will be keen to test the bugs.

Nissan admits that the LEAF isn’t for everyone. Most people who are used to the freedom of a petrol car won’t move to an electric vehicle until charging points become as visible and abundant as petrol stations.

For commuters who have already bought electric cars, such as the G-Wizz, the LEAF is a definite step up the status ladder. But it’s only for those people who don’t mind the inconvenience of electric vehicles and the limited range – 100 miles in the case of the LEAF.

To its credit, the LEAF is a great drive. It’s fast and the noise it makes sounds like a space rocket.

When driving at slow speeds, it even emits a high-pitch, futuristic noise to let people know it’s there.

Nissan says that the car is equipped with software that communicates with its data centres to tell you exactly where and when you should charge up. You can also see where other LEAF cars are in your area (quite why you’d want to do that in the UK, who knows, unless you wanted to steal some parts). I couldn’t test that out, but I did have a great time on the test track although there was a very conservative speed limit.

You can switch on the car’s air conditioning via your iPhone and receive a text message when the car is fully charged. It’s quiet, obedient and pretty quick. You can almost turn it on a sixpence as the centre of weight (the batteries) is in the middle of the car, not the front.

And best of all, the gearstick is replaced by a cute little button for forwards and backwards – yes, like in Mario Kart.

What Nissan has created is amazing – it’s found a way to begin solving the next round of challenges for the car industry – the availability and high price of fuel. It hasn’t looked at the fact there are already too many cars on the road, there is a lack of charging points and people need more convincing.

The infrastructure for the charging grid, certainly in Europe, isn’t ready for the LEAF. That’s probably why Nissan is initially targeting Japan, the US and then Europe in 2012. But even then, a lot of investment has to happen fast.

This is not the first time the car has been touted in front of journalists. Last year, Nissan ran some test drives of the prototype and will continue running more tests this year. One very well-known motoring journalist even asked: “When will we actually be able to test this car on the road?” To which no reply was given.

Think of this – if everyone were to come home from work in their electric vehicle and plug it in for a recharge at dinner time, not many people would be able to watch their daily dose of “Eastenders” (which is actually a blessing). Electricity grids cannot handle such a demand at this time.

But that’s if everyone had one. And barely anyone will for some time yet due to the lack of available infrastructure and the inconvenience of charging. Eight hours is a long time to wait for your car to be ready.

And then there’s safety. It is believed that the car will receive an NCAP rating of four out of five – not great for £23k. The Nissan team was reluctant to give away any secrets of the weight of the car, but we later discovered it is 1.6 tonnes – about average for a similar sized car. I do wonder where all the weight is, though – do batteries really weight that much?

To be honest, it wasn’t the car that interested me in the first place – it was the battery technology. Yes, that is a nerdy thing to say, but it’s true.

Nissan has spent years working on its lithium battery technology with NEC – a partnership called the Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (and we’re told something even better is in the pipeline, but they’re a little cagey about sharing the info at this stage).

If Nissan manages to convince consumers to buy the car – and some people will go for it – and if the batteries work well and are recycled properly, its old batteries could well be seen as a key part of the smart electricity grid in the future.

That’s because one of the biggest problems with renewable energy is that you can make electrcity, but you cannot store it easily. If Nissan’s battery technology is proved roadworthy and the batteries work in other scenarios, such as houses and large buildings, the technology could represent a huge shift in how we use energy.

Quite honestly, my £45 a month phone tells me when the trains are, what’s on TV, allows me to control my house remotely and all kinds of other things. For £300 a month or more I have to live with a car sitting outside my house. The value just isn’t that high these days.

The Better Place model for replaceable car batteries in garages makes a lot more sense given that a lot of people won’t have the patience to wait 30 minutes for a fast charge, let alone eight hours for an overnight one. I wouldn’t. The whole point of paying for on-demand transport is that you can move when you want.

It will be interesting to see how the partnership between Better Place and Renault Nissan plays out given how the Nissan Leaf relies on recharging not replacing batteries. And how Better Place will fight off the competition from utility companies, when they finally wake up and realise the business opportunity. But that’s a different matter …

(Please stand by for next month’s influencer report on Nissan and the Smart Grid)

And for the Nissan Leaf, that’s a lot of ifs. Too many for me at the moment.

So did I enjoy the test drive? Yes – I loved it. The car is magnificent.

Would I pay £23,000 for it? No. I would certainly think about version.2 however, but I’ll let the early adopters figure out the bugs and problems before making a decision.

The three-year eCoMove project aims to develop and test a variety of “green” transport technologies and applications that could help reduce travel-related carbon dioxide emissions by up to 20 per cent. That would be no small feat, considering road transport makes up the bulk — 70 per cent — of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, all forms of transport account for about 20 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions.

eCoMove project researchers envision using ICT applications and services to enable “perfect eco-drivers” travelling on a “perfectly eco-managed” road network. To achieve that goal, they’ll be testing state-of-the-art vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication technologies.

The idea is to help find a combination of cooperative applications that could help transport come as close as possible to the theoretical least possible fuel consumption … without affecting the quality of how people and goods get around.

“In reality today, vehicles, drivers and traffic management systems fall short of this ideal, and much fuel is wasted leading to unnecessary CO2 emission,” said Jean Charles Pandazis, coordinator of the eCoMove project.

Researchers will focus on what they believe are the three main causes of transport-related energy waste: driver behaviour, route choice and road network management. They hope to settle on a blend of technologies that can help motorists drive more efficiently, choose the “greenest” possible routes and have the best odds of getting from point A to point B with a minimum of red lights.

The system could also include incentives or other advantages, like cash eco-bonuses or priority in traffic.

The grant will go to a joint venture led by the city of Stockholm and the Swedish energy company Vattenfall, which are working together to promote the adoption of electric cars. The government funds could enable the largest purchase of plug-in cars yet in Sweden.

“Today there is tug-of-war to become a prioritised country for the electric car producers and this grant will contribute considerably to putting Sweden on the electric car map,” said Göran Lundgren, who heads the electric car project at Vattenfall. “Before a market is established, electric cars are expensive to produce and to buy, and therefore initial support is needed.”

Ulla Hamilton, Stockholm’s environment and traffic commissioner, added, “Energy efficient and silent electric cars with low emissions are needed in the Stockholm traffic. Stockholm is a world leader in the use of environment friendly cars, to a great extent because of our previous purchasing of environment friendly cars. Now we hope that we may in the same way inspire more companies in Stockholm to switch to electric cars.”

“With this venture we hope to speed up the development away from dependence on oil and from the greenhouse gas emissions from the traffic in the cities,” noted Tomas Kåberger, director-general of the Swedish Energy Agency.

The grant-funded electric car programme will move forward in phases, with an initial fleet of 50 vehicles. Public- and private-sector customers who apply for electric cars by August will get the chance to recoup 25 per cent of the vehicle’s added cost — up to a maximum of SEK 100,000. Vehicle deliveries will take place later in the year.

Eventually, the programme aims to support the purchase of 6,000 electric cars, with future deliveries set for 2011 and 2012.

A study conducted before the grant found that more than 100 companies and organisations in the Stockholm area were interested in acquiring electric cars, with support for some 14,000 vehicles.