Our Automotive Future: Clever Tech Meets Clever Manufacturing

In a decade where green has become the new buzzword for almost every industry, automakers are facing two big problems: economy and emissions. The simplest way to achieve this is to reduce weight and reduce the size of the engine. With all the government mandated safety equipment and luxury features that today’s customers demand - power everything, air conditioning and the like - achieving the former is very difficult. And fitting a small engine into a heavy body is only going to stunt performance and make fuel economy all the more worse.

Fortunately, there are a few potential solutions. Carbon fibre is one. It’s said to be ten times stronger than steel and five times lighter. Unfortunately, it’s also four times as expensive, making it impractical for use in non-luxury vehicles. Now, engineers are looking to green energy and new manufacturing methods to make carbon fibre cheaper. Still, the results are yet to be seen.

There’s also the burgeoning belief that ultracapacitors are set to replace lithium ion batteries in hybrid and electric vehicles, though this is far from certain. Like carbon fibre, ultracapacitors are very expensive and unlike today’s lithium ion batteries are quite bulky and heavy. Think of the first generation of phone batteries for a worthy comparison. Fortunately, costs are coming down. According to Mike Sund, VP of investor relations at Maxwell Technologies, “[Ultracapacitor] costs have been reduced by two-thirds over the past three years.”

Even in this post-GFC world, the price of oil is also becoming an increasing concern for consumers and big business alike. Products, like Ethanol E10 and E85, are decent stopgap measures though aren’t solving the bigger problem. Now, companies are looking to manufacture synthetic gasoline from biomass such as woodchips and other waste materials. .

The technology still isn’t at the stage where it can compete with the major oil refineries, meeting only 1/8th of their capacity. Another hurdle is the raw biomass itself, which is too heavy to transport long distances. Still, new advances and investment in the industry are sure to produce some interesting results in the near future.

Lastly, the Scuderi Group has developed an experimental split-cycle engine that causes combustion to occur after the piston reaches the top of the cylinder, which it claims is 50% more fuel efficient than contemporary petrol engines. How about a 1L engine that offers the same performance as a 1.8, with better fuel economy than a contemporary 1L? By using some clever trickery that allows the spark to come later, along with a turbocharger and small air-tank, the Scuderi engine could reinvigorate faith in the internal combustion engine – if it ever reaches production.

So, the future of the automobile is looking bright. Now all that’s left is the wait to see if these technologies will reach production status.

By Tristan Hankins

Source: WSJ , Video: Scuderi Group

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NOx, Hydrocarbons and Worse – What’s Else is Coming from your Exhaust Pipe?

As automotive consumers, we think we’re pretty well informed. We read all the blogs and all the magazines, pouring over the all important numbers: 0 to 60 times, miles per gallon and – increasingly – CO2 emissions. That last one is interesting, as it’s only come to the mainstream public’s attention in the last seven years or so. Anyone would think that the only noxious chemical cars put into the atmosphere are CO2, but you’d be wrong.

Nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbons, diesel particulates and carbon monoxide are also put out by our daily drivers. Think of the worst parts of cigarette smoke and the fumes from burning plastic and you’ll have a good idea what I mean. Premature births, lung cancer and smog – all attributable to these noxious chemicals.

You may be surprised at the vehicles that are very good on CO2 and very bad on NOx and hydrocarbons. By adding the two together, we get a milligram per kilometre rating. So here are the best and worst from the UK’S Vehicle Certification Agency:

UK's best performers

Skoda Yeti 1.2 105PS 49mg/km

Nissan Qashqai+2 2.0 71mg/km

Honda Insight 1.3 IMA S/SE 73mg/km

Porsche Cayman S 3.4 79mg/km

Honda Insight 1.3IMA ES-T 5dr 82mg/km

UK's worst offenders (mg/km)

Nissan Pathfinder 2.5 dCi 190 1,150mg/km

Seat Ibiza SC 1.2 12v 70PS 1,026mg/km

Citroën C5 1.6i THP 1,010mg/km

Audi A4 3.2 FSi Multitronic 999mg/km

Mercedes B-Class B160 BlueEfficiency 994mg/km

Would you believe that a 2.5L Volvo V70 estate is in some ways better for the environment than a 1.3L Fiat 500 with start-stop engine tech? Try 201mg/km versus 484mg/km. And would you of guessed a Porsche Cayman S would be, in one way at least, better for the environment than a Mercedes-Benz B160 BlueEfficiency?

It just goes to show that the more you know the better off you are. One can only hope that, in time, these details will appear on the same stickers that tell us mpg and CO2 emissions so car buyers can make a fully informed choice.

By Tristan Hankins

Source: VCA via Telegraph

GM Building Parts for Chevrolet Volt from BP Oil Spill Booms

The new Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car is doing its part in improving the environment by making the best use of the oil that was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP Deepwater Horizon rig. To explain, General Motors has began recycling oil-soaked plastic booms from the notorious spill into components for the Volt.

The Detroit-based automaker said it has developed a method to convert an estimated 100 miles of the material off the Alabama and Louisiana coasts into more than 100,000 pounds of plastic resin that will be used for parts that deflect air around the vehicle’s radiator.

These parts are comprised of 25 percent boom material and 25 percent recycled tires from GM’s Milford Proving Ground vehicle test facility, with the remaining percentage covered by a mixture of post-consumer recycled plastics and other polymers.

“Creative recycling is one extension of GM’s overall strategy to reduce its environmental impact,” said Mike Robinson, GM vice president of Environment, Energy and Safety policy. “We reuse and recycle material by-products at our 76 landfill-free facilities every day. This is a good example of using this expertise and applying it to a greater magnitude.”

If GM hadn't used the oil-soaked booms for parts, they would have been incinerated or sent to landfills.

“This was purely a matter of helping out,” said John Bradburn, manager of GM’s waste-reduction efforts. “If sent to a landfill, these materials would have taken hundreds of years to begin to break down, and we didn’t want to see the spill further impact the environment. We knew we could identify a beneficial reuse of this material given our experience.”

According to the automaker, the ongoing project is expected to create enough plastic under hood parts to supply the first year production of the new Chevy Volt.

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