Hybrids used to be a fad that people say was one of those things like that stubborn popcorn kernel stuck in between your teeth that you can’t seem to get out that has to fall out sooner or later. Many saw them as a waste of time and that the rule of the petrol powered vehicle was good for another 50 years or so. Gues what, we don;t have enough oil for the auto manufacturers sell more and more cars everyday adding to the already taxed supply. Oil has become a bargaining chip on the global political scene that a simple lack of production would have devastating effect for some of the most gas reliant economies like the US and many countries of Europe. Oil is the most in demand resource and scientists have been telling us that the supplies are limited and it would only be time before we ran out sending us back to the dark ages without power and cars. Then it came, gas shortages and oil wars that prevents it from flowing steadily to fuel the growth of the many booming economies.
As the problems associated with methanol, LPG, LNG and other hybrids got ever more complicated even affecting the global food shortage, PHEV cars are gaining ground. With gas prices in the US soaring above the $4.00 mark, people are desperate for better more efficient cars. Hybrids are in that can be plugged in to charge their batteries for the next day’s trips as their owners rest. The advent of more efficient batteries such as Lithium Ion types has given the electric car a boost that more prefer Plug-In Electric Hybrids over the other types. Even the stock electrical systems of the Toyota Prius have been overhauled using these revolutionary batteries that have the capability to take you over 100 miles on a single charge.
Li-Ion Batteries are found in most gadgets and gizmos such as cell phones, PDA’s and many other small ones we carry around each and every day. Traditional Lead-Acid batteries have a long charge/discharge cycle and are prone to failure due to several factors such as humidity, temperature and the battery’s previous charge which has a nasty ability to have a short life and some safety concerns about the acids they contain should you get into a crash and they spill it all over the place, you get the picture.
Green cars powered by methanol have been given the boot and plug-in hybrids have taken central stage. The food shortage we are currently experiencing is blamed on these green fuels where farmers saw the potential and stopped planting other food crops concentrating on methanol sources for their crops, the result is not enough food for many people (the Mexicans have even rioted over a shortage of tortillas somewhere) and for something to be totally sustainable, that doesn’t look good. So they throw away the keys and focus on PHEV’s which have toxic batteries but have less impact on the environment (for now or till someone blows the whistle about some hidden problem that is also counter the aim of becoming sustainable).
With the acceptance of plans for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) has been widely debated and criticized but with many city’s, manufacturers and other groups accepting and formulating their own support infrastructures for future implementation of such types of vehicles a question surfaces in the sense that would the utility companies have enough will to support such technology by 2010, the period when most car manufacturers have signified that they would begin releasing PHEV vehicles to the general public. The utilities companies are the ones who would be bearing the brunt of the strain with the advent of such technologies and proposals like the ones below can make the difference between having a greener electric car future or not. Utility companies should be able to develop smart meters that would prevent charging of such vehicles during peak times to avoid overloading infrastructure that is already in place. The Utility Company cannot simply replace and upgrade all of the transmission and management systems at so fast a pace due to costs which are also quite high. The current level of off-peak surplus energy (electricity) is so much that even today, it is possible to support a very large fleet of electric vehicles. The adoption and use of PHEV’s would or could lessen CO2 emissions by as much as 50% which is great for the environment. Time is still on the side of utilities but they should act soon if the vision of an almost fully electric vehicle market is to take shape. Even with the minor changes required, billions of dollars of commitment from utility companies is needed. These developments are indeed in debate and are being discussed in the Industrialized world but implementation of such systems in the developing world may take longer than targets set by the various environmental groups and governments for cost is still the main deterrent. Tomorrow might see the rise of the PHEV as the main form of transport, but till these issues are addressed, the fate of the move is still in question and time is running out.
There has been much talk into the ability of tomorrow’s smart cars that have the capacity of augmenting the human driver at the steering wheel of all vehicles. While the driver may not be totally eliminated form the total driving experience, there are technologies in development and use that are designed to augment the driver’s abilities with respect to vision, reaction time and collision avoidance. Technologies in development like the ones currently being researched and proven by the Japanese car manufacturer Honda, their ASV and DSSS systems are designed to lay out the future of smart cars that talk to each other and communicate with traffic computers allowing them real time data acquisition form other vehicles.
Additions of vision augmentation such as the ones used by Mercedes that have built in IR emitters that are seen by an onboard camera that allows drivers to see in front of the vehicle and at the rear when parking avoiding hidden dangers that cannot be revealed even with current HID technologies. Adaptive lighting also used by newer Mercedes cars which has servos and sensors that maintains the most amount of light on the road and out of the face of drivers in oncoming vehicles is also making roads safer and better to drive. Blind corner detection which Mazda is developing is also to take part in the development of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) that would be the framework of tomorrow’s smart roads where cars and drivers are able to gain information form each other and directly form the traffic management people.
Technology has gone a long way in terms of improving the safety and ease at which we drive tomorrow’s cars but the question on how far we would allow these technologies to take over our vehicles is for us to say and many still feel uncomfortable at letting technology rule our lives. That’s why we still have pilots when planes can fly themselves without them and Ship Captains when current high-tech ships can sail on their own. The human ability to react and reason is still the best technology when it comes to risk analysis and no computer can top the intuitive human touch to date.
For almost $4,000.00 that is, the Poulsen Hybrid is a Power Assist Unit that is hailed as a simple bolt on upgrade for standard gas-powered or diesel vehicles. The device has caused a stir and is raising eyebrows for the device simply has the old car retro-fitted with rear DC motors, controllers, on-board charger and storage batteries. The move has the standard vechicle running using electric motors for propulsion on level roads and as with hybrids, switching to the gaspowered engine during high demand conditions like going up hills or when the battery is going flat. The system works by switching to the electric motors after the car has reached a pre-set speed say the cruising speed you select, after which the gas engine halts operation leaving the maintenance of the pre-set speed to the electric motors that gets power from the batteries.
Safety experts are quite concerned at the overall look of the vechile with parts that protrudes from the rear wheels to the trunk but the best part about the idea that makes it interesting is the fact that you don’t need a totally new car to get onto the path to green motoring. New hybrids cost a lot of money and the approach of offering a bolt-on upgrade to save a bit of the gas pump is nice. One European car manufacturer has offered an enticing approch by selling the Think and not the batteries which are kept on lease to eliminate the problems associated with maintenance of batteries which are costly and quite hazardous to the environment. The approach to upgrade existing cars is more realistic that telling a company that has a large fleet of vehicles to simply get rid of all thier cars and get newer hybrids for them to go green. Other options are just not that enticing due to huge investments and often lacking infrastructure limiting their effective range (only certain major cities have support for LPG, LNG and Ethanol Powered Vechiles)
The term describes a select group of driving aficionados who do out of this world driving (safely I hope) to squeeze every ounce of energy from every gallon of gasoline they have in their tanks. With gasoline hitting more than $3.00 a gallon, who wouldn’t? The trend has owners of hybrids and standard gas powered vehicles doing extreme driving practices such as trailing big-rigs (Tractor Trailers) to take advantage of their downdraft which creates suction in between the rig and your vehicle that you are actually pulled along by the rig in front of you. Another practice has people coasting as they are about to hit the stop light and many more. They have come up with unimaginable feats of getting up to or more that 100 MPG which is phenomenal with standard driving practices. Many have taken notice and many are turning into converts but many still question the safety of some of their practices or sometimes even the legality of doing such extreme maneuvers just to save every drop of gas.
They are a growing group that aims to educate people how they can lower their carbon footprints even while driving their cars. Many of these feats are possible only on hybrids but some nuts have been doing them in gas powered ones with equal results but I doubt that their lives should be placed on the line just to save on gas. Hybrids have a small gasoline engine that assists the electric motors during certain conditions that the computer can detect. Hybrids are designed or programmed to have the switching between gas and electric power under certain conditions to be automatic though most have switches that tells the car to stick with electric, gas or automatic propulsion. Hybrids have been getting reports of flat batteries and low charges due to these practices and doing some of these maneuvers on a gas powered vehicle can send you to the grave in no time due to braking power that is provided by the engine itself. It might be better to work with the designers of hybrids to have these changes to the way the car thinks included in the car’s computers rather than having to turn them off and do what you think is best for safety aspects are overlooked by some of these techniques and driving styles. And till they become standardized, I wouldn’t encourage drivers to do the same for as everybody does the same, who will you tail for everybody’s tailing everybody else, and all you’d end up with is a pile up of hybrids and trucks, you get the picture.
The drive to save on gasoline and thus lessen the dependency on oil is great. Global warming, high oil prices and many other environmental and man-made factors are having people take extreme measures just to save on gas. You might save every drop of it but endangering your life and the lives of others may not constitute such acts so do think twice about the implications.
Thanks to Mr. Luis Cruz for the suggestion!
Since the manufacturer still owns the battery maintenance and other costs such as repair and disposal are to be shouldered and handled by the manufacturer, the car owner simply brings it in, gets a fresh set then drive off. Now that’s an idea and even the American firm who would take part in he newly formed company agrees so much they call it a WINNER. The cars would be imported from Norway and then be sold in the United States for under $20,000 US (they set it there so it falls cheaper than the Prius) and they are in talks with US battery makers who would be taking care of the production of the batteries locally which would make the process of maintenance easier and faster.
They are set to begin with 50 demo units aimed at utility companies who need these types of vehicles which are small and best of all GREEN. For safety concerns, well it is considered to be one of a handful of (the Prius, Tesla Roadster being some of them of them, most of the others failed to go beyond prototype stage due to cost issues) of the world’s crash tested and highway certified fully-electric cars in the world. Speed freaks don’t fret; the manufacturer says they can raise the top speed to conform with US speed limits. It charges for three hours on a full day’s use and eight for fully drained batteries. Apparently the idea has been in use for quite sometime in Europe, just wonder why the idea hasn’t caught up in the States sooner?
Nope, were not thinking of a new idea, but the car’s name is Think! The Toyota Prius is credited to be the first commercial fully-electric vehicles among the wide array of other alternative fuelled cars in the United States which has now received more buyers due to ever higher gas prices that have again soared to record highs just a few days ago. The only thing holding back many people from buying fully electric vehicles is the fact that there is still a very big issue with battery reliability as many Prius owners have discovered. The trade off may be enough for some just to become more environmentally friendly yet for most who do want to go green batteries remain the main issue to date. There is a clever idea from a European electric manufacturer who is in process of setting up shop in the US with their fully electric car, the THINK that is ideal for city dwellers due to its two-seater capacity and 110 mile range with a top speed of 65 miles per hour. Now that’s not at all new and many have been able to top that so where’s the innovation? Well they plan to sell the vehicle but lease the batteries. Why the hell would anyone buy a car that you don’t fully own? Well, current battery technology has gone a long way but many reliability issues still remain which is why they have decided to approach the problem with the idea of taking the worrying about the batteries (which is a true headache for the fuel savings can offset the cost of the batteries when they do need replacing)from the hands of the customer whom they charge a monthly fee for using it and maintenance (along with a small electricity insurance to cover electricity prices should they go up).
In the never ending story of how GPS has allowed drivers and travelers alike to get to their destinations faster and easier, another addition to the saga of the errant GPS and their likewise errant drivers. As in previous posts regarding GPS and their ability to go wrong (extremely wrong) and give wrong directions drivers in the UK have had their common sense so to speak driven out of them as they drive into bridge overhangs and other structures which were not taken into consideration by the GPS mapping systems. The article came to my attention from Gadzooki which has a post dated on the 18th of April which shows hilarious yet serious statistics of drivers running into bridges like the ones shown in Mr. Bean cartoons and movies. These drivers trust their high-tech GPS navigation devices so much they forget to keep their eyes on the road and mind structures their vehicles may encounter. GPS has indeed made driving a pleasure by giving the right directions and even telling us when and where to go but it would also be a good idea to consider and include real-time traffic and positional data (not forgetting to take into consideration the location of low lying bridges and structures that may not accommodate the various types of vehicles that are on the road) which is already in some advanced high-price units.
The UK is a growing market for GPS and various gizmos and gadgets are coming to the public being sold as aides to UK drivers. The advantage is that the tons of camera’s in and around major cities allows UK traffic authorities to provide up to date traffic information where the driver can select alternate routes. The growing number of vehicles on the roads of Britain are becoming more and more of a problem which results in gridlock and traffic exclusion schemes to select areas that have provided some relief.
The Uk has also been able to produce one of the most powerful computers on earth named Hector which could be used to process vast amounts of data including traffic management and other tasks for the British Government. As technology progresses and heads into the future, we would be amazed at how far it has gone in the span of our lifetimes. We would also be assured of constant laughter when technology plus humans equals less common sense which makes the drive worth taking. Watch out for that BRIDGE!!!!!!!
Ford has employed a Local Electron Atom Probe (LEAP) device, only four of which exists in North America allowing their scientists to analyze and engineer materials in the nanotechnology arena. Their goal is to discover and design better materials that are lighter yet stronger than current technologies which would greatly increase the safety of vehicles on the roads. Nano-technology is a field of study by which molecular structures of individual atoms are studied and how they interact with one another is understood.
That, along with the introduction of some of the latest design and materials such as carbon-fiber and aluminum alloys they have made driving safe and more enjoyable in terms of road driving comfort. These technologies are some of the best to come into the automotive industry since the seatbelt was invented. Some road legal sports cars and roadsters already use carbon fiber for their main frames and other components and some even have the combined with exotic metals which complement each other for best performance. Magneto-resistive shock absorbers that adapt to road conditions and smart suspension systems that raise or lower the vehicle as needed allow better and safer driving. Magneto-resistive compounds are metallic powder suspended uniformly in a solution that changes its properties with the application of an electric current. Add more current and it stiffens, remove it and it softens allowing for smooth driving without the head banging on those unseen bumps. Adaptive lighting is also slowly coming into use, involves a system of gyro’s, sensors and mirrors that allows the light from the headlights to be focused where it is needed(no more glare when you go up on humps) greatly improving visibility on those lightless roads.
Even the lowly automotive crash test dummy had to be adapted to consider the rising number of obese people from all over the world. These human-like substitutes took the place of real people when the tests began to involve lethal forces that would have surely cut short the life of any volunteer (they actually used real people to test the effectivity of seatbelts when they were invented in real crashes). The newest versions of these unsung heroes of the automotive industry have thousands of sensors embedded within them to monitor all aspects of a crash to see whether an impact is survivable or not. Even with current high-power computers, actual crash tests are still conducted for they offer aspects of a crash that cannot all be factored by computers which rely on input. Real crash shows the way an actual human-like body would bounce around giving designers better insight on how to design their cars better.
The results of these crash tests have saved millions of lives with better designs and innovations such as crumple zones that absorb the impact of the crash from reaching the passengers of the vehicles. The reinforcement of the safety cage is also another design result from test crashes wherein a vehicle is constructed in a way to maximize the survival of it’s passengers by maintaining a survivable space in the cab where they are located.
Recent accidents that have involved obese people which are not factored into crash tests due to their falling out of the normal range in terms of body mass and structure resulting in fatal crashes. Auto manufacturers have been forced to reconsider their needs and thus have added a couple of obese dummies in their quest o satisfy all their customers. Obesity is a rising problem in the US and elsewhere with many getting well out of the standard data sets of body size, height and weight proportions crash test dummies were usually designed to, factoring them in allows manufacturers and designers to make their vehicles safe for all people from all walks of life.
