November 2006 Archives

A compact full-hybrid SUV from GM: 2008 Saturn Vue Green Line will loose its mild alternator belt hybrid system and gain the full hybrid, "two-mode" full hybrid system set to debut shortly in the 2008 Tahoe and Yukon. That front-drive model will use a direct-injection version of the 3.6-liter V-6 and feature regenerative braking and low-speed electric-only propulsion. GM expects a 45-percent increase in combined fuel economy compared with a non-hybrid Vue. The car is based on the Opel Antara and promises higher quality materials and better handling. Look for the car this spring. GM also announced that it is working on a plug-in-hybrid version of the two-mode Vue.
http://www.caranddriver.com/autoshows/12063/2008-saturn-vue.html

Like a Brontosaurus cruising around York long past the Jurassic period, the SUV could be eliminated in California. Automakers tolled the bell of doom Monday (for large profit margins) citing lawsuits over the vehicles' excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

The Supreme Court hears a case against the EPA Wednesday.

A Hydrogen Fuel Cell Ford Explorer will be available for test drives tomorrow and Thursday at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

A center-mounted hydrogen tank that delivers 350 miles per fill up occupies the space typically used for the 6-speed automatic transmission found in production Explorer models.

The Irish Minister for Finance Brian Cowen is reportedly going to stop tax breaks for large hybrid cars in next month's budget. A number of Irish government ministers have recently switched their business cars to large hybrid sedans.

Europe is already has a plentiful supply of clean running small diesel cars which environmentalists claim produce less emissions than large hybrid cars and SUV’s
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaking/story.asp?j=202359368&p=zxz36xx74&n=202360128

In the United States,

A first person account of the AAA hybrid seminar I mentioned in a previous post

"This is all I think about," said Charles Holmes, a chef from Glen Ellen who bought a Prius three months ago. "I'm fixated on the screen in the car. At dinner, we talk about what kind of mileage we got that day. When I'm cooking, my mind wanders and I think about it.

"Do we ever get past this point?"

The qualified Alternative Fuel Motor Vehicle Credit was enacted by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The new credit includes separate credits for four distinct categories:
1. fuel cell vehicles
2. advanced lean burn technology vehicles
3. hybrid vehicles
4. alternative fuel vehicles.

Lacking tax/social incentives and suffering from import duties, the Toyota Prius isn’t selling well in China. The Chinese car is double the price of the American counterpart. What seemed like a sure bet for Toyota in a boom market turned out not to work too well.

China’s largest cities are choking on pollution and the Chinese government is pushing up taxes on gas guzzlers, but the public is hungry for horsepower.

Toyota Motor Corp may market a diesel hybrid sub compact car as early as 2010 in cooperation with Isuzu Motors Ltd. The drive train would be popular in Europe where diesels dominate. European drivers haven't warmed up to the idea of gasoline hybrids because of their longstanding love for diesels. Although Toyota produces diesels for the European market, they are not leading the pack in clean diesel technology.
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061114/FREE/61113017/1024/LATESTNEWS
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=163838

As night fell over the 24 Hours of LeMans this summer, spectators at France's prestigious endurance race detected a pattern. While competitors entered the pits to refuel, a sleek pair of Audi R10s kept stealing laps around the 13.7-kilometer track. Already the fastest cars on the course, and eerily quiet thanks to a unique emissions filter, the Audis were also proving the most fuel-efficient. When the checkered flag flew, the Audi had made history as the first diesel car to win a major internationa race.l race.http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/16/8390259/index.htm

The Chery A5 ISG will be a compact sedan powered by a 1.3-liter four-cylinder engine and an electric motor. The gasoline engine kicks in at speeds higher than 25 mph.

The York Daily Record/Sunday News has given us a new garage to hang in and discuss the world of cars, technology and the future of propulsion.

I picked the domain greenmesh.com because it’s better suited to this blog and besides green machines was already taken by the “The world’s most versatile outdoor sweeper�

Greenmesh.com sifts ideas, searches for innovation and observes our failing oil based energy infrastructure as it’s forced to evolve.

Green thinking and innovations that lead to conservation are the threads that will bind together a sustainable future for a growing population as it places a greater burden on energy resources.

If that doesn’t make any sense, stare into the revolving green crystal (golf) ball in the upper left hand corner of this blog and you will understand totally...

November is Hybrid Vehicle Awareness Month in California and AAA is sponsoring a Hybrid Driver Training Seminar for drivers who want to make the most out of the technology. The two-hour class held at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., included classroom and track work.

General Motors plans to unveil prototype plug-in hybrid at the at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January. GM has a new company-wide focus on "electrifying" the car, GM officials said Thursday.

In an interview with Motor Trend published in July, GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said killing the $1 billion EV1 program was his worst decision. He said it did not affect the automaker's profitability, but did hurt its image (which affected GM's profitability).

The total disconnect is getting plugged in.

In 2002 GM, recalled the electric cars it was leasing under the EV1 program and crushed them.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061110/AUTO01/611100327/1148
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

Consumers have pushed Republicans to the back of the car lot. The GOP has spent millions on advertising, but this time around their model just won’t sell. There is a Democratic majority in the House and Senate.

Later this month President Bush will meet with General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler. You can bet corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for cars will be a hot topic.

A Honda Insight in the UK won class A of the fiercely contested 2006 Formula 1000 Rally Championship at the first attempt using E85 bio ethanol.

The race requires that the cars have engines under 1 liter. An electric/gasoline propulsion system would probably be ideal in a rally situation where a car must stop-and-go like crazy (needing bursts of torque) and the builders were limited in engine size.

A clean-burning, free-from-foreign-oil, efficient racer which is quite the opposite of NASCAR machines.
http://www.crash.net/news_view~t~Hybrid-car-wins-title-at-first-attempt-~cid~15~id~140011.htm

Toyota is catching up with consumer demand and expanding the Prius name. Toyota expects to import 122,590 Priuses this year, up from a previous forecast of 110,000, Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong said. Prius sales fell 12% last month in the USA, although they are down only 1.4% for the year, Autodata reports. For the first time since the current version of Prius went on sale in October 2003, there are enough to fill customer demand, Toyota (TM) Group Vice President Jim Farley says. Other market forces balancing out the supply and demand equation include:

VW says that they have a breakthrough in fuel cell technology. Up until now the cell costs at least as much as the whole car.

I‘ve been scanning theaircar.com for 20 minutes and I still don’t quite get it. The Web site is mostly in English, but it runs into Spanish and sometimes French. The tech just isn’t translated well at times. Mostly they don’t want you to know what they are doing, the best way to keep a competitive edge and the worst way (to me at least) to market something.

The engine runs on either compressed air alone or a combination of compressed air and fossil fuel. The compressed air engine is for cities (only) reaching speeds of 31 mph. The dual propulsion engine will run on compressed air up to 31 mph and then switch to fuel mode. The engine will be able to use gasoline, gas oil, bio diesel, gas, liquidized gas, alcohol etc.