Will consumers respond?
Will consumers even check tire pressures?
German Regulator Roils Auto-Emissions Debate - WSJ.com: "Mr. Friedrich, 60 years old, is a veteran of clashes between Germany's environmentalists and car makers. A year after joining the Federal Environmental Agency in 1980, he so irritated car makers by championing lead-free gasoline that they lobbied the government to shift him to a job dealing with asylum seekers. His employment contract protected him from such a move.
Germany's environmental agency is the biggest in Europe, and its extensive research capability has extended its influence beyond the continent. When California regulators wanted guidance years ago on how to slash soot particles from commercial diesel engines, they consulted Mr. Friedrich. "He's been a constant source of advice and knowledge," says Alan Lloyd, former chairman of California's Air Resources Board.
Last year, Mr. Friedrich's agency completed a study of an idea that has long fascinated car makers: using hydrogen to propel vehicles, either by turning it into liquid engine fuel or by combining it with oxygen in tiny electromechanical devices known as fuel cells. The fuel cells generate electricity, causing vehicles to emit only water vapor.
Mr. Friedrich used to be a fan of fuel cells. He wrote a paper about the principle when he was a university student. But a research project by his agency two decades ago made him a skeptic and turned him in the direction of tweaking the design of cars powered by traditional engines.
The problem, he says, is that pure hydrogen is rare. The gas has to be isolated, compressed, transported and stored -- which requires lots of energy from other sources, such as fossil fuels. The result, Mr. Friedrich contends, is that shifting to hydrogen fuel cells would wind up reducing net CO2 emissions by less than if auto makers simply redesigned cars so that they use gasoline and diesel more efficiently.
In a study completed last year, Mr. Friedrich's agency found that hydrogen fuel cells would be an effective way for Germany to cut fossil-fuel use only if the country had an enormous amount of solar power on tap to make the hydrogen. Building such solar-power capacity, he argues, would take decades.
"Fuel cells are just a gimmick to avoid regulation," Mr. Friedrich says, arguing that the auto industry is promising high-tech answers over the long term to reduce pressure to improve fuel efficiency now."
Sooo, to take a practical approach :"Mr. Friedrich advocates using some of the money currently allocated to revolutionary ideas like fuel cells on improving conventional vehicles. To bolster his case, he hired engineers at the Institute for Automotive Engineering at RWTH University in Aachen, Germany, the alma mater of Porsche's Mr. Wiedeking and other German auto executives. He directed them to experiment on a gasoline-fueled VW Golf.
The engineers' goal was to reduce weight and wind drag without compromising safety or performance. They replaced the side mirrors, an aerodynamic hindrance, with tiny cameras that show on a dashboard screen what's happening behind the car. They changed to more efficient gear ratios, and added a weight-saving carbon engine hood, a stop-start engine mechanism, and speedometer lights that tell the driver the most efficient time to shift gear.
So far, the team has cut the test vehicle's CO2 emissions from 172 grams per kilometer -- the average for German cars sold in 2006 -- to 131 grams. The engineers aim to eventually reduce the Golf's emissions to 120 grams, the EU's tentative target for new cars sold in the region by 2012."
Now, will consumers go for such moves?
No mention was made of other techniques that can be applied to the IC power itself.
Such as variable valve timing, variable displacement, direct injection.
No comments:
Post a Comment