First of all I’d like to thank you all again for participating in the eco-car poll and also in the comments section of the four posts that analysed each each answer. I particularly liked it when :

Carol said that low range vehicles do not take into account the unpredictability of our lives, e.g. drive to work, park, start charging car, school calls child sick, take to doctor, go to pharmacy, stuck in traffic on very hot day, put air con on just lost 10km of range – this is scary!! Either the technology is not ready or we have to change our car dependent infrastructure…Jean-Pierre said changing our car habits will be a small part of the overall change that we’ll have to undertake. Wojtek gave some innovative ideas for recharging electric cars, his idea on non contact induction charging has also been suggested by IAV. Carol says fuel consumption is now becoming trendy! Can you imagine talking about that with your friends in bar 10 years ago! Munir & Josh gave interesting insight on taxing – I don’t think the debate has finished yet though!

Now let’s just think how all this change is going to happen. Here’s an example of some eco design fundamentals:

Product improvement: the automotive industry is working like crazy on this. They’re modifying existing engines or building new ones to be emissions regulation compliant. EURO 6 is a very tough emissions regulation which will come into to force in 2015. Fleet average CO2 has to be reduced from 160g/km to 130g/km by 2015. Then there’s ELV, again by 2015, for all end-of life vehicles, the re-use and recovery shall be increased to a minimum of 95 % by an average weight per vehicle and year. Within the same time limit, the re-use and recycling shall be increased to a minimum of 85 % by an average weight per vehicle and year. Today we’re at 85% and 80% respectively.

Product redesign: this means new types of cars. The electric car for example, surprising how it’s only no. 2 on this list. Well, if you design, make and use the electric car just like the internal combustion engined car then it’ll be better but it’s not enough…

Function innovation: improve the car’s function, i.e. use it better. Car sharing is a good example, here we use the car to its maximum, instead of today’s 1.2 person average.

System innovation: this is my favourite…re-design the whole system! New needs, new business models, new products…our lifestyle will have to change! Once a lot more of us work from home then the car will be used mainly for business use and leisure. It’s very similar to the aviation industry today, you reserve a seat in a big jet for business visits or go to on holiday, and if you’ve got your own private pilot’s licence then you reserve time to fly one of your club’s light aircraft. Cars would then have the same requirements as aircraft, i.e. very little personal ownership & long term affordability: low maintenance costs, high durability, long life. No more changing the car every 2 years as you won’t own one anymore. That’s what I call eco!

And lastly, something that popped up in my mind: imagine arriving at work or returning home and plugging in your electric car to charge up the batteries, sounds great doesn’t it. Now imagine the whole of your company or your street/block/town doing the same thing, well that’s certainly going to dim the lights in my house! I guess we’ve got some more thinking to do… And wouldn’t it be cool to use the car’s batteries for other things too. What about driving to the beach and using the car’s batteries to power a beach party sound system?

Sustainably yours,
Jonathan

So you drive your car to work everyday, once a week you fill the boot/trunk with enough food to sustain your starving teenage children, now and again you take the car and the family on a well earned holiday to the mountains or the seaside – like for all of us the car is an integral part of your life.

But, with China, India and other developing countries wanting a piece of the action there’s going to have to be a lot of give and take.

So,why not lead the change instead of suffering it…

What would make you change your current car-use habits? This is how you answered the survey question number 3:

Offering alternatives really seems to have been the focus of the vast majority of you; i.e. better public transport. In other words, you all want to do your bit to help but today’s alternatives are really not viable…I can relate to that, my trip to work by public transport is bearable but at least there is public transport! This can’t be said for the people who live outside large cities.

So these people will have to turn to flexible car leasing options, i.e. tiny car to go to work in (if you can’t share with another commuter) and a bigger car for family leisure.

And lastly, hike up the price of fuel to “force” change-resistors to change. I don’t really like this, or at least I don’t like it on it’s own. If there are no alternatives we’ll just see businesses fold as they won’t be able to cover their running costs any more. But in fact the price of fuel has never been cheaper than it is today, in 1955 fuel cost 3 times more than it does today relative to earnings. What I’d like to see is the current taxation removed and replaced with a “cleaning-it-all-up-when-it’s-gone” tax, so that this money can be injected into research and actions to clean up the CO2.

Here are some of your additional comments: increase the offer of greener cars and make them affordable, no more fuel for transportation (why burn all those nice molecules…), ecologic company cars.

Sustainably yours,

Jonathan

P.S. In case you missed the poll and the anaysis for Q1 & Q2, here are the articles:Driving for Green: a mini poll, Driving for Green: Poll answers for Q1 & Driving for Green: Do You Have Range Anxiety?

Range anxiety: I love this term! Unfortunately for me I can’t take any credit…so I have to congratulate General Motors for making it up and the Automotive Engineer magazine for a great description…

Range anxiety refers to the sensible reservations on the practicality of battery powered vehicles, i.e. will it get me to where I’m going and will I be able to get home?

And to my second question from the mini poll:

Would you be willing to drive cleaner cars that have a max driving range of 80 km?

A whole 55% of you have range anxiety and would want your eco car to travel more than 80km (OK I’ll stretch to 100km) before filling up or charging up.

Let’s go back to General Motors and have a look at why they believe the Chevrolet Volt has to be able to travel 40 miles (60km) before the range extending gasoline engine fires up to recharge the batteries. Well GM simply took the information supplied by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics on “how many miles one-way do you travel from home to work on a typical day?” and multiplied it by 2 to get the round trip back home. Thus finding that 78% of Americans commute 40 miles or less daily – and I’m guessing that the same percentage of Europeans and Asians would commute shorter distances.

Maybe I should have included a comments box with this question. I’m very curious to find out why 112 people out of 203 want their car to be able to drive long distances all the time.

Let me ask another question: If you could easily hire a long range car would you settle for a short range one for all other commutes?

But maybe I’m slipping into the mini poll’s question 3…

Sustainably yours,

Jonathan

P.S.  In case you missed the poll and Q1 analysis, here are the articles: Driving for Green: a mini poll & Driving for Green: Poll answers for Q1