Category Archives: Transport
Audi is serious with its green dreams, and as part of cleaning up its act, the German automaker will now provide auto show attendees with digital brochures instead of the paper one’s we’ve been seeing all along. Hoping to reduce its impact on the environment and saving a load of trees from doom, Audi has teamed up with Digital Collateral too. So, if in future you end up falling in love with a certain car, you might not carry home a paper brochure. Instead, all you’ll have to take home is a camera-phone picture of you and that set of wheels. Auto shows will have a greener touch to them with reduction in paper use if other automakers follow in Audi’s footsteps.
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A new way to charge up your EV has just showed up recently developed by the TVA and the Electric Power Research Institute. These might just be one of the reasons you stop on a highway, to charge up. The system packs 12 kilowatts’ worth of solar panels and a battery array with about five kilowatt-hours of storage. It also boasts six parking spots for car charging. The first of these stations showed up in East Tennessee, a research prototype that’ll help find out better ways to charge EVs while out. A second prototype with 25 spaces instead of 6 will pop up at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as part of the EV Project.
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We’ve heard of Nissan’s plans to kick off an EV rental program for its electric car, the Leaf before. Mazda is now following closely behind in Nissan’s footsteps with plans to lease EVs in Japan by next year. The automaker is busy lining up a fleet based on the Demio/Mazda2 that will use the SKYACTIV powertrain technology and will be up for lease. The car will have a range of almost 200-kilometer driving (124 miles) and the program will start in the spring of 2012. Mazda is targeting local government groups and fleet customers for this lease program, and aims to gather knowledge of electric vehicles, EV requirements and powertrain technology, for future electric technology.
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The world will have a load of new electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids soon, with Mitsubishi motors planning to embrace green and launch 8 new cars by the year 2015. Abandoning the act of making cars for specific regions like Europe and North America, the firm instead will turn towards developing compact cars and SUVs with world standards and applicability instead. Currently, the company has the Global Small compact car being chiseled out. Small in size, fuel efficient and low priced, this car will hit the asphalt soon, to add to the line-up of already launched EVs by other companies. Mitsubishi predicts a rise in sales by 280,000 units in developing markets and 90,000 in well established markets in the 2013 fiscal.
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We’ve heard of Abu Dhabi’s ambitiously green Masdar City before. A Personal Rapid Transit system is being tested now for the city, powered up completely by green renewable energy. The system involves the use of all-electric, driverless pod cars that move about with magnetically guided lines. Designed sleek with the right lines and curves drawn, the PRT system keeps the air cleaner, with its low-carbon emissions. However, the dreams to expand the network to 3,000 units making 150,000 trips a day have been cut short. The PRT cars are developed by 2GetThere and use lithium-phosphate batteries.
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Virgin America has gone a bit greener, choosing to buy the first of the Airbus A320neo “eco-efficient” aircrafts. The aviation big shot has ordered 30 of the new engine option aircraft, and has committed to buy 30 more. The airplane is available in two engine options; the LEAP-X or Pratt & Whitney’s PurePower PW1100G and comes packed with Sharklet fuel-saving large wing tip devices too. The airplane offers a whole 15% reduction in fuel consumption and emissions, that’s about a whole 3,600 tons of CO2 per aircraft! And Virgin isn’t the only aviation firm buying these green aircrafts. Indian low-cost airliner, IndiGo has signed a MoU for 150 of these airplanes too!
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“Oh look! The neighbor got a red car! Damn, I hate my black one!” How many times before have you had that thought strike you before? We’re pretty sure it’s a common phenomenon. Here’s a car that takes its aesthetics advancements to a never heard of or thought of before level. By Honda, the Native 2011 Concept car has a color changing exterior! So you can have your car match your shirt color everyday. Besides that, it carries a load of green too, with the insides powered completely by H2O. By artist Liviu Tudoran, the car packs in flying wheels, a talking engine, a light body and photo-chromic technology for the color change. Using high voltage lithium ion batteries, the car uses OLED technology with the interiors made of light aluminum.
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With a little touch of the past, a load of the present and some from the future, Audi has come up with yet another little vehicle that’s sure to bring a smile on the faces of car lovers and environmentalists alike. The car’s named the Auto Union Type C e-tron and will show up at the International Toy Fair in Nuremberg in Germany. Now this one’s a lot more than just a toy. It can touch speeds of 18.64 miles per hour and is based on the Auto Union Silver Arrow Type C race car. Using a lithium-ion battery with a .5 hp rear-wheel drive electric motor that generates 29.5 pound-feet or torque (peak at 44.25), this one has a range of 15 miles. The car charges up in two hours, using a 230V European socket.
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Japanese manufacturer Yodogawa Group has pulled the veil of an eco-friendly rickshaw. The vehicle, name the Meguru uses three wheels, like every other rickshaw, though with a green heart pumping energy. With enough space to seat three, this compact vehicle uses a single lithium-ion battery, delivering a maximum speed and range of 40 kilometers (25 miles) per hour and 40 kilometers respectively. Not much, though enough for city travel, this one sure isn’t good to be driven along freeways. Leaving out an air-conditioning system, the Meguru instead uses a pinwheel. Also, the manufacturers plan to add wind chimes to it, to soothe your nerves, instead of packing in an audio system. The vehicle measures 2.5 meters (8 ft 2 in) long, 1.2 meters (3 ft 11 in) wide and 1.6 meters (5 ft 3 in) tall and uses recycled bamboo.
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America has just got its first hybrid minivan. Now we all know of the Prius version that Toyota has been calling a minivan, which isn’t really one at all. A true blood hybrid minivan will however, roll out from the Chrysler shed soon! Using the hydraulic hybrid powertrain in Chrysler’s Town & Country minivan Chrysler and the EPA will produce a running demonstration vehicle in 2012 using a hydraulic hybrid system developed in Ann Arbor. The Town & Country will boast a 2.4-liter, inline four-cylinder gasoline engine and a 117 cc engine pump, a 45 cc drive electric motor and a two-speed automatic transmission with hydraulic fluid will be stored in a 14.4-gallon high pressure accumulator that can get up to 5,000 psi, improving fuel economy by up to 35%.
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