With the passing of Assembly Bill 511 in the Nevada Senate, the U.S. Department of Transport will now have to draw up rules governing autonomous vehicles on the state’s roads.
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Greenpeace went ahead with the attack to draw attention to its concerns over the German company’s ecological record.
The environmental activist group claims that the car giant is “spending millions of Euros every year funding lobby groups who are trying to stop Europe increasing its commitment to greenhouse gas reductions from 20% to 30% by 2020” and calls Volkswagen to turn away from the Dark Side.
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Advances in technology concerning engine downsizing, turbocharging, direct fuel injection, more efficient cooling, electric power steering and variable valve timing will help achieve this, according to the 23-page study.
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Some 700 four-seat Autolib’ vehicles will be rolled out from December of this year, offering green motoring for both residents and tourists alike. The Italian-built four seaters come with a 250 km battery range, radio and GPS navigation system.
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It’s just one of many entries into the 2011 Michelin Challenge Design Showcase we’ve reported on previously. There is something surprisingly masculine about Eskeli’s fluid, organic design; like cavorting dolphins or an Antarctic glacier.
The California-based company is keen to point out the claimed benefits of self-driving cars over their human-driven counterparts including better safety, improved fuel efficient and greater environmental friendliness.
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The station will provide hydrogen for the Toyota fuel cell hybrid demonstration program vehicles, as well as other manufacturers' fuel cell cars in the Los Angeles area.
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Led by Professor Frank Kelly of King’s College London, the study (as the title suggests) investigated what affect London’s much-derided Congestion Charging Scheme has had on the city’s air quality. The result: not much. Through the use of emissions / exposure modeling, analysis of air monitoring data and the, “assay for the oxidative potential of particulate matter,” Professor Kelly and his colleagues found:
“From their comparison of actual air pollutant measurements within the CCZ with those at control sites in Outer London, the investigators reported little evidence of CCS-related changes in pollutant levels at roadside monitoring sites, where their modeling had suggested the most pronounced effects would be seen.”
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The two-sided Smokeboard was created by the Japanese firm’s advertising partner TBWA\Chiat\Day, which is the American division of the advertising agency TBWA Worldwide.
On one side, the billboard features an actual working tailpipe that emits fumes into the air (with the agency stressing the fact that the exhaust is environmentally friendly…) and a headline that reads, “The auto show has over 1,000 of these”. On the other side, there’s a photo of the Leaf and a caption that says “But only one 100% electric, zero-tailpipe Nissan Leaf”. Check out the ad in action in the clip after the jump.
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No, this isn’t a late April Fool’s Day joke: this is serious. And being green is serious business for Steam Whistle, which – among other things – uses renewable energy, recycles damn-near everything and supports various environmental causes as a sideline to its beer brewing enterprise.
Brewery manager Mike Kiraly came up with the idea of electrifying the ol’ girl and even uses it as his daily driver. He explains his brainwave: “What if we could take a sexy vintage ride, save it from the metal scrap heap and outfit it with a zero-tailpipe-emissions engine. Old-school style combined with a modern conscience.”
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So naturally we’re targeting the obvious culprits: Big Mining, Big Agriculture and Big Automotive. We’re also encouraging the average man and woman to use less and be environmentally responsible. So what about the world’s biggest and most prestigious automotive racing category: Formula 1? What are they doing to stem the tide of global warming?
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The 2011 Seoul Motor Show that runs in South Korea from March 31 to April 10 plays host to the world premiere of the all-new Hyundai Blue2 concept study. The name ‘Blue2’, which is read ‘Blue square’, is a combination of Hyundai’s sub eco-brand ‘Blue Drive’ and the number `2’ from H2, the symbol for hydrogen gas.
Codenamed HND-6, the prototype is Hyundai’s first sedan-style Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV). The four-door saloon is powered by a fuel cell electric system that delivers a stack power of 90kW or 121HP and fuel economy of 34.9km/ℓ (of hydrogen, of course), which is equal to 82mpg US and 2.9lt/100km. The concept is also equipped with low-resistance tires and alloy wheels which are designed to improve aerodynamic performance.
It’s all very simple. You know those bicycles that have pedal powered lights? Same principle, though in this case the fans are turned by the circular motion of the wheels and not by being affixed to the wheels themselves.
The fans power a generator that helps recharge the Ventile’s batteries. I don’t know how well this would work in the real world, mostly due to the Law of Conservation of Energy, but really who cares.
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With gas prices going up and car owners downsizing from V6’s to four cylinders and from luxury models to economical subcompacts, the question for automakers becomes; how do we remain profitable? As the automotive big wigs descend on Geneva with their latest and greatest models, this issue is weighing heavily on many minds. So, how does one do it? Well, there are a few answers to this conundrum, one of which is move your subcompact cars upmarket. MINI has done it, Toyota is sort of doing it with the iQ and no doubt many of the world’s other automakers would very much like a piece of that pie. The answer lies very much in the look of a car: its design and the ambiance it gives off.
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Fortunately, there are a few potential solutions. Carbon fibre is one. It’s said to be ten times stronger than steel and five times lighter. Unfortunately, it’s also four times as expensive, making it impractical for use in non-luxury vehicles. Now, engineers are looking to green energy and new manufacturing methods to make carbon fibre cheaper. Still, the results are yet to be seen.
Nitrogen oxides (NOx), hydrocarbons, diesel particulates and carbon monoxide are also put out by our daily drivers. Think of the worst parts of cigarette smoke and the fumes from burning plastic and you’ll have a good idea what I mean. Premature births, lung cancer and smog – all attributable to these noxious chemicals.
The Detroit-based automaker said it has developed a method to convert an estimated 100 miles of the material off the Alabama and Louisiana coasts into more than 100,000 pounds of plastic resin that will be used for parts that deflect air around the vehicle’s radiator.
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Take Ferrari's stop-start equipped California HELE or Mercedes-Benz's SLS AMG E-Cell concept, for instance. And there's more on the horizon, including the plug-in hybrid 918 Spyder from Porsche and BMW's Vision EfficientDynamics, the latter of which allegedly will offer M3 performance with a CO2 emissions rating of just 99 grams per kilometer.
And it's not just these four who are in it for the environmental crowd cred: other makers including Lotus, Audi, Lamborghini, Jaguar and Bentley are also looking to green up their model ranges.