Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Gas 2.0

Gas 2.0

Kansas City Buys 47 CNG-Powered School Buses

Posted: 28 Dec 2010 04:13 PM PST

I remember them as the "yellow devils" that came around every morning to take me to school. Noisy, dirty, and not fuel efficient, Kansas City is looking to trade its petrol-powered school bus for a fleet of 47 CNG-powered buses.

The Kansas City, Kansas school district got a $4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, which covers about half the cost of buying the compressed natural gas buses and the needed infrastructure. The Thomas Built Saf-T Liner HDX CNG-powered buses have a rear-mounted engine, and supposedly have 80% parts commonality on the Cummins 8.9 liter engine between CNG and diesel-powered versions. It makes just as much horsepower and torque, but requires fewer oil changes than diesel-powered engines.

The Kansas City school board went with CNG buses in part because it is an American-sourced fuel. I got nothing wrong with that, and there are plans to eventually convert 100% of the city's fleet of 80 buses over to CNG. Five have been delivered so far, and the rest should be delivered by the end of the year, as the CNG buses are slated to go into service in early 2011. I'm sure the children are (not) thrilled.

Source: Daimler via AutoblogGreen

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

Nissan’s Leaf is Keeping Score

Posted: 28 Dec 2010 03:01 PM PST

A Nissan Leaf owner identifying themselves as “Gudy” over on the My Nissan Leaf forum has posted some neat screencaps of the Leaf’s “CARWINGS” software, which records your energy efficiency and compares it to other Leaf owners’ by region … so you can see how your hyper-miling skills stack up against your neighbor’s!

Nissan’s CARWINGS is more than just a positive-reinforcement game engine, however.  CARWINGS uses advanced telematic systems to track and display all kinds of information about the car while it’s driving, including things like overall number of trips, their distance, duration, etc. … and (most impressively) CARWINGS manages to gather all this data in the spirit of light-hearted “fun”, without any scary “big brother” vibes.

leaf_screencap-1 leaf_screencap-2

There hasn’t been any word on whether or not Nissan will be handing out prizes for the most efficient Leaf owners (Leafers?  Leaftists?), but that seems to be logical “next step” in making driving fun again.

Source:  My Nissan Leaf, via Autoblog.

Beijing and Paris Working on Laws to Limit Automobiles

Posted: 28 Dec 2010 01:47 PM PST

Traffic has always been a problem, and the more cars there are, the worst traffic gets. Some cities, Beijing and Paris included, are taking drastic measures to curb traffic such as limiting new car registration and banning SUV's from city streets.

New car registration in Beijing has almost doubled since 2005, adding over 2 million vehicles to the ancient city's streets in half a decade, going from 2.6 million in 2005 to over 4.7 million this year. Even with China's much-ballyhooed high-speed rail, traffic is horrendous and can even result in a weeks-long traffic jam. Thus, the Chinese capital city is implementing laws that many in America (me included) would consider draconian.

For one, they are going to slash new car registration by 2/3 to just 240,000 vehicles in 2011 (for comparison there have been 700,000 new vehicle registrations since the beginning of 2010), and while at the same time hiking parking rates. During rush hour, cars registered outside of Beijing will not be allowed beyond the city's Fifth Ring Road, which is about 10 kilometers from the city center and mostly links suburbs to the city. Imagine being told, since you're not from around here, you can't go into the city? Additionally, Beijing will require all vehicles within the city limits to adhere to the strict Euro V emissions codes in 2012, which they claim will clean the air an additional 30 to 50%, but will force any vehicles that don’t meet the standards off the road.

Paris is taking a slightly softer approach, specifically targeting SUV drivers and owners of older diesel vehicles, perhaps even outright banning the vehicles within the limits of Paris. Cities such as Lyons are also considering a ban on SUV's, which could come as soon as 2012. At the same time, they are going to push the billionaire Vincent Bollore’s AutoLib program, which for about $16 a month will give Parisians access to 1,000 electric "Bluecars" stationed around the city. This car sharing program will cost four or five bucks an hour in addition to the $16 membership fee, which is surprisingly reasonable if you ask me. Try telling that to slighted SUV and diesel vehicle owners though.

Do you think SUV's be banned from cities too, or is that going too far?

Source: China Daily/Associated Press via Green Car Advisor | Image: Osbornb/Creative Commons 2.0

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

Grand Prix de Pau to Include Electric Racers for First Time

Posted: 28 Dec 2010 11:15 AM PST

The Grand Prix de Pau has roots that date back to 1901, and different versions of the race have been run in this old city sporadically for the past 110 years. After a hiatus in 2010, the Deputy Mayor has announced that the electric racers from the Andros Trophy will run the historic race in 2011.

Pau has run races through its city for over a century, but it took 2010 off to upgrade new facilities to debut in 2011. In addition to new facilities, 2011 will see the debut of electric race cars at the historic motorsports event. The 1st Electric Grand Prix de Pau will debut, alongside the F3 and F4 cars. The star of this electric grand prix will be the AC 03-Evo2 electric racers built by Exagon for the Andros Trophy, an ice-racing series that has roots back in the 80′s and debuted an all-electric racing class last year.

These little 90 kW (122 horsepower/ 147 ft-lbs of torque) cars are light and designed specifically for racing, and they need little more than a tire swap to go from ice-to-asphalt racing. Plus they’ll get more juice from their batteries Sure, I'd prefer it if the racers were a little more powerful, and didn’t look like tiny city commuters as opposed to serious race cars.

These are serious race cars, of course (watch the video above if you don't believe me), but they just look a bit too much like toys for my tastes. It’s hard to convince to take something seriously when it looks like it should have a “Made in China” sticker on the bottom of it. I'll take what I can get though. Bringing electric and other alt-fuel racing to the masses is a better way to get attention, I think, than talking about grams of soot-per-mile.

Source: Made in Motorsport

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.

$5-a-Gallon Gasoline by 2012, says Ex-Shell President

Posted: 28 Dec 2010 08:22 AM PST

Last week, gas prices hit $3 a gallon nationwide, and $4 a gallon gas seems inevitable this summer. Now the former president of Shell Gasoline says that by the summer of 2012, gas could cost $5 a gallon. Yikes.

Former Shell President John Hofmiester told Platts Energy Weekly television that by 2012, Americans could be paying, on average, $5 a gallon for gas, even without a gas tax hike.

Why so high, so soon? While demand for crude is "sluggish" currently, India and China are both poised to become bigger buyers of petroleum in the next two years. China alone bought more cars than the U.S. in 2009 and could do it again in 2010. While India sold far fewer cars (just over 2.1 million) in 2009, that is a 10% increase over 2008. All these new cars require gasoline still, and while America still consumes the most petrol, India and China combined have something like 40% of the world's population, and pretty soon we're all going to be competing for the same oil reserves.

There is another factor at work here too; Americans are using less gas. Even so, oil companies would probably like to continue making record profits, so to make the same money selling less of the same product, the price has to go up. I wouldn’t put it past them, and since we’re a free market, they can sell their product at any price they think people will pay. I don’t have a problem with capitalism, but it is funny how gasoline is the one product that has not made any real meaningful changes in over 100 years, yet we continue to pay more and more money for it…

Think we'll see $5 a gallon gas by the summer of 2012?

Source: Platts Energy Week via CNN

Chris DeMorro is a writer and gearhead who loves all things automotive, from hybrids to Hemis. You can follow his slow descent into madness at Sublime Burnout.
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