Aussie Motoring

Yesterday it was just a rumour that BMW were about to build a small fleet of electric Minis to test the concept and do some serious field trials. Today, with this press release from BMW, it’s official.

 As part of the Group’s Number ONE strategy, the company will begin extensive tests on electric drives in MINI Vehicles

Over the next months, the BMW Group will be carrying out various series of tests on electrically powered vehicles to determine the alternative drive of the future.

Several hundred MINI brand vehicles are being prepared for this. The cars, built in the Oxford plant, will be modified accordingly in Munich and fitted out for trials.

“This step will allow the BMW Group to gain an initial knowledge of how mobility can be achieved efficiently using purely electrically powered vehicles. Our task here is to combine the ultimate driving experience with an efficient electrified drive with practically no emissions”, underlined Dr. Norbert Reithofer, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG.

The tests on alternative drives in a MINI body will be used over the next 12-18 months to refine the technology. Details about the drive concept and its marketing will be published towards the end of the year.

The head of Nissan has announced that the company will be launching an electric car into the US market place by 2010.

Nissan and Renault will work together on the required technology and by 2012 will have the vehicle available outside of the United States. Nissan will focus on marketing the vehicle in Asia … especially China … while Renault will sell the vehicle into the European market.

by Stuart Livesey

I’m not sure who is the greenest car maker here in Australia … if fact you would have to wonder if anyone has actually compiled such a list … but in Europe Peugeot tops the list as the greenest car maker followed by Fiat, Renault, Toyota and Honda.

BMW and Daimler were at the bottom of the list and VW could only manage to appear in 9th position.

The manufacturers were graded on the fleet emissions for 2006 and Peugeot had an average of 142 grams of CO2 per kilometre. But in the future Peogeot and the other car manufacturers are going to have to do much better because the European Union expects all European car makers to reduce their emissions to an average of 120 grams per kilometre by 2015.

Back in 1904 though things were much different and the Peugeot didn’t have to worry about emissions when it built this beautiful little machine.

Photo courtesy of Morguefile

… still hard to sell.

While hybrid cars are beginning to appear in every greater numbers on our roads environmentally friendly hybrid trucks are an absolute rarity, even in the United States. In fact they are so rare that the world’s biggest fleet of hybrid trucks - owned by Fedex - only numbers around 95.

Urban environments should be ideal for hybrid trucks because of the stop-start traffic and manufacturers suggest that hybrid trucks could return some great savings in fuel but truck operators see a bigger picture than just savings in fuel. Truck operators look at the initial cost of a hybrid truck, the reliability, the cost of repairs etc. etc. and that’s where the attraction of hybrid trucks beings to fade.

While environmentally friendly cars sell in great numbers and so have an economy of scale that same economy of scale is not there for truck buyers. For example in Europe trucks such as this Renault Midlum

©RENAULT TRUCKS

are produced in quite limited quantities. In Europe there are 7 brands competing for sales and each can only manage arounnd 15,000 units a year. That’s nowhere near the number at which economies of scale cut in to reduce the price.

So unless governments begin to offer subsidies to truck makers and buyers we’re unlikely to see a take-up of hybrid trucks and certainly not here in Australia.

If you want to read more then follow this link to an interesting Reuters article that puts the problem in perspective.

Just over 20 years ago Honda started thinking of producing a car that produced nothing but water vapour and now that car is about to be released to the public in the United States.

The FCX Clarity is powered by an electric motor that draws its power from a fuel cell that converst hydrogen and oxygen into electricty. Additional power is passed to a lithium-ion battery pack through regenerated energy when the vehicle is braking.

With a range of only 432 km and a need for specialised refueling stations it’s unlikely that we’ll see the Honda FCX Clarity here in Australia any time soon but perhaps one day these, and other, emission free vehicles will be on our roads.

Honda have produced a very informative website about the FCX Clarity and you can find it by following the link.