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May 19, 2009 | 39
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The Obama administration unveiled a plan to boost fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks to an average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016—four years ahead of current schedule and up from an average of just 25 miles per gallon today.
The new standards (pdf) will also impose—for the first time ever—a limit on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles at 250 grams per mile in 2016 under the new proposed rule. (That’s about 5.5 ounces per kilometer, for those of you who like your units mixed differently.)
There are very few vehicles capable of meeting the new standards today, which would mean more hybrids and possibly even electric or other alternative vehicles would have to hit the road within seven years for automakers to comply.
Mar 10, 2009 | 2
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—By 2030, the people of the world will be driving as many as two billion cars—up from 700 million today—according to John Viera, director of sustainable business strategies for Ford Motor Company. Whether those cars are plug-in hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles or just supremely efficient internal combustion engines, the economic, environmental and social impacts will be huge—from lithium mining in Bolivia to road rage in China.
Nov 3, 2008 | 3
Yes, it's true. You can run a car on nothing but air, compressed air that is. Rather than burning gasoline to create the gases that drive a piston up and down (and provide motive to your motor), some automakers plan to use air compressed to around 4,500 pounds-per-square-inch instead. After all, pressurized air is just as good at driving a piston up or down—and potentially cheaper.
Such cars are not as fast as regular ones or anywhere near as powerful, but a tank of compressed air is enough to travel at least 60 miles, which is more than most Americans drive in a day. And as long as you don't need to go faster than 35 miles-per-hour, you won't need to burn any other fuel—meaning all that the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is the same air that went into the engine.
Motor Development International (MDI) in Luxembourg has started working with Indian industrial conglomerate Tata to turn that company's forthcoming Nano car--the world's cheapest at roughly $2,000--into a compressed air vehicle. MDI has also paired with Zero Pollution Motors in New Paltz, N.Y., to make a similar vehicle available to U.S. consumers by 2010 , assuming all goes according to plan, at a price tag of around $18,000.
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