Eye-candy: Porsche’s Hybrid Supercar
From The Local:
Porsche unveiled its creation at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. It claims the car has a top speed of 320 km/h but uses just three litres of fuel for every 100 kilometres – equivalent to 94 miles per imperial gallon.
“We are a sports car manufacturer and that means it’s about driving fast – but at the same time about cutting pollution and conserving natural resources,” Porsche chief Michael Macht said according to the website of news magazine Der Spiegel.
Critically, the Spyder emits an average of just 70 grammes of carbon dioxide, the firm claims. According to Britain’s Department for Transport, the third-generation Toyota Prius – the best-known hybrid car – emits 89 g/km.
500 HP V-8 that get’s 94 miles per gallon?
Fuelishness! Feed: Hummer now “Green” for Japan; Diesel Engine Biofuel Advances; Dolphin Wins Eco-Driving Challenge; Fuel Efficiency VS. The Tax Man in Washington State
- In Japan, the Hummer Is Now Officially Green — Starting this week, Japanese buyers of the hulking power machines from General Motors — which come with a 5.3-liter, 300 horsepower engine and roar to 60 miles per hour in eight seconds — receive a 250,000 yen ($2,780) subsidy under Japan’s new, looser fuel-efficiency standards for imported cars.
. - Researchers develop “smart” diesel engine that runs on biofuel blend — Researchers from Cummings and Purdue University claim to have found a way to improve fuel efficiency in diesel engines that run on biodiesel fuel while cutting emission levels. The process involves an advanced “closed-loop control” approach for preventing diesel engines from emitting greater amounts of smog-causing nitrogen oxides when running on biodiesel fuels.
. - Miami Dolphins quarterback Chad Henne wins Audi fuel-efficiency driving challenge — The Audi Efficiency Challenge was designed to showcase the mileage and performance possibilities that Audi TDI clean diesel technology provides in real-world driving conditions.
. - Fuel-efficient cars affecting Washington gas tax — Automobiles are more fuel-efficient, people are driving less and, increasingly, they are driving automobiles that aren’t powered by petroleum at all…”All of those things add up to the fact that we aren’t going to rely on the gas tax as being the mainstay of the future if we want to maintain, preserve and improve our transportation system,” said Paula Hammond, the state’s transportation secretary.
BREAKING: Tesla Motors Files S-1 Registration Statement for proposed IPO
Tesla Motors has filed the S-1 Registration Statement with the SEC for a proposed public offering of it’s common stock – the first such IPO from an American auto manufacturer since Ford went public in 1956.
While the filing is an exciting sign of growth at Tesla, there’s a bit of bad news buried in the paperwork for Roadster fans… apparently the current Roadster we’ve all come to love will not be built after 2011… possibly to be replaced with a new Roadster after Lotus re-tools their plant in England.
The Model S coupe is expected sometime in 2012.
From AutoBlogGreen:
For the first time in more than fifty years, a U.S. automaker is holding a public offering. Henry Ford made shares of Ford Motor Company public back in 1956. Tesla, the Elon Musk-owned Silicon Valley electric car company, filed to do so today. There’s no word as to when the shares will be available for public consumption, nor any word as to how much each share will cost…
The press release from Tesla Motors starts…
PALO ALTO, CA. – Tesla Motors, Inc. today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. Tesla Motors designs, manufactures and sells high-performance fully electric vehicles and advanced electric vehicle powertrain components. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined…
But Wired Autopia Blog finds some discouraging news in the IPO filings, Tesla Motors say they’ll stop building their popular Roadster sometime in 2011. Here’s why:
Wired’s Autopia was digging through the papers filed by Tesla to the Securities and Exchange Commission for its IPO and came across with this nugget:
“We do not plan to sell our current generation Tesla Roadster after 2011 due to planned tooling changes at a supplier for the Tesla Roadster.”
As everyone’s aware, the current iteration of the Tesla Roadster is built in Hethel, England by Lotus using Elise/Exige underpinnings. Judging by the quote above, that means the Elise/Exige is due to be replaced by a new model (good news for enthusiasts), but that leaves Tesla up a creek without the proverbial paddle.
The other telling line is this:
“As a result, we anticipate that we may generate limited, if any, revenue from selling electric vehicles after 2011 until the launch of the planned model S…”
Exciting days ahead for the EV enthusiasts for sure.
Oprah Show: Distracted Driving – America’s New Deadly Obsession
Oprah Winfrey is using her considerable influence to educate motorists to the growing dangers of distracted driving, a topic near to our hearts here at FuelClinic.
Millions of people text, talk or e-mail on their cell phones while driving—a recent survey finds that 71 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 49 admit they text or talk on the phone while they drive.
If you think you can call, text and drive at the same time, you cannot. That message you can’t wait to send could kill. Distracted driving is an epidemic that is sweeping through our country, claiming lives and destroying families.
On Monday, she aired an entire episode dedicated to her new cause. While you can’t find the full episode online, here is a short clip available at CNN.
We applaud Oprah along with the many professional driving educators, technology creators, and others working every day to make positive changes in this important effort.
FuelClinic in the Orlando Sentinel today
Today there is a nice article about FuelClinic by Steven Cole Smith in the print edition of the Orlando Sentinel (Section G2), our big hometown paper.
…In a nutshell, FuelClinic.com is “a driver-improvement system that helps create safer, smarter, more efficient drivers,” according to the company Web site. “In consumer applications this system helps families save money on fuel, reduce [carbon] emissions, find deficiencies in inexperienced or young drivers, and helps motorists become generally safer and more professional drivers.”
Bragg also is working on a professional application targeted at businesses and fleet managers that, he said, helps them train employees, reduce fuel expenses and reinforce safety initiatives.
Bragg said one of his goals is to take the idea of fuel savings more mainstream, away from the traditional dedicated, hybrid-driving environmentalist who makes a second career out of saving fuel. Bragg is not telling people that they have to buy a Toyota Prius — he still has that four-wheel-drive truck, in fact — but he is saying that by modifying your driving habits, your routes and other easily manageable changes, you can save a lot of fuel, and a lot of money… ( read the rest )
Judging from new user sign-ups, the article is a huge hit. I’d like to welcome all of the new members, and ask that you let me know what you enjoy about the site, and what you’d like to see changed or improved.
How to ensure people’s transportation and at the same time be sustainable?
by Lincoln Pavia, The MelhorAr Project
The better that the economy of a country is, the greater the demand will be for transportation and the larger the impact will be on the public transportation service and the emission of CO2, with obvious repercussions on the traffic of towns and cities.
The MelhorAr (Improve Air) Project of Sustainable Mobility arose from the need to develop a culture concerned with managing the demand for mobility in a sustainable manner in order to reduce the use of individual transportation, responsible for 70% of the occupation of the earth and for the problems arising from this option such as pollution and investments in modal infrastructure, as well as to discuss alternative, more sustainable means for cities.
Evaluating the current models of mobility of the large global urban centers, the MelhorAr Project opted to develop projects focusing on the corporate market, responsible for a large part of the transportation in cities, both of workers and of the distribution of consumer goods. This work model is unique throughout the world, as most consultancies perform with governments.
Nowadays the projects of sustainable mobility are still for the public sector, especially in Europe, where the main focus is on modal integration (interconnection between modes of transport) as a means of encouraging people to walk or cycle in order to reduce the pressure on public transportation. In developing countries where a large part of the population does not earn enough to use public transportation, the option for these cases is to get about on foot. However, to the extent that the economy becomes stronger in developing countries, these people end up opting for individual means of transport, as a large part of the public transportation does not cater efficiently for this new public of the layers D and E. Moreover, the most serious problem is the nonexistence of modal connections, so that people travel most of their route using a single mode. The challenge now in our country is to increase the options of collective means of travel without burdening towns and cities with works of infrastructure and investments in transportation which increase the social, economic and environmental impacts. In developed countries (G8), people usually choose to displacement by car, increasing pollution and affecting the quality of life of the population. Making life unbearable in the city.
The most urgent challenge is to execute an inventory count of the emissions of public and private collective transportation. It is true that while most emissions come from individual means of transport, the automotive industry is already investing millions of dollars in building more economical, hybrid and electrical models and adapting their engines to cleaner fuels, although the traffic will continue to increase. In the collective transportation sector, we do not yet have an inventory count of emissions of the journeys made. The Public Sector will have to do its homework executing an inventory count of its fleet of buses, trains subway trains, etc. The metropolitan train and subway companies will be increasing their capacity of attending to the public by increasing their networks, which will generate a greater emission of CO2 as the Brazilian and others countries generation of power depends upon thermoelectric stations. The pertinent question is how much power will these increases require? Countries has the capacity to build hydroelectric and thermoelectric stations, but will they be sufficient to cover the demand of new consumers, electric cars, collective electrical transportation?
How will the private sector of collective transportation be able to complement this demand with a quick, cheap, more efficient and sustainable public transportation?
Read more
Congratulations to iCarpool for winning the ITS Congestion Challenge
The much anticipated announcement was made earlier today at the 16th World Congress on ITS , and online at the ITSA website.
STOCKHOLM – 23 Sept. 2009: The Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations (STCI), and partners announced the results of the ITS Congestion Challenge, a global competition to find the best ideas for reducing traffic congestion.
The three organizations announced the selection of iCarpool.com at the 16th World Congress on ITS in Stockholm. iCarpool.com, headquartered in Issaquah, WA, won the competition among more than 116 entries from 20 countries. The organization will receive a cash investment of $50,000 USD, which will be used for further development of its solution.
For more info on the ITS Congestion Challenge and the other finalists please see the full Press Release - PDF
We here at FuelClinic would like to say “Well done!” and congratulations to iCarpool on their 1st place finish.
Read the entire press release (pdf).
Interview with Michael Bragg, creator of FuelClinic.com
Michael Block of the Examiner came out to visit the #55 FuelClinic Camaro and team at the SCCA South Atlantic Road Racing Championships last weekend. He wanted to learn more about FuelClinic, what we are trying to accomplish, what plans we have for the company, and ask why we think eco-driving and racing is a good mix.
…Bragg defies the conventional stereotype of an eco-driver. He doesn’t drive a hybrid, nor does he drive insufferably slow. In fact, not only does he sponsor a 540-hp GT1 race car, get this: he’s a genuine car guy…
…”I’m trying to bring out the message to a greater audience, and there’s no better way right now than racing,” he says. He aims to help people save money on fuel, but at the same time wants to “show people that you can still be enthused by and love fast cars.”
Naturally, promoting economical and fuel-efficient driving practices while sponsoring a racing team raises some eyebrows, and Bragg is well aware of it. He argues, “I don’t need to win over any more of the environmentalists.” “They already do this; they’ve been reached. I want them to use the system, but I’m not trying to talk to them anymore. I’m trying to bring this out to everybody else.”
FuelClinic sponsors the MJK Racing Team as a marketing device – to get the “message” of eco-driving out beyond the environmentalist audience who are already “on-board” and need little convincing.
To make a real difference in the world, I feel we need to stretch ourselves beyond our “comfort zone” where people already agree with us. It’s not easy, but it’s where the opportunity for massive effect is.
Mexican cartels smuggle stolen oil into U.S.
Mexican drug cartels are skimming oil from the government owned pipelines an selling it to several U.S. refineries.
In a surprising public acknowledgment, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said last week that drug cartels have extended their operations into the theft of oil, Mexico’s leading source of foreign income which finances about 40 percent of the national budget.
At least one U.S. oil executive has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy that involved what prosecutors said was about $2 million in stolen Mexican oil, U.S. Justice Department officials confirmed to The Associated Press.
Obama Administration’s New Fuel Economy Standards Sued as Too Weak
The Center for Biological Diversity, an organization of “biodiversity activists” who are keen to use the courts to help “protect the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive” – have appealed to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to declare that the Obama administration’s new few standards for 2011 are violating federal law.
The Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards for 2011 vehicles, the first industry wide increase in miles-per-gallon requirements since the mid-1980s, were challenged in court Thursday by an environmental group, which said the rules are too weak and still don’t consider the impact of emissions on global warming.
The standards, announced last Friday by the Department of Transportation, would boost average fuel economy requirements to 27.3 mpg for all vehicles, up by 2 mpg from 2010 models. Passenger cars would have to reach 30.2 mpg and light trucks 24.1 mpg.
Some environmental groups have said the new standards are a small step in the right direction, but the Center for Biological Diversity said Thursday they’re actually weaker than the requirements that the Bush administration proposed last year for 2011 vehicles…
Our fuel economy standards have been nearly flat since the early 1980’s – while modern engines are more efficient than older models (fuel injection vs. carburetors is a simple example), cars and trucks have become bigger and more powerful, and actual fuel mileage – miles per gallon – has not increased.
…The group asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to declare that the administration violated a federal law requiring that fuel economy standards be set at the maximum feasible level, in light of current technology, economic impact, and the nation’s need to conserve energy. The same court ruled in a similar lawsuit in 2007 that the Bush administration’s fuel standards for light trucks and SUVs for the 2008 through 2011 model years were invalid…
Given the existing “climate of chaos” gripping the government, it’s unlikely that this appeal will make many ripples. The problem is not enough time to do the various impact studies and set the standards based on those findings – while still giving the struggling manufacturers time to retool and implement the needed technologies.
…The administration “cooked the books to conclude the maximum fuel efficiency level the United States can achieve in 2011 is the lowest in the world,” Siegel said.
Critics of Obama’s “Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry” pointed out early that the members of the task force generally seem a little out of touch with the importance of improved fuel economy – another example of this administration’s disappointing “do as I say, not as I do” approach to the subject of energy efficiency.
Obama orders push to cleaner, more efficient cars
Some encouraging news earlier today…
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama opened an ambitious, double-barreled assault on global warming and U.S. energy woes Monday, moving quickly toward rules requiring cleaner-running cars that guzzle less gas — a must, he said, for “our security, our economy and our planet.”
He also vowed to succeed where a long line of predecessors had failed in slowing U.S. dependence on foreign oil…
…Obama directed federal transportation officials to get going on new fuel efficiency rules, which will affect cars produced and sold for the 2011 model year. That step was needed to enforce a 2007 energy law, which calls for cars and trucks to be more efficient every year, to at least 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
While I have worked very hard over the last 8 months to help users improve fuel efficiency, and strongly support higher efficiency standards (it’s a disgrace that fuel efficiency for modern vehicles is basically unchanged from those of the early 1980’s), I am concerned about the potential confusion of having each state able to set their own standards for vehicle emissions, and so are the automakers…
The auto industry responded warily. Reducing planet-warming emissions is a great idea, car makers and dealers said, but they expressed deep concern about costly regulations and conflicting state and federal rules at a time when people already are not buying cars. U.S. auto sales plunged 18 percent in 2008.
And industry analysts said the changes could cost consumers thousands of dollars — for smaller, “greener” cars.
Obama on Monday directed the Environmental Protection Agency to review whether California and more than a dozen states should be allowed to impose tougher auto emission standards on car makers to fight greenhouse gas emissions. The Bush administration had blocked the efforts by the states, which account for about half of the nation’s auto sales.
We have a national auto-industry, not state-specific cottage industries. Our auto makers need to be able to efficiently build automobiles that can be sold anywhere in the country. America simply does not have “time or money” to mitigate a jumbled quagmire of new emissions regulations for the automakers. We need to act more quickly.
Instead of creating a confusing new collection of tighter tail-pipe emission standards, maintaining the current established emissions standards while increasing fuel efficiency standards will have a greater and more immediate effect – creating and securing jobs, saving consumers after-tax money (which is an economic-stimulus method that works), cutting fuel consumption (and foreign oil dependence), and cutting emissions more aggressively – without cumbersome tailpipe testing.
This approach will also reduce the engineering costs by allowing automakers to focus all their talents on improving fuel efficiency, so they can create automobiles that are competitive with the higher-mileage imports, instead of trying to improve efficiency while also managing to meet a variety of emissions-only regulations.
At the same time, Obama should hold American automakers to their promise of building-in the Flex-Fuel components needed to “future-proof” these new vehicles, to allow consumers to have a choice to take advantage of the growing alternative fuels market. These systems add very little to the cost of building a new car (about $100/ea. is the last estimate I’ve heard), are well-proven (they’ve been around for 10 years or so), and empower drivers to reduce their own emissions even further by choosing to use alcohol-blended fuels.
I also suggest shifting the impetus for new efficiency standards from global warming for the time being, and concentrate on economic and security related benefits of higher fuel efficiency standards. Regardless of your position on the issue of man-made global warming, the consuming public (who put their hard-earned money on the line) is simply not very worried about global warming, according to the recent Pew survey (among others).
Why try to force-feed the customers a solution to a problem they aren’t concerned about? I think there is much more potential for progress by explaining the economic and national security advantages of higher-fuel-efficiency vehicles – with the added benefit of reduced emissions.
As far as I’m concerned, the best news from today is apparently Obama’s not going to let the temporary downturn in oil prices sway his resolve…
Obama also meant to set a tone with his promises: Science will trump ideology and special interests, attention will stay high even when gas prices fall.
We all know these prices are bound to rebound. Prices are already making upticks at retail gasoline stations (+$0.20 this last month), even as excess oil sits idly in storage tanks and tanker ships around the world.
What do you think about Obama’s announcement today?
What do you think of my own proposals?
Comments are greatly appreciated and all view points (thoughtfully delivered) are welcome.
Crude Oil Prices Continue To Chill
Today as a mass of “global-warming-denying” arctic weather shuts in much of the country with punishing and historic low temperatures; crude oil prices slip again – this time to under $34 – leaving oil companies to float their stock at sea in the bellies of supertankers.
From the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, giant supertankers brimming with oil are resting at anchor or slowly tracing racetrack patterns through the sea, heading nowhere.
The ships are marking time, serving as floating oil-storage tanks. The companies and countries leasing them for that purpose have made a simple calculation: the price of oil has fallen so far that it is due for a rise.
Some producing countries are trying to force that rise by using the tankers to withhold oil from the market, while traders are trying to profit by buying cheap oil now to store and sell at a higher price later. Oil storage has become so popular that onshore tank capacity is becoming scarce.
The crude oil markets are none-to-worried about the “unrest” in the middle east either, it seems. Normally a war (or threat of a war) in that area results in a spike in the price of crude, as futures traders bet on a resulting shortage resulting from direct action or political punishment. But not this time. There was a blip last week, just a hint of warming… but it didn’t last long.
OPEC lowered its energy demand forecast for 2009, with investors already shrugging off production cuts of 4.2 million barrels a day by member countries. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said in its January report that it expects world demand for crude will fall 180,000 barrels per day in 2009, compared with the previous year.
Is Gaia herself giving us a glimpse into our financial future? Do the record low temperatures foretell the continued glacerialization of world economies, the freezing of credit, and the icing-over of hope?
Even Hugo Chavez can’t believe his eyes, or the bottom line. He’s busy eating a little crow at the moment, hoping to court western oil companies to help bail him out of the mess he’s created in his oil-rich but cash-starved
President Hugo Chávez, buffeted by falling oil prices that threaten to damage his efforts to establish a Socialist-inspired state, is quietly courting Western oil companies once again.
Until recently, Chávez had pushed foreign oil companies here into a corner by nationalizing their oil fields, raiding their offices with tax authorities and imposing a series of royalties increases.
But faced with the plunge in prices and a decline in domestic production, senior officials here have begun soliciting bids from some of the largest Western oil companies in recent weeks — including Chevron, Royal Dutch/Shell and Total of France — promising them access to some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves, according to energy executives and industry consultants here.
This economic slowdown, recession, adjustment (whatever you’d like to call it) seems bigger than currently imagined.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil inventories have been rising for months, suggesting that the recession severely cut into energy demand. The Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that crude inventories grew by 1.2 million barrels for the week ended Friday after jumping 6.7 million barrels the previous week…
Refineries are cutting back production because profit margins are next to nil.
Flynn said any existing storage facilities could be flooded with crude as the February contract comes to a close Tuesday, leaving little excess capacity.
“We’re running out of places to put it,” he said. “There’s more oil out there now than we’ve had in a long time.”
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