Hybrid Living

This is something you’re not likely to find anywhere but EcoGeek: an award given to the automaker with the most compact, ecofriendly press kit. While at the media days, I was given more press materials than I could count, from shirts to hats to USB drives loaded with pictures and press releases. However, there were definitely some companies paying attention to reducing materials more than others.

The Worst: Nissan, though it is known as the most fuel efficient car company in Japan and announced its plans to bring EVs to both Oregon and San Francisco, gave out plastic wrapped cases loaded with paper materials and DVDs, along with Nissan Cube t-shirts. Not only was the packaging on the DVDs a little much, but the hundreds of shirts made out of who knows what kind of cotton certainly isn’t doing the environment much of a favor.

The Standard Fare: Most automakers did the job in a relatively frugal way by packaging a DVD in a recyclable paper case with some basic print information, but most of the important stuff on the DVD. Others, like VW gave out business cards with links to find all the images online, but still had large print booklets. Toyota went as far as to packaged their CNG Hybrid information on a 1gb thumb drive in addition to the normal print booklet. There were lots of different presentations, but most of them were focused on presentation and not the environmental impact of hundreds of kits that are sure to be thrown out mere days after the important information is published.

The Best: While a few companies paid attention to reducing waste, I would have to give the overall award to Honda/Acura. Honda’s press information all came on one CD in a plastic clamshell. There were no goodies, junky bags, or paper materials at all. Sure, the CD will be thrown out, but it’s definitely the most compact kit I got. Like the Honda kit, Acura packaged a singled DVD in a custom paper casing with no additional materials, ensuring that there would be no extra waste.

So, congratulations to Honda. If every automaker had taken their tack, or at least moved all their materials to a special, invitation-only website, I probably wouldn’t have had to check a bag on the flight home just to hold all the press materials!

It was really difficult to pick the 5 most exciting green cars from this years auto show, primarily because I didn’t know whether to focus on the concepts or those cars already on showroom floors or in the pipeline for the near future. That said, I think you will find my choice a mix of these two categories, because as important as it is to have green options right now, there’s no denying that the future is looking even brighter.

Here are my top from, from least to most exciting:

5. Nissan Cube

It may seem strange to put the Nissan Cube on a list like this because it will only get a shade above 30 mpg for it’s EPA rating, but I think the Cube represents a new kind of car for the U.S. Sure, Scion has had the xB for several years and has already reached quite a few buyers, but it’s still new to see such an untraditional car coming from a major brand in the U.S. I have seen these cars in Japan, and along with the Kei-class of cars, they represent a dramatically different way to look at personal transportation.

The Cube seats 5 and has a relatively small foot print and high gas mileage, but it’s boxy shape eschews traditional styling for maximum utility. You may not like how it looks, but there’s no denying that the car can hold a lot and it takes a lot of the energy out of the old "I bought an SUV so I could haul my sports equipment" argument. The Cube has incredible utility and I hope the concept of efficient use of space catches hold in the U.S. market.

4. Honda FC Sport

The FC Sport is just a design concept, but that doesn’t mean we should be any less excited about it. Honda is well-known for creating the first certified hydrogen fuel cell car, and is continuing that tradition of innovation by trying to show consumers that not only is hydrogen eco-cool, but it can be just plain cool.

This Wednesday at the LA Auto Show Honda debuted its new Eco-Assist fuel economy enhancement technology with the new Honda Insight Concept. This technology is hot on the heels of other manufacturers that have been releasing detailed fuel economy displays on their hybrid cars, and should be very competitive with these other products.

The Honda Insight, which also made its North American debut at the same time, will come equipped with the new Eco-Assist display in the spring of 2009 when the Insight first goes on sale in the United States.

Eco-Assist is more than just a display; it’s a full fuel economy enhancement package. Besides the scoring function, which rates how you drive and encourages more economic driving, Eco-Assist offers and ECON mode, which tweaks the drivetrain to be even more fuel efficient. Perhaps the most visible and interesting feature is the speedometer background, which glows a certain color depending on how you’re driving. This gives you instant feedback without the trouble of trying to read an extra set of numbers off the dash.

Honda hopes this feature will help propel the Insight, with it’s low $18,500 starting price to projected sales of 100,000 units in North America annually. Personally, I’m looking forward to a test drive where I can see how the functions work in the real world.

This week at the LA Auto Show one of the most interesting displays can be found in the basement, off the beaten path created by manufacturers like Honda, Toyota, and Ferrari. In their booth, automotive supplier Faurecia showed off their most eco-friendly options, from seats all the way down to exhaust systems.

Faurecia does not build cars. However, they are an integral part of the industry and have a lot to offer in the quest for greener cars. Faurecia’s philosophy is that by designing lighter, more compact components they not only reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions, but allow for more efficient overall vehicle design.

To get a taste of what Faurecia does, I will take you through the design of the seat you see pictured. In designing this seat, their greenest, Faurecia has replaced the traditional metal frame and foam-based seat with a molded, supportive back that uses innovative cushioning to reduce the thickness of the seat up to 50%. This design reduces the use of environmentally unfriendly materials like foam, but also frees up over 16 liters of space in the car.

This means that smaller cars can have more leg room or that bigger cars and be made slightly smaller without reducing comfort, but while dramatically reducing weight and fuel usage. A pair of Faurecia’s front seats reduce vehicle weight 5 kg and really up the green-quotient of any car equipped with them. However, you won’t see these seats in many cars yet. Even though Faurecia supplies nearly every manufacturer, these seats are more expensive than traditional seats and it will take time for the industry to shift to dramatically more efficient interior components.

This morning at the LA Auto Show, Green Car Journal named the Volkswagen Jetta TDI 2009 Green Car of the Year. This is the first time that a diesel has been named Green Car of the Year, and to take the top honors it had to best stiff competition from microcars and hybrids alike. However, you have to keep in mind that the award has only been given since 2005, so it hasn’t actually taken that long for a diesel to take top honors.

About the award, Green Car Journal editor and publisher Ron Cogan said, "The 2009 Volkswage Jetta TDI epitomizes what the Green Car of the Year honor is all about. It raises the bar significantly in environmental performance with its EPA estimated 41 mpg highway fuel economy, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and extremely low tailpipe emissions. This is all the more impressive when you consider the Jetta TDI is a clean diesel, achieving the kind of fuel efficiency offered by gasoline-electric hybrids but in a more affordable way."

The car is based on Jetta’s 2.0-liter, turbocharged direct injection engine, which is the first from the company to meet 50 states diesel emissions requirements. However, this technology comes at a steep price with the base vehicle costing consumers $21,990 and boasting a reportedly 8 month long waiting list.

The TDI beat out the BMW 335d, Ford Fusion Hybrid, Saturn Vue 2 Mode Hybrid, smart fortwo to take the final prize. Other notable vehicles like the new Honda Insight Concept were not included in the competition.

On the first day of the LA Auto Show BMW Group’s MINI division made the world Premiere of their much anticipated MINI-E electric car. While the car is not yet ready to be put into production, MINI will be releasing 500 units on lease to drivers in California and New York in order to study the car’s performance in the real world. If you want to sign up for the possibility of getting one of these leases, visit the MINI-E website and sign up.

MINI emphasized that this car was not a mere design study, but was ready to go into production after some important feedback from real life usage and some tweaking of the function of the car. The company also stressed the need for a better electric charging infrastructure in the United States, while at the same time noting that in the case of electric vehicles it was possible for technology to precede infrastructure. This means that although a network of charging stations across the country would facilitate the use of electric cars, the lack of that network doesn’t make EVs useless.

To debut the car, the Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles was brought out on stage and taken for a test drive. Unlike many of the other presentations, the MINI unveiling seemed a bit more friendly during the awkward silence when the very long charging cord was being wound up. Then came the test drive, where the Deputy Mayor and her driver drove off stage for about 15 seconds, at which point the presenter asked the audience, "Did you hear anything?"

The obvious answer was no. Even though the MINI-E packs a 150 kW motor, can do 0-60 in 8.5 seconds, and tops out at 95 mph, it didn’t make a sound as it rolled off of the stage. To underline the efficiency of their new offering, MINI pointed out that the car could drive 5.5 miles on just 1kW (about 10 cents) of energy. When was the last time you could drive 50 miles for under a buck?

This morning Carlos Ghosn, the current CEO and President of Renault and Nissan opened the LA auto show on a forward-looking note. Nowhere are the pressures of the current global recession and looming gas prices more salient than this year’s auto show, and Ghosn didn’t ignore that. He began by speaking of the troubled times that most automakers are going through, focusing on the recent downturn and the need for companies to focus on the short term even to survive.

On that note he predicted a consolidation in the automotive market, hinting that at least one of the major manufacturers would be bought out or would merge with another. You may remember that Nissan/Renault already made an offer for Chrysler earlier in the year when the GM merger rumors were still running high. However, without saying anything in specific, he gave the impression that many manufacturers were already on the brink.

In speaking of the long term, Ghosn seemed optimistic that the markets in India and China were about to explode, driving world total vehicle ownership up to 2.5 billion units by 2050 (compared to 600 million currently). Though he did not comment about the future of the automotive industry in such long terms, he remained confident that cars would be the transportation of choice across the world for at least the next 10 to 15 years.

However, responding to economic and environmental pressures, the type of car would have to change. On this point he revealed that Nissan would be rolling out its first electric cars in the United States in a partnership with the state of Oregon in 2010. Because this was the keynote address and not a company press event, details were few and far between, but it’s encouraging to hear that Nissan is working with local governments (outside of the typical LA-centric product testing) to make electric vehicles and the associate infrastructure a reality in North America.

It’s not often that a blogger has the opportunity to meet with GM engineers and test drive a one-of-a-kind prototype, but that’s exactly the opportunity I was given the other day. GM first presented a run-down of the interesting tech (which we’ve written up here) and then handed over the keys so I could see what I thought first hand. The HCCI-equipped Saturn Aura I drove was hot off the proving grounds and the only one of its kind in the United States (there are to HCCI Opel’s in Europe, like the Opel pictured), and evolved out of an idea hatched way back in the 70s.

My first impression (and the first negative) came before even stepping into the car, and that was when I learned I would be driving an automatic. Evidently, Americans don’t drive stick anymore, but I was still jealous when I learned the two HCCI Opels in Europe were stick shift. I’ll try to put that aside since I’m supposed to be considering the engine, not the whole car.

The Saturn Aura is a fairly large, family-size sedan, and is not uncomfortable by any means. I was given the impression by Paul Najt that this was the type of car currently targeted for HCCI, so I would wager it was a fairly representative of what we as consumers might actually be seeing. GM did hint at the possibility of a V6 HCCI in such a vehicle, but that is just speculation right now, as to the best of my knowledge, there is no such engine in existence.

Those disclaimers made, my first driving impression was “wow, this thing really is like a diesel.” It sounded and drove the part when in HCCI mode, and then in switching back to standard ignition (SI) mode showed its side as a typical gasoline-powered car. The transitions were definitely a little rough around the edges, but I was assured (and believe) that these things will be cleared up long before the car is sent to consumers.

Given the size of the car, the 2.2-liter 4-cylinder had a little less oomph than you would expect from your typical Detroit-built family sedan, but it definitely wasn’t unbearable and I didn’t find myself digging into the gas to keep up with traffic. Monitoring the HCCI display screen while cruising you could see (and feel) the engine performing its unique compression ignition. Such a screen won’t be available in production cars, but even in the unusually aggressive driving cycle that I put the car through in the downtown, live-traffic course, I was in fuel-saving HCCI mode over 50% of the time.

That was, in fact, the most impressive part of the test drive. While I understand that an HCCI mode monitor is unlikely to come with a production model (due to marketing reasons), even without being particularly conscious of my driving, this new technology was in use over half the time. Even though HCCI mode cannot carry the car to highway speeds (it only reaches up to 55 mph right now), the fact that is in operation the majority of the time bodes well for GM’s quoted 15% increase in fuel economy.

It was a pleasure to drive, and it will be interesting to see how (and if and when) it is introduced to the public. If the car does maintain a slight transition between HCCI and SI modes or the sound difference is profound (which really gives the impression of driving a diesel while in HCCI mode), driving an equipped engine will definitely take a shift in the mind of the consumer. However, I won’t fault GM for that now, as it seems that consumers are finally ready to make that switch.

Let’s just hope that those fears don’t keep GM from putting the kibosh on this technology. It gets a definite thumbs up from me.

Has GM struck gold, 30 years later?

HCCI, which stands for Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition, is currently under development at General Motors. Under the watch of Paul Najt, who worked on the technology during his days as a PhD researcher, HCCI is coming to the forefront of GM’s work on eco-friendly gasoline technology. The technology was put on the shelf years ago, but has made a comeback with several important improvements and a promise from GM to make it viable for use in passenger vehicles in the near future.

I recently had a chance to try out this new technology in a working Saturn Aura. You can check out my post-ride review of the technology. But right now we’re going to dive in and talk about exactly what HICCI is, and how it works.

What is HCCI?
At its most basic level, HCCI combines the best properties of diesel and gasoline engines into one. Gasoline engines use spark ignition, whereas diesels are compression ignition, meaning that instead of using spark plugs to ignite the air-fuel mixture within the cylinder they use the pressure of the piston to compress the mixture, creating heat and ignition. Because compression ignition is inherently more efficient, diesel engines are predisposed to good fuel economy, but at the cost of high NOx emissions. Gasoline engines, on the other hand, are less fuel efficient, but are also much cleaner in terms of NOx emissions.

As a biker, I see hills as a bit of an enemy. On the way up, it’s certainly less than fun. On the way down, well, it can be exciting, but not necessarily safe. But it would certainly be worse if I weighed several dozen tons…

For truckers, hills and mountains are a colossal waste of energy. It requires quite a bit of effort to haul a full load up a hill, only to take more effort trying to slow the truck down on the other side. With all that kinetic energy going into the truck’s brakes, you’d be right to think there is a neat way to capitalize on the situation.

The Remote Hybrid Helper is a new system that would attach itself to the back of the trailer to help it up hills, and capture braking energy on the way back down. With it’s own batteries and electric motors, the pusher would assist the trailer up the hill and then use massive battery packs to capture energy generated by "falling" down the hill. 

The neatest thing about this concept, however, is that the remote hybrid helper (RHH) is not just a box that you’re expected to tow around behind your truck forever. The RHH will actually drive itself around, tracking down trucks that need assistance, coupling with them, giving a helpful push, then regen-braking down the hill before find another victim. One could imagine these things flying up and down mountain passes, linking up with trucks on either side all day long. Certainly a weird idea to conceptualize, but something that would work incredibly well to cut down on emissions and improve efficiency in trucking.

Via AutoBlogGreen