Apart from cleaner fuel, what other methods can be used to produce 'greener' cars?

Question

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Answer 1

Paint them green

Answer 2

Re-newable energy resources are a method to make cars greener, bio diesel and bio ethanol come largely from plants grown and harvested recently so the overall cycle is carbon neutral, car burns fuel -> puts out CO2, plants grow ->absorb the CO2. Unfortunately if all the world vehicles switched to bio-fuels the amount of land needed to grow the crops would exceed the total amount of current agricultural land being used today, so it would inevitably mean mass deforestation, hardly a green effect.
Lighter cars as others have said is the best way to save fuel, electric cars might be a possibility, they don't consume less energy but it is easier to control the amount of pollution emerging from a generating station than it is from 100s of thousands of cars.
Hydrogen is as others have said currently generated from oil mainly but it is possible to generate it using solar panels, or hydrogen releasing bacteria.
Recyclable materials are already in widespread use in cars, under some EU directive 95% of car materials must be made form material that can be re-cycled.
Using cars longer, the amount of energy used in a cars lifetime is rarely more than the amount of energy used in its production, about 15 years is the tipping point for most cars, so if you run a car for 30 years you have halved the carbon footprint that buying 3 cars and running each for 10 years would have done. Assuming they all used a similar amount of fuel,and the long term car didn't need too many new parts. If this was done car manufacturers would suffer and the price of cars would shoot up.

Answer 3

It's difficult to avoid talking about cleaner fuels (e.g. bio-fuel, hydrogen, wet-cell batteries, solar panels all mentioned earlier) as these play such an important part in the greener car. However one that deserves particular mention is hydrogen. It's not as green as people think. Certainly, you get near-zero emissions from the vehicle - at the point of use - but you still have to get the hydrogen from somewhere. It doesn't appear spontaneously - you need extract from water by electrolysis, for example, which is a highly energy-intensive process.

Apart from cleaner fuel, reducing the mass is extremely important, as others have highlighted. Even with regenerative braking, you typically don't recover much more than 20% of the inertia (that's because when you need real braking, the generator doesn't cut the mustard - you need traditional brakes to kick in). It's especially important to cut the mass down in city cars because there is so much acceleration and braking. Sadly, the current trend is for increasing the mass - there was an article in "Metro" recently showing that almost all 4x4's crossing Albert bridge exceeded the maximum load allowed of 2 tonnes.

As well as reducing the mass, vehicle management strategy can be designed to produce greener cars. For instance, the engine can be switched off while the vehicle is stationary. Vehicle "vision" can be improved to provide information about the vehicle's surroundings (e.g. proximity to other vehicles) so that engine management can be adjusted accordingly.

42V technology is an attempt to replace all the engine ancillaries (refrigerator for air-con, water pump, power-steering pump, oil pump, vacuum pump) with electric alternatives. This frees up the engine to provide 2 basic services - move the car and charge the batteries. It's a great idea, but interest in 42V technology is a bit stagnant at the moment, mainly due to difficulties in implementation. However, mechanical ancillaries are really inefficient so it would make sense to be able to replace these with more sensible, independent units.

Materials also have an important role to play in the greener car. "Reduce, re-use, recycle" is the common maxim. I think this will translate into: lower vehicle weight, regulated vehicle breakers, and regulated cost of disposal.

Within a broader view with "greener" meaning "greater social conscience", there's also pedestrian safety to consider. Increasing costs of litigation may lead to higher insurance premiums for vehicles that have low "bounciness" when it comes to hitting pedestrians.

Answer 4

Remove the batteries and replace them with the old starting handle system. Not only will you have greener cars, but fitter drivers.

In Switzerland you have to turn the engine off when you stop at the lights. This has had a great effect on their emissions footprint and saves fuel too.

Answer 5

Cars with less power who really needs 300 brake horsepower.
If as most engines are,at best 30% efficient at turning fuel into kinetic energy & 1 pint of fuel is used to create 1 horsepower for a hour then lower output engines are not wasting the fuel by accelerating you to the back of the next traffic jam sooner!

Answer 6

I drive my 2 litre a lot in 5Th gear and it doesn't take much fuel. But difficult when the road planner put traffic lights everywhere and speed ramps and speed cameras. You are constantly over revving to get past all the junk on the roads these days. People working for City and Metropolitan councils should be required to live in the area - commuting in from the suburbs wastes so much fuel - and the dosey pen pushers are half asleep driving in - and half asleep making decisions in Civic centres that affect us not them. Ban all vehicles from near schools too - except for disabled. Make them walk their kids to school and tax the "Chelsea Tractors" off the road. Run the Yahoo Brain bus on a rubber band wound up by 10,000 teenagers on a youth exercise scheme! lol

Answer 7

Petrol-Electric hybrids seem the best interim solution where otherwise wasted energy is harnessed eg from breaking, then used again through electric motors. It also generates extra power and faster cars!

Another system uses both a Turbo charger and a supercharger on a smaller sized engine block.

Answer 8

Get rid of big powerful company cars (used by reps), families who really do not need more than one car should be limited to one vehicle.
Reduce the price of green petrol drastically, diesel should be reduced also to aid the farmers and transport firms.
Public transport to clean up their act and reduce prices for travel.
Aircraft spew out all sorts of crap into the atmosphere, they could also clean up their act.

But having said all that, I doubt very much if it will ever happen.
And that dwarf in the white house (USA), wants to open his eyes and see that pollution is a problem to his country as well as the rest of the world - Kyoto will work, but he has recognise the pollution problem the airhead.

Answer 9

it would be great if you could convert a car to use recyclables for fuel and turn the emissions into oxygen and not use acid batteries but solar panels and anything used to make or kit out the car would come from recycled materials you might also use a sunflower oil in the engine as well there are lots of ways the manufarurers could help but why should they spend their profits on everyones gain it would cost billions

Answer 10

The clean burning cooking oil seems to be a hit all over the world at college campuses with students converting diesel engines to run on used oil that is donated from restaurants.

Answer 11

Create traffic flow in cities, that require less stop&go. Here in Phoenix, the traffic lights are a long way apart & I get great fuel economy from my Corvette with it's 5.7 liter V8 - right up until traffic volume slows me down & I have more stop & go.

Cruising at constant speed (about 75mph in 6th gear) I can get 31 mpg (US gallon). In heavy traffic my Corvette gets 13 miles to the US gallon.