By Ron Cogan
1. Start here: Don’t drive as much. Really, this isn’t as painful as it sounds. We’ve grown accustomed to our cars providing mobility on demand, which is a good thing when it isn’t hurting our wallets or contributing to growing oil dependency. It’s not so good when the reverse is true, which is the situation today. So plan ahead. Consolidating your day’s errands into sequential trips one after another is a great strategy that will save gas. It will also cut tailpipe emissions by eliminating unnecessary cold-starts when your car’s emissions control system is least effective.
2. Ease off on the pedal, Speed Racer. Okay, maybe you’re not really hot rodding your way down the street, but chances are pretty good you’re not thinking about taking it easy from one traffic light to the next. Light accelerator pressure and a conscious effort to avoid quick starts and stops do make a difference in fuel economy, sometimes a pretty big one. Give it a try. While you’re at it, smooth out your pedal pressure at highway speeds as well by using your cruise control whenever appropriate.
3. Feeling the need for speed? Let it go. It’s easy to creep past posted speed limits without thinking about it, especially on urban highways where traffic often tends to move well beyond 65 mph. Some freeways in Southern California regularly flow at 80 mph and sometimes more. The problem is that fuel efficiency diminishes rapidly above 60 mph. In fact, the EPA says that each 5 mph driven above that speed has the net effect of costing you about 20 cents more per gallon of gas.
4. If you’re filling up on mid-grade or premium fuel, check to see if you really need to do this. Some high-compression engines do require higher octane fuel to run properly, and in fact serious engine damage could result from using a lower grade fuel than is specified in your owner’s manual. But if you don’t need premium fuel you shouldn’t be filling up with it. Premium fuel costs about 20 to 40 cents more per gallon but doesn’t provide better performance in engines designed to run on regular … so you’re essentially pumping cash out your tailpipe. Not a pleasant thought, is it?
5. Check your tire pressure weekly and keep your tires aired up to the recommended psi. This is so simple you’d assume everyone does this regularly. Not so. And that’s too bad since tires with low pressure create greater rolling resistance that can cost you up to 3 percent in fuel efficiency. Tires heat up while you drive and checking them while hot will give an artificially high reading. Make a habit of checking tire pressure before driving when your tires are cold. You might also consider buying low rolling resistance tires the next time your car is ready for new treads.
HTTP://WWW.FUELECONOMY.GOV
By Tracie Close
What Are Emissions?
Driving a car creates emissions that place a strain on the environment. Considering the amount of cars on the road every day, these emissions can have a very real effect on air quality and health. Cars emit unburned hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide, among other pollutants. These pollutants can cause respiratory problems in areas where air quality is compromised.
Where Do Emissions Come From?
The combustion of fuel in an engine causes the nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and unburned hydrocarbons to be released through the tailpipe. The most pollutants are released during the cold-start phase when the car is first turned on and its catalytic converter is not yet hot enough to treat the emissions. Thus, combining trips can decrease these emissions because fewer cold starts will occur. Fuel evaporates in high temperatures, which can cause fuel system emissions that release gases into the air, especially during refueling. Maintaining your car's exhaust and cooling system can help reduce your car's evaporative emissions.
How Can You Reduce Emissions?
Opting for cleaner fuels when they're available is a great way to reduce emissions. Oxygenated gasoline, which uses additives like ethanol, creates more complete combustion. Alternative fuels that create fewer emissions are becoming more readily available as the environmental effects of driving become more prevalent. It's also a great idea to carpool during the workweek, which can reduce traffic levels as well as help decrease emissions. When taking short trips, try not to idle your car more than necessary, as idling unnecessarily burns fuel and creates emissions while delivery zero miles-per-gallon. So, the next time you stop at the convenience store, turn off the car when you go in.
How Can Reducing Emissions Help You?
Think about how much you spend on gas bills each week for your commute to work. Taking public transportation or carpooling reduces the cost to your wallet as well as wear and tear on your car. Perhaps your office will consider allowing you to telecommute once or twice a week; many more companies are offering this option to their employees who drive to work. Leave the car in the driveway and consider doing that report in your slippers. Do you suffer allergies? These emissions can cause some of the coughing and wheezing you're attributing to seasonal allergies. Being thoughtful towards the environment can put money back into your pocket and lower allergy symptoms as well.
What Steps Have Been Taken to Reduce Carbon Emissions?
Many federal programs have been in place since 1993 that created standards to help resolve the emissions problem. One example is the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV), a consortium made up of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler that's focused on increasing fuel economy and reducing vehicle emissions. The Clean Air Act has also evolved over the years to require lower vehicle emissions. The recent introduction of hybrid and clean-fuel cars to the car market rounds out some of the work that has been done to help with this issue.
By Tracie Close
When the Clean Air
Act was amended in 1990, several programs were identified to further reduce the effects of automobile and transportation emissions. The goals set out in the original Clean Air Act simply were not being attained, thus the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement Program was set into action to hone in on the weak areas in the existing legislation.
The Program
With its inception, CMAQ studied more strongly the actual causes of transportation pollution and it effect on the air we breathe and the water we drink. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, SAFETEA-LU, provided for over $8.6 billion dollars to fund State Departments of Transportation and transit agencies across the country. The SAFETEA-LU program is just one aspect of the CMAQ program which transitions constantly to focus on the best ways to effectively decrease air pollution from vehicles.
Funds Disbursement
The amount of funding that any one geographic area receives is based on the levels of both ozone and carbon monoxide levels as well as the population of the region. This funding is meant to reach the national regulatory goals as well as to continue the studies done on air pollution.
The Reports
There are several reports available to the public from CMAQ. The CMAQ: Advancing Mobility and Air Quality report lays out several examples of advances to vehicles that have benefited the CMAQ program. A report that focuses on the last 10 years' experience and successes by CMAQ is Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) Improvement Program: Assessing 10 Years of Experience. Brochures are also available to anyone wanting to learn about the multiple parts of CMAQ and its goals. Topics include alternative fuel projects, telecommuting programs, as well as transit and public transportation programs.
The Future
As the world turns toward new choices and options available for cleaner burning fuels and lowering single-vehicle use, the CMAQ Programs continue to adjust and mitigate changes that are necessary in local and federal regulations. Meeting the changing requirements of the global environment and assuring that the necessary funds are available to obtain goals is the main purpose and the future of the CMAQ Programs.
Tracie Close is a freelance writer for print and the web on eco-friendly topics. Her articles have been published in Saving American Manufacturing, Philadelphia Style Magazine, and High Tech, High Touch. She also has contributed numerous articles about green living for eHow.com. Subscribe to Green Car Journal Now!
By Bill Siuru
1. Two Basic Types of Hydrogen Vehicles
Today, most hydrogen transportation research and development is focused on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Here, hydrogen and oxygen – actually air – react in the fuel cell to produce water, heat and the electricity that’s supplied to one or more electric motors to drive the vehicle. Another way to use this fuel is in a hydrogen internal combustion engine, or H2ICE, vehicle where hydrogen is combusted in a modified gasoline or diesel engine.
2. Hydrogen is Not a Fuel
Hydrogen in itself not fuel, but rather an energy carrier. Thus, energy must be expended to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen can be made using non-renewable or renewable energy sources. Today, hydrogen is produced mainly using natural gas or by coal gasification. Hydrogen can also be produced from water (H20) by electrolysis, which separates the hydrogen from the oxygen. If the electricity for electrolysis is produced by renewable resources – solar, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric energy – there can be zero emissions including no carbon dioxide. Nuclear powerplants could also produce hydrogen and electricity. Plus, it’s possible to produce hydrogen directly from sunlight and water using a metallic catalyst. It is argued that even if the electricity for electrolysis is produced at a fossil fuel powerplant, vehicles running on electrolyzed hydrogen are more efficient and less polluting than their counterparts operating on individual gasoline or diesel engines. That’s because centralized powerplants can produce power more efficiently and their emissions can be easier to control.
3. Tanking Up with Hydrogen
Storing hydrogen on board a vehicle is challenging because hydrogen has very low density. Today, it is stored as a highly compressed gas or as a liquid at very low cryogenic temperatures. These storage containers can take up a considerable amount of space, especially if providing reasonable driving range is an important goal and storing greater amounts of fuel on board is needed. Also, considerable energy must be expended to compress or liquefy hydrogen gas. This adds significantly to the cost, consumption of fossil fuels, and possibly pollution and greenhouse gases if not done using clean, renewable resources. Research currently being done for storing hydrogen in metal hydride materials could result in at least a partial solution.
4. Hurdles to Overcome
Perhaps the greatest impediment to hydrogen vehicles is the lack of a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. Before hydrogen fueled vehicles can reach widespread use, hydrogen will have to be as readily available as gasoline, or at least as available as diesel fuel. Hydrogen stations are being built in various places around the world but they are still extremely limited in scope. Private and state initiatives like California's ‘California Hydrogen Highway’ are also funding or in other ways encouraging the building of a hydrogen fueling infrastructure in anticipation of the mass production of hydrogen vehicles. The actual timeline for this commercialization of hydrogen vehicles in unsure because hydrogen fuel cells are costly to produce, they’re still made in very small quantities, and they require costly precious metal catalysts such as platinum.
5. Is a Hydrogen Vehicle in Your Future?
Some hydrogen fuel cell and H2ICE vehicles are already on the road. For example, General Motors is placing over 100 Equinox fuel cell vehicles on American highways as part of its Project Driveway demonstration program. A small number of motorists in California are now driving Honda FCX Clarity hydrogen fuel cell sedans in a program that is expected to grow to several hundred cars. BMW has fielded more than 100 Hydrogen 7 sedans in public demonstrations with its hydrogen internal combustion engines. Ford has delivered H2ICE E-350 shuttle buses to numerous customers. Many other automakers have developed and fielded concept fuel cell vehicles, and this process will continue in ways that pave the way for production models in the future
By Todd Kaho
As odd as it sounds, running a car on air is a reality. Proof of concept and prototype compressed air vehicles – commonly referred to as “air cars” – have been running around for a number of years.
How could it be possible to run on air? Consider the physical work that compressed air already does to make our everyday lives easier. Mechanics rely on air-driven pneumatic tools every day to turn nuts and bolts with authority in garages around the world. Pneumatic tools are powerful, even at a relatively low pounds per-square-inch (psi) pressure setting. They can free rusted-on lug nuts and separate metal from metal through an air hammer or pneumatic chisel. Crank the pressure up and compressed air is a force to be reckoned with, providing enough power to even propel a wheel driven car.
Perhaps that was the inspiration that led former Renault F1 mechanic Guy Negre of Motor Development International (MDI) to pursue compressed air propulsion for the auto industry. And what could be more environmentally friendly than a car with atmospheric air as its only exhaust emission? There’s no combustion whatsoever. Power comes from compressed air sourced from special high-pressure compressors run by electricity from the grid.
MDI’s design uses a pair of air driven pistons, one large and one small, to turn a crankshaft that produces a rotational force. The technology can potentially be paired in two, four, or six cylinder engine configurations and the design is quite inventive. Since there is no combustion and the only engine heat comes from friction, the engine can be made primarily from lightweight aluminum.
For those who want the technical details, here’s the scoop: In MDI’s air engine, the small piston has a conventional connecting rod for turning the crankshaft, while its neighboring larger piston utilizes an innovative rocker arm configuration with the connecting rod. This design allows the large piston to pause at top-dead-center for 70 degrees of crankshaft rotation while metered air pressure builds in a prechamber as the small piston keeps the crank turning during its power stroke. The large piston then turns the crankshaft with greater power as the pair combine to produce power over 270 degrees of crankshaft rotation. Got that all?
Prototype air cars are minimalist transportation that typically exhibit a top speed of about 70 mph and a range of approximately 125 miles on flat roads before requiring a refill. Compressed air is stored at 300 bar (4351 psi) in carbon fiber tanks mounted longitudinally beneath the vehicle floor. Refilling can be accomplished in a matter of minutes at a special high-pressure pump or in about four hours via a home refueling appliance or even an on-board compressor.
In 2007, Tata Motors licensed the rights from MDI for $28 million to build and sell Tata-branded air cars in India. Tata has not confirmed if it will build one of the MDI prototype cars or, more likely, install the MDI technology in one of its existing cars like the light weight Nano (shown here). The Nano is Tata’s $2,500 “scooter replacement” people’s car that recently made headlines. While sought after in developing countries, this inexpensive car clearly won’t meet federal emissions and safety requirements in the U.S. and other regulated markets around the world. Still, the addition of air power to an already inexpensive and efficient model would be quite appealing in the Indian market and others where fundamental transportation is in demand, and air pollution could be a serious challenge as exponentially greater numbers of vehicles make their way to the highway.
In the United States, a company called Zero Pollution Motors (ZPM) has licensed the rights to produce the MDI design in a U.S. factory. Based in New Platz, New York, ZPM has an ambitious goal of rolling out a North American compressed air vehicle for $18,000 by 2010. The company most recently unveiled MDI’s newest car at the Automotive X-Prize exhibit at the New York Auto Show. ZPM and MDI will field two entries – the U.S. production six seat, four door prototype in the mainstream class, and the three seat, two door economy-utility model in the alternative class.
Air cars haven’t escaped the attention of mainstream U.S. automakers, too. For example, Ford has worked with an engineering team at UCLA to develop an air hybrid. In this application, the air hybrid builds air pressure using the engine as a pump while shut down during deceleration, and then utilizes the recaptured energy to launch the vehicle from a stop. Special electrohydraulic actuators in the valvetrain make the transition possible.
Air powered cars are not a new idea, and in fact the concept actually predates a viable internal combustion engine. In his book, “Paris in the 21st Century,” Jules Verne foresaw a transportation system utilizing compressed air. Now, modern visionaries are striving to make that dream come true with the air car.
Want to know more about innovative drive technologies? Be sure to check out these articles on GreenCar.com:
Electric cars
are something that show up in the news all the time. There are several reasons for the continuing interest in these vehicles:
* Electric cars create less pollution than gasoline-powered cars, so they are an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline-powered vehicles (especially in cities).
* Any news story about hybrid cars usually talks about electric cars as well.
* Vehicles powered by fuel cells are electric cars, and fuel cells are getting
a lot of attention right now in the news.
An electric car is a car powered by an electric motor rather than a gasoline engine.
From the outside, you would probably have no idea that a car is electric. In most cases, electric cars are created by converting a gasoline-powered car, and in that case it is impossible to tell. When you drive an electric car, often the only thing that clues you in to its true nature is the fact that it is nearly silent.
Under the hood, there are a lot of differences between gasoline and electric cars:
* The gasoline engine is replaced by an electric motor.
* The electric motor gets its power from a controller.
* The controller gets its power from an array of rechargeable batteries.
A gasoline engine, with its fuel lines, exhaust pipes, coolant hoses and intake manifold, tends to look like a plumbing project. An electric car is definitely a wiring project.
The heart of an electric car is the combination of:
* The electric motor
* The motor's controller
* The batteries
A simple DC controller connected to the batteries and the DC motor. If the driver floors the accelerator pedal, the controller delivers the full 96 volts from the batteries to the motor. If the driver take his/her foot off the accelerator, the controller delivers zero volts to the motor. For any setting in between, the controller "chops" the 96 volts thousands of times per second to create an average voltage somewhere between 0 and 96 volts.
The controller takes power from the batteries and delivers it to the motor. The accelerator pedal hooks to a pair of potentiometers (variable resistors), and these potentiometers provide the signal that tells the controller how much power it is supposed to deliver. The controller can deliver zero power (when the car is stopped), full power (when the driver floors the accelerator pedal), or any power level in between.
The controller normally dominates the scene when you open the hood, as you can see here:
The 300-volt, 50-kilowatt controller for this electric car is the box marked "U.S. Electricar."
I
n this car, the controller takes in 300 volts DC from the battery pack. It converts it into a maximum of 240 volts AC, three-phase, to send to the motor. It does this using very large transistors that rapidly turn the batteries' voltage on and off to create a sine wave.
When you push on the gas pedal, a cable from the pedal connects to these two potentiometers:
The potentiometers hook to the gas pedal and send a signal to the controller.
The signal from the potentiometers tells the controller how much power to deliver to the electric car's motor. There are two potentiometers for safety's sake. The controller reads both potentiometers and makes sure that their signals are equal. If they are not, then the controller does not operate. This arrangement guards against a situation where a potentiometer fails in the full-on position.
Heavy cables (on the left) connect the battery pack to the controller. In the middle is a very large on/off switch. The bundle of small wires on the right carries signals from thermometers located between the batteries, as well as power for fans that keep the batteries cool and ventilated.
Electric car wires
The heavy wires entering and leaving the controller
The controller's job in a DC electric car is easy to understand. Let's assume that the battery pack contains 12 12-volt batteries, wired in series to create 144 volts. The controller takes in 144 volts DC, and delivers it to the motor in a controlled way.
The very simplest DC controller would be a big on/off switch wired to the accelerator pedal. When you push the pedal, it would turn the switch on, and when you take your foot off the pedal, it would turn it off. As the driver, you would have to push and release the accelerator to pulse the motor on and off to maintain a given speed.
Obviously, that sort of on/off approach would work but it would be a pain to drive, so the controller does the pulsing for you. The controller reads the setting of the accelerator pedal from the potentiometers and regulates the power accordingly. Let's say that you have the accelerator pushed halfway down. The controller reads that setting from the potentiometer and rapidly switches the power to the motor on and off so that it is on half the time and off half the time. If you have the accelerator pedal 25 percent of the way down, the controller pulses the power so it is on 25 percent of the time and off 75 percent of the time.
Most controllers pulse the power more than 15,000 times per second, in order to keep the pulsation outside the range of human hearing. The pulsed current causes the motor housing to vibrate at that frequency, so by pulsing at more than 15,000 cycles per second, the controller and motor are silent to human ears.
electric car motor
An AC controller hooks to an AC motor. Using six sets of power transistors, the controller takes in 300 volts DC and produces 240 volts AC, 3-phase. See How the Power Grid Works for a discussion of 3-phase power. The controller additionally provides a charging system for the batteries, and a DC-to-DC converter to recharge the 12-volt accessory battery.
In an AC controller, the job is a little more complicated, but it is the same idea. The controller creates three pseudo-sine waves. It does this by taking the DC voltage from the batteries and pulsing it on and off. In an AC controller, there is the additional need to reverse the polarity of the voltage 60 times a second. Therefore, you actually need six sets of transistors in an AC controller, while you need only one set in a DC controller. In the AC controller, for each phase you need one set of transistors to pulse the voltage and another set to reverse the polarity. You replicate that three times for the three phases -- six total sets of transistors.
Most DC controllers used in electric cars come from the electric forklift industry. The Hughes AC controller seen in the photo above is the same sort of AC controller used in the GM/Saturn EV-1 electric vehicle. It can deliver a maximum of 50,000 watts to the motor.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/electric-car2.htm
Have you pulled your car up to the gas pump lately and been shocked by the high price of gasoline? As the pump clicked past $20, $30, $40 or even $50, maybe you thought about trading in your car for something that gets better mileage. Or maybe you're worried that your car is contributing to the greenhouse effect.
The auto industry has the technology to address these concerns. It's the hybrid car. There are a lot of hybrid models on the market these days, and most automobile manufacturers have announced plans to manufacture their own versions.
How does a hybrid automobile work? What goes on under the hood to give you 20 or 30 more miles per gallon than the standard automobile? And does it pollute less just because it gets better gas mileage? In this article, we'll help you understand how this technology works, and we'll even give you some tips on how to drive a hybrid car for maximum efficiency.
Many people have probably owned a hybrid vehicle at some point. For example, a mo-ped (a motorized pedal bike) is a type of hybrid because it combines the power of a gasoline engine with the pedal power of its rider. In fact, hybrid vehicles are all around us. Most of the locomotives we see pulling trains are diesel-electric hybrids. Cities like Seattle have diesel-electric buses -- these can draw electric power from overhead wires or run on diesel when they are away from the wires. Giant mining trucks are often diesel-electric hybrids. Submarines are also hybrid vehicles -- some are nuclear-electric and some are diesel-electric. Any vehicle that combines two or more sources of power that can directly or indirectly provide propulsion power is a hybrid. Most hybrid cars on the road right now are gasoline-electric hybrids, although French car maker PSA Peugeot Citroen has two diesel-electric hybrid cars in the works. Since gasoline hybrids are the kind you'll find at your local car dealership, we'll focus on those in this article.
Gasoline-electric Hybrid Structure
Gasoline-electric hybrid cars contain the following parts:
* Gasoline engine - The hybrid car has a gasoline engine much like the one you will find on most cars. However, the engine on a hybrid is smaller and uses advanced technologies to reduce emissions and increase efficiency.
* Fuel tank - The fuel tank in a hybrid is the energy storage device for the gasoline engine. Gasoline has a much higher energy density than batteries do. For example, it takes about 1,000 pounds of batteries to store as much energy as 1 gallon (7 pounds) of gasoline.
* Electric motor - The electric motor on a hybrid car is very sophisticated. Advanced electronics allow it to act as a motor as well as a generator. For example, when it needs to, it can draw energy from the batteries to accelerate the car. But acting as a generator, it can slow the car down and return energy to the batteries.
* Generator - The generator is similar to an electric motor, but it acts only to produce electrical power. It is used mostly on series hybrids (see below).
* Batteries - The batteries in a hybrid car are the energy storage device for the electric motor. Unlike the gasoline in the fuel tank, which can only power the gasoline engine, the electric motor on a hybrid car can put energy into the batteries as well as draw energy from them.
* Transmission - The transmission on a hybrid car performs the same basic function as the transmission on a conventional car. Some hybrids, like the Honda Insight, have conventional transmissions. Others, like the Toyota Prius, have radically different ones, which we'll talk about later.
gasoline-electric hybrid
Image courtesy DaimlerChrysler
The Mercedes-Benz M-Class HyPer -- a hybrid concept vehicle
You can combine the two power sources found in a hybrid car in different ways. One way, known as a parallel hybrid, has a fuel tank that supplies gasoline to the engine and a set of batteries that supplies power to the electric motor. Both the engine and the electric motor can turn the transmission at the same time, and the transmission then turns the wheels.
The animation below shows a typical parallel hybrid. You'll notice that the fuel tank and gas engine connect to the transmission. The batteries and electric motor also connect to the transmission independently. As a result, in a parallel hybrid, both the electric motor and the gas engine can provide propulsion power.
Parallel hybrid car
Move your mouse over the parts for a 3-D view.
By contrast, in a series hybrid (below), the gasoline engine turns a generator, and the generator can either charge the batteries or power an electric motor that drives the transmission. Thus, the gasoline engine never directly powers the vehicle.
Take a look at the diagram of the series hybrid, starting with the fuel tank, and you'll see that all of the components form a line that eventually connects with the transmission.
source : http://www.greencar.com/
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