Filed under: Etc.

"Hey you. Yeah, you. You don't have to drive your route today. Just give the keys to Joey. He's been through what you're going through: The Drive & Survive course."

That's what some drivers in the UK have been hearing as the folks behind the Safe And Efficient Driving (SAFED) for Vans program teach the Drive & Survive driver training to van operators so they learn to decrease fuel consumption, cause fewer accidents, and make deliveries quicker. Drive & Survive offers full-day training sessions for company drivers throughout England,

Through the end of March, the subsidized program offered the training for free for companies with fewer than 250 employees (they had to provide their own vans) and larger companies paid just £50 per head. Now the price has jumped up to £160 per head.

In the words of those offering the service: "Your drivers will be coached by experienced, empathetic trainers who are well used to dealing with those who drive for a living, and the techniques learned will be easily applicable to everyday driving scenarios without affecting normal work patterns. In fact, the pilot programme demonstrated that, by adopting the SAFED training techniques, fuel consumption can not only improve by up to 14% but journey times can be cut by 1.5% too."

How much does that 14 percent add up to? "If a hypothetical van in the normal course of its work was completing journeys totalling 200 miles per day at an average fuel consumption of 40 mpg, the cost of the course would be repaid in full in fuel savings alone in just nine weeks," says Mark Edwards, Drive & Survive's Training Manager on the company website.

[Source: Drive & Survive UK]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid

Writers for Newspress are at the Commercial Vehicle show in the UK and their overall impression of the CV market is "Battery electrics today - hybrids tomorrow." That might seem backward to people familiar with the passenger vehicle market what hybrids dominate over the pure-EV market, but that's how they see it.

Their logic is easy to follow: there are no hybrid CVs available on the UK market, but companies like Smith Electric Vehicles of Tyne and Wear, were displaying a "new generation of battery-electrics comprising repowered versions of established diesel-engined models, notably Ford Transit vans and chassis-cabs at 3.5 tonnes gvw and the Avia chassis-cab (dubbed the Newton by SEV) at 7.5 and 9 tonnes." In the UK, hybrid CVs are in the prototype stage and the EVs are already on the streets (see, for example, this post).

One big push for these clean trucks is the planned Low Emission Zone (LEZ) restrictions in London. Smith Electric Vehicles use Zebra sodium nickel chloride batteries instead of lead-acid type batteries. Newspress learned that these power packs are about 80 percent lighter than lead-acid units with the same energy storage and deliver more performance.

[Source: Newspress]

 

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Filed under: Diesel, EV/Plug-in, Hybrid

The second of nineteen plug-in hybrid school buses being supplied by Advanced Energy is going to the Nazareth Area School District in Pennsylvania. Nazareth is the first district in Pennsylvania to get one of these new buses which are built IC Corporation and Enova Systems. The bus will go into service in the fall for the next school year.

The buses use an International diesel V-8 combined with a hybrid powertrain provided by Enova. The hybrid system uses a 22.5kWh lithium-ion battery pack along with the transmission and electric motor in a parallel configuration. Because of the duty cycle of a school bus (a lot of starting and stopping to pickup and drop off kids) they estimate that the fuel economy will be improved by 70-100 percent.

[Source: GreenCarCongress]

 

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Filed under: Hybrid, Toyota

It's the 2007 Canadian Car of the Year. It might soon be built in Oz. And it could be yours. What are we talking about: the 2007 Toyota Camry hybrid.
Lamps Plus has a year-long contest (OK, OK, technically it started in February and ends at the end of December 2007) to get people interested in Lamps Plus. The grand prize is a 2007 Toyota Camry hybrid vehicle. You don't need to buy anything to enter, but the rules say the winner "must be a licensed driver and will be required to provide proof of insurance at time of delivery. Winner is responsible for title, license, registration, dealer preparation costs, auto insurance and other fees associated with prize. Winner must take delivery of prize from the automobile dealership designated by Sponsors." The winner to be announced next January. You can enter your name for the drawing here, and I hope you're patient.

[Source: Lamps Plus]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: Hybrid

The Society of Automotive Engineers has been sponsoring design competitions for engineering students for several decades with one of the most popular being the Formual SAE. In that event, teams of college students design, build, develop and race a single seat open-wheel race car, generally powered by some kind of motorcycle engine. In addition to the car itself, they also have to produce technical reports on the car, including cost and performance analysis all of which are judged. Given the realities of the modern world we live in, there is now an offshoot of FSAE called Formula Hybrid.

The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth got the Formula Hybrid program kicked off when they started working on a hybrid Formula SAE car. The FSAE rules subsequently changed to disallow hybrids but a new competition was started with the first annual event taking place on May 1-3, 2007 at New Hampshire raceway in Loudon NH. The hybrid rules are largely the same as FSAE except for the hybrid drivetrain and not having to build a new chassis every year. They can take existing FSAE chassis and rework them for the new competition. The engines are limited to 250cc displacements and drive-by wire systems are allowed.

This is exactly the kind of thing that's needed to give students some real experience with the kind of technology that's being worked on the industry today. There are nine teams entered for 2007 including a team from McGill University in Montreal. We'll bring you results next week after the competition.

[Source: Formula Hybrid]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Filed under: Biodiesel

BioMaxx Systems, a Canadian biotechnology consulting company, is crossing the Pacific to put the final touches on a design for a biodiesel demonstration plant in South Asia. BioMaxx hopes to plop the plant down in either Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand, and BioMaxx wants the site to be located close to feedstocks and have "geographic access to major markets such as China or Japan." Exactly which feedstock the plant will use was not announced. BioMaxx did say that the, "plant will be designed to process a variety of feedstocks such as Algae, Jatropha, Mustard Seed, Palm Oil, Rapeseed, Soy Oils, Tallow, Waste Vegetable Oils and Yellow greases. The demonstration facility will allow our technical team to demonstrate and develop proprietary production techniques and will demonstrate Biodiesel production rates utilizing the alternative feedstocks for optimal outputs and volumes." You can read the company's statement here.

Let's just remember a few recent posts on those three countries. Thailand can't grow all of the palm oil it need to make biodiesel. In Indonesia, a lot of clearcutting is taking place and Malaysian exports of palm oil to the U.S. increased by 65 percent last year as consumers turned away from trans-fats as Palm oil production and prices soar on back of biodiesel. Considering that the, "demonstration plant will assist BioMaxx in the development of a product line of small scale bio-diesel production plants to be marketed in Asia. The small scale plants will be customizable to the specific feedstocks as dictated by our client requirements," and I'm guessing those clients will, at least in the near term, want to use palm oil, this might open the door to more problems than it solves. To say the least, the politics and environmental impact of palm oil biodiesel production is complicated.

[Source: BioMaxx]

 

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD Step behind the curtain at Ford Motor. Experience the documentary first-hand.

Posted on 04.26.2007 16:00 by Simona Alina
Filed in: Mercedes | suv | hybrid cars | Mercedes M-Class

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China says it will continue to put economic development ahead of combating climate change despite acknowledging the serious impact of global warming. China's own experts are warning of dire consequences of climate change on the country's food production and people's health.

George W. Bush has said he favors a goal of 4 percent annual increases through 2017, but has declined so far to back requiring the increases, and automakers have called such hikes unrealistic.

Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey says humans must prepare for climate change, while working to soften its impact, reports oil industry publication.