Go Go Green Cars

I was listening to the TV while in the kitchen munching on toast and quaffing coffee when my ears tuned in to a segment on Good Morning America dealing with green cars.

Sure they have to fill air time with the wild and wacky to get viewer interest but personally this was just disappointing.

Focusing on the concept cars that have the weird shapes, silly sounding names and run on “stuff” that ain’t gas may make for 30 second TV viewing but it’s time to get real.

The GMA team featured the Bio-Trike which runs on grease together with a Tesla as the “Serious” green car; not exactly a great choice given the recent legal losses over some of the technology and a sales director crashing one at a 100 mph with a potential customer in the passenger seat.  To satisfy the demand for the weird looking, there was also an NmG which has got to be one of the ugliest cars ever, if indeed it can be called a car with three wheels and a 30 mile journey range – this looks like an ugly duckling from a golf cart convention but still costs $25,000 so what on earth would the point be.

More – what kind of jackass message did all of this give to America?

Green cars look stupid, cost a fortune and are messy and impractical?

Honestly GMA, for less than $22,000 the Volkswagen Jetta TDi delivers 50 mpg, is a conventional five door, five passenger sedan which just wins the prestigious Green Car Journal award beating out stiff competition from the Kansas Ford Focus Fusion 2010, BMW 355d and Saturn’s Vue-2 and the best you can come up with is some semi-gay innuendo about green cars for Wall Street schmucks!

Developing the green car market and reducing the environmental impact of our activities is serious and raising awareness about the significant savings in terms of money and environmental impact deserves better treatment than this.

In the short term there appears no clear winner in the fuel system for green cars of the future.

You can take your pick at the moment from ultra clean burning combustion engines, electric motors, hybrids, natural gas or hydrogen fueling.

None have the corner on the market or the consumer imagination.

Honda are putting a lot into hydrogen fuel cells for clean power generation; hydrogen burns with zero emissions except for water (with no carbon emissions whatsoever) and the hydrogen they do use can be obtained from a variety of domestic sources which also means a reduced dependence upon oil.

The development of the hydrogen fuel cell has some major obstacles which need to be overcome, not least how to deliver hydrogen refueling to the mass market.  The widespread commercial adoption of any regular fuel alternative is going to be dogged by the absence of the ability to stop and fill her up!

Honda are working on a home based hydrogen refueling system which generates hydrogen from natural gas which is burned within the home as part of the heating and cooking activities of the home. This does not address what you are going to do when you are on an extended road trip!

Honda’s approach is to start putting some of the technology out there and into the hands of consumers so they can at least start getting familiar with it.  The Civic GX NGV runs on compressed natural gas, still producing a cleaner energy source than regular gasoline and which is widely and readily available.

Still this is not a hydrogen alternative and nor is the 35 mpg Kansas Honda Fit or Civic Hybrid.

The biggest stumbling block is establishing a widespread refueling network or a means in which sufficient fuel can be carried with the vehicle to cover the trip and return to base before refueling is required.