If you check any European car ad, you will see in tiny letters at the bottom the car's consumption and CO2 production figures. This information is a mandatory requirement in Spain. But, according to Ecologistas en Acción and the Unión de Consumidores de España (UCE), an environmental organization and a consumer union from Spain respectively, these figures are not accurate and could be misleading.
Spain taxes the purchase of cars depending on CO2 production figures, therefore it's a consumer's right to know previously what these figures are. UCE found out that 11 automakers didn't have accurate information or their ads were plainly misleading, like saying a car is under 119 g/km when it's just one model and the ad focus on the sport version that produces more than 200 g/km. Also, these figures tend to be hidden with small print. They also accuse automakers of trivializing these figures because all cars pollute even when polluting less.
Don't think it's just one automaker: Hyundai, Nissan, Seat, Volkswagen, Peugeot, Honda, Citroën, Opel, Dacia and Mercedes-Benz were accused of these practices.
The European Patent Office has named Audi the European Inventor of the Year. The reason? Audi's Space Frame technology (ASF). First introduced in the A8 in 1993, ASF is a high-strength aluminum frame structure into which the panels are integrated so that they also perform a load-bearing function. This design enables significant weight savings, improved handling and lower fuel consumption. So, the lighter a car is, the less CO2 it produces, if all other things are the same. The Audi A8, the Audi TT Coupé, the TT Roadster, the Audi R8 and the Lamborghini Gallardo are all equipped with Audi Space Frame technology.
So you run a small business in Europe and you don't want to spend a lot on transportation; plus, you want to save as much CO2 from going to the atmosphere as you can. Until now, your small panel van options were the Citroën Nemo/Peugeot Beeper or the Fiat Fiorino. Well, add one more to the list: the Renault Kangoo Express Compact. This van replaces the Renault Superfive-based Express, which is derived from the old Renault 5/Le Car; some of these are still running around.
The Renault Kangoo Express Compact will be offered with three engines: One gasoline: 1.6i 8V 90 HP (188 g/km of CO2) and two diesels: 1.5 dCi 70 HP (140 g/km of CO2) and 1.5 dCi 85 HP (135 g/km of CO2). We're likely to see an ECO² label version that gets under 119 g/km of CO2 in the near future in order to benefit from the various tax reduction schemes in Europe. The van comes with all kinds of amenities, such as radio CD, A/C, ABS, EBD, electric steering, navigation system, Bluetooth, front and side airbags..
We have spoken quite a lot about Low Emission Zones (LEZ) in Europe. The most well-known is the one in Central London, but we have also reported about Milan's and some German cities as well. If you want to see all of these areas at a glance, you can check this multilingual website, which includes an interactive map that includes each zone with descriptions. The website also has a very good definition of what LEZ are: "areas where the most polluting vehicles are restricted from entering an area. This means that vehicles are banned, or in some cases charged, if they enter the LEZ when their emissions are over a set level." According to the website, 28 European cities and a highway already run a LEZ scheme, while 33 will introduce it this year and five more are coming some time later.
Does diesel have a future? Autoexpress editor Dan Strong believes the answer is a clear no. He doesn't mince words in his new column: "Thanks to high fuel costs, tough-to-meet emissions targets and growing competition for scarce fossil fuel resources, the engine once championed for its efficiency and cost-effectiveness is finished." While the UK is getting closer to its European neighbors in the number of diesel sales, Strong believes this is not going to last.
If we're turning away from diesel, where does Strong think we have to look? Plug-in hybrids, he answers, but not those mated to diesel engines (gas-electrics are his choice). According to his information, a hybrid diesel will produce more pollutants due to the lower exhaust temperature and he wonders if it makes sense economically. Diesel fuel is actually more expensive than gasoline in the UK: £1.25 per liter compared to £1.10, which he translates into £350 more per year when driving 20,000 miles per year.
Sparkless engines aren't totally done for, Strong says, and expressed hope for HCCI (DiesOtto) engines. This technology has a very narrow powerband, which compromises reliability - but Strong says that Ford might be working on solving that issue.
The EU will likely offer a "discount" for automakers regarding CO2 emission levels. Günther Verheugen (pictured above), vice-president of the European Commission and Industry Commissioner, is giving a hand to European automakers, mostly the Germans, who say they can't reduce their average fleet emissions to under 120 g/km of CO2 by 2012. He actually said that "even the Commission knows that new cars won't be able to meet that average that year." Therefore he suggest that the European Parliament could delay this requirement until 2015. There had been rumors that the limit could have been 130 g/km of CO2 by 2012. We'll see if the 120 by 2015 becomes the next whispered goal.
Brazil is going to try really hard to convince the world that Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is just great. The Latin American giant is about to start what they're calling a "diplomatic offensive" that will culminate in a World Biofuels Summit from November 17th to 21th in São Paulo.
According to André Caranha Correa, Chancelor's Director of Energy, there isn't enough information out there on Brazilian ethanol. First of all, Correa said, it should be excluded from the world rise of feedstocks. He also said that Brazil started working with ethanol in 1975 after the 1973 oil crisis, so it's a well-known and proven technology / solution. He compared sugarcane with USA's corn-based ethanol, saying the U.S. fuel could affect food prices. He insisted that ethanol is more environmental friendly than gasoline, even denying that the Amazon forest was being destroyed to produce sugarcane (maybe not, but don't forget this). As for the poor work conditions we've heard about, Correa said that these were completely against Brazilian legislation and that the Goverment was performing routine inspections to put an end to the dreadful situations.
Why is Brazil doing this? Remember that Brazil is fighting to export its ethanol into the EU. The "diplomatic offensive" aims to respond to all kind of attacks and defend the sustainability of this biofuel.
Madrid, Spain, is currently a very polluted city where 1.8 million vehicles are responsible for 75 percent of the pollutants in the air. Madrid's City Hall has decided that it will switch all its vehicles over to "clean" fuels, that is, they will be all running on electricity, natural gas, biodiesel or ethanol. The city also announced that it will join the BEST (BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport) European project to promote the use of ethanol in cars. Madrid has also worked out agreements with groups like taxi organizations that get up to a 75 percent discount on the road tax, depending on fuel.
A few days ago there were rumors floating around about a new agreement between Bajaj Auto and Renault. Sure enough, the two marques have announced a partnership to build Tata Nano rival. They announced that the new vehicle that is under development, named ULC (which probably comes from Ultra Low Cost), will be put on sale in India by 2011 for about $2,500. They expect to sell 200,000 cars per year. A new 400,000 unit factory will be built in Chakan (Maharashtra state). India is the initial target market, but if the US credit markets don't get sorted out the U.S. could be looking for something like this soon too.
Bajaj is India's largest motorcycle manufacturer and Renault has already quite an experience with low-cost vehicles, with the largely successful Dacia Logan. This reopens the debate once more: Having more and more cars on the roads is not good for the planet, but who can withdraw people in developing countries right to drive cars when we've driven them before?
[Source: Nissan, Autoblog en español (Sam Abuelsamid contributed to this post)]
Citroën has something called Sensodrive. It's a manual gearshift change that uses no clutch pedal. This system reduces gearchange times and shaves fuel consumption a bit, especially in city driving. What it is interesting is that it's only been installed in the C2 and C3 models so far. It would seem logical that this be installed in a van, a vehicle which usually gets more kilometers than a small hatchback. Finally, Senosodrive is making the jump. The new Nemo has gotten the option, which costs an extra €500. Coupled to the Nemo's gearbox, the 1.4-liter HDI engine which develops 70 HP and gets 160 Nm of torque (120 lb-ft) while being able to carry 600 kg (1300 pounds). iIt does all of this whil producing just 119 g/km of CO2 and burning 4.5 l/100 km of diesel (52 mpg U. S.) in the European mixed cycle. Don't forget the PSA biodiesel bonus: the company's diesels are guaranteed when running up to B30 blends.
We all know that dropping our old cars in landfills instead of reusing the valuable resources that make up the mass is not good. The EU has, indeed, a directive that forces 85 percent of cars to be recyclable at the end of their lifespan. In case you're wondering just what might be the result of all this recycling, here's something that caught our interest. UncommonGoods has created a series of wine and beer glasses, plus a fishbowl, that are made from used windshields. These don't come as cheap (and some are out of stock) but they're nice and can be delivered almost everywhere. Just remember that if you are driving, be careful what you drink from them before getting behind the wheel.
Although the Fiat 500 is made in Poland, Fiat is an Italian brand. What's something else that we associate with Italy? Pasta! Naturally, it was high time to put these two together. With headrests that look like ravioli and a gear stick that finishes in a giant "agniolotto," the Fiat 500 Giovanni Rana can't be more Italian (or weird). Don't miss that the car painted to look like freshly baked ciabatta and the pedals look like linguine.
The car pays a tribute to one of Italy's best-known pasta manufacturers, Rana. The car was introduced by Mr. Rana himself during a food fair called "Cibus" in Parma last week. Without a doubt, this's one of the funniest conversions we've ever seen in a car. We won't see it being on showrooms any soon, but we do wonder what would happen if we drove it into a boiling pit of water.
Olmix, a French company that specializes in what they call "green chemistry," has announced a prototype vehicle powered with a new type of biofuel. This fuel is a type of biogas obtained from green algae plus a mix of animal and vegetable waste. Animal waste contains a lot of highly pollutant nitrates and green algae proliferation and is actually a problem at the region's beaches.
In order to produce this fuel, Olmix had to develop a new type of "green refinery," which will be installed in the town of Ploërmel, French Bretagne, and will be completed by the end of this year. As a bonus, the new fuel, which uses no heavy chemicals for its production, creates fertilizer as a byproduct.
What if we found a system to transform one of our big "enemies" into a fuel again, and then, when produced, re-transformed again? This is the aim of a project made at University of Nottingham's Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage (CICCS), in the UK, directed by Mercedes Maroto-Valer. They have successfully completed a cycle of transforming CO2 into natural gas (CH4). This could lead to making most carbon capturing processes obsolete while also powering cars we already have. According to Ms. Maroto-Valer, the CICCS group tacked the problem by studying what plants do - capturing CO2, water and solar light and transforming it into carbohydrates - and then replicated the process to create methane instead of carbs. However, it's still unknown what the energy balance the system is - we can't defeat the laws of Thermodynamics, after all.
Nova Biosource announced that its Illinois-based refinery has reached the million gallons milestone after 25 days of production. The plant is expected to reach 60 million gallons of ASTM standard biodiesel per year using three processing trains, although the milestone was reached with only one. Other Nova refineries in Wisconsin and Mississippi have a single train that produces 20 million gallons each. The company's global production is estimated between 180 and 220 million gallons of biodiesel per year.
Nova claims to use locally generated, low-cost feedstocks, including rendered animal fats and oils and recycled vegetable and animal-based greases which are not suitable for human consumption.
If you check any European car ad, you will see in tiny letters at the bottom the car's consumption and CO2 production figures. This information is a mandatory requirement in Spain. But, according to Ecologistas en Acción and the Unión de Consumidores de España (UCE), an environmental organization and a consumer union from Spain respectively, these figures are not accurate and could be misleading. 
The European Patent Office has named Audi the European Inventor of the Year. The reason? Audi's Space Frame technology (ASF). First introduced in the A8 in 1993, ASF is a high-strength aluminum frame structure into which the panels are integrated so that they also perform a load-bearing function. This design enables significant weight savings, improved handling and lower fuel consumption. So, the lighter a car is, the less CO2 it produces, if all other things are the same. The Audi A8, the Audi TT Coupé, the TT Roadster, the Audi R8 and the Lamborghini Gallardo are all equipped with Audi Space Frame technology. 
Does diesel have a future? Autoexpress editor Dan Strong believes the answer is a clear no. He doesn't mince words in his new column: "
What if we found a system to transform one of our big "enemies" into a fuel again, and then, when produced, re-transformed again? This is the aim of a project made at University of Nottingham's Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage (
Nova Biosource announced that its Illinois-based refinery has reached the million gallons milestone after 25 days of production. The plant is expected to reach 60 million gallons of ASTM standard biodiesel per year using three processing trains, although the milestone was reached with only one. Other Nova refineries in Wisconsin and Mississippi have a single train that produces 20 million gallons each. The company's global production is estimated between 180 and 220 million gallons of biodiesel per year.
