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.
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.
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.
It had to happen: since most European brands have created "eco" signature labels to mark their lowest-CO2 emitting models, it's time for Lancia, which belongs to the Fiat group, to do the same. What's it called? The "Ecollection."
Lancia has modified its Musa model, the subcompact minivan showed above, to produce less than 119 g/km of CO2 (118 for the automatic version) by means of using the well-known1.3 Multijet diesel engine found elsewhere in other Fiat-group models, reducing the suspension and installing some aerodynamic tweaks. Prices start at €18,990 in Spain, where the Muso Ecollection is elligible for another low number: 0 percent tax.
Système U, a chain of gas stations in France, has decided to stop delivering E85 at the 22 pumps where it was on sale. According to the company's press release, "This biofuel has not found its public. The French adhesion is just not there." Système U comprises more than 900 shops in France, 600 of which have gas pumps.
The 22 pumps where E85 was distributed barely sold an average of 1000 liters a day (about 250 gallons), mainly because of the low number of flex-fuel vehicles currently running in France. Previously Système U's had plans to grow to 100 pumps in two years' time. Currently, only 211 pumps in France are selling E85, 43 at Leclerc and 42 at Carrefour supermarkets.
France is actually in "pause mode" regarding first-generation biofuels, as French Minister of Ecology Jean-Louis Borloo announced last week. However, he also said that current investments in this technology should be "honored."
Fiat Spain has decided to make an effort to reduce the amount of water used to wash cars by using a special wax. The wax will be used at dealers and repair shops when cars are cleaned before delivery to customers. What will it do? Fiat expects the wax to reduce water use by up to 145 million liters of water (about 40 million gallons) per year.
The wax treatment is part of Fiat's "Ecoproject," which aims to offer customers greener dealers and post-sale services. Other "Ecoproject" measures include discounts for customers with the greatest "ecologic" commitment (whatever that means) and free "green" check-ups.
It has been a while but there is finally news of the Pininfarina / Bolloré electric car project. First the good news. According to Channel 4 it will be sold in America as well as Europe and Japan. The bad news? There is no bad news, only more juicy tidbits like; the concept will debut at the Paris Motor Show in October and once we get our heads around that, the production model reveal is scheduled for the Geneva Auto Show in the Spring. Like that? There's more! The supermini with Pininfarina badging (not pictured above) should seat four and cost in the neighborhood of €15,000. That's $23,295.75 in American greenbacks at today's exchange rate.
Although it will be powered by the Bolloré battery from France it will be innately Italian with the Pininfarina-designed coachwork sculpting being performed at its San Giorgio factory. That facility is now used to build the Spider and Brera for Alfa Romeo but that production work will be moved to its Bairo facility. There is a promise from Pininfarina that it will get 155 miles to a charge and although it will take five hours to completely fill it up from empty, a five-minute quickie will get you 15 miles down the road. We look forward to hearing more and are dusting off our Italian. Bene.
We already mentioned PSA's plans to downsize engines in an effort to improve fuel efficiency. The French company will showcase the progress its making during PREDIT (National Program for Terrestrial Transport Innovation), which is taking place this week in Paris. PSA will show a prototype co-developed with Valeo and IFP (the teams behind the low-carbon Smart). The prototype is a Citroën C2 with a two-cylinder engine, 8 valves and a mild-hybrid system with Stop&Start and regenerative braking. This allows the sub-subcompact to use 3.8 l/100 km (62 mpg U. S.) and emit just 90 g/km of CO2. The "regular" C2 featuring a 1.1 liter I4 engine uses 5.8 l/100 km (40.5 mpg U.S.) and produces 138 g/km of CO2. The C2 in the gallery below is the sporty version.
It's easy to argue that road taxes are quite unfair because they're flat: You pay fees to drive around; it doesn't matter how much you actually use the car.
The Netherlands has decided to improve the country's road tax by taxing according to the vehicle type, usage, hour and roads the vehicle is using. The system uses GPS, a car transmitter and a standard cell phone GSM network to send this information to a central computer that processes the information. Once these figures are calculated, the driver is charged. Congestion and the environment are both taken into consideration in the rate scheme. Using a highway that enters a city in peak hours while driving an SUV will be taxed more than driving a small car in a rural area where private vehicles are more of a necessity.
Dutch officials hope the system will reduce CO2 emissions and congestion, because the Dutch government claims that there is no more room to build more roads. Critics say this system is an attack on privacy: a computer will know where and when you've driven, although the company that implements the system guarantees that this information won't be stored once translated into money. The system starts in 2011 for freight transport and will be expanded to include cars in 2012. Full deployment of the system is scheduled to be completed in 2016. A similar system has been under study in the UK.
A new speed control radar has been blown-up in Saint-Gervais in the French department of Val-d'Oise. This is the twelfth such radar that has been destroyed in the past year. Ten out these 12 bombings were claimed by a group named FNAR (Fraccion Nationaliste Armé Révolutionaire), although nobody has claimed this bombing yet.
As in Rotterdam and Barcelona, French authorities have installed the radars to reduce car accidents (France has one of Europe's highest accident rates) but also to lower pollution levels by forcing speed reduction. However, voices are being raised against the radars because some claim they are just one more source of income for authorities rather than a security or environmental measure. Still, it is one thing to believe that and quite another to blow up the little boxes.
[Source: Le Figaro (h/t to Dominique for the tip)]
Can the vehicle above become a new icon of emission-free transportation in the City of Love? Perhaps, as Paris now has a small fleet of hybrid pedal rickshaws, similar to those in Rome and Valencia. The rickshaw service, called Urban-Cab, is defined as an "intermediate non-polluting solution between a bus and a taxi." The rickshaws operate on a route that passes along the Bastille, the Louvre, Place de la Concorde, Saint-Michel and Notre-Dame - basically where tourists want to go. The rickshaws are powered not only by pedal power, but also a battery and an electric motor that assists on steep grades. Urban-Cab claims that these are a completely carbon-free means of transport and they expect to have more than 100 units around Paris by the end of this year.
[Source: Urban-Cab (thanks to Dominique for the tip)]
The Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP, French Oil Institute), has introduced a natural gas-powered car which reduces its CO2 emissions down to 84 g/km. The prototype, called Vehgan, was made from a standard older model Smart Fortwo with several technologies added to reduce fuel consumption. First of all, there is a downsized engine which uses a turbo and an intercooler, in this case, optimized for use with natural gas. Then, the powertrain is mated to a Valeo StARS 14V+X hybrid system, for which the IFP developed a new management process to minimize fuel consumption. This mild hybrid system has a Start&Stop function and features regenerative braking.
The car has a range of about 200 km (120 miles), but the composite-made gas reservoirs don't affect the vehicle interior. IFP expects future developments to reduce CO2 emissions down to 80 g/km. That would be 32 percent less than the standard gasoline version. Oh, and let's mention that despite Smart being a German brand, the factory that makes these cars is in France
In a dog bites man kind of move, Friends of the Earth has issued a report in which they criticize the oil industry for not doing more to reduce their carbon footprint. The environmental organization believes that measures to increase energy efficiency - as well as forgetting about biofuels - could be the key to reducing the footprint. FotE has made a similar argument in the past. Overall, FotE says, the oil industry could reduce carbon emission by between 10.5 and 11.5 percent through the two measures. This would allow the EU to reach its target of reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent in 2020. According to Friends of the Earth, oil companies aren't telling the truth to the EU when they claim they can't reach the 2020 target, something they say to reduce legislation and increase their profits.
Lots of Nissan electric car news today. Shortly after hearing that Nissan intends to be a global leader in affordable electric cars, news comes that the company is looking at a few cities to trial some of their new electric vehicle technology. One such city on the short-list is reportedly London. Carlos Ghosn says, "We have not yet got to the level of talking to the mayor's office. At this stage it is just a feasibility study, but London is definitely among the cities interested." London seems to be a rather obvious choice, considering the cities controversial new congestion charges which would offer zero-emission vehicles a big advantage over their gas or diesel-consuming cousins.
Let's recap the other recent news. Israel and Denmark want in on the electric car craze too. In fact, What Car reports that Israeli authorities have struck a deal with Nissan allowing the automaker exclusive rights to sell electric cars in Israel for a period of ten years. California is slated to be the first stop for an upcoming Nissan electric car in the U.S.
Interestingly, Nissan hopes to get 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, of range from a single battery pack, which could then be swapped out or recharged at an EV station -- sorta like an electrified version of today's gas stations and part of the Project Better Place idea. Ghosn says that Nissan is fully capable of offering an EV, sans battery, for the same cost of a normal gas-powered car. After the initial purchase, the cost of the battery and the amount of money spent keeping it charged will be less than the cost of gasoline. Ghosn also says that Nissan's electric cars will be sexy and attractive. That seems to cover all the bases rather well. Nissan, you've got our attention... we're waiting!
Système U, a chain of gas stations in France, has decided to stop delivering E85 at the 22 pumps where it was on sale. According to the company's press release, "This biofuel has not found its public. The French adhesion is just not there." Système U comprises more than 900 shops in France, 600 of which have gas pumps.
The Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP, French Oil Institute), has introduced a natural gas-powered car which reduces its CO2 emissions down to 84 g/km. The prototype, called Vehgan, was made from a standard older model Smart Fortwo with several technologies added to reduce fuel consumption. First of all, there is a downsized engine which uses a turbo and an intercooler, in this case, optimized for use with natural gas. Then, the powertrain is mated to a Valeo StARS 14V+X hybrid system, for which the IFP developed a new management process to minimize fuel consumption. This mild hybrid system has a Start&Stop function and features regenerative braking.
In a dog bites man kind of move, Friends of the Earth has issued a report in which they criticize the oil industry for not doing more to reduce their carbon footprint. The environmental organization believes that measures to increase energy efficiency - as well as forgetting about biofuels - could be the key to reducing the footprint. FotE has made a 
Lots of Nissan electric car news today. Shortly after hearing that Nissan intends to be a 
