Here’s Sian from We Are Futureproof, guest driving at the Revolve Eco-Rally 2010.
Assigned to the 103 g/km petrol-driven Suzuki Alto (What Green Car rating 28) Sian italked to Book of Green news about her trip and the need for the government to continue to support the development of super-clean electric vehicles.
Last year, when I helped judge the What Green Car awards, I was full of hope that next time we’d see production models of ‘proper’ electric vehicles on the shortlist.
And, sure enough, this year my fellow judges and I turned up to Imperial College and there were two cars capable of running on pure electricity parked under the plane trees next to Queen’s Tower.
Unfortunately, neither was strictly eligible for the awards. The plug-in Prius hybrid was just passing through as a guest prototype, and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV (while orders can be placed this year) is not quite going to available in UK showrooms during the qualifying period.
To me, the pace of bringing new EVs to the market seems glacial. However, there is light on the horizon at last and several may be in the running for the awards next time they come around. Sometime next year the Nissan Leaf EV should start appearing in Europe, and both Citroen and Renault have vehicles based on the i-MiEV in preparation. The Mini E may even make an appearance on the regular market.
The arrival of real cars that run on electricity can only be a good thing, since the What Green Car ratings for EVs are far below any of the petrol- or diesel-driven models on the market, including hybrids.
The WGC rating aims to be the most scientific method of evaluating the impact of a vehicle, taking into account the full environmental impact of making and driving a car throughout its life.
The very low ratings of EVs (8-10 versus 25-35 for the greenest fossil-fueled cars and hybrids) signify not just lower CO2 emissions from manufacturing and use (even when charged with non-renewable electricity), but also their zero impact on air quality while being driven – a very important factor in congested cities where more than half the world’s population now live.
And at last I have got to drive one, which was very exciting. Unlike the other smaller cars on the shortlist, the i-MiEV’s electric drive really does take off when you put your foot on the accelerator – a feeling that’s all the more extraordinary because it’s also virtually silent.
Yes it is somewhat like driving a dodgem (and just as simple) but the i-MiEV is not a tinny, rattly thing at all. It’s very much a ‘proper’ car – roomy, solid and with decent back seats and everything. All in all, I was very impressed with my first spin in an EV, and the judges – while we couldn’t give it a prize this year – marked it out as the ‘car to watch’ for the real leap forward it represents.
On to the actual winners then.
The full shortlist is below, and I had the chance to drive most of the cars around the short test run around the edges of Hyde Park.
The most impressive thing to note about the field as a whole is the continuing drop in CO2 emissions compared with last year. The overall WGC ratings are falling too, but it’s the strides in pure fuel efficiency that are most noticeable.
The equivalent 3-series BMW that we tested last year emitted (if I remember correctly) 123 g/km of CO2, but this year it was down to 109 g/km. A huge drop in just one year of development, and testament to the company’s efforts with a wide range of fuel-saving technologies in its ‘efficient dynamics’ programme.
Also commended was the Seat Leon MPV – the first I’ve seen that goes below 100 g/km of CO2 and, with other pollutants at Euro V standard, likely to be exempt from the congestion charge in London soon.
Overall, though, it fell to a Toyota hybrid to pick up the main prize again. Last year the new Prius had us all drooling over its improved engine and newly stylish bodywork, but the Prius was always something of a niche car for the eco-concerned, not a car for the average family.
The Auris uses essentially the same engine and has the same ratings and emissions as the Prius. However, by putting the engine into one of their ‘regular’ cars, reducing the price and making them in huge numbers in their new factory in Derbyshire, Toyota are at last bringing hybrids into the mainstream in the UK, and this is what clinched the decision for us.
Read more about the judges’ comments, and see photos on the What Green Car website here.
Winner:
Toyota Auris hybrid – WGC Rating: 32 – CO2: 89 g/km
Commended:
Seat Leon 1.6 TDI Ecomotive – WGC Rating: 28 – CO2: 99 g/km
BMW 320d EfficientDynamics – WGC Rating 31 – CO2: 109 g/km
Citroen DS3 1.6 HDi – WGC Rating: 29 – CO2: 99 g/km
To watch:
Mitsubishi i-MiEV 47kW/Li-ion – WGC Rating: 10 – CO2: 0 g/km
Other cars on the shortlist:
Volkswagen Polo 1.2 TDi BlueMotion – WGC Rating: 26 – CO2: 89 g/km
Vauxhall Corsa 1.3 CDTi ecoFLEX – WGC Rating: 29 – CO2: 98 g/km
Volvo C30 1.6D DRIVe – WGC Rating 29 – CO2: 99 g/km
Kia Venga 1.4 CRDi – WGC Rating: 33 – CO2: 117 g/km
Honda CR-Z hybrid – WGC Rating: 37 – CO2: 117 g/km
Climate Change refocuses everything. The trajectory that we were all on has suddenly been interrupted with a new emerging awareness that how we have been living and what we have been making as a human species has been and is continuing to have an effect on the planet’s ecosystem. Oh, and it’s serious. Unfortunately transport is one of the sectors where the CO2 emissions are still increasing - at the moment transport accounts for over 20-25% of the world’s total emissions.
The auto industry has had a rude awakening. Not only are they beginning to understand that they have to downsize their SUVs, they have to somehow compete with auto makers on a global scale. Players like Toyota unexpectedly captured a large segment of the US auto market with their popular Prius. And amidst the financial meltdown, auto companies have had to receive loans, declare for bankruptcy, and beg for stimulus packages such as the recent scappage schemes to help keep themselves and their dealers afloat. But these are short term measures, and as the money for the schemes dry up, they are once again faced with the changing world before them.
In this context, with the growing knowledge that transport emissions have to decrease, combined with the recent collapse of the financial systems across the world, and the introduction of regulatory frameworks to help bring emissions down, the UK government has been working with the automotive industry to get a handle on where new car technology is heading, and where investors would best put their money.
The New Automotive Innovation and Growth Team (NAIGT) was established by the UK government in April 2008, led by industry and chaired by Richard Parry-Jones (ex-CEO from Ford). While the collapsing economics had a devastating impact on car makers and their suppliers globally, the NAIGT concluded early on that they should focus on the long term rather than short term survival. In 2009 they produced a report setting out its 20 year vision for the automotive industry and its recommendations to Government and industry to achieve this. The report was a product of stakeholder meetings with senior industrialists, academics and financial analysts experienced in the automotive sector. Their research was an attempt to both plan out where technology was going in the near future as well as trying to decipher where they needed to invest in order to maintain a competitive edge amongst emerging players (like China).
The report sets out an integrated and strategic vision for the future development of the auto industry in the UK. A major emphasis of the report is the need to embrace the challenge of climate change and invest in technologies capable of providing innovative solutions in the form of safe and satisfying future low carbon vehicle products that customers want to buy.
Key among the recommendations in the report are proposals to:
According to the then UK Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, “The Automotive Council will be an opportunity for Government and industry to work together on the long term strategic development of the sector. The car industry needs to capitalise on the economic opportunities and job creation offered by the shift to low carbon.”
Looking at the technology roadmap below, for the near future NAIGT emphasises the increasing electrification of vehicle propulsion, as well as providing a vehicle recharging infrastructure with adequate capacity and density, and the development of second generation biofuel powertrain technologies that enable the reduction of fossil fuel dependence of internal combustion engines. Surprisingly, fuel cell technology is relegated to beyond 2020, and all bets are on for a breakthrough in battery technology around 2020.
The UK roadmap for passenger cars is seen as a kind of defining plan for the industry, and used as a basis for lobbying for R&D funding from the government. However, this kind of mapping approach seems about as relevant as KPI’s (key performance indicators), to use management consultancy speak, which, while indicative, are a legacy of the 20th century approach to linear planning that fails to notice the world just doesn’t work that way.
We bang on these days about efficiency – which is really a management idea thought up at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and fully realized by Henry J. Ford, who started the car industry. Management pursued the goal of using resources (including human labour) as efficiently as possible on order to secure the greatest economic outcome.
Unfortunately efficiency is myopic, and I would argue, boring. Efficiency rewards compliance to a strict and timely organizational structure, and at the least sign of stress, tightens it’s reliance on compliance to limits even more strongly.
There is an old saying I picked up years ago - it goes something like, ‘argue for your limitations and they become yours’. This somehow seems an appropriate way to approach the limitations of the NAIGT roadmap produced in the UK. What we really need is risk taking in every direction!
The systems around us are changing rapidly, and we’re in the midst of this huge transition. Also, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil, technology is changing exponentially, not linearly. None of can predict anymore what the world will look like in 10 year’s time.
We need to create a brave new world. Together we have to use every ounce of inspiration, creativity and resources at our disposal to lean into this changing paradigm. The old ways certainly won’t do. We don’t have time for caution, nor can we depend on government’s support for the changes that we need businesses to make. Businesses have to pull out all the stops, without any guarantees.
We need to see some humility from the car makers. Their industry is hardly one that is ‘very strong and sound’, as SMMT’s Paul Everitt often admonishes. In fact, car makers, if they have had any plan at all, have followed a tragic strategy at best. If they have been planning to undermine the earth’s underlying ecosystem, they are succeeding.
In conclusion, what we need is a major rethink by the car industry, a humble reckoning, and a new approach which directly combats the problems facing us rather than slowly perpetuating it, albeit, more ‘efficiently’. Maybe the future is electric, maybe it’s hydrogen, but there are no maps for human ingenuity.
Blake Ludwig, for We Are Futureproof
What do you do in Paris after speaking at a plenary session on international rules on green advertising? Why you hire a Velib bike and pose in front of the Eiffel tower of course!
Velib is a really cool system. I only had to register at the ticket machine, get a pin code and then take a bike. The whole process took about 3 minutes, and we were off riding the leafy Paris boulevards towards Trocadero.
It’s free to use for the first half hour and you can ride and leave it at any other Velib stand around Paris.
And it’s dead perfect for riding in a Paul Smith suit.
Blake, for We Are Futureproof
No, I’m not seeing naked emperors, but perhaps their automotive equivalent, the much promoted Electric Vehicle (EV).
I’m not going to go on a positive or negative rant about EV’s, but just make a few observations about when and how they will likely make a significant contribution to the central issue. And perhaps ponder on whether there isn’t a need to modify our expectations and do more in the here and now.
We’re told we need EV’s as a solution for The Cars’ contribution to climate change and global warming, though oddly there seems to be more of a focus in the UK on reviving our manufacturing industry with new EV technology.
So what am I seeing that concerns me so? In the first instance it is all about certainty. The scientific community is quite “certain” that climate change is taking place and equally “certain” that this is linked to man-made CO2 emissions, to which transport, and passenger cars particularly, are a significant contributor. Doesn’t that mean that what our climate needs now are solutions with an equal amount of “certainty”?
The New Automotive Innovation and Growth Team (NAIGT) produced a handy report for the government last year which outlined a technology road-map out to 2040 and beyond. It shows the increasing roles that various types of emerging automobile technologies such as hybrids, electric vehicles and fuel cell cars will have over the next 30 years. The main observation I’d make from this report is that accompanying the inception of Full Hybrids, Electric Vehicles and Fuel Cell cars is a word that we know is right to be there, but perhaps do not acknowledge as much as we should. The word? “Breakthrough”. For me, a future “breakthrough” is not the same as “certainty”. It is presented as though it will definitely happen (and it may) but its not “certain” to happen.
Another high profile UK Government advisory body, the Technology Steering Board, also produced a report last year. This projected another view of the future as they see it. Their report states that over the next 10 years, 90% of transport carbon reductions will come, not from hybrids, electric cars or fuel cell vehicles, but from improvements in conventional technologies. They even put a number to it; they say that they expect future global sales of electric vehicles to reach between 1-3 million by 2020. This is against a backdrop of circa 50m ish total annual sales. So even if 3m EV’s sold globally in 2020 were a “certainty”, which it isn’t (and I’ve used the bigger number deliberately), their contribution to carbon reduction is not that great (even if all the electricity they used was renewable, which it won’t be!).
So where does that leave us.
It is uncertain that we will achieve the necessary “breakthroughs” to make viable electric vehicles which will make a difference over the next ten years. Should we stop trying? Of course not. Should we develop our charging infrastructure? Yes, of course. Should we also promote and encourage the take up of TODAY’s low CO2 cars? Yes, we should.
Do we have technologies TODAY that WILL make a difference, Yes we do.
Do we have measures in place to help people buy today’s cars that are low CO2? Well, we have some weak ones - a few quid off VED perhaps. But nothing like the government’s £5k grant when you purchase an electric vehicle.
Whilst the UK government is happy to throw money at punters to purchase a new Tesla Roadster, (which is unlikely to be used everyday as its as impractical as any sports car), someone buying a new frugal, small, diesel powered car and using it for their daily commute gets no such incentive. Where is the logic in that?
A final thought, The cars put on the road today will still be there (in the majority of cases by 2020 and beyond). By not focusing the public’s mind and helping them purchase today’s green cars, the government is continuing to contribute adversely to transport’s climate impact for some time to come.
Peter, Environmental Transport Consultant, for We Are Futureproof
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