Future car technologies

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Future car technologies include new energy sources and materials, which are being developed in order to make automobiles more sustainable, safer, more energy efficient, or less polluting.

Contents 1 Main energy sources 2 Energy savers 3 Materials 4 See also 5 External links 5.1 Cars specifically 5.2 Transportation technology 6 References

[edit] Main energy sources

Andrew A. Frank argues that hybrid cars that can be plugged into the electric grid (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) will soon become standard in the automobile industry.^[1]. This hypothesis is supported by the current PHEV mass-production race, especially among Toyota, GM and Ford. Other technologies include the following:

• dual mode vehicle or vehicles platoon that use relatively small electric motors and fuel supplies or battery reserves for door-to-door service off electrically powered arteries. Some swap battery packs to avoid waiting associated with recharging. This also avoids deep discharge that shortens battery life and makes a smaller and lighter battery pack with logistically infinite range using incremental energy sipping through frequent fully automatic battery exchange at speed. The monorail mode provides superior safety at very high speed.

• battery electric vehicles have the potential of using locally available sustainable energy resources while at the same time reducing vehicle energy requirements by 1/2 to 1/4 when using batteries to store electricity. A new high-performance electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster has attracted much media attention^[1] since its release in June 2006.

• hydrogen cars could eventually be produced that use sustainable energy resources and water. The resulting hydrogen could be burned in an engine or converted back into electricity by a fuel cell and its support systems instead of a battery to be powered as an electric vehicle. Due to the additional conversion losses and added distribution and support logistics overall efficiency is currently not as good as current ICE ("internal combustion engine") vehicles. Rather it is far simpler and more efficient (by a factor of three to six by some estimates) to transmit locally available sustainable electricity directly into the batteries of a battery electric vehicle.

• alternative fuels are being proposed : alcohol fuel, water (see hydrogen fuel), highly compressed air (see air car), garbage, hemp oil.

• Powering electric vehicles directly from the grid would use the least of any kind of fuel because utilities obtain much higher efficiencies than cars. Vehicles also do not have to carry the weight of the many components between the filler cap and the tip of the exhaust. Electrification of highways and arterials is greatly simplified if vehicles form into trains. These are described in detail at roadtrains.org.

[edit] Energy savers

Various technologies have been developed and utilized to increase the energy efficiency of conventional cars or supplement them, resulting in energy savings.

• Regenerative braking

• BMW's Turbosteamer technology to harness the heat generated by conventional internal combustion engines and use it to generate mechanical energy [2], resulting in a 15% increase in fuel efficiency. [3]

• Utilization of waste heat from the engine as useful mechanical energy through exhaust powered steam, stirling engines, thermal diodes, etc..^[2]

• Using Computational Fluid Dynamics in the design stage can produce vehicles which take significantly less energy to push through the air, a major consideration at highway speeds. The Volkswagen 1-litre car and Aptera hybrid car are examples of ultra-low-drag vehicles.

[edit] Materials

• Duraluminum, fiberglass, carbon fiber, and carbon nanotubes may totally replace all steel in cars (potentially improving lightness and strength).

[edit] See also

• Automobile dependency
• Flying car
• MIT Car
• New Mobility Agenda
• New urbanism
• Transit-oriented development
• Vehicle Infrastructure Integration
• Hydrogen economy

[edit] External links

[edit] Cars specifically

• Future Cars at HowStuffWorks
• What if Cars Could Drive Themselves? (from U. Washington's Innovative Transportation Technologies website)
• Hypercar Concept - Rocky Mountain Institute

[edit] Transportation technology

• [4] RUF (Rapid Urban Flexible) dualmode transport system
• Roadmap of Key Developments in transportation
• Article on platooning and e-guideways from Francis Reynolds, grandfather of dualmode.
• Fuel-Cell Hype vs. Economic Reality, National Public Radio interview with Matt Wald
• Wired Magazine, How Hydrogen Can Save America*
• The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs (2004) National Academy of Engineering (NAE), Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (BEES)
• Urban Light Transport website
• Alternative Fuel Vehicle Training From the National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium.
• New Scientific American article
• Fuel Efficient Vehicles Now An activist site with much information on what can be done now to do to improve things even more.
• Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems

[edit] References

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