Green Car Rollout | Green Energy News

January 8, 2006 – Vol.10 No.42

GREEN CAR ROLLOUT.

The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Motor City (Detroit) is THE place to show off new and upcoming models to the American car buying public. Here’s what’s green this year:

--- AutoWeek magazine awarded the new Toyota Camry the Most Significant at the Show saying, “Toyota will easily and quickly become #1 in the world after just one year of sales of this new Camry”

AutoWeek comments that the Kentucky-built hybrid version, to be in showrooms by June, “will frighten the stink out of every competitor.” The hybrid will have a combined gas/electric 192 horsepower and get 43 miles per gallon in city driving, 37 on the open road, 40 combined. The gas four-cylinder engine is rated at 147 horsepower, the electric drive is 45. The hybrid car will offer the same, or better performance as the 6-cylinder version. Who wouldn’t want the hybrid over the 6? There’ll be long waiting lists for this car.

--- GM, slow off the mark with hybrids, will offer the Saturn Vue Green Line by summertime. At $23,000 Green Line could be the lowest priced hybrid SUV on the market.

Fuel economy for Green Line should be 27 city / 32 highway, 20 percent better than the conventional 4-cylinder, automatic version.

GM also launched a hybrid Tahoe SUV. A V-8 is under the hood with 25 percent better fuel economy as long as the displacement on demand feature (cylinder deactivation) is included.

--- Mitsubishi showed off the Concept-CT. It is what its name suggests. It has in-wheel 20-kilowatt electric motors at each corner (inside twenty inch diameter wheels) and a rear-mounted 1.0 liter cylinder gas engine to generate electricity or to drive the rear wheels. Combined peak - where-the-rubber-meets-the-road - horsepower is 134 (100 kilowatts).

The in-wheel electric motors can be used with power sources beyond conventional engines including batteries or fuel cells. As in the Concept-CT, in-wheel technology makes it easy to build a four-wheel drive car.

--- Subaru, like GM a latecomer to the hybrid scene, now has electric and hybrid cars in testing.

The R1e urban electric vehicle has lithium-ion type batteries with recharge to 80-percent in 15 minutes or so.

The Turbo Parallel Hybrid (TPH) technology in the company’s B5-TPH is like Honda’s hybrid system with an electric motor stuffed between the engine and transmission. However, Subaru includes a turbocharger to create additional on-demand power while keeping core gasoline engine size relatively small. Subaru also uses Miller Cycle combustion, which with the TPH technology, should be 30 percent more efficient than conventional power. Manganese lithium-ion batteries are to be used, so they say.

--- DaimlerChrysler’s all-electric Global Electric Motorcars (GEM) division showed off new 6-passenger versions of their neighborhood electric vehicles. The e6 and e6S will begin production in April 2006.

--- DaimlerChrysler’s Mercedes-Benz division is currently without hybrids but it will have its BLUETEC diesel technology on the way by next fall. (Think biodiesel.)

BLUETEC is the cleanest automotive diesel technology to date so much so that the company says it should pass emission tests in all 50 states. (Five don’t allow new diesel cars now.) The company may license the technology to others as well.

--- Volkswagen didn’t show up in Detroit with a hybrid, but in Germany the company announced it has started a partnership with Continental Automotive Systems to develop and supply power electronics for future hybrid vehicles and VW has ordered a hybrid drive system from Continental and ZF Friedrichshafen AG.

In other words, they may getting into the hybrid business. (ZF is the same company that built the Hindenburg in the 1930’s)

Volkswagen did announce in Detroit that along with Shell and Iogen it would study the feasibility of producing cellulose ethanol (bioethanol) in Germany. Bioethanol, which uses enzymes to break down cellulose into sugars, can cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent in a full cycle analysis compared with conventional petroleum fuels.

Visit Toyota at http://www.toyota.com/, GM at http://www.gm.com/ , Subaru at http://www.subaru-global.com/ Mitsubishi at http://media.mitsubishicars.com/ , GEM at http://www.gemcars.com/ , Iogen at http://www.iogen.ca/ Continental at http://www.conti-online.com/ (click Press Services) ZF Friedrichshafen at http://www.zf.com/ .