Tech that

What other companies are doing to present their green credentials.

The Toyota Prius hybrid is probably the best known crusader of the alternative clean-fuel technology brigade. Countless Hollywood stars and the who’s who of Beverly Hills made it an overnight star, and its success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Today, nearly every major manufacturer worth its salt is looking at adopting a wide range of technologies that will drive future cars.

One of them is Nissan. Nissan believes pure electric vehicles can pave the way for their future cars and at the recent Paris Motor Show brought the Nuvu concept. The Nuvu is a 2+1 micro car concept that uses electric lithium-ion batteries, just like GM’s Volt. The interesting bit is Nissan is trying to make the batteries even lighter and more efficient.

 

Having tied up with NEC, Japan for the batteries, the battery capacity has doubled, the output increased while the size reduced. On the Nissan Cube mule that has been the platform for Nissan’s new thrust, an 80 kW motor that is powered by the Li-ion batteries has been used. Nissan hopes to bring the first of its production cars to showrooms in Japan and US by 2010, and in the rest of the world markets by 2012.

Another interesting application are fuel cell cars. Fuel cell cars use hydrogen, obtained from either natural gas, coal or liquified petroleum gas using a process called thermolysis. The fuel is stored using compression due to its low volumetric energy density. In cars, the same fuel is stored in fuel cell stacks that use platinum as catalysts.

A few companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz have tried their hand on this technology. BMW, for instance runs a fleet of 7 Series saloons that run on this technology. Mercedes-Benz on the other hand has a couple of A and B-Class cars running this tech and even some Citaro buses in Hamburg. The technology on these vehicles uses hydrogen that reacts with oxygen to create water and electricity.

Electricity is used to run the car, while water is passed through the exhaust, thus making it a clean tech. Fuel cells however are fraught with problems like cost of the fuel cells itself, the transportation and storage of fuel and the lack of fuel stations. Most manufacturers howevr are trying to bring down the cost of fuel cell cars, but that will take quite sometime.

Effectively then, the IC engine is not going to die an easy death. Which is why, Toyota and Honda have placed their bets on hybrids. As the name suggests, they use an internal combustion engine to power an electric motor. At low speeds, the electric motor provides motive power and when speeds reach a certain threshold, the IC engine kicks in, while recharging the batteries in the car.

These cars also feature regenerative braking that converts the energy spent during braking to recharge the batteries or power other applications. Toyota, for instance, have made the current Prius a plug- and-play car that allows for the car batteries to be charged just like an electric car.

For now, hybrids, though mass produced, still suffer from problems of heavy batteries and questions regarding production emissions. But these are also the only ones you can order from a showroom near you, for now.