The Auto Industry Goes Green

Having been bailed out by the government, US car manufacturers ought to be more beholden now to their customers (and taxpayers) wants and needs more than ever before. However, this has not really been the case in recent times. While there has been a steady and increasing cry for energy-efficient vehicles, and even totally green, fossil fuel-less cars, the industry has been somewhat hesitant to put these cars on the market. When electric cars were first being put on the market in the early 2000s, it seemed as though the motor industry was taking its role in shaping the future of our planet seriously. Then, almost as suddenly as they appeared, the electric car was shelved by companies who pandered to government lobbyists and big oil’s almost invincible grip on the auto industry. I would recommend the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? to anyone who is interested in finding out the sordid details – but trust me, you will be angry. http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/

In any case, the car companies proceeded to roll out SUV’s and other gas-guzzling vehicles over the decade, pushing gas-hungry cars onto consumers who were fed up with exorbitant and ever-increasing gasoline prices. Hopefully, people are realizing that gasoline-powered vehicles ought soon to become a thing of the past – due in no small part to the strain they cause on consumers’ wallets. In response to this new demand, there has been a sporadic but concentrated effort from Detroit and automotive companies around the globe the produce more fuel efficient cars. Legislation has passed in Congress that has increased the standard miles per gallon in cars, but this has not really affected the industry at all. While most companies are busy with and content with offering cars that have good mileage, others have put forth some more revolutionary ideas:

Most familiar to people is probably the hybrid car. When models like the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius began to sell in massive quantities, the rest of the auto industry was quick to hop on the hybrid bandwagon. In regular cars, the engine uses a lot of gas to move the pistons and create the energy to propel you forward, but hybrid cars have much smaller engines. Therefore, they cannot do as much work. A small hybrid engine runs on gasoline, and generates enough momentum to keep your car moving, but it needs extra help when speeding up, going uphill, etc. That help comes from the electric-powered battery. By using two sources of energy, hybrid cars have gotten national attention. The hybrid car reduces gasoline intake in your car by a lot and reduces your carbon footprint by relying on a simple principle – that people do not need their cars to be running at peak performance at all times. A typical engine is big enough and gas-hungry enough to supply energy when you need to floor the gas pedal – this is when your car is at peak performance. However, most drivers use peak performance in their cars far less than 1% of the time, and the other 99% of the time it is simply wasting energy. While the hybrid car reduces this efficiency problem, it still doesn’t eliminate the need to put fossil fuels in our cars.

According to Automotive Digest, there are a number of companies currently at work on fuel cell vehicles. Fuel cell vehicles, or FCVs, are nowhere to be found on the current market. That is because these vehicles have been mostly equipped with “batteries” that use natural gas and fuel such as hydrogen to make them run. While these vehicles could cut carbon emissions from cars by as much as 50%, and have 25% greater fuel efficiency than even hybrids on the market, the fact that America and the world is infrastructurally unprepared to deal with a slew of cars that run on fuel cells – the technology has simply not been researched enough and would need to become far more ubiquitous to truly make an impact. According to the magazine, these fuel cell vehicles will be pushed into the market by 2014 and are expected to reach sales of 670,000 per year by 2020.

Even with these options, carbon emissions will still exist, and both options still contribute to pollution and the destruction of the ozone.

Then there is the electric car. Fuel cell vehicles and hybrid cars are also technically “electric,” but this is not what the auto industry means when it talks about electric cars. These cars run wholly on rechargeable battery power, often coming from pricey lithium-ion battery packs. The price of such batteries has contributed to high prices for these cars and therefore low sales, but introductions like the new Nissan Leaf car and other smaller “mini” cars tailored for city life are becoming more and more popular. In addition to being totally gas-free, the electric car has plenty of other advantages – for one, it runs nearly silently when compared to traditional motors. The Obama administration has tried to apply pressure to the auto industry from the bailout to eliminate funding for fuel cell cars and focus more on purely electric cars, but this legislation was squashed by the House in 2010. instead, the Department of Energy is slowly cutting off funding for fuel cells (an idea toted by the Bush administration as the best viable alternative) and increasing funding for electric car technology. Hopefully, given all the trends of destruction and ignorance, we are finally arriving at a place where the companies that have taken taxpayer money are listening to the consumers who saved them: green cars are the way of the future, and are an integral part of the next chapter of the American auto industry if it wants to stay competitive in a global market.

Sources:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car.htm

http://www.automotivedigest.com/content/displayArticle.aspx?a=66581

http://www.howstuffworks.com/electric-car.htm