From The Economist:
Ferrari is planning on building a hybrid race car that will compete with its gas-guzzling cars. Other car manufactures are building (or going to build) hybrid cars, but the reason I post that Ferrari is shifting gears is because in my impression this is significant. When expensive race cars go green it truly means that the future could use less oil.
In a recent interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said that they are planning to reduce CO2 levels by 40% before 2012. They will make it possible thanks to a new hybrid technology and Ferrari might build cars powered by turbocharged V6 engines which are smaller and more fuel-efficient.
“We are currently working on the development of a Ferrari that will use alternative energy sources and which will be based on what we are doing at the moment in Formula 1″, he said. KERS or Kinetic Energy Recycling System is a technique based on the brake-energy-regeneration principle and it consists of a super-efficient CVT gearbox which uses a spinning flywheel to harness energy when the car brakes. This energy will be perfect to increase the acceleration needed when overtaking or cornering.
I’ve always thought of F1 racing as being good research and development for car companies. That line of thinking inevitably lead me to wonder why the cars still use gas when all signs point to hybrid automobiles in the future. I’ve been wondering this for years, and my brother has taken the brunt of my unrelenting curiosity around this.
Finally, F1 will be using hybrid technology in their cars.
The hybrid system that will be phased in is know as KERS, which stands for Kinetic Energy Recovery System. KERS doesn’t store as much energy as a traditional hybrid system, but it only weighs 55 pounds and the limited energy storage capacity is well suited for Formula-style racing.
The biggest difference between KERS and a regular battery-electric hybrid is that KERS stores recovered waste energy in a rotating flywheel. Instead of converting waste energy into electricity and than back into useful energy again with an electric motor, KERS simply transfers the kinetic energy to a ~5kg flywheel in the F1 car’s transmission. The energy stored in the flywheel can then be used by the driver by pushing a “boost†button.
Some more information form the 2006 Canadian census has been released and it paints a green future for transportation in Toronto. The census asked how people get to work (car, walk, public transit, bike, etc.). In the city the younger one is, the more likely it is that one is taking a more green approach to getting to work.
Workers under the age of 25 in the Toronto region use public transit 30.8 per cent of the time, walk 9.5 per cent of the time and cycle 1.5 per cent of the time.
That’s a considerably higher reliance on environmentally friendly means of getting to work than the average commuter in the Toronto region, who commutes by public transit 22.2 per cent of the time, by foot 4.8 per cent of the time and by bike 1.0 per cent of the time.
Reliance on the car in the Toronto region seems to increase with the age of the commuter.
Commuters younger than 25 used a vehicle to get to work — either as a driver or a passenger — 57.2 per cent of the time. Those age 25-34 commuted by car 66.1 per cent of the time, and those 35 and over drove or were driven 75.8 per cent of the time.
What really stood out to me was that the desire to own a car is shrinking!
Owning a car used to be a rite of passage for young people, but environmental awareness in that generation has made gas guzzlers uncool, says Dan McDermott, director of Ontario’s chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada. The high cost of gasoline is another factor for those with limited incomes.
“The desire to own a car is diminishing for a number of reasons — environmental consciousness being high on that list,” said McDermott.
I’ve never understood why people want to own cars even if they don’t need one.
Treehugger has a neat post up about London and how they are at the forefront of Western cities deterring car usage.
London is now announcing that it plans “to create a new network of quick, simple, and safe routes for cyclists and pedestrians that represents the largest investment in walking and cycling in the city’s history.”
This is not some token initiative, either. London is committed to spending US$975 million over the next ten years to implement five new programs “with the aim of having one in ten round trips in London each day made by bike, and saving some 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 per year .”
The photo above of the bike ambulance makes me super-happy!